Thoughts on Ron and Hermione as a ship?
thank you very much for the ask, @thesilverstarling!
iâll state my position straight away: book ron and hermione are the best of the canon couples.
they will have a long and extremely happy marriage made rich by great and stalwart love, lust, fun, and faithfulness, rather than held together by duty and couplesâ therapy like so many readers and authors (including jkr, who seems to have decided to spend the years since the conclusion of the series failing to understand anything about her own characters) tend to think.
i will state another position straight away: lest i seem like iâm just a fan with blinkers on, i think this even though hermione is, by far, my least favourite member of the trio. if she were real i would detest her, and i dislike how she is treated by the narrative as always justified in her negative characteristics. i like fanon hermione - perfect and preternaturally good - even less.
as a result, i think that itâs ridiculous that jkr has said that she thought ron needed to âbecome worthyâ of hermione. they belong together as equals - which is what theyâre set up in the narrative as being from the off - and i hate seeing that undermined.
because ronald weasley? heâs an icon. and he doesnât get anywhere near the respect he deserves in fandom.
there are multiple reasons for this - ronâs narrative purpose is to be the everyman sidekick, and so he is able to be less special than harry or hermione (the helper-figure); the amount of aristocracy wank in this fandom means that the weasleysâ ordinariness is less appealing to writers than making harry have twenty different lordships and call himself hadrian; the narrative interrogates ronâs flaws - especially his capacity for jealousy - much more intensively than it interrogates either hermioneâs (cruel, inflexible, meddling) or harryâs (reckless, self-absorbed, judgemental) - but one i feel is particularly significant is that ron is such a british character that many of his traits are not understood as intended by non-british readers.
in particular - as is outlined in this excellent meta by @whinlatter - ronâs sense of humour isnât indicative of immaturity or a lack of seriousness, but is, in fact, evidence that heâs the most emotionally aware of the trio.
ron is shown throughout the series to understand how both harry and hermione need to have their emotions approached - and i think there is no piece of writing which says this better than crocodile heart by @floreatcastellumposts:
That was what she liked most about Ron, she thought vaguely. He was very good at being suitably outraged on your behalf. For Harry, for her, for Neville. That sort of thing mattered, when you were hurt or embarrassed or wronged in some way. You needed to have someone else on your side, to be as emotional as you felt, maybe even more so, so that you might feel a bit more normal. It was very decent of him, and she was not sure he realised he did it.
ronâs inherent emotional awareness is an enormous source of comfort to other people. he does the work which isnât flashy or special - he makes tea and tells jokes and is just there - but which is needed in healthy human relationships far more frequently than a willingness to fight to the death for the other person.
[as an aside, this normality - even though i think it is assumed rather than justified by the text - is also what ginny provides for harry. if you believe that hinny are a good couple but romione arenât⊠i canât help you.]
but letâs look at some specific reasons why ron and hermione belong together:
their communication styles mesh perfectly. ron is the only person hermione knows who feeds her love of being challenged and debated, and who is able to engage in this way of communicating without becoming irate when she refuses to back down. ron is good at picking his battles, but heâs also good at recognising that hermioneâs tendency to argue isnât intended to be confrontational a lot of the time - itâs just the way she works through feelings and problems. heâs far more easy-going about her tendency to nag, interrupt, try to provoke arguments, or speak condescendingly than heâs given credit for - and hermione evidently respects this, since when he does tell her not to push a situation (above all, when sheâs trying to needle harry into talking about sirius), she listens to him.
that ron and hermioneâs tendency to bicker is taken by fans to be a bad thing is because itâs something harry - from whose perspective the narrative is written - doesnât understand. harry is extremely conflict-avoidant - he tends to take being pushed on views and opinions he has to be insulting; and he has a tendency to assume that he is right which is just as profound as hermioneâs. he and ginny communicate not by debating, but by ginny having no time for his rigidity and refusing to indulge it - but ron and hermione bickering about everything is not a negative thing within their specific emotional dynamic.
