#hp relationship analysis

[senlinyu]

I loved Manacled a lot--it was one of most well-written books I've read, and that includes ones traditionally published. I know you write a lot on Draco and Hermione, and I was wondering why you find that pairing interesting (versus her with Ron, or with someone else), and how you got into writing fanfiction on them?

I like dramione because it's a weirdly flexible pairing. I feel like genre-wise you can really run the gamut with it, both Hermione and Draco are fairly flexible characters where I can write them in different ways and feel like it's convincing. I like it when both characters have the capacity for introspection, but I also want some inherent tension built in. That's why as much as I love Hermione/Viktor, I don't write it because it's just a nice soft happy pairing that makes me smile when I see art or think about, and I don't want to make it sad or difficult just to be interesting, but as a result I don't find it interesting enough to write.

But I also want someone with the capacity to fully appreciate Hermione, all her facets, and Harry and Ron, they like her because she's really helpful but they don't really bother to appreciate the aspects of her beyond that, in canon it's treated like such a big deal that Ron cares about house-elves once after four years of Hermione being passionate about it that he deserved to be kissed. And I don't really want her with somebody who's like 'wow Hermione, that's so great that you're into this smart thing that I have no comprehension of, you go do that,' I like the idea that someday she'd find someone who'd fall in love with her mind and want to understand it rather than finding it tiresome or intimidating or only worthwhile if its personally beneficial. I feel like Hermione doesn't need a hero to help her as much as she needs someone with the capacity to be selfish for her, because otherwise she'll obliviate her parents and drain all her finances because she's so used to being the person who helps that she doesn't know how to ask for help herself.

Draco obviously has a significant amount of character development to go through to hypothetically become that person, but he's clever, and ambitious, and appreciates Hermione's intellect enough to base almost all his assassination attempts on things he learned from her, and grows up to become a man willing to become estranged from his parents and sell his soul for his wife.

I think Hermione deserves someone like that.

[senlinyu]

My friend and I are on the phone right now and we’re pondering what your personal beef with Harry is?? (Sorry if you’ve already answered something like this)

I’ve already explained this a lot of times, you find find it in the HP relationship analysis tag.

But bottomline, Hermione is willing to sacrifice basically everything in her life to help and protect Harry full time because he’s her friend. Whereas on Harry’s part, once you set aside the heroism/saving people tendency that Harry directs towards literally everyone, the most proactive Harry generally is in his relationship with Hermione is “letting her” be his friend, and withdrawing that allowance whenever she does anything he doesn’t like. Whereas Hermione sticks with him, even when she thinks he’s wrong or making the wrong choices, she sticks up for him, over her parents and financial security and the boy she fancies and her own safety, she chooses Harry anytime he needs her to.

Ron I’m actually more willing to forgive because at least he fancied her and was stupid, confused and overreactive because of that. But Harry only ever is Hermione’s friend, he’s never confused about his feelings towards her, and he is demonstrably capable of being a good friend, but he doesn’t invest that effort into Hermione.

But this is admittedly informed by my own experiences in my teens, my best friends were never my best friends back. I was always the tertiary, second choice friend, and it brought me a lot of grief that my commitments to friends was never reciprocated. I’m not saying I was very good friend or that I was entitled to be best friends with anyone, but it did happen enough that I know what it looks like to be kept as a friend just because you’re useful.

[senlinyu]

Okay I’m REALLY sorry if this comes off crass or rude, I’m genuinely curious, this isn’t a critique. It’s just I can’t help but wonder why you choose to write Draco?? Your draco, to me personally, feels like Snape in a Draco suit. Idk how to say it, anc I’m really hoping this doesn’t come off wrong, it’s just that it seems like mancled and let the dark in both seem like they’d work super smoothly w/Snape subbed out for Draco so I’m curious why you chose him. I’m curious what drew you to this character, and why you chose to go that direction?

Personally I have pretty specific idea of Snape’s character in my head, probably not the most accurate one, but it’s one that I stick to. Snape is to me not a very malleable character. Draco is younger, his age is highly relevant to the way I write him. A Manacled-esque story featuring Snape instead of Draco would be an extremely different tone and relationship dynamic and set of motives, Draco is more amoral in that story in a way that is more Snape-like but his age/trauma/worldview is wrought in a way that is very unique to him.

Let The Dark In similarly is extremely unique to Draco’s life and upbringing. A story where Snape was say a Dark Arts professor from Durmstrang teaching Hermione the dark arts during the Triwizard tournament would be an extremely different story because the power dynamics and relationship and motives would be entirely different.

But again that’s based on the fact that I interpret and write Snape a fairly specific way. I’ve written a little more analysis about Sevmione and Dramione here and here.

[senlinyu]

your views on Harry are fucking stupid. if Harry is “emotionally abusive” then what the hell is Draco? And I say this as a Dramione. log off indefinitely

Well, this may be a somewhat nuanced take for someone who came here from twitter in order to go on anon, but… Harry is supposed to be Hermione’s friend.

Draco is not. In fact, Draco intentionally antagonizes her because he doesn’t like her. He knows he is being hurtful, he is trying to be. That makes him a shitty person, but he never called her his best friend. Canon Draco is a shit, the whole point of dramione is he has to make amends for all that. He’s been brought low and the idea is that he learns to be better. This is what’s called a redemption arc.

Harry is the hero, the chosen one, he has no redemption arc in canon nor is he set up for one moving on from the series conclusion, because his behavior is supposed to be good and heroic.

