i really think Ginny understands Harry best out of anyone, and I do not get the line of argument that interprets her saying she understands Harry leaving to fight Voldemort because she knows he has to do it as anything other than the truth. it's called hero worship but like...it's not? she's right! he might not *want* to be the chosen one but she does understand that he feels he needs to be. he WILL only be happy if he fights Voldemort. it's not actually ginny's hero worship and idk why people say it is, it's her understanding his sense of duty and his genuine desire for revenge!! she's not saying 'you have to do that bc you are the chosen one', she's saying 'you have to do that because you have a sense of morality and it's the right thing to do. even though it is painful for both of us.' she likes him because he understands that Voldemort is evil and needs to be fought?? like of course??bc she is someone who has been deeply deeply hurt by Voldemort!! he even says that instead of telling him not to do it she understands that he needs to. saying this was exactly what he needed from her at that moment in time.
Do you think that with Harry’s childhood, he would let his kids get away with just a touch more than regular parents would or he’d save it for more special occasions/once in a blue moon type thing?
If Harry's experience happened in a vacuum, yes. But while the Dursleys were strict/abusive with him, they completely and utterly spoiled Dudley and that sets as much an example for Harry as his own experiences. I think he's be a fairly balanced parent where yes, special things are saved for special days and I think he'd be quite aligned with Ginny, where things were saved for special days for financial reasons
oh man, i oscillate between really liking hinny one day and feeling completely indifferent towards them the next.
hinny might be the relationship i like the most for harry, and it's all because because of the family aspect. through marriage w ginny, harry officially became a weasley family member. and, of course he always was one, but he actually is a weasley on paper and i think having that in writing would mean a lot to harry. and my golden trio heart can't not mention that by hinny being married - ron and hermione are literally harry's brother and sister (in-law) now and !!!!! that just makes my heart melt (i know those two were always harry's family but bc of the aforementioned reason, etc. you get it)
so right off the bat, when i try to organize my more positive thoughts on hinny, i'm mostly focused on how the relationship best serves harry, and only harry. and this is where my frustrations with the ship begins: it's so hard to think the other way around because ginny's narrative purpose is just to be harry's ideal love interest, instead of being a fully fleshed character. i really love ginny with all her spunk and feistiness, but she's so underutilized. she had a cute crush on him in the start of the series which was adorable, but her character was inarguably just "ron's younger sister". and after she gets possessed by volde/gets saved from the CoS by harry, she still continues to have a puppy-love crush on harry until OoTP!!! GAAHHHH!!! Apparently joanne said hinny were always meant to be soulmates and i think if these two had a consistent "invisible string" motif throughout the series, it would've been so good (and almost as good as romione's slow burn). So...
here's how i'd fix hinny (lmao):
i wouldve made the ginny a much more prominent character in PoA and beyond.
we get to see hinny actually have heart-to-hearts about the incidents of CoS - for ginny to play such an IMPORTANT role in the titular plotline of the second book, then to just have her blend into the background afterwards just boggles my mind - that was the perfect oppurtunity to make ginny an invaluable character in the cast. she has this huge experience in common with harry - being personally victimized by voldemort - that harry doesn't have w ron or hermione at that point and it would've been so nice to see harry find an equal, a confidant in ginny from then on - like, dont let the readers forget that harry and ginny have this huge thing in common, have it be with us in the back of our heads the whole time!
start the hinny romance subplot fr fr in GoF
the potential of ginny being a maybe date for harry to the yule ball, harry feeling jealousy towards neville for getting to dance and spend time w ginny and harry being like "wait a minute! i'm supposed to crush on cho! im jealous of neville??" that wouldve been FUN - again, they couldve been a less insane version of romione hello
having the hinny subplot unravel in tandem with harry's crush and relationship with Cho in ootp
in ootp, you can argue that the story attempts to make a foil between cho and ginny's characters but if that were the case, it could've done a way better job of it
with harry's relationship w cho - harry likes her bc she's cool and pretty but she wants to connect with him through their connection via cedric and his death, which is off the bat a hugely touchy/traumatic topic for both of them and cho couldn't possibly fathom what it's like to be in the presence of voldemort/tom but guess which other character does ehehe...
