Why Ron dated Lavender - an analysis
Author’s note: I. freaking. did it. I started this whole adventure over a year ago, and honestly I didn’t know exactly where that would lead me. I certainly didn’t imagine that I would end up writing more than 40 pages on the reasons that drove two fictional characters to date each other (or more precisely, the reasons that drove one fictional character to date another), even more when that element is almost a detail in the entire story. But the question had really bugged me for years, because I couldn’t quite understand and pinpoint all the aspects of the relationship, and the answers I was given did not satisfy me. At all. So I looked, searched, thought and pondered for a very long time, and finally came to a conclusion. I could have just presented that conclusion, and my essay would be a lot (like a lot a lot) shorter but I chose not to. If I spent so much time wondering why Ron dated Lavender, that’s because the most common interpretations of the events of the sixth book were lacking something for me; yet they’re still, to this day, the most popular interpretations. If I had just exposed my own explanation, it would have been taken as just another interpretation, and, what is more, this interpretation would have been deemed less believable than the most popular ones. So I thought it would be best if I were thorough and explained my entire reasoning. That’s why my answer is so ridiculously long.
I’m tagging @warriorlid14, @honeycombsandcherries, @vivithefolle, @fivenamereveals, and @benedettabeby who apparently want to read the very odd things I do when I have free time (yes, the joke about not having a hobby is dawning on me).
Disclaimer: I’m not exactly here to discuss Hermione’s, Ginny’s or Lavender’s thoughts and feelings but Ron’s. Ron is by far my favourite character and I spend most of my time as a Harry Potter fan thinking about him and the whys and the hows of his actions, which is why this essay here is mostly centered around him. That doesn’t mean that I condone everything he does, or that I’m not interested in other characters. I’m not here to judge, but understand, or at least that’s what I’m trying to do. Keep in mind that I’m trying to give a rational analysis of things as complex, confusing, beautiful and unpredictable as feelings based on book quotes. I can’t affirm that my reading of the characters’ feelings is the only one valid.
So yeah, question of the century: why did Ron date Lavender ?
What are the most common explanations given to explain why Ron dated Lavender ?
1. He pettily wanted to get back at Hermione for having kissed Krum two years prior (or for having potentially dated him, or for potentially still dating him). Him going out with Lavender would be a way to punish Hermione, using Lavender to try to make her jealous.
2. He wanted to prove to Ginny that she was wrong, and that he was not a child anymore. Some even claim he wanted to rub in his relationship with Lavender to her face just to revenge the many public displays of affection she had had with Dean.
3. He just wanted a physical relationship and was only attracted to Lavender because she was pretty. In other terms, he was just being an immature teenager and did not know what he wanted in a relationship. This idea is backed up by J.K.Rowling (this is just her interpretation, and, as Jacques Rancières explained it, a book’s meaning escapes its author and belongs to the readers: so her interpretation does not weigh much than what any of her readers can come up with).
Some people think he could not have tried to make Hermione jealous because he had no idea she was interested in him. While some others might claim he was very aware of her feelings for him, and we’ll get back to that later, let’s assume he was not. It’s still possible that he wanted to make Hermione jealous, even if he thought she would never look at him, because love and hope are not rational thoughts but complex feelings.
Very quickly, I dismissed the idea that explanations 1 and 3 could be possible at the same time and rather assumed they were mutually exclusive. Why? Both explanations are the complete contrary of one another : in explanation 1, the person wants a deep emotional connection with someone they love or fancy and are denied this connection, but yearn for it all the same; in explanation 3, the person does not realise they want a deeper connection with someone else, and go out with others just to have a good time. But you can’t yearn for a meaningful relationship - and consciously take revenge for not having it - and not realise you want one at the same time!
You might argue that it’s possible if you’re not really conscious that you are trying to make someone jealous (which is, in itself, already quite far-fetched), if you’re deluding yourself and ignoring the real reasons you went out with someone, but even if such a behaviour exists, it cannot be applied to Ron in this situation. Indeed, he became really cold towards Hermione the day after his row with Ginny, and that’s because he learned she kissed Krum - we’ll get back to that for further explanations, but the text is heavily pointing out in that way, without considering the details and hidden reasons-. The cause of the silent treatment he gave to Hermione was the row with Ginny and the information he gathered during it -the facts and what he speculated from them.
‘D’you think Hermione did snog Krum?’ Ron asked abruptly, as they approached the Fat Lady.
Harry awoke the next morning feeling slightly dazed and confused by a series of dreams in which Ron had chased and confused by a series of dreams in which Ron had chased him with a Beater’s bat, but by midday he would have happily exchanged the dream Ron for the real one, who was not only cold-shouldering Ginny and Dean, but also treating a hurt and bewildered Hermione with an icy, sneering indifference.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
From those book quotes I don’t see how it would be possible to believe that Ron was not spending his free time pondering over his row with Ginny and moments he spent with Hermione, as well as imagining what happened between her and Krum, all the while feeling angry and hurt. Given that I’m now assuming explanation 1, I also don’t see how it would be possible to believe that Ron deluded himself into thinking that he was not trying to make Hermione jealous by going out with Lavender, considering that he started his relationship with her after a hurtful argument with Hermione.
In other words, since my explanation above was to oppose a possible counterargument to my theory, there is no way Ron was both trying to make Hermione jealous and being completely ignorant of his feelings for her and more importantly, of his want to enter a real relationship with her.
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Now it’s time to consider the explanations in themselves.
Was Ron trying to make Hermione jealous?
Why it seems to make sense…
At first sight, explanation 1 makes a lot of sense. After all, Ron was jealous of Viktor Krum and of his relationship with Hermione (I don’t know anyone who interpreted the text differently - what’s really at stake is either there was more). Ron had reacted really badly when he saw a really pretty Hermione escorted by his Quidditch idol during the Yull Ball. Every time Viktor Krum got mentioned afterwards (for example when Hermione announced that Viktor had invited her to go on holidays in Bulgaria in his home, when she mentioned they were pen-pals in the fifth book, etc.), Ron got tense or grumpy or both. And this time, in the sixth book I mean, was no exception. After his row with Ginny, Ron, who was already in a foul mood, was sombre when he entered the common Room (“he said darkly”), and Harry and him “barely spoke to each other that evening». Then he cold-shouldered Hermione for days.
They finally had a short but hurtful argument after the Quidditch match won by a landslide by Gryffindor, not least thanks to Ron’s talent and Harry’s ploy to help his best friend regain confidence in himself. That was a ploy that Hermione disparaged in front of Ron, to the latter’s dismay, especially since she implied without meaning it that he was unable to keep his goals without the help of a Felix Felicis potion. He got really angry with her and left Harry and Hermione on the spot. After they part ways, the next time we see him he is in Lavender’s arms, closely entwined with her.
‘I want a word with you, Harry’ She took a deep breath. ‘You shouldn’t have done it. You heard Slughorn, it’s illegal.’
‘What are you going to do, turn us in?’ demanded Ron?
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Harry, turning away to hang up his robes so that neither of them would see him grinning.
‘You know perfectly well what we’re talking about!’ said Hermione shrilly. ‘You spiked Ron’s juice with lucky potion at breakfast! Felix Felicis!’
‘No I didn’t,’ said Harry, turning back to face them both.
‘Yes you did, Harry, and that’s why everything went right, they were Slytherin players missing and Ron saved everything!’
‘I didn’t put it in!’ said Harry, now grinning broadly. He slipped his hand Inside his jacket pocket and drew out the tiny bottle that Hermione had seen in his hand that morning. It was full of golden potion and the cork was still tightly sealed with wax. ‘I wanted Ron to think I’d done it, so I faked it when I knew you were looking.’ He looked at Ron. ‘You saved everything because you felt lucky. You did it all yourself.’
He pocketed the potion again.
‘There really wasn’t anything in my pumpkin juice?’ Ron said, astounded. ‘But the weather’s good… And Vaisey couldn’t play … I honestly haven’t been given lucky potion?’
Harry shook his head. Ron gaped at him for a moment, then rounded on Hermione, imitating her voice.
‘You added Felix Felicis to Ron’s juice this morning, that’s why he saved everything!
See! I can save goals without help, Hermione!’
‘I never said you couldn’t - Ron, you thought you’d been given it, too!’
But Ron had already strode past her out of the door with his broomstick over his shoulder.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
However, despite the fact that him kissing Lavender happens so closely after this argument with Hermione about his Quidditch abilities, explanation 1 considers this a mere coincidence, an isolated incident, the last straw at most, and not something that had a real role on the spur of the moment decision of Ron to kiss and then date Lavender. The first explanation indeed deems that everything was already settled by the fact that Ron could not let his anger and hurt and jealousy about Hermione and Krum’s relationship slide.
It is actually compliant to the interpretation given by Harry in the very same chapter:
Harry walked slowly back up the grounds towards the castle through the crowd, many of whom shouted congratulations at him, but he felt a great sense of let-down; he had been sure that if Ron won the match, he and Hermione would be friends again immediately. He did not see how he could possibly explain to Hermione that what she had done to offend Ron was kiss Viktor Krum, not when the offence had occurred so long ago.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
It could be entirely plausible, since Ron did not get angry at Harry before the match for having “slipped” Felix Felicis in his potion, despite the fact that it implied the same thing - that Ron was not able to keep his goals without help (note: do not get me started on cortisol and how stress affects your brain). This behaviour, of course, can be explained by completely different reasons: Ron was very anxious and on the verge of a panic attack and thus was relieved for the help, plus he considers Quidditch to be really something important, a feeling shared with Harry but not with Hermione who regards the sport as trivial at best (so Hermione’s implied meaning can not be excused by the importance of Quidditch).
But even if we disregard other reasons that could explain why Ron did not lash out at Harry but only at Hermione, explanation 1 lets some things aside that made me question the truth of such a statement.
1. First reservation: Ron’s reaction after Hermione sent canaries at him
The first is in regard to Ron’s reaction after he got attacked by the flock of birds launched at him by Hermione. Indeed, if Ron was trying to make Hermione jealous, then the birds should have been felt as a great victory, as the obvious but unwilling confession by Hermione of her feelings for him. Indeed, it makes no sense: if Ron’s goal was to get back at Hermione, if Ron’s goal was to get a reaction out of her, if Ron’s goal was to test her feelings for him, then the violence she displayed and her sobs should have been indication enough that he had succeeded. But no, the tomorrow morning he takes “a defensive and resentful tone”.
This behaviour, and thus my first reservation, can be explained by several things : he might have been angry and ashamed of the attack thrown his way by Hermione, he might have thought that Hermione did not have to have a say in who he dated and thus kept dating Lavender out of sheer pride and defiance, he might have imagined that Hermione kissed Krum more than once and thus that he could and would do the same with Lavender, etc.
2. Second reservation: Ron’s joy during the beginning of the relationship
But none of those explanations can answer to my second reservation to explanation 1, and to this day I have not found a single counterargument to fight it.
Why, if Ron only dated Lavender to make Hermione jealous, was he really happy with Lavender in the first weeks of their relationship ?
Because he was, as this book quote shows - and it contrasts quite sharply with the days, and even weeks before this relationship began, when Ron was angry, cold, oversensitive, full of self-loathing and even aggressive:
Ron, who might have once found the necessity of these detours a cause for jealousy rather than hilarity, simply roared with laughter about it all. Although Harry much preferred this new laughing, joking Ron to the moody, aggressive model he had been enduring for the last few weeks, the improved Ron came at a hefty price.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
Even though Ron could get rather sullen if Hermione was mentioned, he still was really cheerful on the whole in those first few weeks, and it does not sit well with the behaviour of someone trying to make somebody else jealous. In those cases, people fake their attachment to the person they’re dating, and they’re focused on the reaction of the person they’re trying to make jealous- and in the cases of teenagers, rare are the ones who fool everybody into thinking they really feel affection for the person they’re dating. But it is obviously not the case with Ron there. Outside of the fact that Ron is known for wearing is heart on his sleeve, for being genuine, painfully honest and open, Harry explicitly tells the reader that Ron is cheerful, and that seems to be caused by his new relationship with Lavender. He’s actually very happy and proud of this relationship with her, because when the Twins mention it at Christmas, he turns pink and “doesn’t look displeased”. He really wants to get involved in this relationship, as he “[keeps] shouting Bill and Fleur covert looks, as though hoping to pick up tips” (and at that moment, they’re definitely not kissing because Fleur is mentioned to be talking loudly; and there is no way Molly would let Bill and Fleur isolate themselves in a corner to make out).
I could even add that on Ron’s birthday, when Ron begins to display the signs of someone having taken love potion, Harry declares : “Friends they might be, but if Ron started calling Lavender ‘Lav-Lav, he would have to put his foot down.” Even if he was not expecting Ron’s sudden spurt of longing, this statement of Harry is not the one of someone who thinks their best friend does not care at all about whom they’re dating. Yet this behaviour differs for example greatly from the one we know dated someone to make somebody else jealous and getting back at them - Hermione (she said, speaking of MacLaggen: ‘I thought he’d annoy Ron most’, which leaves little to the imagination). She chose MacLaggen because he was Ron’s rival at Keeper tryouts; she said in front of Ron that she would go with Cormac to the Christmas party and also aimed a jab at Ron (‘I like really good Quidditch players’); she faked being delighted at the prospect (one cannot forget “a most un-Hermione-ish giggle”) but actually fled from him during their date and spent a really bad time with him.
The only moment in the books in which Ron displays a behaviour hinting that he might be “using” Lavender is after Christmas - long after he began dating Lavender. When Ginny, Ron and Harry came back at Hogwarts, Ron tried to start a conversation with Hermione but she cut him off and completely ignored him, as if he was not even existing – she even offered Harry his Christmas present in front of Ron. And soon after “Ron and Lavender locked in a kind of vertical wrestling match”, and I interpreted it as Ron trying to drown his sorrow and hurt in Lavender’s kisses.
‘I got back a couple of hours ago, I’ve just been down to visit Hagrid and Buck - I mean Witherwings,’ [Hermione] said breathlessly. ‘Did you have a good Christmas ?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ron at once, ‘pretty eventful, Rufus Scrim -’
‘I’ve got something for you, Harry,’ said Hermione, neither looking at Ron nor giving him any sign that she had heard him.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
I know what some might say: that Ron was just happy with the relationship in itself and having a girlfriend he could kiss whenever he wanted because she actually considered “any moment that she was not kissing Ron as a moment wasted”. But then, it would be an argument backing up explanation 3 and trying to mix explanations 1 and 3 together, and I already stated and demonstrated that the two were mutually exclusive - at least I think so. And you can’t even imagine that Ron first dated Lavender to spite Hermione and then began to enjoy his new relationship, because the change in his attitude was just too fast for this theory to be feasible. You can not spend days and weeks completely moody out of feelings of inadequacy, jealousy and hurt and yet forget it just like that because you’re suddenly enjoying the company of the girl you dated just to spite another person. It’s almost as realistic as Hermione falling in love with Cormac MacLaggen during Slughorn’s Christmas party after having sent canaries at Ron. Or as Snape suddenly forgetting Lily on a bright sunny day and enjoying a relationship with Mrs. Rosmerta. Which means, absolutely not realistic.
So something else was at stake.
3. Third reservation: Ron’s own statement about his relationship with Lavender
Moreover, when Ron is more or less taking stock of his relationships with Lavender and Hermione in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, he clearly expresses regrets for not having been able to end his couple with Lavender. What does it hint at ? It shows that Ron had either not thought about having a romantic relationship with Hermione before the Lavender affair, either that he had not deemed it possible.
‘This isn’t your average book,’ said Ron. ‘It’s pure gold: Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches. Explains everything you need to know about girls. If only I’d had this last year, I’d have known exactly how to get rid of Lavender and I would’ve known how to get going with… well, Fred and George gave me a copy, and I’ve learned a lot. You’d be surprised, it’s not all about wandwork, either.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
Then what about his reaction before Hermione sent canaries at him ?
Some might be wondering about a passage that seems, at first glance, to point out that Ron knew what he was doing when he first kissed Lavender:
‘Oh,’ he said, drawing up short at the sight of Harry and Hermione.
‘Oops!’ said Lavender, and she backed out of the room, giggling. The door swung shut behind her.
There was a horrible swelling, billowing silence. Hermione was staring at Ron, who refused to look at her, but said with an odd mixture of bravado and awkwardness, ‘Hi, Harry! Wondered where you’d got to!’
Hermione slid off the desk. The little flock of golden birds continued to twitter in circles around her head so that she looked like a strange, feathery model of the solar system.
‘You shouldn’t leave Lavender waiting outside,’ she said quickly. ‘She’ll wonder where you’ve gone.’
