Also this one:

 

Any pairing from the Canon seems flawed for me, I seriously don't believe anyone would find his future husband / wife at school before being 17 years old, the average age at which they get their NEWT (I never know if I should put at s at NEWT).

Hell at 17 you are still discovering new feelings and things (hello, sex is great, I want more of it), you are very unlikely to look for someone to "perpetuate" your family line

 

Well, not with the relative frequency that may have been displayed. That said, it can and does happen that 'highschool sweethearts' both marry and stay happily married until, well, death do they part. Not so much nowadays, certainly, but views on marriage/divorce are also much different now than they used to be.

Of course, there are negative implications therein, as to just why some of those couples might have stayed together, but that's another issue, and doesn't negate the fact that they did.

 

That's a fair bit darker then I thought it was, especially by Dumbledore. Ironic too, since Harry wasn't actually happy hunting Voldemort in book 7; I read that more as satisfied then happy, but I might be wrong.
I do think at least Ginny meant something else. The whole argument started over Harry breaking up with her and hunting Voldemort doesn't stop him from snogging her, it just reduces her life expectancy.

 

Yes and no.

 

I agree. What I haven't noticed anyone say here yet (or they may have and I missed it) though, is that most of the romance in this story takes place during a time of war and uncertainty, where you could die tomorrow.

To be fair to Rowling's... let's call them attempts, attempts at writing romance, people DO tend to marry young and cling to each other with a fiery passion in those situationw, trying to reassert the fact they're alive. That's why most of the pairings in the series are reasonably realistic: They're more out of convenience than actual connection.

And that's yet another reason the Epilogue fails so tremendously: After a few years of peace, they really SHOULD have noticed they totally do not belong together and called it off. Maybe they stuck it out for the children, most of which were almost certainly conceived at or before the wedding night.

 

Must be a really long wedding night if they managed to conceive multiple children during it...

It's also possible that after a few years of peace they noticed they had problems and succesfully worked them out.

 

Forget it. I'm writing a Slytherin!Harry fic where he never anythings Hermione and ultimately ends up porking Romilda Vane in the greenhouses. It's far more believable given the circumstances of Harry's fame, his eagerness to have a life before death, and the simple fact that a normal person (given the number of females throwing themselves at him) would want very little to do with his best friend's little sister.

BUT all that said, JK Rowling should have kept this to herself. All it does is make one wish for a love triangle that would have been interesting during Deathly Hallows, but would have ultimately ruined Harry's character -- cheating on Ron's sister with Ron's love interest in the absence of his best friend would have been anything BUT a children's story.

EDIT:

"Yer a lizard, Harry!"

 

"B-but I CAN'T be a lizard! I'm just...Hairy."

Well, after the first one, why not have more. After all, just because it's not love doesn't mean you wouldn't still have sex. What else is there to do when you have nothing in common that we know of, except Quidditch?

And, admittedly, possible, I just find it far less likely. I don't see them as having problems, perse, nothing particularly wrong with them. I just see them as not realizing how the other person just isn't someone they want to spend the rest of their lives with.

 

Considering that Magical Britain is 100 years or so behind the times (on average) and people used to be married younger, this may not hold.

Finding "true love" is not the norm among societies and is a pretty new western concept in many ways.

 

Well again, many marriages that are 'on the rocks' result in another child. Often, couples who are in difficulties will try and paper over the cracks with another child. It doesn't really work though and after the first couple of years they realise that they still don't actually like eachother, but now there's even more at stake in a divorce.

 

1. Not cheating.

2. Ron doesn't own Hermione; if she wanted to hook up with Harry in his absence, too bad. It's not like Ron didn't have plenty of chances to stake a claim. Especially since his absence was voluntary, and he had yet to make a move when he abandoned ship.

 

Yes, because a hundred years ago was back in the age of castles and horses, right? Fuck off. A hundred years ago, women worked in factories and typewriter pools. They were getting the vote in a number of countries and were fighting for it in the rest. A hundred years ago we were four months away from WW1, which would see a quarter of the adult female population of Britain working. It was not the fucking Middle Ages.

A hundred years ago was a peak of median marriage age that would not be reached again until the 90s.

And even if you managed to unfuck your brain long enough to figure out how time worked and correctly referenced the Middle Ages, political marriage was an institution among the upper classes. You think John Q Goatfucker, Peasant, was going to be shopping around for a military alliance for his daughter? You think either the Weasleys would follow the customs of nobility? You think Harry Potter would after being raised by 90s society?

If your answer to any of those is 'yes', you're a fucking idiot.

I am angry. Angry about history.

 

I object to the term porking!
Besides, we all know what happened to Porkins...

Technically (and otherwise), you can't cheat on someone you officially broke up with (for their own good). :mrgreen:

[Edit: Also, if a few months of high school romance, during a war, were enough to make Ginny think they'd might as well be making that summer's wedding a double one, the safest thing Harry could do is run far, far, away.]

Of course, that only put him in the clear with Ginny: Showing Hermione where he was keeping the extra tent pole would have been a dick move. Eh? Ehhhhh?

Though, I can't recall if Ron and Hermione were an official couple at that point... like, up until the kiss during the battle. I'm pretty sure if a guy abandons you in the middle of a war against a totalitarian regime, he can longer claim 'dibs;' it's a rule. Same goes for an apocalypse.

 

Even if they did, Harry died after, so it doesn't count.

No, Ron, I have no idea why 'your' first child was premature and yet full-sized and completely healthy, as well as dark-haired. Must be magic.

 

Good ol' "You can't be pissed at me because I died for you(r sins?)" defense.

...That'll do. That'll do nicely.
...I can't believe there's no clap smiley.

 

Point of fact, Tehan, the relevant timeframe by what jibrilmudo said would be 100 years before Harry Potter's (i.e. ~1897), not 100 years before now. Still, I know too little about history to say anything more than that, so if your statement is still true, just consider me a pedantic asshat (or an idiot... so basically carry on as usual).

As for what JKR said... well, Hermione is my favorite character from the series, and Ron is my second favorite... But I'm still iffy about the relationship between them for some of the reasons already listed. If she'd just show that Ron had grown up... but the epilogue suggests the opposite.

On the other hand, the romances in general were the worst thing about the series for me – partly because they were so poorly done, but mostly because I just didn't give a fuck. Romance was not and never has been what Harry Potter was about.

 

The whole of idea of marriage at the age of twelve is pretty much the work of fiction and "Great man" historiography. It's why, IMO, the annals and postmodern approaches to history/historiography are a ton better and more accurate. /hi-horse.

As for marriage in the previous centuries, I don't have numbers for the middle ages, but:

As for early marriage:

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/OLD-ENGLISH/2005-05/1116407949

 

Only nobility had young girls marry to cement political alliances. Johnny Peasants got married because he was the one that (probably) got Anne the Peasant preggers and he didn't want to burn in hell or be stabbed by her relatives.