now we're at hbp and this is where the good stuff starts bc if i'd had it my way, we'd have gotten their friendship in poa and two books of solid romantic build-up up until now
i honestly had a such a fun time with hinny in hbp, ginny in her OWL year being so cool and harry's hugeass crush on her- harry being a hormonal teenager was hilarious to read like its implied that harry is having increasingly inappropriate thoughts about her throughout the novel and theyre just intercut with "BUT RON-" that's some good shit
my one gripe w hbp's hinny is that i wish we actually got to see their dates sneaking around hogwarts, finding the perfect hideaways for makeout sessions, etc etc i know hp wasn't a romance fantasy by any means but imagine how swoony it wouldve been if we got to actually see these sunset dates instead of just being told about them - it wouldve been cathartic to actually see harry actually live the life of a normal teen boy before everything fell apart lol
if we got all these invisible string moments between them throughout the series, harry thinking about ginny and how good it felt to kiss her lips before he walks to his death in DH would've felt so much more earned
from a storytelling perspective, the case with hinny begs the question of if you can have a love interest for the jesus figure of your narrative? can you make a believable, grounded and balanced love story for the chosen one? i honestly think so but then you'd have to put equal amounts of effort and work into creating two nuanced characters and unfortunately we don't see that effort be put in ginny's character and that's why harry's endgame falls short for so many people. earlier, i said that this is the ship i like most for harry, but honestly that isn't saying a lot - i think with an almost saint-like character like harry, its hard to imagine a satisfying love and partnership for this kid. i like tomarry as a ship for when im feeling a bit insane but other than that, my main harry ship is him with a lifetime of peace and healing.
i also want to argue that hinny was never meant to be a primary romance in this story - the main romance/love story in the series is ron and hermione's and i think joanne's romance prowess all went into romione and i'm so thankful for that because i think it makes for better story (also i'm totally biased)
i also cant not mention the freudianess of it all with hinny, right? like god freud would Love hinny bc what do you mean they look identical to jily, what is going on here. that and the fact they had their first kid at 22/23 years old like my god, WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING you should be at the club!!!!! i do dig the failmarriage vibes they were serving in TCC, also.
Could you give a hint about how you think Ginny felt kissing Harry on his 17th birthday? because for him the feeling was better than fire
There is a lot going on in that scene. Yes, for Harry it was better than firewhiskey. Harry doesn't expect to be kissed but then Ginny calls him into her room and the boy makes smalltalk, which she ignores to everyone's relief.
Ginny calls him inside with a purpose. She knows exactly what Harry is going to be doing. She has known it since they broke up, and his slip-up a few days before confirms that. She pales, but she's not totally surprised.
There is some meta on it already and I wasn't able to find it back right now, but for Ginny this is a goodbye. She is not worried about him finding some Veela. They both know it. It's what she says because she doesn't want this moment to be sad. She lets him know she understands what he's about to do, that she understands this kiss doesn't change that they broke up. I think Ron severely underestimates both Harry's and Ginny's attachment and understanding of one another then.
Ginny knows this might be the final time she kisses him. His odds weren't all that good. That's why it's a goodbye. There is a lot of pain in it for her, I think. We don't have as much insight about how Ginny feels kissing him in general, but we're going to assume she's about as smitten for him as he is for her.
If she is fire, he is water. Calm on the surface a lot of the time, but with things brewing in depths that only very few people understand, like she does. They can both cook up a storm in different ways, in their own powerful ways.
And she kisses him like she is parched. We know this, because Harry tells us she kisses him like never before. There is so much longing from both of them because they need more time and it's just not enough. I think she calls him inside because she wants to give him a goodbye, but I think as soon as their lips lock, she lets her emotions take her over and take any second she can get, and even that moment is sadly cut short, it's poetic but it's painful. And in a way it's Harry's unfinished business (metaphorically for Ginny and a happy future which she is inevitable tied to), the thing he thinks about when he is about to die.
Edit: excellent meta was by @whinlatter (https://whinlatter.tumblr.com/post/707539962902577152). It's a slightly different take for some parts but has some amazing analysis)
HEYYY I really want you to reflect more on Ginny’s insecurity when it comes to her relationship with Harry. I’ve been thinking about it since your latest chapter. I don’t know how you can portray all these emotions tbh😭 it’s just way too perfect
ok the inbox is aflutter with questions along these lines so! with no spoilers for the rest of the fic, here's a little (big) lunch break meta on my read on the tensions and insecurities in harry and ginny's post-war relationship, and where harry and ginny are at at this point in beasts. thank you anon! 💞
spoilers for chapter 9 are below the cut!