She walked very slowly and erectly towards the door. Harry glanced at Ron, who was looking relieved that nothing worse had happened.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
I’ve always thought that he looked away from Hermione because he was still very angry with her, yet was also ashamed of the way he had treated her. In fact, him trying to ignore her does not seem very different from what he did the days prior the incident. The fact that he was “awkward” could very well mean that he was uncomfortable having been found trying to sneak away with Lavender in front of both his best friend and the girl he loved (honestly, I believe Harry would have been awkward as well if Ron and Hermione had seen him trying to go with Cho somewhere more private). And “bravado” is often displayed when one does not feel confident at all. My guess is that he was feeling guilty after the treatment he had given Hermione for days (and not weeks, as I’ve seen a couple of times, because the use of the expression “over the next few days” (p.272) after Ron’s row with Ginny points out clearly that days are not weeks, and no I won’t go there because sarcasm does not suit me) and even more guilty because of his imitation of her, but also hurt and angry at her lack of faith in him, jealous, and also insecure - Lavender was the first girl he actively went out with, and Ginny had pointed out his lack of experience and had mocked him for it. But he did not want to show all this (and he failed, as usual when it comes to hiding his feelings), so bravado was in order. What backs up this explanation is the way he seemed to feel guilty after he imitated Hermione in Transfiguration not long after he began dating Lavender, yet didn’t apologize to her for fear Hermione might send more birds at him.
“A long way along the table, Hermione was sitting alone, playing with her stew. Harry noticed Ron looking at her furtively.
‘You could say sorry,’ suggested Harry bluntly.
‘What, and get attacked by another flock of canaries?’ muttered Ron.”
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
That would also explain why he was “relieved that nothing worse had happened”: after his behaviour towards Hermione and given the murderous or completely bland look she must have given him, all the while surrounded by birds, he might very well have been expecting to be hexed. Sometimes, you can be nervous just by looking at the expressions of the people in front of you.
There’s another passage that might hint that Ron actually dated Lavender because he was jealous of Hermione’s kiss with Krum and wanted to get back at Hermione for that, and might also hint that Ron knew what he was doing but tried to justify his actions.
'Ron, whose hands and forearms still bore scratches and cuts from Hermione’s bird attack, was taking and resentful tone.
'She can’t complain,’ he told Harry. 'She snogged Krum. So she’s found out someone wants to snog me, too. Well, it’s a free country. I haven’t done anything wrong.’
Harry did not answer, but pretended to be absorbed in the book they were supposed to have read before Charms the following morning (Quintessence: A Quest). Determined as he was to remain friends with both Ron and Hermione, he was spending a lot of time with his mouth shut tight.
'I never promised Hermione anything,’ Ron mumbled. 'I mean, all right, I was going to go to Slughorn’s Christmas party with her, but she never said… just as friends… I’m a free agent…”
Harry turned a paged of Quintessence, aware that Ron was watching him. Ron’s voice tailed away in mutters, barely audible over the loud crackling of the fire, though Harry thought he caught the words “Krum” and “can’t complain” again.’
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
BUT! I have a completely different interpretation to offer you than the one I just gave, which backs up the final explanation as to why Ron dated Lavender in the end of my reasoning, an explanation that fits with everything that happened, unlike explanation 1.
There we are : it appeared obvious to me that Ron was not trying to make Hermione jealous when he dated Lavender, because it did not cover the entirety of his behaviour at that time.
Did Ron date Lavender to prove Ginny wrong ?
Why it seems to make sense…
Let’s give a look at explanation 2.
This explanation is heavily based on the row Ron entered with his sister after a particularly bad session of Quidditch practice, in the corridor where she was kissing Dean.
It is important to provide at least a bit of context here. Ron and Ginny usually do have a good relationship in most of the books. Since it’s not exactly the subject here, I think you’ll forgive me if I don’t look up closely and quote all the times they were doing something together (but if someone asks, I’ll do it). However, I can list some of them from the top of my head: Ginny was going to tell Ron what was happening with her in her first year, Ron tried to cheer her up after Mrs. Norris got attacked, Ginny wanted to remain with Ron and his friends in their compartment at the beginning of her second year, Ron wanted to hex Malfoy for mocking Ginny after she sent her Valentine to Harry, Ginny defended Ron from Fred’s unsympathetic remark after Scabber’s death, they played Quidditch together, they bantered, they discussed Harry’s situation together, they actually had a rather lighthearted talk about Ginny’s boyfriends in the end of Ron’s fifth year and Ron made a comment about her ex-boyfriend without being hexed (that alone is, in my mind, quite telling of their close bond; Ginny does not seem to be the kind of people who let others comment on her love life)…
However, from the beginning of the sixth book, their relationship looks rather strained. Ron apparently told the Twins some details about Ginny’s love life (whether or not he exaggerated, as the Twins’s comments suggest, is another debate - Fred and George can be quite dramatic themselves) that obviously made Ginny angry. In return, Ginny despised Fleur and Ron’s unavoidable attraction for the fourth-Veela and tripped him up in front of Fleur when he tried to get a goodbye kiss from her, leaving him completely humiliated and furious.
It is yet important to notice that whatever the state of their relationship is at the beginning of this book, it does not mean that they don’t like each other anymore. The most obvious sign for me of that is the name Ginny gave to her cute Pygmy Puff : Arnold (p127), because Arnold is an anagram of Ronald. It could be a coincidence, but I believe the coincidence is too big to be missed - not least because Ginny is not the kind of people who misses such things. Moreover, Harry makes several references to moments he shared with Ginny and Ron that were happy moments, full of laughter.
So, in the sixth book appears the following paradox : it is probably the book in which we see Ron and Ginny interact the most, hang out together the most, but it is also the book in which their relationship is the most strained. Between them stand Ginny’s love life, Quidditch practices and their personal evolutions at that point.
Before the row, they were already not on the best terms this day, because of Quidditch practice. Ron had already begun in the previous trainings to panic and lose any confidence in himself as the “looming prospect of the opening game of the season” (the word “loom” suggests something threatening), and during this particular session, he accidentally punched Demelza Robins’s mouth. Ginny was not pleased with him and called him a prat. Ron was more than a little despondent at the end of their Quidditch practice.
‘It was an accident, I’m sorry, Demelza, really sorry!’ Ron shouted after her as she zigzagged back to the ground dripping blood everywhere. I just -’
‘Panicked,’ Ginny said angrily, landing next to Demelza and examining her fat lip. ‘You prat, Ron, look at the state of her!’
‘I played like a sack of dragon dung,’ said Ron in a hollow voice when the door had swung shut behind Ginny.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
Then Ron found Ginny and Dean snogging in a corridor and things went out of hand.
[Harry] kept a relentless flow of encouragement all the way back to the castle, and by the time they reached the second floor Ron was looking marginally more cheerful. When Harry pushed open the tapestry to take their usual short cut up to Gryffindor Tower, however, they found themselves looking at Dean and Ginny, who were locked in a close embrace and kissing fiercely as if glued together.
Dean and Ginny broke apart and looked round.
'I don’t want to find my own sister snogging people in public!’
'This was a deserted corridor till you came butting in!’ said Ginny.
Dean was looking embarrassed. He gave Harry a shifty grin that Harry did not return, as the new-born monster inside him was roaring for Dean’s instant dismissal from the team.
'Er…c'mon, Ginny,’ said Dean, 'let’s go back to the common room…’
'You go!’ said Ginny. 'I want a word with my dear brother!
Dean left, looking as though he was not sorry to depart the scene.
'Right,’ said Ginny, tossing her long red hair out of her face and glaring at Ron, 'let get this straight once and for all. It is none of your business who I go out with or what I do with them, Ron-’
'Yeah, it is!’ said Ron, just as angrily. ’D'you think I want people saying my sister’s a-’
'A what? Shouted Ginny, drawing her wand. 'A what, exactly?’
'He doesn’t mean anything, Ginny-’ said Harry automatically, though the monster was roaring its approval of Ron’s words.
'Oh yes he does!’ she said, flaring up at Harry. 'Just because he’s never snogged anyone in his life, just because the best kiss he’s ever had is from our Auntie Muriel -’
'Shut your mouth!’ bellowed Ron, bypassing red and turning maroon.
'No, I will not!’ yelled Ginny, beside herself. 'I’ve seen you with Phlegm, hoping she’ll kiss you on the cheek every time you see her, it’s pathetic!’ If you went out and got a bit of snogging yourself you wouldn’t mind so much that everyone else does it!’
Ron had pulled out his wand too; Harry stepped swiftly between them.
'You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Ron roared, trying to get a clear shot at Ginny around Harry, who was now standing in front of her with his arms outstretched? 'Just because I don’t do it in public -!’
Ginny screamed with derisive laughter, trying to push Harry out of the way.
'Been kissing Pigwigeon, have you? Or have you got a picture of Auntie Muriel stashed under your pillow?’
A streak of orange light flew under Harry’s left arm and missed Ginny by inches; Harry pushed Ron up against the wall.
'Harry’s snogged Cho Chang!’ shouted Ginny, who sounded close to tears now. 'And Hermione snogged Viktor Krum, it’s only you who acts like it’s something disgusting, Ron, and that’s because you’ve got as much experience as a twelve-year-old!’
And with that, she stormed away. Harry quickly let go of Ron; the look on his face was murderous. They both stood there, breathing heavily, until Mrs. Norris, Filch’s cat, appeared round the corner, which broke the tension.
'C'mon,’ said Harry, as the sound of Filch’s shuffling feet reached their ears.
They hurried up the stairs and along a seventh-floor corridor. 'Oi, out of the way!’ Ron barked at a small girl who jumped in fright and dropped a bottle of toad-spawn.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
The first thing you have to consider while analysing this is that feelings, especially at that age, are confused. We readers try to compartmentalise them, to act as if they were clear, as if the character knew what they were feeling because it’s easier for analysis, but it’s not true. Most of the time it’s a bunch of emotions caused by a lot of different sources that can influence all of our actions.
When Ron first finds Ginny and Dean in the corridor, she is the one in a position of vulnerability, even if she called Ron a prat mere minutes before this, even if Ron was ashamed of himself during the Quidditch session before this. She is indeed found in an intimate moment with her boyfriend. Ron plays the overprotective brother at this precise moment. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not that Ron does not want Ginny to date anyone ever (the mere fact that he said: “Good for you. Just choose someone - better - next time» in the end of the fifth book is telling; if he was truly unhappy with Ginny dating boys in general, then why did he talk about “a next time” ?), but rather that he does not want to see her hurt, especially by someone he does not think is good enough for her (which we’ll agree, is not his business to tell). What I think is a clue of that are his different reactions in regard to Harry and Ginny’s relationship : he cast Harry “an oddly furtive look” when he’s speaking about a new boyfriend for Ginny; he shrugs when Harry, who just kissed Ginny passionately, looks at him to gain his approval; he only talks about “permission” after he got laughed at by Ginny, Harry and Hermione; and he gets furious at Harry in the seventh book because he kisses Ginny after he dumped her and hurt her, and thus Ron feels like Harry is somehow playing with her.
Once he reached the seclusion of the freshly mown lawn, Ron rounded on Harry.
‘You ditched her. What are you doing now, messing her around ?’
‘Im not messing her around,’ said Harry, as Hermione caught up with them.
But Ron held up a hand to silence her.
‘She was really cut up when you ended it -’
‘So was I. You know why I stopped it, and it wasn’t because I wanted to.’
‘Yeah, but you go snogging her now and she’s just going to get her hopes again -’
‘If you keep groping her every chance you get -’
‘It won’t happen again,’ said Harry harshly. The day was cloudless, but he felt as though the sun had gone in. ‘OK?’
Ron looked half resentful, half sheepish; he rocked backwards and forwards on his feet for a moment, then said, ‘Right then, well, that’s… yeah.’
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, J.K.Rowling.
There you have it, the overprotective brother. Just like with Dean, Ron had no right to have a say in his sister’s relationships, but he did anyway to protect her from heartbreak. Given the way he acted there, I can safely say that there was protectiveness (over protectiveness) in his overreaction to Ginny snogging Dean. The difference is that, back then, he wanted to protect her reputation - and given what happened to Harry, I can assume that Ron knows how a bad reputation makes your life hell. In the passage, he talks about the way others could see Ginny, even if it’s true that he says he doesn’t want others to speak badly about his sister.
There were certainly other motives : he was probably uncomfortable at the idea of his sister snogging, he was not in a good mood to begin with, etc. Obviously, he lacked tact in this situation. His wording, as well as the anger he displayed would never have been received well, especially by Ginny who loves her independence and hates it when people – especially her brothers - try to interfere with her love life. Ginny, who was not in a really good mood either (given the Quidditch session), who had been made vulnerable in front of her boyfriend and in front of her crush lashed out. She tried to change the balance of vulnerability (at the end of the passage, she’s on the verge of crying; it is obvious she was not well, and probably wanted to hurt Ron as much as he had hurt her). And she mostly succeeded.
What she said was said with the purpose to hurt Ron in retaliation for his angry comments. So she struck where she knew it would hurt : she compared him to Harry and to others and said he was as usual the last one to get where the others had already arrived, she partly revealed a shameful secret and mocked him, she implied there was no way he could have been involved in a relationship, she inverted the balance (you blame me for kissing someone, I blame you for not having kissed anyone), she revealed that Hermione had kissed Krum (I believe she knew of Ron’s feelings for Hermione, but it’s never explicitly said).
It cannot be doubted that Ron was left really hurt and angry by her comments. He tried to defend himself, but Ginny kept throwing insults at him, and thus Ron ended being the one completely defenceless: his complexion turned maroon, his face looked “murderous”, he was not being able to retort and he became even angrier and more aggressive than he was before.
What makes this row so important in regard to why Ron dated Lavender is the fact that, if Ron’s situation was not brilliant before, it went completely downhill after that.
“To Harry’s dismay, Ron’s new aggression did not wear off over the next few days. Worse still, it coincided with an even deeper dip in his Keeping skills, which made him still more aggressive, so that during the final Quidditch practice before Saturday’s latch, he failed to save every single goal the Chasers aimed at him, but bellowed at everybody so much that he reduced Demelza Robins to tears.
Noting Harry said made any difference. He tried boosting Ron’s confidence all through dinner, but Ron was too busy being grumpy and surly with Hermione to notice.”
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
Even more important, Ron kissing Lavender happens only a few days after his row with Ginny in which she mocked and humiliated him for not having kissed anyone and almost advised him to “[go] out and [to get] a bit of snogging [himself] [so he] wouldn’t mind so much that everyone else does it”. And Ginny says, albeit with a smirk, that he’s a “filthy hypocrite”, which makes it hard not to see any correlation between the two events. It does not seem far-fetched to think that Ron went out with Lavender to prove something to his sister and to himself: his sister would see he was not as immature as she made him out to be and that he could have a relationship himself, just like he would prove to himself he was not a failure.
There is probably a correlation between the two events, but is there really causation ?
This explanation, when considered on its own, has a deep, big, huge flaw: what about all this Krum drama ? It’s rather difficult to believe that Ron dated Lavender, but that it had absolutely nothing to do with his relationship with Hermione, nothing to do with the big revelation that Hermione had kissed Krum, and almost nothing to do with Ron’s representation of himself and Ron’s insecurities. Do I really need to go on ?
Now, you could say that explanation 2 could be an additional reason as to why Ron dated Lavender, and not the main one, for example it could be coming together with explanation 1. The thing is, if you just consider it to be an extension of explanation 1, it suffers from the same flaws as the latter: how do you explain Ron’s sudden cheerfulness when he began to date Lavender, although he had been moody for weeks, even before the incident with Ginny happened ? How do you explain Ron’s statement of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ? And no, don’t try to add something that would be remotely close to explanation 3 because the three explanations don’t bloody mix together!
Did Ron not really know what he wanted in a relationship due to his immaturity ?
Now let’s examine the last most common explanation as to why Ron dated Lavender. Basically: a mix of hormones, immaturity, lack of self-awareness and ignorance of his own desires in regard to romantic relationships. This explanation is, I remind you, the one that J.K.Rowling gave when she was asked this particular question.
Why it seems to make sense…
Just like explanation 1, explanation 3 makes a lot of sense at first. Probably because J.K.Rowling intended it to be that way. It implies that Ron only dated Lavender because she was a pretty girl who admired him, and because he was interested in getting the physical aspects of a romantic relationship. Several elements could point out that way : the idea that Ron was sexually attracted towards Lavender since fourth year, the fact that he mostly shared a physical relationship with her, several comments he made that could suggest he considered looks to be essential in a relationship, and of course his assessment in the seventh book of his relationships with both Lavender and Hermione.
1. A possible long-term sexual attraction
It’s no accident if J.K.Rowling chose Lavender as a love interest for Ron. In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Ron called out Hermione when she dismissed Lavender’s feelings in her will to prove her point (p.162). And in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Ron made a pun on the word “Uranus” directed at Lavender. His comment could just be a joke making fun of the silly pronunciation of Uranus in English, or a hint at a possible sexual attraction made by a hormonal teenager.
“Seamus and Dean, who were working nearby, sniggered loudly, though not loudly enough to mask the excited squeals from Lavender Brown - 'Oh, Professor, look! I think I’ve got an unexpected planet! Oooh, which one’s that, Professor ?’
'It is Uranus, my dear,’ said Professor Trelawney, peering down at the chart.
'Can I have a look at Uranus too, Lavender ?’ said Ron.”
