thinking about the latest chapter of falling in place and how it finally forced me to reckon with ron and hermione’s break up—not as a fanon convenience, but as something emotionally and politically inevitable.
as a dron writer, i’ve never felt the need to explain romione’s failure in depth. most of the time, it’s cleaner to treat the split as a given:
• the story isn’t about romione
• overexplaining risks bashing the canon love interest
but romione writers have challenged me to ask why they’d break up, and what that rupture might mean for ron’s arc moving forward.
so here’s where i landed:
hermione: principled, radical, uncompromising
hermione enters the post-war era believing shacklebolt’s government will fix everything—creature rights, ministry reform, accountability for collaborators. but when change stalls, she’s radicalized.
• she’s a muggleborn who’s endured hogwarts’ casual bigotry, the apathy that met her fight for creature rights, and the institutional violence of the registration commission.
• she refuses to work within corrupt systems, choosing instead to become a solicitor and push for change from the outside
• her ethics are principled, urgent, and shaped by lived trauma
she expects ron to feel the same. when he doesn’t, it feels like betrayal.
ron: relational, loyal, pragmatic
ron sees the same rot hermione does—but he draws a different conclusion.
• his ethics are relational, not ideological
• he believes institutions are flawed, but abandoning them only hands power to worse actors
• his loyalty leads him to stay—not to endorse the ministry’s failures, but to help steer it toward something better
ron’s realism and desire for post-war stability make him sympathetic but ultimately incompatible with hermione’s radicalism.
why romione fails
they don’t stop loving each other. they just stop being able to walk the same path.
• hermione demands a partner who will burn with her
• ron offers one who will rebuild
both are ethical. both are right. but they can’t bend without breaking something essential in themselves.
why dron works
draco’s realism is born from terror. he was conscripted into voldemort’s regime as a teenager—tasked with murder, branded with the dark mark, and forced to watch his home become a prison and execution chamber.
• he doesn’t want revolution—he wants survival
• he believes someone will always hold power, and hopes it’s someone decent
• ron’s quiet stewardship, his belief that institutions can be redeemed from within, feels safe to draco
draco doesn’t need ron to remake the world. he just needs ron to hold it together. 💞