in chapter nine, we see harry and ginny physically the closest they have been to each other in months, but beginning to discover the real distances between them at play in the current version of their relationship, and see the symptoms showing up in their interactions and (lack of) conversation. after the flashback, this chapter begins with ginny, back an awful time at school, waking up in her boyfriend’s bed, enjoying the luxury of time together and opportunities for physical intimacy. as @ashesandhackles pointed out in her very lovely comment, physical touch - particularly a very natural and instinctual expression of intimacy - is a defining feature of harry and ginny’s romantic relationship in the canon series. canon’s also full of examples of them communicating silently/non-verbally (their in-jokes, as early as PoA, but also the various moments that the two read each other’s minds or have entire interactions without having to say a word). these are obviously important, lovely things and something both of them value in their relationship. but, in this case, where ginny is hiding so much, they can quickly become things to hide behind. tellingly, ginny does not wake up thinking oh good now I have all this time to tell harry what’s up with me, and, over the course of the chapter, finds that secrets have a way of slipping out even if you try your very best to keep them under wraps.
why won't ginny open up?
without spoiling the rest of the fic (!) i think there are few things to bear in mind about why ginny isn't opening up to harry, and what insecurities she might have about the relationship that are preventing her from being honest about the hardships she's going through.
the first is that ginny, canonically, is an extremely guarded person who does rarely opens up, including - or especially - to harry. late canon is full of examples of harry seeking reassurance and emotional comfort in ginny, but examples of ginny doing the same in harry are few and far between. 'lucky you' is a reminder that ginny's own distressing experiences credential her as someone harry can seek reassurance and answers from; it is not a cry for reciprocal help or support. her mentioning riddle's diary in HBP when she finds out about the prince's book works similarly - though harry reassures her about it, her concern is for him, not herself. in the birthday kiss scene, only the 'there's the silver lining i've been looking for' line gives away that ginny has been going through emotional difficulty. in fact, it's ron who conveys that ginny has been 'really cut up' over the breakup. throughout the series, ginny consistently practices a kind of emotional selflessness and self-sufficiency. she understands how important she becomes as a source of comfort and safety for harry, and she is happy and proud to fill that role. she cares deeply about harry, she wants to meet his emotional needs, and she does it very well. she's canonically a fantastic liar, too, which is maybe my favourite characterisation note from her - while hermione and ron are both very easily emotionally read, ginny has an incredible poker face and can lie so well she can have literal dung on her hands and convince her own mother that it was crookshanks throwing dungbombs at the door of the order meeting. in canon, we see ginny crumble only once in her emotional stoic-ness in front of harry (in her bedroom after the birthday kiss - and even then she turns away and tries to hide it). we can speculate about why it is that ginny is like this (...), and i talk more about what this means for harry and ginny long term below. but for now suffice to say that ginny doesn't have a track record of divulging her emotional state and anxieties in very many people, including harry.
the second is that ginny is fiercely protective of harry and tries to shield him from pain, including her own. from CoS thru the rest of the series, ginny cares about shielding harry from criticism, distress, and emotional harm ('leave him alone!') it makes sense that, given ginny's interest in safeguarding harry's happiness and keeping her own sufferings private, she would also seek to protect him from information about herself that would upset him or make him feel worse when she recognises he's already going through a tough enough time. (harry himself practices this form of love in his parental relationship with sirius, eg. trying to retract 'my scar hurts' in GoF - sweet child).
the third - relatedly - is that ginny has begun to link her symptoms to her own wartime experiences, and to torture she endured under the carrows, the full extent of which hasn't been addressed at this point in the fic and which harry doesn't know. harry spends most of DH ignorant about what is happening at hogwarts - he worries for ginny post-sword-stealing, but he's reassured that she won't have been tortured because she only got sent into the forbidden forest. cue neville in the hog's head tunnel quite modestly revealing what really has happened at hogwarts, that the torture of children by way of the cruciatus curse has become a daily occurrence, and that the DA, ginny especially, have gone through a fresh hell. that harry crucioed amycus carrow for so much at spitting at mcgonagall tells us something about how harry might take the news of what actually went down at hogwarts during the war and especially what happened to ginny. in ginny's mind, the idea of strolling up to harry and banging on at length about the sufferings she has endured would be to lay more at his door than he deserves to have to worry about.
there's also this other point, the only issue between harry and ginny that is verbally addressed (but not resolved) in this chapter, which is ginny's lingering insecurities about her relationship with the trio, which also colours all of this. the conversation with harry and ginny in bed about harry staying for at the burrow christmas in ron and hermione’s absence is actually the first section i wrote for this chapter, and one of my favourite parts to write. it picks up this theme of ginny’s ambiguous relationship to The Trio as a unit, something i think a lot about and which i play with a bit in other writing (it comes out at a few points in orchards). i want to write a proper meta about this one day, but running thru this canon is a dynamic of ginny constantly being left out of the trio, from ‘go away ginny’ in PoA (‘oh, that’s nice!’) all the way thru DH. ginny only rarely explicitly complains about this exclusion, though it’s clear she has both noticed it and is irked by it. by the series’ end, this dynamic remains unresolved, even though ginny has become emotionally important to all three of the trio individually.