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K.Rowling
2. A mostly physical relationship
It cannot be denied that Ron and Lavender’s relationship was essentially based on physical affection and sexual discovery, because there are very few moments in the sixth book in which Ron and Lavender do anything other than kissing, and even then, when that happens it does not always go very well (p.332). I’ve counted, and Ron and Lavender are mentioned to be kissing no less than 4 times out of the 7 moments they’re seen together before Ron gets high on Amortensia.
3. An importance given to looks?
I’m going to gloss over the fact that Ron wanted to take the prettiest girl he could find to go to the Yull Ball with him, because in the fourth book nearly all boys behaved the same way: Fred advised Ron to find a date quickly otherwise only the ugly girls would remain (p.332), Harry made several comments suggesting looks were important, and Dean muttered before the ball that he “can’t work out how [Harry and Ron] got the best-looking girls in the year” (p.347).
However, a passage in the sixth book may imply that Ron does think looks are important to measure attractiveness:
“’Yeah, that’ll work,’ said Ron sarcastically. ‘Listen, no bloke in his right mind’s going to fancy Tonks when Fleur’s around. I mean, Tonks is OK-looking when she isn’t doing stupid things to her hair and her nose, but-’” (p.93)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling
Here, Ron is saying that Fleur is objectively more attractive than Tonks because she’s more beautiful, which could suggest that Ron might choose a partner for their looks. That being said, this interpretation should be treated cautiously, for several reasons. The first is that even if Ron doesn’t phrase it very well, he’s not completely wrong: Fleur has an hypnotical effect on most or all boys she meets and she’s more attractive than Tonks in traditional standards- Fleur is breathtakingly beautiful and confident, while Tonks is charming and punk (however, in the sixth book, Tonks is depressed and is not good company). The second reason is that Ron is not saying that he thinks looks are the most important things for a relationship. I know enough teenagers (I’m tutoring some students, my mum is a teacher and my little brother is 16 years old) to be aware of the fact that they can be thoughtless and immature or say things that don’t reflect what they really think; some of the teenagers I know are really emotional and want to fall in love, but still say things that are close to what Ron said.
4. An assessment that suggests he did not really know what he was doing
I’ve already talked about this declaration made by Ron in the last book above (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, p.90), when he took stock of his relationships with both Lavender and Hermione. While this declaration made no sense if you considered explanation 1 (in that case, Ron should have expressed regrets for having ever dated Lavender at all), it actually does make sense when you try to back up explanation 3. Indeed, those few sentences uttered by Ron could very well show that he had never realized his feelings for Hermione before, let’s say, he got poisoned, or when he understood how much he missed Hermione when they were estranged from one another, or when he got that what he shared with Lavender was actually not what he wanted in a relationship.
This explanation has a deep flaw, which is exactly the same as explanation 2 if you consider explanation 2 on its own : it does not take into account the circumstances in which Ron dated Lavender – a period in which he was already not well mentally because of several reasons, almost all of them linked to his deep sense of insecurity and lack of self-esteem (his struggles in Quidditch, the awful treatment Slughorn gave him, etc.), his row with Ginny in which Ron learned that Hermione had kissed Krum, and his reaction afterwards. You can’t have all this drama and after say that it absolutely did not have any incidence on the following events. You cannot say that Ron was not conscious of his jealousy and deluded himself into thinking that he was not jealous of Krum either, because, as I’ve pointed out earlier, he was very much aware that what was bothering him was the fact that Hermione had kissed Krum (why this fact bothered him so much is up for debate later), and he reacted to that fact in a definitely non-brotherly fashion. You cannot say that Ron had not realized he wanted a relationship with Hermione when he muttered in front of Harry after the canary incident “I was going to go to Slughorn’s Christmas party with her, but she never said… just as friends…I’m a free agent…” (I promised you I would give you another interpretation for this passage, and I will, but let me some time, damn it!).
Actually, I will give you an actual example of what explanation 3 could look like if put in motion : just watch the movies again. You don’t have any reference to Krum anywhere, you don’t have Ron really struggling with his old demons (you don’t even have Slughorn really belittling him), you don’t have Ron giving the silent treatment to Hermione, you don’t have the infamous row with Ginny, Ron likes Lavender just because of the “damn it, who is this pretty girl smiling at me over there… oh, she just kissed me, great! I like that, I’m going to continue” mentality, in short you don’t have any real drama before the canary incident; and Movie Ron is actually very surprised and confused when Hermione sends canaries his way, because what could he possibly feel guilty of ? Unlike book Ron, movie Ron was not on bad terms with Hermione before the canary incident, they did not have any hurtful arguments and did not exchange any cold glares, and they did not share any moment that might have hinted that Ron was aware that something was happening between Hermione and him.
Then why the hell did Ron date Lavender ?
So, I was torn : it was obvious to me that none of the explanations usually given to explain why Ron dated Lavender could stand on its own, but that they could not all be mixed together either to fill the gaps(explanation 1 and 2 could have – and yet that would still not be enough-, but not explanation 1 and 3).
I thus had to find elsewhere the reason or possibly the reasons why it happened.
Usually, when you’re thinking through a problem in philosophy, you have to understand what is the initial bias that was at the origin of the reasoning. That’s what I did, even if the problem here had nothing to do with philosophy. And I came to the conclusion that the bias, here, was Harry. Why do we think that Ron went out with Lavender only to get back at Hermione ? Because Harry tells us so (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, p.280). Harry tells us that what Hermione did to offend Ron was kissing Krum two years prior. And it appears to fit nicely with the events we see through Harry’s eyes : the row between Ron and Ginny in which the latter revealed to Ron that Hermione kissed Krum, the tentative question of Ron (‘D’you think Hermione did snog Krum?’, p.270), the treatment he gave Hermione after that, and even the comments he said the day after Hermione threw canaries at him (when he said that he was “a free agent” and that “[Hermione] [couldn]’t complain [because] she kissed Krum.”).
But all of this is just Harry’s conclusion. He is not in Ron’s shoes, and so does not know what he’s feeling, and does not ask him but assumes things. He is himself in a position when he’s feeling extremely jealous of Dean and Ginny’s relationship (you know, the famous “green-eyed monster” in Harry’s chest).
So what could Ron feel that Harry would not be aware of ? Is there something that Harry might have overlooked ?
Ron wears his heart on his sleeve. But if there’s one thing he rarely talks about and something Harry is quite oblivious to, it is the extent of his insecurity and lack of self-esteem. The chapter “The Silver Doe”, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is the one that reveals the depth of self-loathing Ron can feel, information Harry was not privy to. I can’t base all my explanation on that chapter alone, because it happens after Ron dated Lavender and that would be a flaw in my reasoning, but I believe I can use it to some extent, especially because the extreme mental suffering Ron went through in “The Silver Doe” definitely did not come out of nowhere. I would rather say that it was the last stage of a process that had begun a long time ago, and the last key to understand Ron’s insecurity.
Let’s have a look at what the Locket used to torture Ron, which are, in fact, a reflect of the thoughts that had been plaguing Ron’s mind for quite some time:
“’Least loved, always, by the mother who craved a daughter… least loved, now, by the girl who prefers your friend… second best, always, eternally overshadowed…’
‘Why return ? We were better without you, happier without you, glad of your absence… we laughed at your stupidity, your cowardice, your presumption-’
‘Who could look at you, who would ever look at you, beside Harry Potter? What have you ever done, compared with the Boy Who Lived?’
‘Your mother confessed,’ sneered Riddle-Harry, while Riddle-Hermione jeered, ‘thar she would have preferred me as a son, would be glad to exchange…’
‘Who wouldn’t prefer him, what woman would take you? You are nothing, nothing, nothing to him,’ crooned Riddle-Hermione, and she stretched like a snake and entwined herself around Riddle-Harry, wrapping him in a close embrace: their lips met.”
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K.Rowling
I think that from that heartbreaking moment several elements are worth noticing in regard to our initial question: Ron believes no one would ever look at him compared to Harry and, by extension, to people showing characteristics Ron admires; in fact Ron seems to be persuaded he’s nothing at all, unworthy of attention or love; he’s afraid of oblivion, which means that he’s afraid he will end up forgotten and unnoticed because of his apparent lack of qualities; and, but it’s actually not new at all, the need for Ron to be seen as his own person and as somebody special.
I say it’s not new, because we’ve been aware of this from Book 1 and the Mirror of Eriséd. What does Ron see in the mirror of Eriséd ? He sees himself older, as a Head Boy and Quidditch captain, holding the Quidditch cup. Some people see this dream as face-value, as if Ron’s deepest dream was exactly what he described and thus that he partly realised it, but I’m not of this opinion. I rather believe his deepest dream was to be seen as someone special, as someone worthy of love and attention. What Ron sees in the mirror are things his brothers realised before him : Bill was Head Boy, Charlie won the House Cup… I think that in Ron’s eleven-years old mind, he would stand out of his brothers if he could manage to do all the great things they did at the same time.
So to be seen as someone special who would be worthy of notice and love is Ron’s deepest dream. It’s also the root of his deep-rooted insecurity, as “the Silver Doe”, as well as the first talk between Ron and Harry in the train, show (“You could say I’ve got a lot to live up to.”; “Everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it’s no big deal, because they did it first.”). What this first encounter really suggests is that Ron is used to comparisons, and that he dreads them as much as he does them himself in his head. He dreads them because he has the impression that whatever he does will never be good enough, never as good as what others did before him, and thus that he’ll always be a shadow no one will pay attention to.
This double-edged sword, both dream and nightmare, this inferiority complex is central to understand Ron’s character. And you cannot leave it out altogether of your reasoning if you want to explain his actions and feelings in important moments of his life.
Ron was already feeling inferior to his brothers before he met Harry. Then he met Harry, the Boy-who-lived, the famous wizard who killed Voldemort when he was a toddler, and became his best friend. He also became best friend with Hermione, an excellent student and near-genius who is praised by all the teachers. Where does that leave him? He is always known through someone else: the brother, the friend, “the tad-along”. He never is the first in someone’s mind, and he does not seem to feel as if he got this unconditional love that every child deserves (probably because his mother had to look after the twins and baby Ginny in the first years of his life).
Ron, throughout the series, is always looking for this: finding his own person, being looked up to, being seen as good enough, being “the first” in someone’s mind. In short, being special. Yet this is also always denied to him in a way or another. He never receives long-term validation from anyone, be it his peers (apart from one single match in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and even that does not count as 'long-term’ validation), his teachers, or even his family. What I mean is that he never receives constant encouragement or compliments that are not linked to the successes of others. Yet this would have been necessary for him to start gaining self-confidence and be reassured of his own importance as a person.
On the contrary, probably because of his character’s arc, obstacles always seem to stand in his way, everything and everyone seems to confirm his doubts that he’s no good or not good enough and that his feelings don’t matter, that he’s not as important as other people, and his failures are always thrown in his face.
We have to see the build-up leading to Ron’s emotional and psychological state of mind in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, especially in regard to his self-esteem issues and to his romantic interests; let’s keep in mind everything, be it his family, his teachers, his friends, his peers. I’m not trying to do a deep, deep study about how Ron’s self-esteem evolved, because that’s not the subject but am merely considering moments I find interesting or jarring to understand how he felt before he dated Lavender.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
As I’ve said before (so I’m going to gloss over it), Ron already goes to Hogwarts with some deep insecurity baggage: he’s embarrassed because he’s poor and has nothing of his own, he feels like he has to compete with his brothers otherwise he’s going to be a failure, but even then it’s not going to mean anything because they did it first, so whatever he does, he’ll always end up being overlooked. That impression is reinforced by the fact that his mother seems to forget simple facts about him (I’m not there to judge Molly, because let it be clear right now that I think she’s a great mother, I only talk about Ron’s point of view) -his hatred for corned beef and the colour maroon-. In one of his first speeches lies already the fear and conviction that he’s invisible.
“I’m the sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I’ve got a lot to live up to. Bill and Charlie have already left – Bill was Head Boy and Charlie was captain of Quidditch. Now Percy’s a Prefect. Fred and George mess around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they’re really funny. Everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it’s no big deal, because they did it first. You never get anything new, either, with five brothers. I’ve got Bill’s old robes, Charlie’s old wand and Percy’s old rat.
[…] (Note: two sentences in which Ron’s ears turn pink because he unwillingly revealed he was poor)
'She always forgets I don’t like corned beef.’
'Every year she makes us a jumper,’ said Ron, unwrapping his own, and mine’s always marron.
'Harry’s is better than our, though,’ said Fred, holding up Harry’s jumper. 'She obviously makes more of an effort if you’re not family.’
'I hate maroon,’ Ron moaned half-heartedly as he pulled it over his head.”
That’s why his deepest desire is to be seen (his childish way of achieving that is to beat his brothers, doing everything they did but better).
When Hermione meets them some time after that, she tends to do what most people will do after her: she ignores Ron in favor of Harry who seems to be far more interesting. She also looks down upon him because he failed his charm (she said that it was “not very good”) and she does it again in class later on; Ron seems like he can’t bear her criticisms, and it probably shows how much people thinking he’s not good affects him.
It’s interesting to note that at the end of this year, Dumbledore granted him 50 points “for the best-played game of chess Hogwarts has seen in many years” in front of the whole school, which earned him cheers from all the Gryffindors, and above high praise from his brother Percy who actually bragged that Ron was his brother, something you’ll never see again from any of his siblings (once again, I’d like you to note that I love the Weasley siblings and their banter and teasing, I just think the fact that very few people actually praised Ron had an influence on him).
This book shows that whatever will happen in the next books will have an influence on Ron, since he’s already very much insecure and fears that he’ll never get noticed, that he’s unremarkable, that he doesn’t matter.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Not much happens in this book that would allow us to see a change in regard to Ron’s behaviour or Ron’s vision of himself, or Ron’s vision of how others see him. However, there are a few elements that can be interesting to consider given what happens in the later books.
The first is that this is the book Ron gets Harry to enter in his family, thus adds a new brother to love and to compete against, and a famous brother at that. He can also see, for the first time, how much the financial situation between Harry and him is not balanced:
“Harry enjoyed the breakneck journey down to the Weasleys’ vault, but felt dreadful, far worse than he had in Knockturn Alley, when it was opened. There was a very small pile of silver Sickles inside, and just gold Galleon. Mrs. Weasley, felt right into the corners before sweeping the whole lot into her bag. Harry felt even worse when they reached his vault. He tried to block the contents from view as he hastily shoved handful of coins into a leather bag.”
It’s also informative to see that when they go to Flourish and Botts, Ron is thrown out of the way while Harry is fawned upon. Even though Ron does not say anything about it, it symbolizes what happens to Ron whenever he’s with Harry: he’s put to the side in favor of his best friend.
It also embodies one of Ron’s deepest fear – oblivion.
“A short, irritable-looking man was dancing around taking photographs with a large black camera that emitted puff of purple smoke with every blinding flash.
'Out of the way, there,’ he snarled at Ron, moving back to get a better shot. 'This is for the Daily Prophet.’
'Big deal,’ said Ron, rubbing his foot where the photographer had stepped on it.
Gilderoy Lockhart heard him. He looked up. He saw Ron – and then he saw Harry. He stared. Then he leapt to his feet and positively shouted, 'It can’t be Harry Potter?’
The crowd parted, whispering excitedly. Lockhart dived forward, seized Harry’s arm and pulled him to the front. The crowd burst into applause.”
Another important element of Ron’s second year at Hogwarts is that his wand is completely broken and causes catastrophes, among those a rather painful humiliation in front of the Slytherin Quidditch Team when his own spell backfires on him. It’s been said before that the fact that he did not get a new wand in his first year that ended up being broken while Ginny got a new one might have aggravated his impression that he was a second-thought (or seventh-thought). Nowhere in the books is it stated or even hinted that Ron felt especially resentful for that, even though it’s easy to imagine. However, what can be assessed is that he talks a lot about his broken wand, yet no one really takes notice of that or tries to help him, apart from one suggestion on Harry’s part that he asks his parents for a new one (p.100).
No, talking about Ron’s wand is not the priority in the grand scheme of things: the Trio speaks a lot more about the Chamber of Secrets, Polyjuice Potion, Harry not being the Heir of Slytherin, Hagrid, Hermione being petrified, even Lockhart’s credibility and Nearly-Headless-Nick’s death birthday are more discussed than Ron’s wand -which remains an afterthought. Ron’s arachnophobia is not really discussed as well, merely acknowledged.
Ron himself is an afterthought for Professor McGonagall when she comes onto the Quidditch Pitch to get Harry to Hermione who has just been found petrified. Talking about the teachers, no one actively encourages Ron this year despite his broken wand (he’s even scowled at when he crushes his beetle because he could not see what he was doing due to his wand producing fumes). However, I’m not so sure about how much that particular information is important considering that we’re not really told what happens in classes other than Lockhart’s, Snape’s and on one occasion, Binns’s.
It’s also worth noticing that for the last time, Ron will get an important reward from Dumbledore at the end of the year for contributing to the demise of Tom Jedusor, and that this award is the same as Harry’s.
