Fantastic News! (with one bitter note)

Ok, before I share this news with you, I want to make sure we’ve all got the proper ambiance.  So, before you scroll any farther, I want you to pause and click “play” on the video below:

Via Hypable (and, yes, I spent a good long while checking if this was a hoax):

J.K. Rowling questions Ron and Hermione’s relationship

In a new interview conducted by Emma Watson, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling drops a bombshell: She’s not so sure she should have put Ron and Hermione together.

The shocking revelation came in the new issue of Wonderland, of which Watson is a guest editor this month. The comments were obtained by The Sunday Times.

Rowling says that she should have put Hermione and Harry together in the Harry Potter series instead of Hermione and Ron, according to the publication’s headline, which reads, “JK admits Hermione should have wed Harry.”

“I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment,” she says. “That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” she continued, “I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.”

Watson didn’t seem shocked by these comments and agreed with her. “I think there are fans out there who know that too and who wonder whether Ron would have really been able to make her happy.”

Rowling also says that Ron and Hermione would have needed “relationship counseling.”

A friend of mine actually phoned me the moment she saw the story, to make sure I had seen it, too.  And I am delighted that even Rowling, by logical extension, wishes that the Epilogue were not canon.

It’s not just that Ron seems less intelligent and inquisitive than Hermione in the books, but that her joy in research and making connections leave him uninterested at best and impatient or contemptuous at worst.  And she hardly seems to share his interest in Quidditch or Wizard Chess.  Couples don’t need to share every interest, but a partner who checks out when you’re at your most engaged and joyful is bad news.

But I’m not quite pleased by the news that Rowling wishes she’s paired Harry and Hermione.  Don’t get me wrong, they have a lovely relationship…

But I love that it’s a platonic relationship.

Harry and Hermione are friends who make sacrifices for each other and share each others joy, and their relationship can keep becoming deeper and more lovely without any intrusion of eros.  They can hug or tease each other or hold hands without any hint that relationship would be truer if they were kissing.

Besides, Harry belongs with Luna anyway.*

UPDATE: The Anchoress fires her own barrage in the shipping wars.

*It’s true!  Of all the people we meet, Luna is the only one who always interacts with Harry as a person, rather than as HARRY POTTER THE BOY WHO LIVED.  She has a inner reserve of strength and kindness she is glad to share, in the words of one of my friends “tells people what they need to hear, not what they want to,” and c’mon, her date with Harry to Slug Club was the best date in the series.