so why doesn't ginny get angrier about it? we know ginny is a stubborn person perfectly capable of sticking up for herself when being mistreated. that we would expect someone as outspoken and stubborn as she is to actually kick off many more times suggests not that ginny doesn't care, but that she has learned to actively fight her impulse to raise the issue and demand better for herself. my read is that the trio excluding her is, like harry's chosen one fate, just another thing ginny has had to (privately) be hurt by, but get her head around and accept because she recognises it’s part of a bigger picture and, by hbp, connected to a broader more serious quest that has something to do with the end of the war. (lots of hinny fics have ginny get mad at harry after the war about the break-up and for keeping her in the dark, and, sometimes, for keeping her out of the trio, but i think actually ginny is too far down the self-denying i-just-have-to-deal-with-this path to get mad without external stimulus. she hasn’t let herself be mad about this sort of thing for a long time, much as she has a right to). as a result, the ginny we see in beasts is a person who has become very self-denying, and who has spent a lot of time telling herself she shouldn’t be selfish or let her ego or pride get the better of her, and to accept certain lots in life for the greater good. would harry/ron/hermione be horrified if actually made to confront this? yes, i think so, absolutely! but they have done this to her and are yet to face the music on how they have excluded her so consistently throughout her teen years. it's a tension that absolutely still needs to be raised and resolved.
what will happen now harry knows something is up?
this chapter sees harry start to realise something's going on with ginny. he finds out ginny saw her ex, michael, about a health condition he's having that might be related to hogwarts last year, that ginny describes 'DA stuff'. luna later accidentally clues him onto the fact ginny, too, has had some mysterious health issues she hasn't raised with him, despite their near constant letter communication over the past four months (luna, your bluntness is extremely narratively convenient, thank you). ginny's blurted out question to harry - ‘you still want to stay, right?’ when finding out romione aren't spending much time at the burrow that christmas - echoes harry’s own at the start of the fic (‘you’ll write, right?’). it’s meant as the same act of a character blurting out a revealing question that speaks to a big insecurity and need they have. when harry calls her up on it before bed later that night, ginny tries to reassure him by showing him some of this mental work she’s done over the years to understand and accept what he + ron + hermione are to each other, reassuring him that she doesn’t want to intrude on that, and to go as far as to say that although he’s extremely welcome at the burrow for christmas, he doesn’t have to spend his christmas there if he’d rather be with his best mates. and what we have in harry’s response is him having to face up, for the first time, not just to the extent of ginny’s exclusion from his friend group, but how much work she has done to be at peace with her exclusion from parts of his life and particularly from his friend group which includes her own friend and brother. in her most insecure thoughts, ginny’s thinking oh god what if harry doesn’t want to be here with me as much as he does with ron and hermione; harry’s like, i’m just now realising the person lying next to me seems to think i want to leave to go hang out with my friends instead of spend christmas with her during this awful time for her family, seems to think i’m doing her a favour by staying, and seems to be hiding something from me that is connected to her own wellbeing.
what will harry's reaction be?
i will be keeping my cards reasonably close to my chest on this one, but i will say this... it was important for me to have two issues come up at the same time: harry working out ginny's keeping secrets while also finding out that she feels much more insecure about how important she is to him and how much she just wants him to be happy even at her own expense. i also wanted it to take place in a chapter that hammers home how much the weasleys, including ginny, are people grieving a great loss and struggling with it, harry a witness to ginny's attempts to hold her family together and make this time together special. of course harry's suspicious, and, likely, hurt. but he's also aware of what she and her family are going through, watching them all suffer extreme pain, and he's also just accidentally been informed of some of his own failings and shortcomings when it comes to ginny and her insecurities about her place in his life. that harry isn't immediately demanding answers and calling ginny out is a sign of him both processing dynamics years in the making, but it's also him reading the room. it would be extremely entitled to storm in and demand answers from ginny when he is seeing her and her family in such extreme distress - so instead he's keeping quiet for now, showing her wordless physical affection, and really deeping what's going on here.
harry and ginny will be facing the music very (very) soon. so far in the fic, the moments where ginny has come closest to giving the game away have been whenever harry and ginny are physically in the same place (st andrews, hogsmeade midnight field picnic). i wanted all the issues to start to come up this chapter now that harry and ginny are back together 24/7 and can't hide behind carefully chosen words in letters, and for their physical displays of intimacy and affection to start to stop working as well as strategies to paper over deeper conversations that need to be had. hence ginny waking up in harry’s bed with no nightmares after physical intimacy at the start of the chapter, but going back to the nightmares despite his proximity and physical displays of affection by the time we get to the chapter's end. their coping mechanisms are running out of road.