It is very clear that Ron and his problems are never a priority; he’s often overlooked, especially next to Harry, and sometimes it even feels like he’s an afterthought. His main problem that year, that is his broken wand, does not prompt many people to help him: he’s quite alone.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
The most important thing to note about the third book is this remark from Ron in the chapter “The Leaky Caldron”, when the trio finally meet again at the end of the summer and talk about how Harry blew up his aunt and did not get punished for it. Ron acknowledges there, even if it’s in a light tone, that Harry and him don’t have the same situations and that Harry is someone special, whose mistakes can be glossed over because it’s Harry (even if, to be clear, I hate Aunt Marge and do not blame Harry for losing his nerve):
“Probably cause it’s you, isn’t it?” shrugged Ron, still chuckling. “Famous Harry Potter and all that. I’d hate to see what the Ministry’d do to me if I blew up an aunt. Mind you, they’d have to dig me up first, because Mum would’ve killed me. […]”
In the same chapter, Ron displays eagerness at the idea of getting a reward for Sirius Black’s capture in order “to get some more money”, and in doing so he shows that he’s not comfortable with his family’s wealth status – another thing that sets him apart from Harry.
Later, before they leave for Hogwarts, Molly tells her children that she’s made sandwiches for them and explicitly reassures Ron that his are not made of corned beef. I talk about this moment to show that Molly does pay attention to him and his needs, even if the latter are sometimes overlooked because something more urgent is apparently happening, or because of a lack of communication. However, at Christmas, Ron’s jumper is maroon again.
Ron also begins to compare the way his brothers treat him and the way they behave with Harry, and he is clearly hurt when he discovers that Fred and George had the Marauder’s Map and did not hand it to him but to Harry. There’s a possibility he believes they prefer his best friend over him: “How come Fred and George never gave it to me!” said Ron, outraged. “I’m their brother!”.
In this book, Ron shows in an explicit manner that he’s happy when people pay attention to him – namely when students are eager to listen to him telling how Sirius came into the Dormitory to kill Peter and scared the living daylights out of him.
Ron, in this book, notices more and more how different his and Harry’s situation are, and expresses it more openly as well. He begins to realise that next to Harry, he will probably never get noticed, and so he enjoys very much the short moment when everyone is paying attention to him. Moreover, he seems to be afraid that not only strangers, but also his family (in the figures of Fred and George) will end up preferring Harry over him; I wonder if it’s not the beginning of his beliefs that he’s apparently just not that valuable, especially next to someone like Harry. Furthermore, even if his problems are a matter of real discussion this year, he’s not exactly listened to by Hermione (until she apologizes).
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Ron’s poverty and the imbalance that it creates with Harry is really on display that year, and Ron is shown to be very much embarrassed by the fact that Harry can afford things while he simply cannot; Harry has the possibility to offer expensive gifts to his friends (p. 79), and above all he doesn’t have to suffer through painful humiliations because of a lack of money (namely, the maroon dress robe, which is the core of a rather upsetting humiliation done by Draco Malfoy at Ron’s expense p.142-143, and a source of great embarrassment at the Yull Ball). Ron’s financial and material situation quite reflects his emotional one, because if he looks ridiculous, who is to say he isn’t ? One is tempted to think, when Ron asks “furiously” “Why is everything I own rubbish?”(p.133), that Ron is actually asking: “Why am I rubbish?”. Moreover, the way his feelings of frustration and embarrassment in regard to his poverty are exposed shows an other problem Ron faces: his needs are sometimes invalidated or ignored:
“’Must be nice,’ Ron said abruptly, when they had sat down and started serving themselves roast beef and Yorkshire puddings. ‘To have so much money you don’t notice if a pocketful of Galleons goes missing.’
‘Listen, I had other stuff on my mind that night!’ said Harry impatiently. ‘We all did, remember?’
‘I didn’t know leprechaun gold vanishes,’ Ron muttered. ‘I thought I was paying back. You should’t’ve given me that Chudley Cannon hat for Christmas.’
‘Forget it, all right?’ said Harry.”
Here, despite the fact that Harry and Hermione will try to cheer Ron up in the rest of the scene, it’s clear that Harry has trouble understanding what Ron is going through and that Ron is expected to “forget it”, because his problems are not that important in the grand scheme of things. The same thing happens after Harry’s name comes out of the Goblet of Fire: Ron feels betrayed but should have swallowed down any bitterness or any feeling of mistrust. In fact, later, Hermione has to explain to Harry how much Ron sacrifices for him, and how much he can be insecure:
“'Look,’ said Hermione patiently, 'it’s always you who gets all the attention, you know it is. I know it’s not your fault,’ she added quickly, seeing Harry open his mouth furiously, 'I know you don’t ask for it… but – well – you know, Ron’s got all those brothers to compete again at home, and you’re his best friend, and you’re really famous – he’s always shunted to one side whenever people see you, and he puts up with it, and he never mentions it, but I suppose this is just one time too many…'”
But unlike the other three years, Ron can not keep quiet his feelings of inadequacy that are getting bigger and bigger. So he’s not just looking for the confirmation that he matters and just as valuable as his siblings and best friends, he openly craves validation: he is a bit bitter that a lot of girls want to go to the Yull Ball with Harry while he has nobody (p.328), he tells stories after the Second Task to get attention (p.429) – even if he gives up the act because he’s ashamed of lying -, and most noticeably tries to get the fake Mad-Eye Moody to tell him that he, too, would be a good Auror (and Ron is the one character in this book who explicitly says that he’d like to be an Auror):
“'Did you find him?’ Harry asked, without preamble. 'Mr Crouch?’
'No,’ said Moody. He moved over to his desk, sat down, stretched out his wooden leg with a slight groan and pulled out his hip-flask.
'Did you use the map?’ Harry said.
'Of course,’ said Moody, taking a swig from his flask. 'Took a leaf out of your book, Potter. Summoned it from my office into the Forest. He wasn’t anywhere on there.’
'So he did Disapparate?’ said Ron.
'You can’t Disapparate in the grounds, Ron!’ said Hermione. 'There are other ways he could have disappeared, aren’t there, Professor?’
'You’re another one who might think about a career as an Auror,’ he told her. 'Mind works the right way, Granger.’
Hermione flushed pink with pleasure.
'Yeah, someone could’ve – could’ve pulled him onto a broom and flown off with him, couldn’t they?’ said Ron quickly, looking hopefully at Moody, as if he, too, wanted to be told he had the makings of an Auror.
'Should be right up your street, this one,’ said Moody, looking up at Harry and scratching his scarred and stubbly chin. 'From what Dumbledore’s said, you’ve managed to get through stuff like this plenty of times. Broke your way through a series of obstacles guarding the Philosopher’s Stone in your first year, didn’t you?’
'We helped,’ said Ron quickly. 'Me and Hermione helped.’
Yet this validation is denied to him: at first nobody wants to go to the Ball with him, the attention he gets after the Yull Ball is not one he actually deserves, and the fake Moody does not tell him he would be a good Auror but instead spontaneously praises Harry and Hermione. Even more than that, Ron endures quite a lot of humiliations this year: he’s much more prone to be ridiculous under the power of the Veelas than Harry (p.107), he is humiliated by Draco Malfoy in the Hogwarts Express (p.142-143), is soaked and drenched in water when he arrives at Hogwarts because Peeves drops “a large, red, water-filled balloon” onto his head (p145), is once again humiliated in the Great Hall by Draco Malfoy who insults his parents (p.171-172), and makes a fool of himself in front of Fleur Delacour to his greatest shame (p.336)…
And he gets a reality check at the Yull Ball which is a turning point in his relationship with Hermione. Indeed, he realizes at this moment that he can loose Hermione who can find someone else, and becomes therefore aware of his feelings for her. He also becomes conscious of the unbalance existing between Hermione and him (this so-called unbalance, that doesn’t exist except in Ron’s and Ron bashers’ eyes, is very important to understand his relationship with Hermione): she’s a very pretty and most brilliant witch, admired by everybody, while he’s a poor tad-along that most people ignore. This unbalance is reflected by their situations at the Yull Ball: Hermione is a princess who comes to the Ball with a Quidditch Superstar, while he wears a hideous dress robe and doesn’t get along with his date. Moreover, this superstar is Ron’s hero, the embodiment of everything he’d like to be (it’s not an accident if Ron spent a lot of time before the Yull Ball singing Viktor Krum’s praises): talented, popular, rich… And so Ron breaks symbolically Krum’s figurine because he represents, in his eyes, everything he will never be, which is a very painful conclusion… and it is, at least for me, the beginning of Ron’s descent into self-loathing.
This book is the turning point in regard to Ron’s insecurity and self-esteem issues. His different attempts to get attention is actually a cry for help, because he craves the confirmation that he matters, that he’s valuable, that he’s not nothing. Yet this is denied to him: his achievements are not recognized and even swept away while Harry is portrayed as the hero who did everything (p.481); the fake Moody implies that, unlike Harry and Hermione, he’s not good enough to be an Auror (p.481); and, as usual, all the attention goes to Harry (the only person/creature who actually compliments Ron is Dobby). Not only are his calls for a confirmation that he’s somebody uncalled for, but his feelings are sometimes ignored (most noticeably when he expresses his anger at being poor, but also when he tried to show he was feeling betrayed after Harry’s name came out of the Goblet of Fire). Moreover, he’s faced with the embodiment of everything he’d like to be in the person of Krum, and the comparison undoubtedly leaves him with the idea that he cannot compete with him, especially when it comes to Hermione’s affection. Indeed, I have no doubt that he realized he had feelings for Hermione at or after the Yull Ball, but also began to think she was made for the Krums of this world.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
One of the most significant elements of Ron’s fifth year at Hogwarts is that it mirrors some of his aspirations of his first year, when he was looking at the mirror of Erised : he becomes Prefect and gets on the Quidditch Team. Yet it doesn’t fulfil Ron’s deepest desire, that is to be seen as special, worthy, important. Quite the contrary in fact: Ron gets humiliated, bullied, puts down, and what should have counted as a success ends up being a confirmation that he’ll never amount to anything and is worthless, especially comparing to his brothers and/or Harry.
That is extremely visible when Ron receives the Prefect Badge: everyone, including Ron himself, expected Harry the Hero to get the badge. At first, Ron is so stunned that he doesn’t react. Fred and George then take note of what’s written on Ron’s Hogwarts letter and express their incredulity and even indignance that Ron could have been chosen over Harry. Ron is still quiet and needs Harry to confirm that the letter is true in some way. Unfortunately, Hermione bursts in their room at the precise moment Harry’s holding the Prefect Badge, and believes that Harry has been nominated Prefect, as if it was bound to happen. When Harry explains to her that he’s not the one who got the Prefect Badge, her jaw “drops” and she looks “thoroughly bewildered”: she too is completely surprised by the news, but she reacts in an outrageously puzzled manner (“Always the tone of surprise” rings a bell ? – To Ron, Hermione acts as if she doesn’t expect him to succeed). Completely flustered, she’s unable to really defend Ron from the Twins, unable to quote anything he did – and Ron is “defiant” because he’s trying to rebel against the idea that nominating him was a mistake, even though he silently agrees with the twins. The only person who is really happy when their first hear that Ron got the prefect badge is Molly – but her congratulations call to mind Ron’s first encounter with Harry and his claim that whatever he does will never be remarkable because at least one of his brothers will have done it before him. And that’s exactly what happens here, because Molly compares his achievements with that of his brothers, as if, after all, becoming a Prefect was self-evident in the Weasley family. Though Ron gets excited over his future new broom, he drops all pretense when Harry congratulates him: his smile fades and he cries out that “[he] never thought it would be [him]!”
“'What’s up with you, Ron?’ asked Fred.
Ron did not answer. Harry looked round. Ron was standing very still with his mouth slightly open, gaping at his letter from Hogwarts.
'What’s the matter?’ said Fred impatiently, moving around Ron to look over his shoulder at the parchment.
Fred’s mouth fell open, too.
'Prefect?’ he said, staring incredulously at the letter. 'Prefect?’
George leapt forwards, seized the envelope in Ron’s other hand and turned it upside-down. Harry saw something scarlet and gold fall into George’s palm.
'No way,’ said George in a hushed voice.
'There’s been a mistake,’ said Fred, snatching the letter out of Ron’s grasp and holding it up to the light as though checking for a watermark. 'No one in their right mind would make Ron a prefect.’
The twins’ heads turned in unison and both of them stared at Harry.
'We thought you were a cert!’ said Fred, in a one that suggested Harry had tricked them in some way.
'We thought Dumbledore was bound to pick you!’ said George indignantly.
'Winning the Triwizard and everything!’ said Fred.
'I suppose all the mad stuff must’ve counted against him,’ said George to Fred.
'Yeah,’ said Fred slowly. 'Yeah, you’ve caused too much trouble, mate/ Well, at least one of you’s got their priorities right.’
He strode over to Harry and clapped him on the back while giving Ron a scathing look.
'Prefect…ickle Ronnie the Prefect.’
'Ooh, Mum’s going to be revolting, groaned George, thrusting the prefect badge back at Ron as though it might contaminate him.
Ron, who still had not said a word, took the badge, stared at it for a moment, then held it out to Harry as though asking mutely for confirmation that it was genuine. Harry took it. A large 'P’ was superimposed on the Gryffindor lion. He had seen a badge just like this on Percy’s chest at Hogwarts.
The door banged open. Hermione came tearing into the room, her cheeks flushed and her hair flying. There was an envelope in her hand.
'Did you – did you get -?’
She spotted the badge in Harry’s hand and met out a shriek.
'I knew it!’ she said excitedly, brandishing her letter. 'Me too, Harry, me too!’
'Non,’ said Harry quickly, pushing the badge back into Ron’s hand. 'It’s Ron, not me,’ Harry said.
'Ron?’ said Hermione, her jaw dropping. 'But…are you sure ? I mean -’
She turned red as Ron looked round with a defiant expression on his face.
'It’s my name on the letter,’ he said.
'I…’ said Hermione, looking thoroughly bewildered. 'I…well…wow!’ Well done, Ron! That’s really -’
'Unexpected,’ said George, nodding.
'No,’ said Hermione, blushing harder than ever. 'no it’s not… Ron’s one loads of…he’s really…’
'His… but…Ron, you’re not…?’
Mrs. Weasley let out a shriek just like Hermione’s.
'I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! Oh, Ron, how wonderful! A prefect! That’s everyone in the family!’
'What are Fred and I, next-door neighbours?’ said George indignantly, as his mother pushed him aside and flung her arms around her youngest son.
'Wait until your father hears! Ron I’m so proud of you, what wonderful news, you could end up Head Boy just like Bill and Percy, it’s the first step! Oh, what a thing to happen in the middle of all this worry, I’m just thrilled, oh, Ronnie -’
Fred and George were both making loud retching noises behind her back but Mrs. Weasley did not notice; arms tight around Ron’s neck, she was kissing him all over his face, which had turned a brighter scarlet than his badge.
The smile faded off Ron’s face.
'I never thought it would be me!’ he said, shaking his head. 'I thought it would be you!'”
The same thing happens to his dream of getting on the Quidditch team. Before the tryouts, Ron trains himself very hard but doesn’t tell anyone what he’s doing, for fear that he would be laughed at, as is evident from this scene with Harry below. Here, Ron, flushed, expects his best friend to mock him because he wants to try out for Gryffindor Keeper; and, when Harry displays his enthusiasm, he’s so stunned that he “blinks”. Obviously, Ron has internalized the idea that he’s worthless and think other people have the same opinion of him; so he expects them to laugh at his “presumption” when he wants to succeed.
“'But what have you got your broom for, you haven’t been flying, have you?’ Harry asked.
'I – well – well, OK, I’ll tell you, but don’t laugh, all right?’ Ron said defensively, turning redder with every second. 'I – I thought I’d try out for Gryffindor Keeper now I’ve got a decent broom. There. Go on. Laugh.’
'I’m not laughing,’ said Harry. Rin blinked. 'It’s a brilliant idea! It’d be really cool if you got on the team! […]’
'So you’ve been practicing tonight?’
'Every evening since Tuesday… just on my own, though. I’ve been trying to bewitch Quaffles to fly at me, but it hasn’t been easy and I’ don’t know how much use it’ll be.’ Ron looked nervous and anxious. 'Fred and George are going to laugh themselves stupid when I turn up for the tryouts. They haven’t stopped taking the mickey out of me since I got made a prefect.’
