Discussing Harry Potter with one of my students, I was a bit offended when she asked "But didn't you think that the love stuff was just…ridiculous?" I happened to think that the description of Harry's infatuation with Ginny was quite well-done (although is getting her to break up with her boyfriend with the help of the Felix Felicis any different really that Voldemort's mother using a love potion on Tom Riddle???)
However, the Hermione and Ron situation, once again, ruffled my feathers. I have always identified with Hermione and perhaps I am apt to judge her a bit more harshly. First of all, why Ron? If Hermione is the perfectionist that I know she is, why doesn't she shoot for the big one, Harry Potter himself? I think Ron is a neat guy, but he's a bit of a dork and the descriptions of him making out with Lavender Brown hardly make me think he would be a good lay.
Also, I think Rowling went a little overboard with Hermione's reaction to the Ron/Lavender fiasco. I don't know. For the first time I actually could remember a little bit what it was like to be the same age as the characters. In the previous books, I didn't really identify with them very much emotionally, but my late teenage emotional memories are still quite present in my memory. And, as I said, I always identified with Hermione. But in this situation, I couldn't really understand why she flipped out. The bird attack was a bit extreme. Normally, don't teenage girls just brood alone in their rooms, write clichéd poems, listen to the same CD over and over again, all the while trying to seem like they've got it together on the outside? Or was that just me?
In any case, I do believe that the scenes at the end with Ron and Hermione comforting each other at Dumbledore's funeral were sweet, if not very real to me. And if we are in some sort of sick way living vicariously through the HP characters, I hope for everyone's sake that they get to stay single for a little while longer.