would harry be jealous of ginny telling michael?
harry (and ginny) are canonically a bit jealous, absolutely. but they're only really jealous when they're broken up and have more reasons to be insecure about their relationship (ginny with cho, harry with dean/krum - all are tensions that happen while they're broken up. when they're together, it's something they laugh about, eg. romilda and fleur). some of the responses to the fic (understandably) have focussed on oh my god ginny saw her ex. but i think ginny seeing her ex (which she doesn't deliberately keep from harry but realises after the fact she should tell him about, and is careful not to lie to him) is less likely to be upsetting to harry than the idea that ginny went and saw someone that she shared intense, traumatic experiences with that harry wasn’t a part of, and that, throughout DH, he’s in the dark about. that it's michael doesn't improve things, but it's the bigger context that makes the act more upsetting.
are harry and ginny doomed?
a lot of hinny critics cite various versions of the above dynamics as reasons why hinny would ultimately not make it long-term as a couple. i (obviously) disagree with that, because i believe these are two characters willing and able to make this relationship flourish and thrive. with that said, i don't think people writing harry and ginny as a pairing should ignore the existing dynamics within hinny as a relationship that would need to be unpacked and worked on as they rebuild their relationship as a foundation for a happy, healthy future together. this includes the fact that their relationship has been uneven in the level of mutual emotional support in canon, and full of cultivated omissions and silences. i'm not blaming harry (much) for this - i think harry has had, if not good reasons, then understandable reasons why, in the canon timeline, he gives ginny less emotional support than she gives him, not least because 1) he has (frankly) needed more (not to diminish ginny's post chamber trauma, but i think this is fair to say), 2) because ginny has great trouble accepting emotional support, and 3) because the arc of the later series is harry slowly accepting the role of the chosen one, deciding that he is not a normal person, and setting himself on a singular path to destruction stripped of ties to other people, even though he longs for the life of a normal person deep down. less dramatically, harry also ends the series a repressed 17 year old boy with some obliviousness issues and some growing up to do in ways that make him actually extremely typical of even emotionally healthy teenage boys (do i think every kind supportive man i now know in my late twenties was the best at emotional literacy and maturity at age 17? no no i do not. having met some of them at that time, i can you for a fact that they were, in fact, Not, and none of them were the subject of a terrible prophecy and all fought in precisely zero wars).
i believe harry wants a mutually supportive relationship with ginny. i believe him capable of having just that, and willing to do the work to build it. we know in canon he wants to build a family and instinctually practices reasonably healthy dynamics within one (in his familial relationship with sirius, it's often harry who sets the boundaries and healthy precedents). harry also often worries about ginny's wellbeing, physical and emotional, in his internal monologue, and sincerely wants to make her feel better about the awful things going on around them and that he is putting her through (see the birthday kiss scene - his instinct is to comfort her, and it's ron's rage that stops him). i'm always struck that in DH he starts to watch ginny on the map not when she might be in physical danger (eg. when she comes into contact with carrows/snape), but when she is in bed, alone with her thoughts/dreams/nightmares, and imagines himself reaching into her brain and hoping she's doing ok. in the battle he tries to reassure ginny in the thick of fighting even though he knows they are 'empty words'. across all his relationships more generally, he does show capacities for emotional awareness and generosity, consistently building loving, supportive connections with other characters throughout the series arc, and worrying particularly about the emotional state of the people he views as family (sirius chief among them).
when push comes to shove, harry potter, by the end of DH, is getting much better at knowing how to make his closest loved ones feel better. my favourite example being his perfect detonation of words and physical comfort to ron in the forest of dean - ron feels forgiven, loved and understood by harry so beautifully in that scene. i argue that he would take this hard-won work-in-progress trait and run with it when it comes to building his postwar relationship with ginny. but i think harry has a lot still to learn about how to communicate effectively, how to verbalise that concern and action it into meaningful emotional support and comfort, and at this point in beasts, he's perhaps beginning to realise how deficient he's been in this department. ginny, too, has a lot of work of her own to do. and it's my pleasure to try and figure out how they do that, and i'm grateful for the faith in me having a go at writing a version of it in this fic!
🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings
Ohh, I'd love to hear a nice Hinny headcannon😊 Or Jily too, whatever you want.
I have about a 1000 versions of Hinny's reconciliation after the Battle in my brain and I don't think I'll ever make my mind up, but I do think that it happened shortly after the battle, and it happened quite naturally.
They love each other, and they're so hot for each other and they are each other's comfort. Ginny is symbolic for his future. I think it starts the moment the book ends.