Which is why I have said and will continue to say, Harry is a shit friend to Hermione. Could he realize that he takes her for granted and habitually emotionally abuses to her in order to punish her? yes, possibly. I’ve even written it. But generally speaking people don’t stop taking others for granted until they lose them, and that’s how I see Harry and how I write him. Is it also a character flaw of Hermione that she lets him? Yes. Still no excuse for Harry being a shitty friend.

However, disagree with this? Go for it. Almost any other author you can think of in Dramione likes writing positively about Hermione’s relationship with Harry and you are welcome to read their stories instead of mine.

[senlinyu]

It feels like in a lot of your stories Hermione has serious issues w Harry relating both to his treatment of her and diff ideologies (manacled and dngg). Does this come from how you read canon? And do you think she'll ever confront him in one of your stories?

I find that Harry and Ron’s treatment of Hermione in canon is pretty emotionally abusive. There’s a lot of withdrawing friendship because she disagrees with them and only “forgiving” her when they feel sorry for her (Harry’s broom from Sirius and the defense of Crookshanks), using her as a convenient scapegoat (Harry’s wand breaking), ignoring and/or internally belittling her feelings (obliviating her parents, being tortured by Bellatrix).

Draco is a bigoted jerk in canon, but at least he was conscious of his cruelty, he was being intentionally hurtful. So in the process of repenting he can make better choices. But in Harry and Ron’s cases, they are the heroes. They always regard themselves as doing Hermione a favour by being friends with her, and the first thing they do to punish her for daring to question or cross them is withdrawing their friendship. Aside from Viktor, and Ginny (who ultimately always sides with Harry) Hermione has no other friends in canon and she’s clearly shown as suffering when Harry and/or Ron cut her off.

That’s part of her fight with draco in manacled, when he criticizes the way her friends treat her, she says that he has no room to talk because they’re all the same and Draco at that point apologizes sincerely. Because he does know that what he was doing was wrong, whereas Harry and Ron’s treatment is in my eyes worse because they do it while claiming and believing themselves to be her friends. At least Draco saw her as an enemy when he was cruel.

I don’t think canon Hermione is well-positioned or had the support system to see how abusive her friendships were, or to call them out. But I like to hope and imagine that someday she would, when she finally found people who didn’t just care about her conditionally because she was useful to them.

[senlinyu]

manacled was actually the fic that introduced me to the dramione "fandom" so i still am very new, and i have a small question for you. what do you think of cannon romione? does everyone in the fandom hate it? honestly, it's not too bad for me when i was reading the books. thanks!

It depends. I don’t hate Ron, I just don’t think he and Hermione would be very good for each other. I tend to think they would bring out negative traits in each other in the long run.

Personally I prefer it when fics can just say they parted ways because they weren’t suited for each other, broke up, and stayed friends. The idea that Ron has to be the worst ever seems a bit contrived. Admittedly a bad relationship that you cling to can really mess you up, that’s something I’m exploring in one project currently.

It really depends. I have a longer post about Hermione and Ron as a couple buried in my HP relationship analysis tag.

[senlinyu]

What a rabbit hole your hp relationship analysis tag, I love your interpretations of canon, it makes me so emotional and heartbroken whenever I read deep analyses of Hermione's relationship with Harry and Ron </3 I haven't read the books/watched the movies in a while and I really wonder if I'll ever approach them again without getting angry at Harry and Ron

Haha. I really enjoy relationship analysis, although I have a lot of asks about different pairings languishing in my ask box because I feel like I need to give the characters the dynamics a lot more thought before I can really write out a response. I don’t think Harry and Ron were intentionally bad friends, there are some lovely friendship scenes in the books, but I don’t think that either of them put even a remotely equivalent level of effort into the friendship that Hermione did.

 But that may be a bit of self-insertion from a girl who was always the third member in every friendship trio.

[senlinyu]

Recently I’ve been thinking about your analysis’ on HP relationships and exactly how shit Harry and Ron treated Hermione. I had acknowledged Ron before, as his treatment was blatant, but never really thought about the silent abuse that Harry gave her. She would of, and has, done nearly anything for him and he couldn’t possibly care less. And yet Ron is the more cherished friend. It makes it more sad because the impression in fandom is that Hermione never really had friends before, so she 1/2

Latched into these two, and stays even when they treat her like this because she doesn’t think anyone else would want her. She even marries one of them, despite being given the bare minimum. I always loved to believe Hermione and Harry were more than best friends, they were siblings, and to have that torn away makes me angry. She deserves more than being an afterthought, and second best to the Weasleys. This is partly why I love Draco with her. Can you call him an enemy, with friends like this?

I mean, that’s part of why I ship her with Draco. Because if you give him the redemption arc that he felt as though he was on the cusp of, he can learn to be better. 

Whereas with Harry and Ron, as her friends, I don’t know that they’d realise their failings, particularly because they aren’t inherently disloyal. It wasn’t a general trait, instead it was almost a subconscious tendency to take her for granted, and dismiss her feelings or convictions when they were inconvenient, which is a much harder thing to realize, acknowledge, and unlearn about yourself.

I’ve tried to write a few things where Harry and Ron grow-up and become better friends to Hermione,  I like to imagine they would eventually become better friends to her rather than continuing such a heavily one-sided friendship. But it does make me very frustrated when reading the books to notice how much less of a priority she often was.