Unfortunately for Ron, the Slytherins come onto the Quidditch pitch during his first practice and take advantage of the fact that he’s nervous and anxious to unsettle him through taunts and mockery. I’d like to inject a bit of educative neurosciences there: when you’re too stressed (and that stress can come from various sources, including the fear of failure, pressure, judgement from other people, deprecating and humiliating remarks, neglect, bullying…), cortisol, the stress hormone, is secreted in too much amounts. That has a lot of consequences: the frontal lobes are inhibited, the hippocampus (the part of the brain which deals with memory) is reduced, the amygdala (which plays a great role in the management of emotions) is weakened, etc… That’s what happens to Ron when he plays Quidditch: he’s fallen into what Daniel Favre, an eminent expert in education sciences, calls “la motivation de sécurisation parasitée” (the motivation to be secure that has been interfered with). It means that a sort of foreign program conditions the behaviour of an individual and limits his abilities, just like Ron who persuades himself that he’s no good at Quidditch and thus acts like he’s no good at Quidditch: “His greatest weakness was a tendency to lose confidence after he’d made a blunder; if he let in one goal he became flustered and therefore likely to miss more.” All of this explains why Ron’s first Quidditch practice is disastrous: Ron is anxious, distraught, embarrassed, which leads to him not managing to keep his goals efficiently, and makes him ashamed of himself and even more persuaded that he’s an incompetent. That’s why, during this practice, you see Ron apologizing every two seconds (seriously, he apologized no less than three times in the three pages dedicated to this event - and people say that Ron never says sorry when he’s sorry to be himself): he’s sorry that he’s so incompetent, he’s sorry that he’s himself, he’s sorry that he’s here at all.
“'All right, Ron?’ said George, winking at him.
'Yeah,’ said Ron, who had become quieter and quieter all the way down to the pitch.
'Ready to show us all up, Ickle Prefect?’ said Fred, emerging tousle-haired from the neck of hid Quidditch robes, a slightly malicious grin on his face.
'Shut up,’ said Ron, stony-faced, pulling on his own team robes for the first time.”
“Ron mounted his broom and kicked off from the ground and Harry followed him, watching his ears turn red from behind.”
“Ron, who had pelted towards the ground to catch the Quaffle before it landed, pulled out of the dive untidily, so that he slipped sideways on his broom, and returned to playing height, blushing.”
“It would have been hard to say whether Ron’s face or the Quaffle was a deeper scarlet when he again returned to playing height.”
“'Sorry!’ Ron groaned, zooming forward to see whether he had done any damage.”
“Harry looked round at Ron, who was hovering in front of the left-hand hoop, leaving the other two completely unprotected.
'You keep shifting around while you’re watching the Chasers!’ said Angelina. 'Either stay in centre position until you have to move to defend a hoop, or else circle the hoops, but don’t drift vaguely off to one side, that’s how you let in the last three goals!’
'Sorry…’ Ron repeated; his red face shining like a beacon against the bright blue sky.”
Persuaded that he’s incompetent and that people think the same, Ron is very sensitive to any implication that he’s “lousy”. That’s what happens after this first Quidditch practice: he confesses to Hermione how horrible was practice, she correctly understands that he’s completely dejected because of his performance; but in trying to comfort him she fails, because as he did not say why practice was “completely lousy”, he’s frustrated and angry that Hermione immediately thought that the reason why the practice was completely lousy was because he was completely lousy, as if he was “bound to be rubbish”?.
“'How was practice?’ asked Hermione rather coolly half an hour later, as Harry and Ron climbed through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room.
'Completely lousy,’ said Ron in a hollow voice, sinking into a chair beside Hermione. She looked up at Ron and her frostiness seemed to melt.
'Well, it was only your first one,’ she said consolingly, 'it’s bound to take time to -’
'Who said it was me who made it lousy?’ snapped Ron.
'No one,’ said Hermione, looking taken aback, 'I thought -’
'You thought I was bound to be rubbish?’
'No, of course I didn’t! Look, you said it was lousy so I just -’
'I’m going to get started on some homework,’ said Ron angrily and stomped off to the staircase to the boys’ dormitories and vanished from sight.”
The next Quidditch practices are unequal, because Ron can play well, but loses confidence everytime he fails, and thus keeps on failing as he enters a vicious circle (remember what I said on the “motivation de sécurisation parasitée” or “the motivation to be secure that has been interfered with”). And he’s not helped by the pressure his big brothers put on him with their judgements and their lack of confidence in him. The most tragic example of that is, paradoxically, a compliment the twins said to Ron after an extraordinary save he made; indeed, that save was an accident caused by a blunder on Ron’s part, but Fred and George said they might begin to acknowledge that they were related to him because of that:
“Even Fred said that Ron might yet make him and George proud, and that they were seriously considering admitting he was related to them, something they assured him they had been trying to deny for four years.”
Before the first match, Ron is more and more bullied, and thus gets more and more anxious (he drops whatever he’s holding when Draco Malfoy imitates him because he’s shaking too much, seems like he’s going to throw up, and the morning before the match he looks “pale” and “sweaty” and he’s in a position that means he’s withdrawing himself), to the point that the foreign program telling him he’s an incompetent is completely implemented in his mind the morning of the match. He believes that he is “lousy”, “rubbish” and “mental” to have even thought that he could succeed, and his voice is “croaky”, which means that he’s really upset. Hermione wants to encourage him, probably moved by his lack of confidence, and kisses his on the cheek, which has the good but temporary effect of disorientating Ron so much that he’s lost in his own world for a few minutes.
“The only thing really worrying Harry was how much Ron was allowing the tactics of the Slytherin team to upset him before they even got on to the pitch.
But Ron had never endured a relentless campaign of insults, jeers and intimidation. When Slytherins, some of them seventh years and considerably larger than he was, muttered as they passed in the corridors, 'Got your bed booked in the hospital wing, Weasley?’ he didn’t laugh, but turned a delicate shade of green. When Draco Malfoy imitated Ron dropping the Quaffle (which he did whenever they came within sight of each other), Ron’s ears glowed red and his hands shook so badly that he was likely to drop whatever he was holding at the time, too.
The morning of the match dawned bright and cold. When Harry awoke he looked round at Ron’s bed and saw him sitting bolt upright, his arms around his knees, staring fixedly into space.
'You all right?’ said Harry.
Ron nodded but did not speak. Harry was reminded forcibly of the time Ron had accidentally put a Slug-vomiting harm on himself; he looked just as pale and sweaty as he had done then, not to mention as reluctant to open his mouth.
[Harry and Ron] received a rousing welcome at the Gryffindor table, where everyone was wearing red and gold, but far from raising Ron’s spirits the cheers seemed to sap the last of his morale; he collapsed on to the nearest bench looking as though he were facing his final meal.
‘I must’ve been mental to do this,’ he said in a croaky whisper. ‘Mental.’
‘Don’t be thick,’ said Harry firmly, passing him a choice of cereals, ‘you’re going to be fine. It’s normal to be nervous.’
‘I’m rubbish,’ croaked Ron. ‘I’m lousy. I can’t play to save my life. What was I thinking?’
‘Get a grip,’ said Harry sternly. ‘Look at that save you made with your foot the other day, even Fred and George said it was brilliant.’
Ron turned a tortured face to Harry.
‘That was an accident,’ he whispered miserably. ‘I didn’t mean to do it – I slipped off my broom when none of you were looking and when I was trying to get back on I kicked the Quaffle by accident.’
‘How’re you feeling?’ Ginny asked Ron, who was now staring into the dregs of milk at the bottom of his empty cereal bowl as though seriously considering attempting to drown himself in them.
Harry looked questioningly at her, but she shook her head warningly; Ron had just ambled over to them, looking lost and desperate.”
However, during the match, Ron suffers a very painful public humiliation: all (or nearly all) students of Slytherin shout a very mortifying song to mock and ridicule him in front of everybody, a song that completely reinforces the “foreign program” now implemented in his brain; he’s so upset and anxious that he actually cannot save any goal, once again in front of everybody… and it makes the song true (like a self-fulfilling prophecy).
“’Weasley cannot save a thing,
He cannot block a simple ring,
That’s why Slytherins all sing,
Weasley was born in a bin
He always lets the Quaffle in
Weasley will make sure we win
“[Harry] turned away to meet the rest of the team who were now landing one by one, yelling and punching the air in triumph; all except Ron, who had dismounted from his broom over by the goalposts and seemed to be making his way slowly back to the changing rooms alone.
“It did not feel as though they had won the match at all. Everywhere Harry looked there were disconsolate and angry faces; the team themselves were slumped around the fire, all apart from Ron who had not been seen since the end of the match.”
“’Have you seen Ron?’ Hermione asked in a low voice.
‘I think he’s avoiding us,’ said Hermione. ‘Where do you think he-?’
But at the precise moment, there was a creaking sound behind them as the Fat Lady swung forwards and Ron came clambering through the portrait hole. He was very pale indeed and there was snow in his hair. When he saw Harry and Hermione, he stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Where have you been?’ said Hermione anxiously, springing up.
‘Walking,’ Ron mumbled. He was still wearing his Quidditch things.
‘You look frozen,’ said Hermione. ‘Come and sit down,!’
Ron walked to the fireside and sank into the chair furthest from Harry’s, not looking at him. The stolen Snitch zoomed over their heads.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ron mumbled, looking at his feet.
‘For thinking I can play Quidditch,’ said Ron. ‘I’m going to resign first thing tomorrow.’
‘If you resign,’ said Harry testily, ‘there’ll be only three players left on the team.’ And when Ron looked puzzled, he said, ‘I’ve been given a lifetime ban. So’ve Fred and George.’
Hermione told him the full story; Harry could not bear to tell it again. When she had finished, Ron looked more anguished than ever.
‘You didn’t make me punch Malfoy,’ said Harry angrily.
‘-if I wasn’t so terrible at Quidditch-’
‘-it’s got nothing to do with that.’
‘-it was that song that wound me up-’
‘it would’ve wound anyone up.’
Hermione got up and walked to the window, away from the argument, watching the snow swirling down the pane.
‘Look, drop it, will you!’ Harry burst out. ‘It’s bad enough, without you blaming yourself for everything!’
Ron said nothing but sat gazing miserably at the damp hem of his robes. After a while he said in a dull voice, ‘This is the worst I’ve ever felt in my life.’
‘Join the club,’ said Harry bitterly.”
The aftermath of the match is an excruciating moment for Ron, who leaves the pitch alone and spends the rest of the day dwelling on self-loathing thoughts…alone, in the cold weather of the season – it’s such a cold day that when he comes back by the evening, there is snow in his hair. Yet no one comes after him to reassure him and comfort him, either because they didn’t find him (like Hermione who has clearly looked for him since she believes Ron “is avoiding” Harry and her), either because a more pressing matter took their time (that’s the case for Harry and the rest of Gryffindor), that is the fight that got Fred, George and Harry a lifelong ban on Quidditch. What does it mean ? It means that even after such a horrible humiliation like the one he suffered this day, Ron is just not the priority when a Quidditch victory is at stake (I’m sorry, I’m probably being unfair right now because Quidditch was one of the few things that made Harry, Fred and George happy, but I just feel like crying). And even when Ron comes back… I mean, you’ll most likely think that I’m being unjust to Harry in that scene, but I’ll stand by my interpretation: Harry is being very self-centred there. When Ron arrives, Hermione is the one who is anxious and frets over his well-being, while Harry doesn’t say anything. Then Ron sits down, “into the chair furthest from Harry’s, not looking at him”, and apologizes… for “thinking that [he] can play Quidditch”, or, in other words, for thinking that he’s on the same level as Harry - it’s as if Harry was the guardian of awesomeness and Ron was apologizing to Harry for not being as awesome as him, as if Harry would be ashamed of him. Harry only talks to tell Ron “testily” that if he resigns, “there’ll be only three players left on the team”: the priority here is clearly the Quidditch team. As expected, this speech is very guilt-inducing and Ron immediately thinks that it’s all his fault. Follow a series of stichomythia with Ron apologizing and trying to explain his behaviour, and Harry telling him angrily that of course it’s not his fault and that the song would’ve upset anyone. That would have been perfect if Harry had left it at that (and yet “it’s got nothing to do with [you being lousy at Quidditch]” is not such a great answer to Ron’s cry of distress but whatever), but Harry doesn’t. Instead, he bursts out that “it’s bad enough, without [Ron] blaming [himself] for everything!”: this sentence is all about how Harry feels, and the fact that he cannot and will not deal with Ron’s feelings. So Ron stops blaming himself, and confesses that he feels very bad. Yet Harry doesn’t sympathize with him: instead, he nearly invalidates how Ron feels because he brings the confession back to him. Excuse-me, but “join the club” is not an appropriate answer to “This is the worst I’ve ever felt in my life”, all the more when you’re talking to someone who’s just been humiliated in front of the whole school (I know it’s quite appropriate for Harry, but please remember that I am here to analyse how Ron’s self-esteem issues escalated over time).
I wish I could say this is the only moment when Ron is rebuffed by Harry for mentioning his feelings of inadequacy and his self-esteem issues, but no, it’s not. Later, just before Harry goes to Valentine’s day, Ron tells him he cannot go because Angelina planned “a full day’s training” and laments the fact that Angelina won’t let him resign even though he’s pathetic. In theory, Harry’s answer is great, but his tone (he says this “irritably”) contradicts what he’s saying: he’s not being sympathetic and he openly tells the reader as much. That means that Ron gets the message that he should not talk about his problems, because he won’t be listened to.
“’Are you coming?’ Harry asked Ron, but he shook his head, looking glum.
‘I can’t come into Hogsmeade at all; Angelina wants a full day’s training. Like it’s going to help; we’re the worst team I’ve ever seen. You should see Sloper and Kirke, they’re pathetic, even worse than I am.’ He heaved a great sigh. ‘I dunno why Angelina won’t just let me resign.’
‘It’s because you’re good when you’re on form, that’s why,’ said Harry irritably.
He found it very hard to be sympathetic to Ron’s plight, when he himself would have given almost anything to be playing in the forthcoming match against Hufflepuff. Ron seemed to have noticed Harry’s tone, because he did not mention Quidditch again during breakfast, and there was a slight frostiness in the way they said goodbye to each other shortly afterwards.”
Upon consideration, Ron is more or less told that he should act as if he had no problem, or at least people behave as if the best option was to ignore Ron’s problems. When Ron is bullied by Malfoy and his croons outside of the Quidditch pitch (and not before a match either), Hermione tells Ron to ignore them.
“’Yeah Weasley, we were just wondering,’ said a malicious voice.
Unheard by any of them in the muffling snow, Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle were walking along right behind them. ‘D’you reckon if you saw someone snuff it you’d be able to see the Quaffle better?’
He, Crabbe and Goyle roared with laughter as they pushed past on their way to the castle, then broke into a chorus of ‘Weasley is our King.’ Ron’s ears turned scarlet.
‘Ignore them, just ignore them,’ intoned Hermione, pulling out her wand and performing the charm to produce hot air again, so that she could melt them an easier path through the snow between them and the greenhouses.”
But ignoring your bullies only goes so far. It does not erase the hurt they caused, it does not erase the words they said, it does not erase the taunts and the humiliations they did. As a consequence, Ron both goes though painful experiences that reinforce his belief that he’s a fraud and a worthless incompetent and has to pretend that those experiences do not affect him. As I’ve said before, he’s not really helped or recomforted in regard to his self-worth: even if Angelina does not let him resign because “she knows he has it in him”, even if Hermione frets over his well-being when he’s not there and encourages him and even if Ron is sometimes told that he can do it, he’s most of the times left alone by the other students of Gryffindor who prefer being sorry for him from the sidelines but do not tell him that they believe in him. That kind of attitude is very present after the second Quidditch match in which Ron let in 14 Quaffles: Ron is left on his own, “hunched in a corner staring at his knees, a bottle of Butterbeer clutched in his hand”, while others (like Ginny, Harry, or Fred) look at him with sympathy but don’t try to talk to him. Their behaviour can be explained by several reasons, including the false impression that Ron would rather be alone in that moment (that’s what Harry believes, since he “wait[s] a while before going up to the dormitories himself, so that Ron could pretend to be asleep if he wanted to”- that’s probably because that’s what Harry would want in Ron’s place). My interpretation is that while they’re sad that things are not working for him, they believe he doesn’t have the ability to perform under pressure and thus that he’s out of place in the Quidditch team. That thought is reinforced by their impression that Quidditch is doing more harm than good to Ron, but also by the unconscious idea that Quidditch is an important business that has to be taken seriously. That’s exactly this mix of different concerns that Harry’s expressing when he’s saying that he “like[s] Angelina for the faith she [is] showing in Ron, but at the same time [thinks] it would be really kinder to let him leave the team.”
“‘Hermione,’ said Harry, shaking his head, ‘you’re good on feelings and stuff, but you just don’t understand Quidditch.
’Maybe not,’ she said darkly, returning to her translation, ‘but at least my happiness doesn’t depend on Ron’s goalkeeping abilities.’
And though Harry would rather have jumped off the Astronomy Tower than admit it to her, by the time he had watched the game the following Saturday he would have given any number of Galleons not to care about Quidditch either.
The very best thing you could say about the match was that it was short; the Gryffindor spectators had to endure only twenty-two minutes of agony. It was hard to say what the worst thing was: Harry thought it was a close-run contest between Ron’s fourteenth failed save, Sloper missing the Bludger but hitting Angelina in the mouth with his bat, and Kirke shrieking and falling backwards off his broom when Zacharias Smith zoomed at him carrying the Quaffle.
Harry looked over at Ron, who was hunched in a corner staring at his knees, a bottle of Butterbeer clutched in his hand.
‘Angelina still won’t let him resign,’ Ginny said, as though reading Harry’s mind. ‘She says she knows he’s got it in him.’
