Don E. Delivery mentions the scene, but I don't think he even did justice to scene where Ginny truly has her moment of awesomeness with Harry.

To me, that was the scene where Ginny stopped being a side character and stepped to the center for Harry. She's strong, a tad caustic, but also helpful and provides reliefs for some of his deeper fears, all-the-while puncturing an over-inflated ego--"Some of us have suffered as bad or worse than you under Riddle, Potter."

I remember thinking it really showed she'd grown up.

 

Yeah, but Daphne is hardly a canon character...

I don't agree with the comments about normality as well - Harry is anything but normal, and he felt like an outsider for his entire life, which is part of the reason he felt so comfortable around Luna, another outsider. Rowling confirmed that she toned down her cryptozoological tendencies post-Hogwarts, and I don't think it bothered Harry all that much in the first place - he was actually interested in what she had to say, and it was Hermione who freaked out over Luna's ideas, because she's a cunt.

We don't know too much about Luna's interest in Harry, but she did seem to be pretty enamored by him. Moreover, Harry's encounters with Luna seemed to be the only scenes in OotP where he didn't behave like a girl on her period... which, I think, is what he really needs.

 

Luna exists in the books for nothing except to make Harry seem normal by comparison. She's a nutcase, a weirdo...just someone who's not all together. Think of your own life. Would you even think of dating a girl like Luna yourself? I most certainly wouldn't. We call them 'insane', and we put them in asylums for a reason.

 

:facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm

You're either trolling, or you haven't read the books, or you haven't read the books in a long long time and you've read a lot of bad fanfic.

Which is it?

If A, I think this has about run its course, don't you? If B or C, literally go read books 1-7 again and then come back and tell us what you've learned.

 

I primarily meant a job within the Ministry, it seems to be the 'Go-To' for anyone within the Wizarding world.

 

Ffs can't I have an opinion here? Her mother dying and crazy father made her insane thats canon.

 

Well, if your opinion is wrong, people will tell you so.

Anyway, seems like this 'joke thread' became semi-serious after all. That is quite funny.

 

Had Luna and Harry been closer sooner in the series, she could have been a strong candidate. As it is, at the time Harry starts needing a confident because Hermione and Ron prove lacking in this area, Ginny steps in the position before Luna can (if she ever wanted to, which is not sure at all).

In an AU where she is the one bringing the Easter egg and telling not to abandon seeing Sirius? Why not, but I'm not sure it would be enough.

His relationship with Ginny is built mainly on their moment about the possession, the Easter egg, quite a bit of shared time (she was around during all the best times in his life, being summers at the Burrow or parties in the common room) and no small amount of physical attraction. The Quidditch match she won for him is just the icing on the cake, he's already hooked at the point.

On the other hand, Luna has this one strong moment at the end of OotP, much less interaction and a lot less common ground (that we know of, and we don't really know much about what Luna likes beside her friends). Harry certainly likes her a lot as a friend, but there isn't the little spark to incite him to go further.

tl;dr: Harry and Luna have good times and chemistry together, but just not enough and to late for it to really count.

 

This is exactly how I felt rereading HP. 5 years ago :fire

 

You can have all the opinions you want.
Convincing people to agree with them, or even just take them seriously on the other hand is all on you.


And back on topic, the best girl for Harry is obviously Hedwig, who is actually a witch trapped in the form of an owl.

 

I've always been of the opinion that Occlumency wouldn't help against love potions, nor any other mind-affecting potion.

Spoiler

No matter how much willpower you have or how organized your mind is, once you've got a substance physically affecting your body (and, thus, your mind), all bets are off. Maybe it would help you realize you need help, if you caught on that you're being affected by something in the first moments after the substance is introduced, but after that...

How many people swear they're sober when they're blind, stinking, drunk? Heck, studies have shown that just making the face associated with a particular emotion will make you start feeling that emotion: That's how pathetically easy it is to trick your brain into feeling something.

Now add a magical potion.

If you don't twig to your own sudden surge of affection for your poisoner in the first few minutes and get help, you're probably fucked (literally - I think they're calling it rape, these days: Oh, Wizarding World, you're so full of whimsy and... and horror. Utter fucking horror. ).

Meh. I guess everyone has a story in their head for the characters we didn't see much of/hear much from, and I don't have a story for Katie. I find the notion of H/Katie about as uninteresting as H/Hannah (with H/Susan only being a hair better). They're all blank slates, so why not a new one? Everyone's been telling -more or less- the same H/Slytherin-Girl story for years, now.

