Are you married to an intelligent, driven woman? I am, so I was speaking from experience and not talking out of my ass. By all means continue believing what you want though.

 

I am an intelligent, driven woman and I've been dating someone very Ron-like for the last three years.

I wouldn't want someone as driven as me as we would just butt heads. I refuse to sacrifice my career for another, and it would not be fair to make someone who is equally driven sacrifice theirs. We would end up breaking up due to both of us being stubborn bastards who are determined to accomplish our dreams.

Instead, my SO is more focused on friendships, enjoyment and family. It balances out my drive and helps me calm when I get home. I need someone who is funny and chill and is willing to give, yet stop me when I go too far. Plus, as his career is not his top priority, he is willing to quit and follow me. It works out great. He is my support.

This is how I assume Hermione feels in the books. She needs someone to bring her back down to Earth.

 

I happen to be one, and what I want out of a relationship isn't a neat list of stereotypes that fit together like Lego bricks. I don't need an equally highly intelligent or driven partner any more than Bach needed someone who could more or less codify a genre of music as he did or Grace Hopper needed someone who could invent a compiler from scratch. I don't need a partner to ~challenge~ me, because that's what work is for. Non-work relationships are downtime, and someone has to be able to create space and time for that downtime, especially if children are eventually involved. And it sure as hell isn't going to be me.

Not to mention that if you can't relate to and converse with people who rate lower on the [academic] intelligence scale than you do, that speaks more of your own stupidity than theirs. It's perhaps the biggest sign that you aren't actually as smart as you think you are.

But hey, you're married to a woman, so you know everything that goes on in her head and the heads of all women like her.

Also well said, Lindsey

 

Point about Hermione hating being beaten. All the more reason that she'd be attracted to a dude who can't compete with her (so she feels secure) and isn't the least interested in competing with her (so he's also secure, and their dynamic if not perfect is at least fairly healthy). It doesn't have to be Ron, but definitely not Harry, whose shadow she'd live in for most of her career.

I knew there was a reason we d̶i̶s̶a̶g̶r̶e̶e̶ ̶o̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶h̶i̶l̶d̶r̶e̶n̶'̶s̶ ̶b̶o̶o̶k̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ hated each other at first encounter!

 

Wait, wait, let's not mix up "being attracted to someone" and "who you'd live the happiest marriage with." That's not how attraction works. Okay well... maybe Hermione might have the foresight to fall for someone specifically because of how they fit into her future plan, but throughout the dynamic I don't think Rowling ever suggested that Hermione wanted to fall in love with Ron. In fact, book 6 suggests if she were capable of controlling her emotions (which we know she can't), she would have turned off any attraction to Ron.

As juxtaposition, based on the way it was written, Harry and Hermione would unlikely fall for each other because of how they see the other. Harry saw Hermione as an overbearing older sister and Hermione saw Harry as a someone that she needed to care for (much like house elves and Buckbeak).

Ron and Hermione are a couple that -- as I get older -- I look back and see did not come out of nowhere in spite of being adamantly against it years ago. It never seemed like they would have anything in common since they were basically forced to spend time with each other out of their shared friendship with Harry but I can now see that it isn't exactly unusual for someone like Hermione to find that the bickering would feel a lot like flirting. I don't "ship" it but I certainly don't mind it anymore.

 

The problem with Ron/Hermione is that Ron hates being overshadowed, he always wanted to be recognized for his skills.

Being married to Hermione, it's pretty much guaranteed he'll always be overshadowed. That is unless he had changed a lot after all these years.

 

Ron doesn't hate being overshadowed, although it's easy to misread him that way - locket!Horcrux did, and failed to manipulate him. Ron hates being left out, and he hates being mocked, and he hates being useless. All he wants is to be given a chance.