[as another aside, this glaring chasm in communication styles is why harry and hermione would be a disaster as a couple.]
they each provide validation the other needs. itâs clear - reading between the lines - that hermione is a tremendously lonely person. the friendlessness of her initial few weeks at hogwarts seems to be a continuation of her experience as a child, and - outside of ron and harry - that friendlessness endures through her schooldays. iâm always struck, for example, by the fact that, when she falls out with ron in prisoner of azkaban, she has no-one else to spend time with, and that this is only avoided in half-blood prince because harry decides not to freeze her out. i donât think her friendship with ginny is anywhere near as close as fanon seems to imply (ginny has no interest in being nagged either), nor do i think that sheâs anywhere near as close to neville (not least because she is so condescending to him) as sheâs often written to be.
and this loneliness seems to stretch beyond hogwarts. the absence of hermioneâs parentsâ from the narrative is - in a doylist sense - clearly just a device to maximise time with the trio all together, but the watsonian reading is that she doesnât have a particularly good relationship with them. hermioneâs obviously upper-middle-class background - the name! the skiing! the holidays in the south of france! - can be presumed, i think, to come with a series of expectations from her parents which she feels constantly that sheâs not entirely meeting, particularly expectations attached to academic success.
[for example, the grangers - were she a muggle child - would undoubtedly have ambitions for her to attend an elite university and then go into a prestigious career. tertiary education of the type that theyâre familiar with doesnât seem to exist in the wizarding world - most careers seem to be taught by apprenticeship - and this, alongside all the other divides between the magical and muggle worlds which contribute to the distance between them, would be one very obvious area in which she felt the need to prove herself to them.]
ron, too, has quite a difficult relationship with his position in the family - voldemortâs locket is not wrong to point out that he seems to receive considerably less of his motherâs emotional attention than ginny or the rest of his brothers - and he too is constrained by expectations which he doesnât know how to explain he has no interest in - above all, mollyâs desire for her sons to achieve top grades and go into the ministry.
he also suffers while at hogwarts from being âharry potterâs best friendâ, something which harry never appreciates. but hermione does. she recognises ronâs jealousy and never allows harry to minimise it (and she and ron are very much aligned on having no respect for harryâs saviour and martyr complexes). she appreciates ronâs strengths - above all his kindness and his sense of humour - and makes him feel as though heâs achieved things with them. and ron does the same for her; he is hugely observant when it comes to her, and he challenges and defends her.
the two of them clearly spend a lot of time together one-on-one while harryâs involved in his various shenanigans (including outside of school - hermione has often arrived at the burrow days or even weeks before harry, and they seem to write to each other frequently when apart). they do this within a relationship which is fundamentally equal. one issue with hinny is that, post-war, harry is going to have to get used to seeing ginny as a peer, rather than as someone he has to protect. but ron and hermione never have that issue - equality is baked into their relationship from the off.
because, to be quite frank, fandom overstates the role that jealousy plays in their relationship. itâs true that ron certainly doesnât acquit himself brilliantly when it comes to hermioneâs relationship with viktor krum (itâs because heâs bi and doesnât know it yet), and a tendency to externalise his insecurity into trying to make others also feel insecure is one of his primary negative traits (hermione does this too, via her patented lofty voice when sheâs trying to condescend to people). but this is often taken as the initial red flag for how the relationship would crash and burn, and ronâs toxic jealousy is often used in fan-fiction as the trigger for emotional and physical violence towards hermione which, frequently, seems to drive her into the arms of either draco malfoy or severus snape⊠who are, of course, the first people we think of when we hear the words ânot prone to jealousyâ...
but i think itâs important to point out several things in defence of ronâs jealousy over krum. firstly, hermione evidently regards his jealousy as ridiculous - sheâs upset by it, yes, but her upset must be understood as being caused by the fact that she wanted him to ask her out. she doesnât think heâs being possessive, she thinks heâs being stupid. secondly, hermione is equally as jealous over ronâs crush on fleur delacour and relationship with lavender brown. she behaves just as cruelly when it comes to lavender as ron does when it comes to krum - and the narrative only treats her actions as more sympathetic or justified both because harry dislikes lavender too, and because, by that point in the series, jkr has dispensed with any inclination to ever criticise her.