Harry liked Angelina for the faith she was showing in Ron, but at the same time thought it would be really kinder to let him leave the team. Ron had left the pitch to another booming chorus of ‘Weasley is our King’ sung with great gusto by the Slytherins, who were now favorites to win the Quidditch Cup.
Fred and George wandered over.
‘I haven’t got the heart to take the mickey out of him,’ said Fred, looking at Ron’s crumpled figure. ‘Mind you… when he missed the fourteenth-’
He made wild motions with his arms as though doing an upright doggy-paddle.
‘well, I’ll save it for parties, eh?’
Ron dragged himself up to bed shortly after this. Out of respect for his feelings, Harry waited a while before going up to the dormitories himself, so that Ron could pretend to be asleep if he wanted to. Sure enough, when Harry finally entered the room Ron was snorting a little too loudly to be entirely plausible.”
While Ron is not exactly reassured in regard to his self-worth (I say exactly because some attempts were made to comfort him), his failures as Keeper is also used against him by Harry at some point: he’s angry that Ron told Hermione he was still having “funny dreams”, and takes revenge through the lie that what Ron had heard during the night was a dream in which Harry gave Ron advice to grab the Quaffle; and Harry feels “ a kind of vindictive pleasure” when Ron’s ears turn red (and they remain red during the whole conversation).
“’You can’t tell me you’ve stopped having funny dreams,’ Hermione said now, ‘because Ron told me you were muttering in your sleep again last night.’
Harry threw Ron a furious look. Ron had the grace to look ashamed of himself.
‘You were only muttering a bit,’ he mumbled apologetically. ‘Something about “just a bit further”.’
‘I dreamed I was watching you lot play Quidditch,’ Harry lied brutally. ‘I was trying to get you to stretch out a bit further to grab the Quaffle.’
Ron’s ears went red. Harry felt a kind of vindictive pleasure; he had not, of course, dreamed anything of the sort.
‘You know,’ said Ron, whose ears were still flaming red, ‘if Montague doesn’t recover before Slytherin play Hufflepuff, we might be in with a chance of winning the Cup.’”
Even more tragic, Harry and Hermione only assist to Ron’s humiliations and moments where he’s so anxious he cannot save goals, and are absent when he finally succeeds on his own (something that is really incredible, honestly; it’s extremely hard to convince yourself that you can do something when you’re persuaded that you cannot; as I’ve said the brain, when you’re stressed out, is completely overwhelmed with cortisol, and cortisol in too much quantity reduces your ability to deal with your emotions and sends wrong messages to the rest of your brain; however, the fact that Ron was still stressed after he won the last match of their fifth year is completely realistic, but I digress). I’m not here to blame Harry or Hermione, because Hagrid is Hagrid and it’s hard to resist Hagrid. But the fact remains that the image Harry and Hermione have of Ron is that of a completely humiliated and desperate Quidditch player overwhelmed with stress. Moreover, it’s not very gratifying to see that your match was not that important all things considered.
“’Yeah,’ said Ron slowly savouring the words, we won. Did you see the look on Chang’s face when Ginny got the Snitch right out from under her nose?’
‘I suppose she cried, did she?’ said Harry bitterly.
‘Well, yeah – more out of temper than anything, though…’ Ron frowned slightly -‘But you saw her chuck her broom away when she got back to the ground, didn’t you?’
‘Well, actually…no, Ron,’ said Hermione with a heavy sigh, putting down her book and looking at him apologetically. ‘As a matter of fact, the only bit of the match Harry and I saw was Davies’s first goal.’
Ron’s carefully ruffled hair seemed to wilt with disappointment. ‘You didn’t watch?’ he said faintly, looking from one to the other. ‘You didn’t see me make any of those saves?’
‘Well -no,’ said Hermione, stretching out a placatory hand towards him. ‘But Ron, we didn’t want to leave – we had to!’
‘Yeah?’ said Ron, whose face was growing rather red. ‘How come?’
In fact, Ron’s feelings are often ignored for the sake of something apparently more urgent. When Ron’s dad is attacked, Ron shows the signs of someone on the verge of a panic attack: he’s ‘whey-faced”, he looks “terrified”, and makes “a convulsive movement” when he hears that his dad is covered in blood. Later, “Ron [is] still ashen-faced and silent.” Yet he’s given no time to grief because Harry’s problems are still more important.
Ron is actually often told to “get a grip” in the face of urgent and important matters that leave no place to any futile consideration, like, for example, saying “You-know-who” instead of Voldemort. Harry and Hermione openly tell Ron their exasperation and their weariness on the subject, and they sometimes berate him for not saying the name. At one point, Harry asks Ron: “When are you going to start using his name ? Sirius and Lupin do.”. And Hermione, who had a hard time saying “Voldemort” until the beginning of the fifth book, snaps at Ron for wincing when Voldemort’s name is being pronounced in the chapters following her first utterance of the name (even if she’s still struggling with the name herself – she stammers when she’s saying it): “Oh, don’t be pathetic, Ron”, “oh, for heaven’s sake, Ron”, “stop whimpering, Ron”.
It’s not the first time one of his two best friends imply that he’s at best immature, or at worst a wimp who has never done anything remarkable. In the beginning of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry lashes out at his friends out of resentment for having been kept in the dark for quite some time and yells that he “'HANDLED MORE [THEY]’VE EVER MANAGED AND DUMBLEDORE KNOWS IT – WHO SAVED THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE? WHO GOT RID OF RIDDLE? WHO SAVED BOTH YOUR SKINS FROM THE DEMENTORS?'” (once again, I want to remind you that I analyze things from Ron’s point of view and not from Harry’s, and that I’m trying to note all the elements that might explain why Ron’s self-esteem issues escalated).
Yet I’d like to notice that his abilities and his worth as a person are not the only elements that come into consideration in regard to Ron’s self-esteem issues, and not the only elements that are questioned or mocked this year. When Ron goes visiting his dad at Saint-Mungo, he meets an old portrait who is convinced that Ron’s freckles are “unsightly blemishes” symptomatic of an illness called “spattergroit” and openly tells Ron that he’s “gruesome” because of them: here Ron is humiliated because of how he looks.
“Ron was seriously affronted when a medieval wizard called out that he clearly had a bad case of spattergroit.
‘And what’s that supposed to be?’ he asked angrily, as the Healer pursued him through six more portraits, shoving the occupants out of the way.
‘Tis a most grievous affliction of the skin, young master, that will leave you pockmarked and more gruesome even than you are now-’
‘Watch who you’re calling gruesome!’ said Ron, his ears turning red.
‘-the only remedy is to take the liver of a toad, bind it tight about your throat, stand naked at the full moon in a barrel of eels’ eyes-’
‘I have not got spattergroit!’
‘But the unsightly blemishes upon your visage, young master-’
‘They’re freckles!’ said Ron furiously. ‘Now get back in your own picture and leave me alone!’
He rounded on the others, who were all keeping determinedly straight faces.”
All of the elements quoted above come into play at a moment Ron and Hermione’s relationship is already ambiguous and full of tension and unsaid things. In that regard, Hermione herself is ambiguous: on the one hand, she kisses Ron on the cheek before his first match, frets over his well-being after, “her frostiness seems to melt” when she looks at Ron and notices how dejected he is after his first Quidditch practice, looks impressed when he exposes the theory that Sturgis Podmore’s arrest was a set-up organized by the ministry (p.259), interrupts her holidays in France with her parents when she hears that Ron’s dad has been attacked, doesn’t hesitate to ask for his opinion or for backup (p.580), looks at Ron “with an odd expression on her face” and helps him with his homework after he tears up Percy’s letter and immediately determines to finish his essays even if he has to spend the night working on it (p.268). On the other hand, she tends to criticize him a lot: if some can be attributed to a tendency Hermione has had since first year to correct her comrades, like in the excerpt below, it’s clearly not always the case : some of her remarks are just gratuitous critics said out of frustration.
“'It’s the way you’re moving your wand,’ said Hermione, watching Ron critically, 'you don’t want to wave it, it’s more a sharp jab.’
'Ravens are harder than frogs,’ said Ron testily.
'Fine, let’s swap,’ said Hermione, seizing Ron’s raven and placing it with her own fat bulldog. 'Silencio!’ The raven continued to open and close its sharp beak but no sound came out.
'Very good, Miss Granger!’ said Professor Flitwick’s squeaky little voice, making Harry, Ron and Hermione all jump. 'Now, let me see you try, Mr. Weasley.’
'Wha-? Oh-oh, right,’ said Ron, very flustered. 'Er-silencio!’
He jabbed at the bullfrog so hard he poked it in the eye: the frog gave a deafening croak and leapt off the desk.”
That’s what happens when Harry tells Ron and Hermione that Cho and he kissed. Ron is completely euphoric when he hears the news and has a childish and innocent reaction of joy and hilarity: he rolls around on the hearthrug and goes “into a raucous peal of laughter”. Hermione, who seems already annoyed (she’s frowning), is even more annoyed by this display of impropriety (she gives Ron “a look of deep disgust”). When Harry tells them that Cho was crying, Ron suggests the incorrect possibility that Harry is bad at kissing; Hermione comments: “Of course [Harry] is not”, which makes Ron wonder who she could possibly know. Hermione then explains that Cho spends all her time crying, which prompts Ron to comment that “a bit of kissing [could have cheered] her up” (aside: he’s not completely wrong, because kissing is definitely something that can make you feel good; and I’d like you to remember how Ron sees that kind of physical stuff). Hermione, who has understood that a kiss with Harry might have made things more confusing and more painful for Cho, tells him that he’s “the most insensitive wart [she’s] ever had the infortune to meet”, which is a really unfair and violent statement to make, especially considering that Harry is acting the same way as Ron. Faced with Harry and Ron’s lack of understanding of Cho’s situation, Hermione explains to them how her past relationship with Cedric makes things very complicated (even if I believe that Hermione extrapolated a bit). Ron is a bit stunned and expresses his incredulity that Cho might deal with all that without going crazy: “One person can’t feel all of that at once, they’d explode.” (aside: there he’s absolutely right, it’s impossible to face such distress without acting out in a way, and Cho’s cries are exactly that); Hermione once again makes a brutal remark to him and tells him that he’s got “the emotional range of a teaspoon”. At one point Ron notices that the letter Hermione is writing is so long that it’s trailing on the floor next to him (some people think Hermione did it on purpose, but I’m not so sure) and asks her who she’s writing “this roman” to. Hermione tells him that she’s writing o Krum, and for Ron if Hermione writes such a long letter to Krum, it obviously means that she’s in some sort of relationship with him, or at least that she finds him attractive, since Ron asks Harry later what Hermione sees in Krum and is faced with both the reality of Krum’s superstar status and the possibility that Hermione might be attracted to him because of that.
“’Did you kiss?’ asked Hermione briskly.
Ron sat up so fast he sent his ink bottle flying all over the rug. Disregarding this completely, he stared avidly at Harry.
Harry looked from Ron’s expression of mingled curiosity and hilarity to Hermione’s slight frown, and nodded.
Ron made a triumphant gesture with his fist and went into a raucous peal of laughter that made several timid-looking second-years over beside the window jump. A reluctant grin spread over Harry’s face as he watched Ron rolling around on the hearthrug. Hermione gave Ron a look of deep disgust and returned to her letter.
‘Well?’ Ron said finally, looking up at Harry. ‘How was it?’
Harry considered for a moment.
‘Wet,’ he said truthfully.
Ron made a noise that might have indicated jubilation or disgust, it was hard to tell.
‘Because she was crying,’ Harry continued heavily.
“Oh,’ said Ron, his smile fading slightly? ‘Are you that bad at kissing?’
‘Dunno,’ said Harry, who hadn’t considered this, and immediately felt rather worried. ‘Maybe I am.’
‘Of course you’re not,’ said Hermione absently, still scribbling away at her letter.
‘How do you know?’ said Ron very sharply.
‘Because Cho spends half her time crying these days,’ said Hermione vaguely. ‘She does it at mealtimes, in the loos, all over the place.’
‘You’d think a bit of kissing would cheer her up,’ said Ron, grinning.
‘Ron,’ said Hermione in a dignified voice, dipping the point of her quill into her inkpot, ‘you are the most insensitive wart I have ever had the misfortune to meet.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Ron indignantly. ‘What sort of person cries while someone’s kissing them?’
‘Yeah,’ said Harry, slightly desperately, ‘who does?’
Hermione looked at the pair of them with an almost pitying expression on her face.
‘Don’t you understand how Cho’s feeling at the moment?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Harry and Ron together.
Hermione sighed and laid down her quill.
‘Well, obviously, she’s feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I expect she’s feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can’t work out who she likes best. Then she’ll be feeling guilty, thinking it’s an insult to Cedric’s memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she’ll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can’t work out what her feelings towards Harry are, anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that’s all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and she’s afraid she’s going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she’s been flying so badly.’
A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, ‘One person can’t feel that all at once, they’d explode, then Ron said, ‘One person can’t feel all that at once, they’d explode.’
‘Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have,’ said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again.
‘She was the one who started it,’ said Harry. ‘I wouldn’t’ve – she just sort of came at me – and next thing she’s crying all over me – I didn’t know what to do-‘
‘Don’t blame you, mate,’ said Ron, looking alarmed at the very thought.
‘You just had to be nice to her,’ said Hermione, looking up anxiously. ‘You were, weren’t you?’
‘Well,’ said Harry, an unpleasant heat creeping up his face, ‘I sort of – patted her on the back a bit.’
Hermione looked as though she was restraining herself from rolling her eyes with extreme difficulty.
‘Well, I suppose it could have been worse,’ she said. ‘Are you going to see her again?’
‘I’ll have ton won’t I?’ said Harry. ‘We’ve got DA meetings, haven’t we?’
‘You know what I mean,’ said Hermione impatiently.
‘Oh well,’ said Hermione distantly, buried in her letter once more, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to ask her.’
‘What if he doesn’t want to ask her?’ said Ron, who had been watching Harry with an unusually shrewd expression on his face.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Hermione vaguely, ‘Harry’s liked her for ages, haven’t you, Harry?’
‘Who’re you writing the novel to, anyway?’ Ron asked Hermione, trying to read the bit of parchment now trailing on the floor. Hermione hitched it up out of sight.
‘How many other Viktors do we know?’
Ron said nothing, but looked disgruntled.”
‘What does she see in Krum?’ Ron demanded, as he and Harry climbed the girls’ staircase.
‘Well,’ said Harry, considering the matter, ‘I s’pose he’s older, isn’t he… and he’s an international Quidditch player…’
‘Yeah, but apart from that’, said Ron, sounding aggravated. ‘I mean, he’s a grouchy git, isn’t he?’
An other element that makes Hermione’s behaviour ambiguous is the difference she makes between Ron and Harry, or her attitude towards other boys in general. In the excerpt above, Hermione does not hesitate to show that she maintains some form of relationship with Viktor Krum, and at one point she even implies that she knows how Harry kisses. At the beginning of the book, Hermione not only expected Harry to get the badge, but was completely bewildered when she understood that Ron was the one who had been nominated prefect, and so flustered because of her mistake that she was unable to quote any of Ron’s feats and/or qualities. At Christmas, she’s really enthusiastic when she thanks Harry for his gift, but only tells Ron that the perfume he gave her is “really unusual”, even though a perfume has a romantic connotation.
“On their way downstairs they met Hermione.
‘Thanks for the book, Harry,’ she said happily. ‘I’ve been wanting that New Theory of Numerology for ages! And that perfume’s really unusual, Ron.’
From that point onwards, it’s very clear that Ron’s self-esteem issues are not just a little nuisance that sometimes make his life difficult, but much more something that invaded and perverted his entire daily life. Ron is, unlike in the other books (he tried to hide his insecurities and was always a bit ashamed to reveal “too much”), completely open about it. He often makes comments about his supposed lack of qualities and he states those comments as if they were facts (he uses the present, and that is utilized to point out a general truth) – and even if those comments are mostly related to Quidditch, one cannot apply them only to Quidditch (as can witness his reaction when he received the Prefect Badge, but also his belief that Harry would laugh at him for even thinking of joining the Team, or the fact that he apologized after his Quidditch match because he should have known he was going to be a failure). A lasting impression this book has made on me is that Ron, at times, sounds and behaves exactly like Neville, especially the Neville of the early books who thought he was nearly a Squib and believed that everyone else thought it, too. However, unlike Neville, Ron doesn’t have many people encouraging him (Angelina is the only one who apparently tells him constantly that he can do it): no teacher explicitly supports him, his friends and family feel sorry for him but don’t really remind him that he’s got abilities and that he’s valuable and he’s bullied and humiliated. Moreover, his feelings of inadequacy and cries of distress are not exactly heard, sometimes ignored or invalidated or even turned against him. At the same time, Ron and Hermione’s relationship becomes more and more ambiguous and full of romantic tension, between Ron who openly compliments Hermione and buys her perfume and Hermione who kisses Ron on the cheeks and sometimes melts when she’s faced with his loyalty/his qualities/his problems. However, Hermione’s behaviour is also ambiguous and it makes things confused: while she expresses affection for him and worries for him, she also criticizes him a lot and sometimes gives the impression that she prefers Harry or Viktor Krum, her reaction when Ron got the Prefect Badge and her behaviour when Harry told Ron and Hermione that he had kissed Cho being the most equivocal moments.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Now that we have a clear view of how Ron’s self-esteem issues escalated over time to the point that they are the lens through which he sees not only himself but also most of his relationships (he has an inferiority complex telling him that he’s inferior to his friends and family and looks at the world with a “worthy/not worthy” mindset), let’s see how that came into play in regard to his relationships with both Hermione and Lavender in the sixth book (given the fact that his relationship with Hermione is already unclear and full of tension).
