Hi, I love ur work, it's truly amazing and I read ur meta on harry and ginny and three couples who parallel them and I just wanted to ask if you their is any other couples in media who parallel them as well ?:)
One example of another couple hinny is (very clearly in my opinion) inspired by is Odysseus and Penelope, in the sense that the hinny plot in DH is substantially the basic plot of the Odyssey: he needs to leave the woman he loves for a war, then needs to go through a complex journey with various episodes to come back home, while she is at said home fighting against the people who want to take control over it.
Of course, if you go into the specifics, it's not the same story but, again, the basic plot is that.
But when it comes to hinny you can find references to a billion different love stories because it's a genre of couple that finds its place in the literary culture of myths, epic poems, and so on... Its probably most recent evolution being superheroes stories. Big stories with big themes, heroes, great sacrifices, and loves that survive beyond death. Those love stories where the love is intense, excruciating, and eternal, and the obstacles are external to the couple.
This is also why hinny has the whole technically toxic perspective of loving the other person unconditionally. You shouldn't love a romantic partner unconditionally of course, but it's part of the genre hinny is written for. Now, with hinny and most of these couples, the paradox is in the fact that while they love each other unconditionally, they also love the other because they would never pointlessly hurt them. But it's also why there's a whole section of mirror couples to these, the dark versions, the couples that do hurt each other immensely, intentionally, and still are completely obsessed with one another. Personally, I think you could, for example, put in this category Catherine and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. Maybe it's not really a coincidence that the quote "He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." works quite perfectly for Harry and Ginny.
Some people claim that Harry and Ginny already have their dark version in canon with Voldemort and Bellatrix. I get that there are a couple of scenes in DH where you could sort of claim this parallel is drawn by the story, but frankly, I don't think it really can go beyond the "Ginny is Harry's lover and Bellatrix is Voldemort's". Without even getting into the whole "Ginny is not Harry's subordinate, and if you interpret the break-up like that, you did not get what it's about", the fundamental bigger problem with that parallel is that Voldemort doesn't love Bellatrix. It's not just that he doesn't love her in a non-dysfunctional way because, as explained, that's not the point; there's just no evidence that he loves her even in an obsessive, sadistic way (there's not even any actual evidence that they are lovers).
But going back to the genre hinny belongs to, it's substantially the matter of soulmates. Now, some people, wrongly, frankly, interpret this as being forced together, and to that I say: soulmates' marks AUs fried your brains (I'm joking, maybe). It's about loving someone for who they are at their core; it's the "as long as I'm me and you are you, I'll love you, and I can't stop being me and you can't stop being you". It's a type of story forged in a time when people felt considerably more at the mercy of the unpredictable events of the world, a considerably less anthropocentric time. When fate, gods, and magic still felt meaningful. And in fact, the point is that the obstacles for the couple are external to them (war here being the popular culprit). It's why time is such a big factor in Harry and Ginny's story ('I just wish I’d asked you sooner. We could’ve had ages… months… years maybe…’.; He spotted Ginny two tables away; she was sitting with her head on her mother’s shoulder: there would be time to talk later, hours and days and maybe years in which to talk.) In every single book of the HP series, there's at least one scene where Harry and Ginny get interrupted in a potentially pivotal moment. And then, of course, there's how intimately intertwined they are with each other's near deaths... How it's not a friends-to-lovers but their becoming friends coincides with their falling in love… How their being each other’s ultimate love is an inextricable part of their characterisations… And so on and on... But I hope you'll get my point without me diving into all the details, or this post is never going to end. There's a whole book that could be written only on the sun symbolism.
The true opposition, the competition, to this type of love story only really arrives with the development of the novel, Europe shifting towards a far more anthropocentric mentality, the arrival of psychoanalysis, and so on... So around the 18th/19th century. With this change in mentality, and people feeling more in control of their lives, looking more at themselves internally, comes the question: what if the problems for the couple are the people in the couple? What if they need to change to be compatible? What if you are what your life turns you into? There's no perfect match, there's no higher love? Of course, a story can very easily play around with both the epic and the introspective view, but at the end of the day, every love story can be classified by answering the question: are their obstacles mainly external or internal?
To summarise, all you need to do is look at the structure of Harry and Ginny's characters. They are circular (just like the saga), they become who they were always supposed to be. And their love story inevitably follows the same exact principle. And this is precisely how so many love stories were conceptualised for such a long time: the two souls who will find each other again.
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