but, outside of this teenage pettiness, ron is never jealous of hermione over things which matter. he is never jealous of her intelligence or competence or ambition or success (indeed, he defends her constantly from attacks designed to undermine her in these areas). for someone who struggles with being overshadowed by harry, he is never upset at being overshadowed by her. he is clearly going to be happy to support her in any of the career ambitions she can be written as having post-war.
and, on this point, i think itâs worth interrogating why so many readers still seem to feel uncomfortable with the idea of ron and hermione having a dynamic where she is the more âpowerfulâ one. [itâs always a bit trite to say âbut what if the genders were reversed?â, but actually thatâs not irrelevant here]. if hermione ends up taking the ministry by storm and ron becomes a stay-at-home father or has a job which is just to pay the bills, what, precisely, is wrong with that? why, precisely, should hermione regard ron making that choice for himself as a negative thing? hermione so often seems to leave ron in fan-fiction because of a lack of ambition - something which seems to be particularly common in dramione - but, in canon, she is shown to not particularly care if ron and harry do the bare minimum when it comes to studying etc. she nags them to do their work so they donât get in trouble. she doesnât nag them to do it to the same standard that she would.
and, actually, i think that ron being less ambitious than hermione is something which is key to how well they work. because ron provides not only emotional support, but emotional clarity.
hermione is shown throughout canon to - just as harry does - have a tendency to become obsessive to the detriment of her own health. she is also often - as harry is - emotionally or intellectually inflexible, and finds it hard to move on when what she feels or believes is proven to be wrong. both she and harry are micro-thinkers, who lean towards knee-jerk assumptions and stubborn convictions (and, indeed, hermione has a remarkably hagrid-ish tendency towards blind loyalty).
ron is none of these things. ron is a big-picture thinker (itâs why heâs so good at chess). heâs a pragmatist. heâs the least righteous of the three. he understands that faith and loyalty are choices, and that sometimes these choices will lead to outcomes which are bad or hard. he is the one of the three most willing to own up to having made mistakes. he is the one least likely to act on gut instinct (and, therefore, the hardest to fool - i think itâs worth emphasising that he clocks that tom riddle is tricking harry immediately, the only one of the trio to do so). he understands that things are a marathon, not a sprint. he is the least obsessive.
and these traits contribute to aspects of his character which are underappreciated. ron worries about hermione making herself ill during exams, or when she is using the time-turner, and makes an effort to get her to set healthy boundaries and redirect her anxiety. ron stands on a broken leg in front of sirius or goes into the forest to fight aragog not out of righteousness, but out of choice. ron takes over the burden of preparing buckbeakâs defence when it is clear that hermione is approaching burnout. ron is completely right that harry hasnât done any long-term planning for the horcrux hunt, and his anger does force harry to tighten up after he leaves the trio. ron has a clear head in the middle of battle. ron makes harry and hermione laugh. ron is unafraid of human emotion. ron arrests harryâs tendency to brood over the little things by looking at the bigger picture. ron will always come back.
ron is bringing his politician wife regular cups of tea and making sure she doesnât work all night. he is helping his lawyer wife to feel less upset over losing one case by reminding her that sheâs won ten others. he is noticing stress creeping in and whirling her off for a dirty weekend, or even just a takeaway on the sofa. he is teaching his daughter to be proud of her ambition and his son to treat women as equals and both of his children that all you can do when you fuck up is apologise and try to do better. he is making hermione smile on the worst days of her life. he is helping her strategise her long-term goals when she gets stuck on the short-term ones. he is telling her straight when she needs to get it together. he is seeing a misogynistic head of department call hermione a âsilly little girlâ and choosing to tell him exactly what he thinks of that.
ron is the ultimate wife guy. hermione is a very, very lucky lady.
