Harry/Hermione - Personally, I don't think Hermione is a good fit for Harry. Any relationship between either her and Harry would likely end poorly. There's just very low compatibility between the two on a romantic level. Harry/Hermione mainly seems like Harry would let Hermione boss him around and wind up being fairly miserable, but not being willing to speak up out of fear of risking his relationship.

Harry/Ginny - Harry and Ginny do have a certain chemistry. I think the only real problem with Harry and Ginny as a couple was that Rowling just wasn't very good at writing teenage romance when she did Half-Blood Prince, resulting in Harry's Chest Monster rather than more natural growth and development. I don't think Rowling even had HP/GW planned until HBP but I think she was trying to choose between Ginny and Luna as evidenced by her choice to send them both with Harry to the DOM at the end of OOTP. Harry's Chest Monster and characters stopping every hundred pages or so to randomly talk about how beautiful and awesome Ginny was definitely feels like Rowling was scrambling to lay all the groundwork for her final pairing.

Harry/Luna - Harry and Luna had a pretty good dynamic throughout the books. Obviously nothing romantic, but he seems to understand her oddness and find it endearing. There are worse foundations to build off of.

 

Instructions unclear.

Harry/Hedwig

 

They are all trash.

 

Harry/Pansy forever.

 

Actually JK dm'd me, the real endgame is Harry/Daphne after Fantastic Beasts 4 reveals she was a Dumbledore the whole time (and also somehow a Palpatine, idk). The whole Nagini thing is to set up how her mum turned into a goat and Aberforth, well...

 

I still remember Master Eldryan's. He must have been the first to run with that pairing, I can't imagine anyone else managed to come up with that insanity before 2004.

 

Did furries exist back then?

 

While there have been mentions of anthropomorphic interest since the 1970s, the furry fandom as we know it now started in the 1980s. It started at a convention, if I recall correctly, and grew from there. Went the fanzine route like Star Trek fanfiction used to.


In the story I'm referencing, I think Hedwig was completely human, though. It's been like 18 years, though, and he scrubbed all of his stuff from the internet. If Hedwig was an owl it'd be bestiality, not anything furry.

 

Well, it'd be furry if there she had feathers or like large owl eyes right?

But I dunno there's something about wanting to fuck an intelligent magical owl that gives off the same energy as furry nonetheless.

To me the line between furry and bestiality seems more like a soft, fuzzy border than a harsh, defined one.

On Topic: They're all bad.

Harry probably wouldn't see Hermione as a sexual being if they were the last two people on earth.
Ginny had been in love with Harry since she was like 2. It just seems like the laziest thing to write about in fanfic.
Luna is basically a QAnon conspiracist.

 

I've only come across HP/Hedwig once, and that had either Hedwig turned into a human, or she was an owl animagus that got stuck as an owl?

I dropped the story there because it was clearly about to become a harem fic.

 

O.O *Uncanny Valley intensifies*

Anyway, Harry/Hermione is boring. They would either implode as a couple in short order and go back to being friends, or they would turn out to be almost too compatible, and would bore every reader to tears with their complete lack of conflict or passion.

Harry/Ginny is also boring, mostly because Ginny herself is about as interesting to me as watching paint dry. And not just any paint, a really dull shade of brown that just sucks all the life out of whatever room you're painting that color. Ginny however, is made even more boring as an option because she is the canon pairing.

To me, there are few things duller than canon pairings in fanfic. It's predictable and lame, and the very thought of it makes me drowsy.

 

Have to agree with @Othalan.

I realise it's not necessarily the most popular form of romance in fanfic, but I prefer a traditional romance plot to a fluff romance plot. I like it to work like it does in classic romance novels, or movies, where it is about the progression towards the relationship more so than the relationship itself.

The reason for that is that I like to see characters undergo progression throughout the story. They should end a different person to how they started (or, they should explore some change before deciding to return to what they were). To that end, I like plots and elements which advance that kind of progression, and avoid things which do not.

A romance between two long term friends can demonstrate that kind of growth, but it requires a level of subtlety and awareness that fanfiction typically lacks completely. Generally, these 'romances' lead to static characters, which are just boring to read about. This is true of the vast majority of Harry/Hermione and Harry/Ginny stories. They're presented as already compatible from the very beginning, and neither character has to change or grow in order to make the relationship possible.

Harry/Luna is a little better, but still amounts to the tired old 'up tight guy feeling drowned in responsibilities meets manic pixie dream girl' storyline. It's tried, it's tested, and I've no doubt people enjoy it, but it's always just played so straight that there's rarely anything to get really stuck into.

It's why I tend to look for rare pairs. As pairings become more popular, the fans 'in' those pairing spaces come to regard it as more and more like the default. The characters in those stories migrate slowly towards a standardized fanon which presents them as actually totally compatible, with, again, no real growth needed to make a relationship work. With rare pairs this process is slower, and usually the characters are still founded in their canon, non-romantically-minded forms, which means that at least some small amount of growth will be needed.

I should also mention, returning to my first point, that stories focused on already established, or early-established relationships can also demonstrate character growth, but that this is typically not the intention. Instead they're most often written as manifestos outlining why these two characters are sooo perfect for each other.