At the beginning of the book, the atmosphere is already full of tension, and not least because Ron is awestruck at the beauty of his sister-in-law Fleur (or rather, he is completely intoxicated whenever she’s around because of her Veela powers), something that doesn’t sit well with Hermione:
“Looking careworn, she left the room. Ron still seemed slightly punch-drunk; he was shaking his head experimentally like a dog trying to rid its ears of water.
‘Don’t you get used to her if she’s staying in the same house?’ Harry asked.
‘Well, you do,’ said Ron, ‘but if she jumps out at you unexpectedly, like then…’
‘It’s pathetic,’ said Hermione furiously, striding away from Ron as far as she could go and turning to face him with her arms folded once she had reached the wall.”
I can safely say there that Hermione, here, is jealous of Fleur and is somehow angry at Ron for being under the girl’s spell, and she’s trying to communicate that anger, as she “turns to face him with her arms folded” while also loudly and “furiously” expressing her disapproval. The thing is, Hermione’s way of dealing with her own feelings is to scowl at Ron and tell him that what he does is “pathetic”.
It’s a far cry from Lavender’s behaviour. When we first see her, she openly expresses her approbation and her admiration for him and laughs at one of his comment as if it was one of the best jokes she’d ever heard (I’m not saying that Hermione should have changed for Ron, but lashing at people is not an appropriate way to convey your feelings; it makes the message you’re trying to communicate muddled). And as Lavender’s hints, unlike Hermione’s, are unequivocal, Ron gets it:
“Hermione’s was drowned by a loud giggle; Lavender Brown had apparently found Ron’s remark highly amusing. She continued to laugh as she passed them, glancing back at Ron over her shoulder. Ron looked rather pleased with himself.”
As the book progresses, Hermione is more and more ambiguous in regard to her intentions and feelings. On two occasions she made it seem like she fancied Harry instead of Ron (and Harmony shippers use those two moments, so if Hermione makes us readers confused, imagine what Ron must have felt), and while those moments are perfectly understandable given Hermione’s personality, the mixed signals definitely got to Ron:
“Hermione turned to Harry with a radiant expression and whispered, ‘Did you really tell him I’m the best in the year? Oh, Harry!’
‘Well, what’s so impressive about that?’ whispered Ron, who for some reason looked annoyed. ‘You are the best in the year – I’d’ve told him so if he’d asked me!’
Hermione smiled but made a ‘shush’ing gesture, so that they could her what Slughorn was saying. Ron looked slightly disgruntled.”
This conversation takes place during Slughorn’s first lesson, and just after Hermione identified one of the potions present on the table as Amortentia (that potentially means that Ron smelt something reminding him of Hermione just before). Hermione is very clearly delighted that Harry told one of their teachers she was the best in their year, and that’s probably because she is very happy that a teacher was aware of her reputation/identity before term thanks to her best friend and that said teacher confirmed that she was indeed the best in their year. Hermione is undoubtedly very proud of that, and the fact that Harry managed to put a word in for her with a future teacher is very gratifying for her. Even if Ron whispering that it’s an established fact he would have told anyone if asked is cute, it’s just not the same. So Hermione is glad to hear it but doesn’t dwell on it and move on to something else, that is listening to the course. From Ron’s point of view however, the situation reads completely differently; Hermione’s reaction seems quite excessive, and immediately one cannot help but wonder if the reason why she looks so happy is because Harry told Slughorn she was the best in their year (her exclamation “Oh, Harry!” doesn’t help). So Ron tells her that he shares the same opinion as Harry and would have done the same thing; but Hermione’s reaction to that declaration is a lot less strong. The result is that Ron, who as we’ve seen examines his relationships with people through comparisons, has the impression that Hermione favors Harry over him, that she prefers Harry over him.
That impression is reinforced when Hermione tells Harry that he’s fanciable in front of Ron, yet ignores Ron and his calls for her attention just a day or two later:
‘I dunno why the team’s popular all of a sudden.’
‘Oh, come on, Harry,’ said Hermione, suddenly impatient. ‘It’s not Quidditch that’s popular, it’s you! You’ve never been more interesting and, frankly, you’ve never been more fanciable.’
Ron gagged on a large piece of kipper. Hermione spared him one look of disdain before turning back to Harry.
‘Everyone knows you’ve been telling the truth now, don’t they? The whole wizarding world has had to admit that you were right about Voldemort being back and that you really have fought him twice in the last two years and escaped both times. And now they’re calling you the “Chosen One” – well, come on, can’t you see why people are fascinated by you?’
Harry was finding the Great Hall very hot all of a sudden, even though the ceiling still looked cold and rainy.
‘And you’ve been through all that persecution from the Ministry when they were trying to make out you were unstable and a liar. You can still see the marks where that evil woman made you write with our own blood, but you stuck to your story anyway…’
‘You can still see where these brains got hold of me in the ministry, look,’ said Ron, shaking back his sleeves.
‘And it doesn’t hurt that you’ve grown about a foot over the summer, either,’ Hermione finished, ignoring Ron.
‘I’m tall,’ said Ron inconsequentially.
Knowing Hermione, there is absolutely no emotion behind her words; she is just stating facts. Her telling Harry all the points that makes him attractive in the eyes of others (notice that all the points she makes are mostly related to Harry’s image and reputation as the brave “Chosen One”) is no different than her telling the boys what Everlasting fire is: she’s just as impatient and exasperated (hence why she’s saying things like: “come on, can’t you see why people are fascinated by you?”). She’s probably thinking: “I’m surrounded by two idiots!”. Hermione has a tracking record of thinking that people have to be proper all the time (she had the same behaviour of disapproval when Ron came back from a Quidditch session grumpy and covered in mud, or when he rolled over on the carpet at Harry’s confirmation that he had kissed Cho) – hence why she spares Ron “a look of disdain” when he’s gagging on a piece of kipper - and considers her intentions to be clear (so she’s a bit dismissive of Ron’s reaction because don’t you see it’s not about you, Ron?).
But to Ron the situation is very different.
She lists all the things that make Harry attractive. And Ron undoubtedly concludes, as he already thinks he’s at best unremarkable and at worst a nobody with no quality whatsoever (plus he has a big inferiority complex towards Harry): “Who could blame her? I’ve got nothing to compete against Harry with.”
So Hermione’s sending the wrong signals, or at least mixed signals, to Ron. Meanwhile, Lavender keeps on showing Ron that she thinks he is great and valuable and encourages him. And what she does is clear: nowhere is she seen flirting/seemingly flirting with anyone else. And as Ron is a straightforward kind of person (subtle hints are not his thing; he doesn’t lie often, he doesn’t like it, and it’s always a bit obvious when he does; in third year he was even crossing his fingers under the table as he lied to Hagrid), he appreciates that. See there an example of that: Hermione just told Harry he was fanciable, is cold and distant because she’s jealous on the way to the Quidditch Pitch, but later compliments Ron when he does well (so unfortunately, Hermione maintains Ron’s false impression that he has to do something incredible to be noticed and eventually worthy of love); Lavender, on the other hand, is consistent as she smiles and wishes Ron good luck.
“When they left the Gryffindor table five minutes later to head down to the Quidditch pitch, they passed Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil. […] What did surprise him was that when Ron drew level with them, Parvati suddenly nudged Lavender, who looked round and gave Ron a wide smile. Ron blinked at her, then returned the smile uncertainly. His walk instantly became something more like a strut. Harry resisted the temptation to laugh, remembering that Ron had refrained from doing so after Malfoy had broken Harry’s nose; Hermione, however, looked cold and distant all the way down to the stadium through the cool, misty drizzle, and departed to find a place in the stands without wishing Ron good luck.
‘Good luck!’ cried a voice from the stands. Harry looked around, expecting to see Hermione, but it was Lavender Brown.
‘You did brilliantly, Ron!’
This time it really was Hermione running towards them from the stands; Harry saw Lavender walking off the pitch, arm in arm with Parvati, a rather grumpy expression on her face. Ron looked extremely pleased with himself and even taller than usual as he grinned around at the team and at Hermione.”
At that precise moment, when Ron got the position of Keeper on the Gryffindor Quidditch Team and is complimented by Hermione, Ron is overjoyed, because he feels validated. Yet that joy dies away quickly as he’s reminded just a few moments later that Harry and Hermione could very well be together, as they’re the ones worth noticing while he’s just rubbish. Indeed, as he enters the Great Hall, he takes note of Harry and Hermione’s absence; he retraces his steps and sees them whispering together – are they having a moment ? (that’s why he looks “suspicious” in the excerpt that will follow). And mere seconds later, the trio meets Slughorn, who basically confirms Ron’s insecurities and practically embodies them – he shows Harry and Hermione that they’re valuable and ignores Ron as if he were nothing. And that’s exactly it: for Ron, attention is the sign that you’re worth something (hence why he knows that Ginny, who is fiery and powerful, will be noticed by Slughorn and invited to his party). Being shown he’s not worth anything puts Ron in a bad mood for the rest of the evening, yet his friends don’t really deny that Slughorn is wrong, either. And Ron, during the following conversation, already begins to look at Lavender.
“Ron merely guffawed gloatingly and strode off into the Hall after him, but Harry caught Hermione’s arm and held her back.
‘What are you two doing?’ demanded Ron, reappearing in the doorway to the Great Hall and looking suspicious.
‘Nothing,’ said Harry and Hermione together, and they hurried after Ron. The smell of roast beef made Harry’s stomach ache with hunger, but they had barely taken three steps towards the Gryffindor table when Professor Slughorn appeared in front of them, blocking their path.
‘Harry, Harry, just the man I was hoping to see!’ he boomed genially, twiddling the ends of his walrus moustache and puffing out his enormous belly. ‘I was hoping to catch you before dinner! What do you say to a spot of supper tonight in my rooms instead? We’re having a little party, just a few rising stars. I’ve got McLaggen coming, and Zabini, the charming Melinda Bobbin – I don’t know whether you know her? Her family owns a large chain of apothecaries – and, of course, O hope very much that Miss Granger will favour me by coming, too.’
Slughorn made Hermione a little bow as he finished speaking. It was as though Ron was not present; Slughorn did not so much as look at him.
‘I can’t come, Professor,’ said Harry at once. ‘I’ve got a detention with Professor Snape.’
‘Oh dear!’ said Slughorn, his face falling comically. ‘Dear, dear, I was counting on you, Harry! Well, now, I’ll just have to have a word with Severus and explain the situation, I’m sure I’ll ne able to persuade him to postpone your detention. Yes, I’ll see you both later!’
He bustled away out of the Hall.
‘He’s got no chance of persuading Snape,’ said Harry, the moment Slughorn was out of earshot. ‘This detention’s already been postponed once; Snape did it for Dumbledore, but he won’t do it for anyone else.’
‘Oh, I wish you could come, I don’t want to go on my own!’ said Hermione anxiously; Hermione knew that she was thinking about McLaggen.
‘I doubt you’ll be alone, Ginny’ll probably be invited,’ snapped Ron, who did not seem to have taken kindly to being ignored by Slughorn.
After dinner they made their way back to Gryffindor Tower. The common room was very crowded, as most people had finished dinner by now, but they managed to find a fee table and sat down; Ron, who had been in a bad mood ever since the encounter with Slughorn, folded his arms and frowned at the ceiling.
[Harry] looked hopefully at Ron, who was sitting with his arms folded, staring over at Lavender Brown.
‘Can you think of any way Malfoy-?
‘Oh, drop it, Harry,’ said Ron.
‘Listen, it’s not my fault Slughorn invited Hermione and me to his stupid party, either of us wanted to go, you know!’ said Harry, firing up.
‘Well, as I’m not invited to any parties,’ said Ron, getting up to his feet again, ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’
He stomped off towards the door to the boys’ dormitories, leaving Harry and Hermione staring after him.”
In the weeks that follow, Harry is doing is best to makes sure Ron doesn’t feel left out (he schedules Quidditch sessions at the same moment as Slughorn’s parties), and Hermione can change subjects if she sees that Ron becomes moody at the mention of Slughorn’s parties (as the following excerpt will show), but ignoring Slughorn and pretending that nothing’s happening only works so far. Indeed, Ron still knows that Slughorn thinks he’s not even worth a glance, which is a direct jab at his insecurities and a confirmation (by a seemingly competent and important adult) that what he thinks of himself is not just in his head, that others think the same thing.
“’Harry, that’s three of my little suppers you’ve missed now!’ said Slughorn, poking him genially in the chest. ‘It won’t do, m’boy, I’m determined to have you! Miss Granger loves them, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Hermione helplessly, ‘they’re really -’
‘So why don’t you come along, Harry?’ demanded Slughorn.
‘Well, I’ve had Quidditch practice, Professor,’ said Harry, who had indeed been scheduling practices every time Slughorn had sent him a little violet-ribbon-adorned invitation. This strategy meant that Ron was not left out and they usually had a laugh with Ginny imagining Hermione shut up with McLaggen and Zabini.
‘Well, I certainly expect you to win your first match after all this hard work!’ said Slughorn. But a little recreation never hurts anybody. Now, how about Monday night, you can’t possibly want to practice in this weather.
‘I can’t, Professor, I’ve got – er – an appointment with Professor Dumbledore that evening.’
‘Unlucky again!’ cried Slughorn dramatically.
‘Ah, well… you can’t evade me forever, Harry!’
And with a regal wave, he waddled out of the shop, taking as little notice of Ron as though he had been a display of Cockroach Cluster.
‘I can’t believe you’ve wriggled out of another one,’ said Hermione, shaking her head. ‘they’re not that bad, you know… they’re even quite fun sometimes…’ But then she caught sight of Ron’s expression. ‘Oh, look – they’ve got Deluxe Sugar Quills – those would last hours!’
Glad that Hermione had changed the subject, Harry showed much more interest in the new extra-large Sugar Quills than he would normally have done, but Ron continued to look moody and merely shrugged when Hermione asked him where he wanted to go next.”
Less than two days after this unfortunate encounter with Slughorn, a very important conversation between Ron and Hermione happens during a Herbology lesson:
“Anyway,’ said Hermione, continuing their interrupted conversation as though a lump of wood had not just attacked them, ‘Slughorn’s going to have a Christmas party, Harry, and there’s no way you’ll be able to wriggle out of this one because he actually asked me to check your free evenings, so he could be sure to have it on a night you can come.’
Harry groaned. Ron, meanwhile, who was attempting to burst the pod in the bowl by putting both hands on it, standing up and squashing it as hard as he could, said angrily, ‘And this is another party just for Slughorn’s favourites, is it?’
‘Just for the Slug Club, yes,’ said Hermione.
The pod flex out from under Ron’s fingers and hit the greenhouse glass, rebounding on to the back of Professor Sprout’s head and knocking off her old patched hat. Harry went to retrieve the pod; when he got back, Hermione was saying, ‘Look, I didn’t make up the name “Slug Club”-’
‘”Slug Club”,’ repeated Ron with a sneer worthy of Malfoy. ‘It’s pathetic. Well, I hope you enjoy your party. Why don’t you try getting off with McLaggen, then Slughorn can make you King and Queen Slug-’
‘We’re allowed to bring guests,’ said Hermione, who for some reason had turned a bright, boiling scarlet, ‘and I was going to ask you to come, but if you think it’s that stupid then I won’t bother!’
‘You were going to ask me?’ asked Ron, in a completely different voice.
‘Yes,’ said Hermione angrily. ‘But obviously if you’d rather I got off with McLaggen…’
There was a pause while Harry continued to pound the resilient pod with a trowel.
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Ron, in a very quiet voice.”
Although Harry watched his two friends more closely over the next few days, Ron and Hermione did not seem any different except that they were a little politer to each other than usual.
The first thing I want people to notice here is that Ron is once again angry at the beginning of the conversation. Almost every time he appears on page in the previous chapters as well as in the next ones, Ron is mad and/or moody at one point or another. It’s actually a defence mechanism (and a pretty common one among teenagers, even if it’s a huge red flag that something is very wrong): every time he seems to be aggressive/moody/angry, that’s because something that made him feel worthless happened beforehand and he’d rather firing up than dwelling on the sadness and feelings of unworthiness. The excerpt above is no exception: as soon as the party held for “Slughorn’s favourites” is mentioned (the favourites, aka the worthy ones), Ron becomes mocking, disdainful and infuriated. It’s easier to discard the Slug Club as being pathetic than to imagine you’re not good enough for it while your friends and family are.