He doesn't care that Hermione and Harry consistently get (somewhat, in Harry's case) better grades than he does, because they never mock him for it. He doesn't care that Harry's competing in the Triwizatd Tournament with all the trappings of glory and whatnot, he cares (from his POV) that Harry didn't tell him he was going to put in his name so they could do it together - logically only one of them could be champion. He doesn't hate or resent Harry for being miles better as Quidditch than he is, or for having the chance to play from first year, or for being captain when at first he himself is just a lousy, well, nervous Keeper. Even when he storms out in DH, it's because he thought Harry had a plan; because he was so used to being sidekick that he was subconsciously waiting for orders and became upset when orders didn't come.

I don't have quite as many older siblings as Ron, but I do have the crazy age gap part (ten years, nine years, and four years older than me) so I think I'm a bit qualified to say that my problem growing up wasn't that people didn't notice me more than they noticed them; I just wanted to be noticed at all. I didn't want to be better than them, I wanted to be not-useless. And Ron shows a lot of that with Hermione, like the whole "Always the tone of surprise" thing in DH. With the Parseltongue he's pleased that he can do something she can't, not to lord it over her but because it means he's useful to the team and to her personally, and he doesn't want that to be something that surprises her. He knows he's not as capable as she is, and he's been fine with it from the moment she Petrified Neville. He just wants to be seen as capable too.

Besides, Ron played second fiddle to the freaking Boy Who Lived for seven years (plus the rest of their lives together); doing it for Hermione is well within his capabilities.

 

Within Ron's capabilities, yes, but within his pride?
Harry was The Boy Who Lived - something that ensured he was always going to be famous - but Hermione? She was just another person with her own personality traits.
He would NEVER be able to compete with Harry - how many wizards alive can? But Hermione was smart academically, sure - but otherwise that's just a characteristic - unlike Dumbledore, Harry, or even TMR (who were marked by fate and let's face it, life does give some people a ridiculously good hand where it's near impossible to fuck up), she wasn't marked by birth - she was marked by choices, just like Ron.

It's different.

Don't think this is true - Ron no longer cares about the glory when he realises that Harry could have died - it wasn't about togetherness, it was how far he was willing to go for glory - Ron wants to stand out, but there's a line of things he's willing to do to get said glory, and endangering his life is beyond it. Ron wants glory (the way I see it) as much as the average person does, which is work hard but within his definitions of exactly [I\how much hard work is involved[/i].
For a guy who watches basketball videos, it may go as far as playing for an hour every day - but abandoning everything else in your life to go to training ground after training ground, probably not. Waking up at 4am and working strictly on power workouts, then school? Probably not.

 

Except that Ron doesn't compete with Hermione, not really. I think chaosattractor is mostly right here - Ron, more than anything, just wants recognition, which makes sense to me, given how he was overshadowed by his brothers for so long. That doesn't mean he doesn't want also to be the best, since in the Mirror of Erised he sees himself as the greatest of all his brothers, but I think it's important that he doesn't really see him as the smartest or funniest or best at magic, but rather as the one with the most accolades. Head boy, Quidditch captain, winner of both cups - in the Mirror, he's finally done something to get out of all his brothers' shadows, even though most of those titles and awards are basically meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

I mean, my siblings went to Harvard and Berkeley while I was in middle school, and my dad said to me one day: "Your brother currently attends the top private university in the country. Your sister attends the top public university. Where will you go?" My response wasn't that I would go to the greatest school in the world or something; rather, it was, "Is there a third category?"
("Yes. Community college.")

If he actually cared about Hermione being smarter than him, Ron wouldn't have copied off her notes or homework. At the risk of sounding incredibly conceited, in my experience at school, the kinds of people who ask to copy off you are usually the ones who are both more secure in their mediocrity and more willing to admit your greater aptitude for the topic - if they cared more about proving themselves better than you, then asking for your help would be like giving up. You can claim that Harry is different to Hermione, but I think Ron got used to Hermione being smarter and more driven than him a long time before they got married.

As for the Triwizard Tournament, it's not about the glory. The reason he tries to apologize when Harry almost dies is:

You'll notice that he no longer believes Harry put his name into the goblet, because he realizes Harry would have to be absolutely insane to do it. The reason they reconcile isn't because Ron doesn't want the glory anymore, it's because he realizes that Harry never wanted the glory in the first place. This is the key distinction between "I am hurt because you left me out in a bid for glory!" and "I am hurt because you got chosen over me to win great glory!"