I'd like to see more stories where Morag MacDougal or Su Li fills this niche.
(I'd also like for people to stop writing it as "Sue." That's not her name.)

LOL! Man, have I been there.

This probably comes off sounding a bit trite to many people.
But... also a bit true.

BTDT.

I didn't even have the fate of a country/world on my shoulders, and dating crazy was still too much work and too nerve-wracking to be worth it.

And if your SO ever tries to perform a sex act on you, right in front of their grandparent, let me assure you that you're not a square for stopping them and pointing out that (aside from there being only so much disrespect you can actively perpetrate without spontaneously combusting) "legally blind" is not the same as "really most sincerely blind."

EDIT: Huh, I tried posting this last night in Firefox and, even after refreshing the page the post wouldn't appear... and here I just went to post it in Chrome, and I find out it did post. I'd love to know exactly when these problems started, and why.

 

But JKR said that you can counter Veritaserum with Occlumency.

 

Yeah... she says a lot of stuff.

I mean, I know you kind of have to take her word for it, considering, but some of it makes very little sense.

 

Yeah, I personally use about 0% of what she says in interviews as canon. She tends to pander to whoever is giving the interview, like using a random throw-away line about something that is clearly revisionist canon, but now we're stuck with it.

 

The Word of God is what it is. There's nothing wrong with retcons.

 

My biggest peeve with the canon Harry/Ginny pairing is that it goes from angsty and awkward teenage romance into happy lasting marriage with multiple kids with no transition at all (the same applies to Ron/Hermione). Either one alone is fine, but you can't have both without showing at least some development in between. Teenage romances just don't last for decades except in very special cases.

So who is the best girl for Harry? For a teenage romance I'd go for basically anyone, except maybe Pansy (there's too much bad blood there) or Hermione (they are too much like siblings), with the girls in the DA having slight advantage over the others. For later life serious relationship I'd broaden the scope to include also Pansy and Hermione; people really do grow up after they finish school, and you never know who you end up liking when you see them in new light. Ten years more life experience does wonders to the worst of teenagers, and the three year age difference that seems enormous when you're fifteen suddenly isn't all that bad anymore.

Anyone ending up having Harry's kids is a blank slate, no matter what their name is.

 

Harry/fem!Blaise. I remember a few very good stories with that pairing.

 

19 Years Later... Pretty sure we'd need more books to see "some development in between."

Normally I'd respond that war creates some very special cases. But you're right. Teenage romances don't last for decades. They have a shell life of, like, seven years if they start real early. But I'm confused. What are these 'very special cases'? Did they kidnap Tinker Bell and set off to Neverland?

I'm sorry, I'm an ass. The temptation was too great.

 

I argued before that I prefer Harry and Luna romance by far, their interactions alone in canon get more and more sweet and heartwarming. Luna also has a sense of insight and lightness that would do wonders for Harry during his harder angsting fases. And Harry, with his steadfast loyalty and damn strength of character and stuborness when he is fighting for what he believes or his friends already helped Luna so much, just see what her father said in book 7.

When Harry and Luna talk, I don't know, they just feel natural, there isn't anything heavy or forced like his talks with Ginny post OOTP and Cho, Harry also feels strongly protective of Luna, unlike any othe girls I remember. Also, Luna is adorable, pure without being naive, intelligent and quite franly, magical, Luna reminds me of the feeling I got when I read the first book. I just feel like she represents the wizarding world most fascinating and endearing aspects.

 

Snatching up this thread before it necros but... Ginny and Harry is nice that its hard to find an author who can pull it off. My personal preference though would be to take the Wheel of Time approach in that three heads (or in that case four) are better than one. Luna/Ginny/Harry. I can see it working once the kinks are worked out. Then again I can see Hermione working with Fred AND George who would have been one scary combination.

Or I could just be reading to much crackfic.

But if it must be an even pairing, Luna/Harry or Harry/Ginny.

I've also noticed as of late that a lot of people in the HP community seem to have taken up the Dumbledore-Ginny-Ron bashing to 11 with a lot of derivative works and Harry's only hope of true love is with Hermione. I'm mean it could work if someone did it right, and there was chemistry in the movie verse, but in the way canon tells it. They seemed more like Siblings.