turbinicarpus
Formerly 'Pahan'
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2015
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Thinking about it some more, part of what taints their relationship is not just that they feel what they feel because of magic but that their feelings --- even if genuine --- were prompted and encouraged by their magical circumstances. In other words, magic can't create true love, but it can certainly create circumstances for this one of the less malevolent instances of the Stockholm Syndrome. For all that I enjoy this story, I view their relationship as fruit of a poisoned tree of Life Debts and Patronage system.Overcoming their own fear that their love is tainted by the Patron Oath and Life Debt, overcoming the barriers to their relationship by society, law and custom, challenging and changing the world if that is what it takes to be happy together, is the point of the story. Both had to grow up more quickly than Nymphadora and Viktor. While Viktor was still a student and Quidditch star, those two were Patron and Retainer, trying to rebuild a destroyed family. Hermione and Harry realizing that their love was not caused by the Life Debt and Oath was a major milestone in the story.
I hate to contradict Word of God, but any sense of "against all odds" evaporated the moment the Life Debt situation occurred, and doubly so once the Patron Oath was sealed. Their relationship, though condemned by society on some level, is also the path of least resistance day-to-day.Or on those romances who are important. And this story is about Harry and Hermione coming together against all odds.
"Against all odds" (within reason) would be Hermione marrying a pureblooded family heir like Neville.
Nothing? I don't presume to know the state of affairs at the end of the story, but if it's going where I think it's going, they will have survived adolescence, despite having the greatest villain of the past half-century after them personally, overcoming said villain and his followers; they will have defeated the Imperius-lite that is a Life Debt and societally imposed magical shackles of a Patron Oath; and they will have accumulated magical and social power that gives them freedom to do what they will with their relationships. If even half of that is true, how would that be nothing?It would feel incredibly cheap and wrong to me to go "oh, yeah... turns out, all of that was for nothing.
And when they choose to fight for each other completely of their own free will, as opposed to because they "need to", how would that be bad?You don't actually love each other romantically. You don't need to fight for each other.
Like I said, it's pureblooded heir of a family, or bust! Or, maybe her status is sufficient to start her own dynasty. Harry can marry Susan Bones, with them tossing a coin to decide which of their children will take which family name.Enjoy your totally accepted life as best friends. Hermione can marry that half-blood she will now fall realistically in love with, removing even the last potential for conflict with society."
I don't see these two scenarios as similar at all. Perhaps the difference is that I see the extrinsic forces pushing them together as more powerful and more pernicious than those keeping them apart. Therefore, I see the hypothetical ending that you describe as life-affirming: a victory of reason and free will over insidious magic and ignorant society, and two people who've been stuck with each other for almost a decade realizing that they don't have to be.Removing their love, reducing it to a platonic friendship, would pretty much destroy the story in a "slap in the face" twist because they would have gone through all those trials and challenges just to realize that they actually were fooling themselves all along. That would be on the same level as "Oh, you beat Voldemort. Good job. But it turns out, his new body was defective. He'd have died anyway in a few weeks."
I know that I'm almost certainly not changing any minds here, so I'm going to see if I can turn this into constructive criticism... I suggest making the forces keeping them apart feel more powerful and pernicious. Day-to-day, their main effect seems to be that they can't kiss in public and Hermione has to put up with random girls flirting with Harry, and some looming Year of Discovery stuff that's distant and, ultimately, something that they can choose not to engage in without much cost that we've been shown. Otherwise, the Patron-Retainer relationship actually makes it easier for them to spend time together than for any other Hogwarts students of opposite sex outside of their Year of Discovery.