 

I don’t think they would make a good couple, not just because they are different and have different priorities. This alone is not enough, but because Ron behaves as if he still were in a kindergarten. Whenever he is pissed off, he stops talking to Hermiona or other people too. Giving your partner a silent treatment is a good way to ruin your relationship, so unless he grows out of it or finds a good therapist, I can certainly see how Ron’s lack of communicative skills could destroy any relationship. Normal, mature people talk with each other to solve problems, Ron just throws a temper tantrum like a five year old.

 

that'sbait.jpg

 

My post is not a bait at all. I just wrote what I think. Would you or anyone like to be in a relationship with someone who whenever there is something that strongly pisses him off stops talking to you for days or even weeks? Seriously, this alone makes Ron a terrible boyfriend material.

How is Ron’s behaviour making things better? I would rather be with someone who is willing to discuss things and wants to understand/find a solution, etc. than with someone who is mentally a five year old child.

 

You've just described every legitimate and realistic relationship.

 

I don’t know what kind of experience you have, but it has certainly never happened to me and I have been in a relationship for over three years now. If I or my boyfriend are annoyed, we may not speak with each other for around an hour to let our emotions cool down, so we can talk more calmly, but we have never acted like Ron and stopped to talk with each other for days or weeks.

 

This is my opinion as well. As individuals it makes no sense for Ron and Hermione to progress past friends or perhaps have occasional and regretful "hate/anger sex/snog".

 

Sceptical

I honestly prefer Ron and Hermione over Harry/Hermione. There are already far too many stories where the leading man gets the best girl. Still, I do think Ron and Hermione are unsuited for each other. Personally I think it’s important that a couple share the same life goals. I guess they are an example on “opposite attracts”, but is not crucial learn to*appreciate*each others differences rather than tolerate them? What do they actually talk about?
It must be difficult to not be able to discuss your interests with someone you are married to.

 

Holy shit. I didn't want to join this debate in the first place (see me earlier in the thread), but.. if you're gonna bring in your own relationship experiences into this then you really gotta take a step back and think, 'Is this comparison valid?'
Also,

1) Just because you don't do what Ron does in a relationship, does not make Ron more or less of a dick/unlikable person that no one would date nor does it mean that Hermione wouldn't date him. Argue all you want about Harry being the link between Ron and Hermione, but they were still friends after seven rocky years where they found themselves in some pretty life-threatening situations. Can any of you say that with your own life?

2) Ron's behaviour once they actually start dating does not seem like a five-year-old's. I don't know where you got that impression from. Sure, he throws his fair share of temper tantrums and especially during fourth and sixth year has jealous tendencies leading to fights with Hermione but fourth year was Krum and sixth year was actually Hermione being jealous of Lavender. It's literally how teenagers behave 101. Nothing even remotely resembles five year old behaviour.

This argument, though, should've died a long time ago. For the vast majority of the series, the main characters were teenagers and trying to decide whether a teenaged relationship is going to happen is bound to end in disaster. Teenagers don't make sense, and I'm speaking AS a teenager. JKR depicts Ron and Hermione as a couple in the epilogue, so if you're the type of person to believe canon is law, then they work together.

If you don't believe in canon, then... well you can either write your own fanfiction where Hermione gets paired up with god knows who, or you can go and partake in the vast amounts of fanfiction dedicated to pairing Hermione with anyone but Ron. Enjoy.

 

While personally I dislike Hermione as a character for the most part, pairing her with Ron works if you believe they can balance each other. If you see Ron's relaxed approach to life helping to calm Hermione down then it works, this also works with Hermione motivating and pushing Ron. It doesn't work in fandom a lot of the times because Ron takes so much abuse and for the most part Hermione is put on a pedestal.The idea that she checks their homework bleeds into the idea she flat out does it for them and is the only reason Harry and Ron are passing.