Of course, this behaviour changes completely once Hermione implies that she wanted to include him and invite him to the party. Her invitation is not exactly an invitation, and it’s not really clear whether she means it as a romantic one or not – and that’s where the confusion is going to come from later. Indeed, as Ron openly rejects the Slug Club, Hermione, blushing, tells him that “they’re allowed to bring guests” and that “[she] was going to ask [Ron] to come”. On the one hand, some elements do suggest that Hermione is inviting Ron to a romantic date: she’s blushing, and does so just at the moment she announces that Slughorn gave her the possibility to take someone with her at the party and she wanted to ask Ron to come, and, more importantly, she opposes this option with “getting off with McLaggen” (something that definitely made Ron pause). On the other hand, other aspects of the conversation hint that Hermione is not asking Ron out on a date: Hermione went red, but that was just after Ron jabbed at the Slug Club and suggested that she got off with McLaggen so that she could be crowned Queen Slug (and Hermione is mentioned to be “angry” just after); she uses the word “guest” and that word does not have a romantic overtone, it’s rather a word you’d use for a friend or an acquaintance (and the use of the plural here reduces a possible romantic overtone even more); she says that she was going to ask Ron to come, and as she resorts to past tense, her invitation is also sets in the past and so doesn’t have any meaning in the present; etc. Everything about Hermione’s may-have-been invitation is neutral or does not allude to a romantic overtone, from the vocabulary she uses (she’s not “asking him out”, she was “going to asking him to come” as “a guest”), to her tone (she’s angry), without forgetting the reason she puts forward (she doesn’t hint at the reason why she personally wanted to ask him to come and only refers to the fact that Slughorn “allowed [them] to bring guests”). All in all, it makes things confused.
As for Ron, he initially thought, or at least hoped, that Hermione was going to ask him out on a date. His change of behaviour, as well as the efforts he makes the following days, show that he’s hoping Hermione is beginning to see him in a new light (you see, this is the first time Ron actually displays a behaviour hinting that he believes Hermione might want a relationship with him) – and after all, he may be on the path to be worthy of her; hasn’t she said that “he had done brilliantly” after he won the Keeper position ?
Yet Ron’s hopes cannot replace his now deep-rooted belief that he’s incapable and so that he’s a fraud who usurped his position on the Quidditch Team (a conviction he alluded to the year before); and that belief is even more reinforced by Slughorn’s attitude towards him. Therefore, as “the looming prospect of the opening game of the season”, Ron’s anxiety rears its ugly head with more strength than even before. Then comes the Quidditch session in which Ron let in half a dozen goals and “punched an oncoming Demelza Robbins” on the mouth, which prompted Ginny to call him a prat.
“‘I played like a sack of dragon dung,’ said Ron in a hollow voice when the door had swung shut behind Ginny.
[Harry] kept a relentless flow of encouragement all the way back to the castle, and by the time they reached the second floor Ron was looking marginally more cheerful.”
At this point, Ron already feels like he’s not good enough and worthless, but he still knows that if he has something to denigrate, it’s his performance – and not himself. Moreover, Harry still manages to cheer him up. However, at that precise moment, the two of them stumble upon Ginny and Dean kissing – and Ron fires up again.
I will not comment on the reasons that pushed Ron to row with Ginny about her love life, or the balance of power during the argument, as I already did. However, I’d like to say something about the way Ginny’s words affected Ron. Ginny makes Ron feel worthless, or at least less than others who had a relationship/kiss before him – so it feels like having a relationship is a measure of one’s worth – and pathetic (she reveals a shameful secret involving Aunt Muriel, and denigrates the way he acted with Phlegm).
Ginny also says that Hermione kissed Krum; she doesn’t say when though. To be sure, Ron asks Harry’s opinion, and Harry’s silence is very telling. And it is the end of Ron’s hopes that maybe, just maybe, Hermione liked him (and just a few days later, he begins his relationship with Lavender).
Because, and that’s the moment both his self-loathing tendencies and Hermione’s mixed signals come into play, if Hermione kissed Krum, then there’s no way she could be interested in someone like him. At that moment, Ron remembers all his failures, and the fact that almost nobody told him he was a capable person. He recalls the way Slughorn ignored him and basically confirmed what he had always thought: that he’s the tad along of two very remarkable people. He remembers that Harry told him Hermione probably found Krum attractive because he was an international Quidditch Player. He remembers that Krum invited Hermione in Bulgaria. He also remembers Hermione’s tone of surprise when he got the Prefect Badge (where do people think “Always the tone of surprise” comes from ? Ron did not forget), and the fact that she was unable to mention any remarkable thing he could have done (so that means they were not remarkable). He analyzes the moments he shared with her, and realizes that she never complimented him all that much – so it means that she did not find him worthy of compliments – but criticized him a lot. He remembers that Hermione said Harry was fanciable, how she was so enthusiastic when she heard that Harry had told Slughorn she was the best in their year but shushed him when he tried to tell her the same thing, how Harry and Hermione seemed so close after the Quidditch Tryouts… So how did he ever think that she wanted to invite him out on a date ? He recalls all the elements that showed that she was just asking him to come with her, “as a guest”, “just as friends”, and forgets all the subtle hints that she wanted to ask him out. In short, he compares himself to both Krum and Harry (but mostly Krum who embodies everything he’d like to be) and finds that it’s not in his favour. He acquires the certitude that he’s just a worthless nobody Hermione never wanted to be with.
Moreover, and that’s an important element, he doesn’t know when Hermione kissed Krum, and she never said anything about a snog or a relationship with Ronaldo Krum. As far as he’s concerned, Hermione could very well have entered a relationship with Krum just before she came to the Burrow before the beginning of their sixth year.
And what does Ron do, in the sixth book, when he feels worthless ?
He becomes angry (let it be clear that I think the reason why Ron is so angry is because his self-esteem issues worsened and anger is the way he copes with that). He’s angry at himself, because he’s been a stupid, worthless and hopeful moron. And he takes out that anger on others, because that’s easier to deal with (it doesn’t make it okay though), even if it gives him more reason to hate himself afterwards (yes, that’s a pretty self-destructive behaviour): that’s why he “bark[s] at a small girl who jump[s] in fright and drop[s] a bottle of toad-spawn”, that’s why “Ron’s new aggression [does] not wear off over the next few days”, that’s why “he bellows[s] at everybody so much that he reduce[s] Demelza Robbins to tears” during the final Quidditch practice before the match against Slytherin (but I still want to point out that all of this is forgotten after the match as “all enmity forgotten, the Gryffindor team left the pitch arm in arm”)…
And that’s why after this particular Quidditch practice, Ron drops all pretense and says “I resign. I’m pathetic.” You see there that Ron uses the word be and so openly admits he believes he is pathetic, as if it were part of his identity. He’s at a very low point at that moment, and as he doesn’t see that he shouldn’t depreciate himself but only his behaviour, “nobody Harry [says] [makes] any difference”. The two Quidditch practices detailed before the first match mirror one another: in the first, Ron, anxious and insecure, doesn’t play well and recognizes that he didn’t play well, but doesn’t depreciate himself as a person; during the second, Ron, full of self-loathing, takes his anger out on others and plays even worse; but this time, he thinks that’s because his entire person is pathetic, and so Harry is not able to cheer him up.
Ron is also very angry at Hermione and is more aggressive with her than anybody else, because she made him feel worthless: he thought for a moment that he had a chance with her, while in fact she always thought he was not good enough (at least that’s what he thinks at that point); and the fact that she asked him to come “as a guest” to Slughorn’s party is even more painful because she unintentionally made him believe that there was something while there wasn’t since she kissed Krum. So Ron is angry at Hermione because he feels like she made him believe that there was something although she never really had a high opinion of him. Part of this anger is due to the mixed signals she sent him, and an other is due to Ron’s projection of his own feelings on Hermione (once again, it doesn’t make his treatment of her okay, I’m just explaining my interpretation of the events). So Hermione is taking the bulk of Ron’s anger (he’s more aggressive with her than with anybody else) because Ron thinks, without realizing it maybe, that she’s in part to blame for the way he feels now. As I said but I repeat it, that’s because he believes she considers him as a forgettable nobody like everybody else, and also because she made him compete with Krum and Harry for her heart when he was doomed to fail.
And that belief is going to be cemented by the events taking place before and after the Quidditch match. Lavender, before the match, tries to cheer him up and affirms that she knows “[he]’ll be brilliant”. And indeed, Ron does brilliantly thanks to Harry’s scheme: having the certitude that he can’t do wrong released the right hormones in Ron’s brain (while anxiety releases too much cortisol, an hormone that can be paralyzing), and that allowed him to perform well. Yet right after the match, in the changing room, Hermione accuses Harry of spiking Ron’s juice, and uses the fact that Ron saved every single goal as a piece of evidence. To Ron, it’s the ultimate proof that Hermione never thought highly of him as Hermione seems not to believe that Ron doing something remarkable is possible (it’s different for Ron to think that, and for Hermione to believe it as well).
“ Ron gaped at him for a moment, then rounded on Hermione, imitating her voice:
’You added Felix Felicis to Ron’s juice this morning, that’s why he saved everything! See! I can save goals without help, Hermione!’”
Just after that, Ron decides what he wants: and he’s tired of feeling like he’s not good enough for Hermione and gives it up the possibility of having a relationship with her. Instead, he turns to Lavender, because she makes him feel like he’s special and valuable. With Lavender, he doesn’t have to compete with anybody else, he’s not an afterthought, he’s the one she wants to be with. With Lavender, he’s enough as he is. He’s not trying to get over Hermione (which means that he’s not dating Lavender to drown his sorrow and hurt), he chooses (consciously or unconsciously) the way Lavender makes him feel over the way Hermione makes him feel. Thus begins his relationship with her. The reason why he’s immediately making out with her (apart from the fact that he doesn’t know how a relationship is supposed to work) is that he wants to feel good for once and in the fifth book, he said: “you think a bit of kissing would cheer her up”.
Daniel Favre, an eminent expert in education sciences, identified two kinds of sources of motivation for pupils/children: la motivation de sécurisation (motivation to secure oneself), et la motivation d’innovation (motivation to innovate). Basically, a child is driven by the motivation to secure themselves to feel better about themselves and their environment, especially when the latter is new. Once a child is secure enough, they progressively become more and more driven by the motivation to innovate, that allows them to discover new things and explore the world. If I were to apply Daniel Favre’s theory to Ron, I would say that him dating Lavender was driven by the motivation to secure himself.
Despite that, Ron knows he didn’t act well towards Hermione and he feels guilty about that (the fact that he felt apart after the final Quidditch practice before the match against Slytherin because he had bellowed at everybody, and the fact that he felt guilty after he imitated Hermione in Transfiguration and would have apologized had he not feared he would receive another flock of birds is very telling of the way Ron works). That’s why Ron is so awkward the next time he sees Hermione after the match: the last time they have talked, he has imitated her, and that imitation was only a part of the horrible treatment he has given her the days before; moreover, when he sees her, she’s alone, in a deserted classroom, and she’s definitely sad. So he feels guilty and definitely expects to be told off/ yelled at.
However, Hermione does not yell at him. Instead, she says this: “‘You shouldn’t leave Lavender waiting outside,’ […]. ‘She’ll wonder where you’ve gone.’” And just after that, she throws “a little flock of birds” at him, and those birds “attack, pecking and clawing at every bit of flesh they could read”. And this sentence, coupled with Hermione’s excessive reaction, lead him to suspect that after all, Hermione did like him as more than a friend:
“Ron, whose hands and forearms still bore scratches and cuts from Hermione’s bird attack, was taking and resentful tone.
'She can’t complain,’ he told Harry. 'She snogged Krum. So she’s found out someone wants to snog me, too. Well, it’s a free country. I haven’t done anything wrong.’
Harry did not answer, but pretended to be absorbed in the book they were supposed to have read before Charms the following morning (Quintessence: A Quest). Determined as he was to remain friends with both Ron and Hermione, he was spending a lot of time with his mouth shut tight.
'I never promised Hermione anything,’ Ron mumbled. 'I mean, all right, I was going to go to Slughorn’s Christmas party with her, but she never said… just as friends… I’m a free agent…”
Harry turned a paged of Quintessence, aware that Ron was watching him. Ron’s voice tailed away in mutters, barely audible over the loud crackling of the fire, though Harry thought he caught the words ‘Krum’ and ‘can’t complain’ again.”
Ron, there, is very clearly fishing for information. When he’s trailing his sentence with the expressions “but she never said…”, “just as friends”, “I’m a free agent…”, and then watches Harry closely, he’s waiting for Harry to contradict him, he’s hoping against all hopes (because despite his new relationship with Lavender, he still has feelings for Hermione) that Harry’s going to tell him that no, he’s not a free agent, that Hermione wanted to ask him out on a date, that she likes him. However, as Harry doesn’t answer, Ron’s self-doubts get vocal again.
Yet I’d like to point out something: Ron is very clearly criticizing and rejecting the confused and mixed signals Hermione sent. Indeed, the part of Ron who’s still suspecting that Hermione might have been jealous of Lavender affirms that “[Hermione] can’t complain [because] she kissed Krum”. To me, given the reading I made of the events beforehand, it plainly means: “She never made a move on me, believes that I’m incapable and kissed Krum, and she’s probably in a relationship with him. Yes, I was going to go to Slughorn’s party with her, but it never meant anything, right ? She never actually said that it was a date… just as friends… She’s been unclear with me and kissed Krum, so she can’t complain if I want to kiss somebody else!”
So Ron decides he wants to pursue a relationship with Lavender. He’s very happy at the beginning, as I’ve pointed out earlier (Harry said that he “much preferred this new, laughing Ron to the moody, aggressive model he had been enduring for the last few weeks”). Despite that, he’s still very much affected by Hermione: he’s hurt when she mocks his moustache in Transfiguration and so retaliates and does a quite cruel imitation of her, feels guilty of his behaviour afterwards, has to stop kissing Lavender because he’s still feeling jealousy that Hermione is going to go to Slughorn’s party with another, and feels hollow when Hermione subtly puts him down and apparently dates McLaggen to annoy him, while Parvati openly says that Hermione likes Quidditch players like Krum and now McLaggen:
“A long way along the table, Hermione was sitting alone, playing with her stew. Harry noticed Ron looking at her furtively.
‘You could say sorry,’ suggested Harry bluntly.
‘What, and get attacked by another flock of canaries?’ muttered Ron.
‘What did you have to imitate her for?’
‘She laughed at my moustache!’
‘So did I, it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.’
But Ron did not seem to have heard; Lavender had just arrived with Parvati. Squeezing herself in between Harry and Ron, Lavender flung her arms around Ron’s neck.
‘Hi, Parvati!’ said Hermione, ignoring Ron and Lavender completely. ‘Are you going to Slughorn’s party tonight?’
‘Yes, I’m meeting Cormac at eight and we’re-’
There was a noise like a plunger being withdrawn from a blocked sink and Ron surfaced. Hermione acted as though she had not seen or heard anything.
‘we’re going up to the party together.’
‘Cormac?’ said Parvati. ‘Cormac McLaggen, you mean?’
‘That’s right,’ said Hermione sweetly. ‘the one who almost; she put a great deal of emphasis on the word, ‘became Gryffindor Keeper.’
‘Are you going out with him, then,’ asked Parvati, wide-eyed.
‘Oh – yes – didn’t you know ?’ said Hermione, with a most un-Hermione-ish giggle.
‘No!’ said Parvati, looking positively agog at this piece of gossip. ‘Wow, you like your Quidditch players, don’t you? First Krum, then McLaggen…’
‘I like really good Quidditch players,’ Hermione corrected her, still smiling. ‘Well, see you… got to go and get ready for the party…’
She left. At once Lavender and Parvati put their heads together to discuss this new development, with everything they had ever heard about McLaggen, and all they had ever guessed about Hermione.”
So Ron’s going to be torn between two different states of mind: he appreciates Lavender and the way she makes him feel, he is pretty proud of the relationship and wants to get more involved in it (as shows his behaviour at Christmas: “he doesn’t look displeased” when the Twins mention his relationship with Lavender, and he observes Bill and Fleur for tips); but soon he realizes that he what he shares with her is pretty shallow because of several reasons: they don’t have many things in common and have different expectations for their relationship (the necklace Lavender offered him at Christmas and expected him to wear is pretty telling), Ron still has feelings for Hermione that don’t go away, and above all Ron didn’t date Lavender exactly for Lavender herself – he dated her because of his she made him feel; he appreciated more the idea of a relationship with Lavender, and above all what it represented (being special in someone’s heart) than Lavender herself.
That’s why I suggest another interpretation of J.K.R’s words: Ron did not date Lavender because a bit of kissing would make him worthy of Hermione; I’d rather say that dating her gave him a clearer view of what he wanted in a relationship, and what it entailed to be a part of a relationship with another person. In that sense, it indeed made him more mature (like a lot of experiences tend to do). On the other hand, I’d like to add that it also made Hermione mature, as she became much more openly appreciative of him and diminished her critics, because she also realized that if she wanted to have a relationship with Ron, she’d have to make an effort and meet her special person’s needs.
But that’s another story.
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