Guardian News and Media/London
Traumatised Harry Potter fans distraught at the aspersions J K Rowling cast on the viability of Ron and Hermione’s marriage can relax: the novelist actually believes the pair “will be alright with a bit of counselling”.
Snippets of Rowling’s interview with Emma Watson, who plays Hermione in the film versions of the bestselling Harry Potter books, were leaked last week, leaving fans in turmoil over the author’s comments that she “wrote the Hermione-Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfilment”, and that “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”.
In her complete interview, which Watson conducted for Wonderland magazine and which fan site Mugglenet has posted online in full, Rowling did admit that “in some ways Hermione and Harry are a better fit”, and that “Hermione’s always there for Harry”.
But, while committing what she called “Potter heresy” and saying that Hermione and Ron’s pairing was “a young relationship. I think the attraction itself is plausible but the combative side of it … I’m not sure you could have got over that in an adult relationship, there was too much fundamental incompatibility”, Rowling ended up deciding that the duo would probably have made it.
“Maybe she and Ron will be alright with a bit of counselling, you know. I wonder what happens at wizard marriage counselling? They’ll probably be fine. He needs to work on his self-esteem issues and she needs to work on being a little less critical,” Rowling told Watson, adding of the character Hermione: “Just like her creator, she has a real weakness for a funny man. These uptight girls, they do like them funny … It’s such a relief from being so intense yourself – you need someone who takes life, or appears to take life, a little more lightheartedly.”
