first: iâm going to assume youâre super new around here if youâre just now getting the memo that i like hansy. it is the year of our lord 2016, friend, you are incredibly late to the party.
second: keep your hands, arms, legs, and feet inside the ride at all times, and do not exit until you are explicitly instructed to do so. itâs about to get a little bumpy.
if you genuinely think hansy is âdisrespectfulâ to canon, you havenât been paying very much attention to canon. i know what rowling has said/not said about pansy parkinsonâhow she essentially wrote her as a one-dimensional placeholder for every Adolescent Mean Girl everâbut that isnât canon to me. want to know why?
pansy spends the majority of the series as one of draco malfoyâs lackeys; a literal hanger-on; sheâs barely an individual, and when she is given speaking lines, sheâs petty and mean and the embodiment of several highly unflattering stereotypes. she coos at draco, she giggles a lot, she wears a frilly pink dress to the yule ball. she likes unicorns. sheâs clearly written as the Anti-Hermione, and while i certainly have thoughts about that, theyâre beside the point. pansy is not an individual. she is, at best, a caricature of a teenage girl, an easy-to-hate amalgam of a dozen different negative traits that harry, our most unreliable of narrators, is particularly critical of. she is not an individual.
i honestly canât fathom why rowling picked pansy parkinson, of all the available tertiary characters at hogwarts, to be the only one to speak up and try to hand harry over to voldemort. i can only guess that it was intended to be another nail in her Mean Girl coffin, but the older i get, and the more nuanced the implications of that act become, the more i start to wonder.
why would a girl who, historically, was perfectly content to follow draco malfoy aroundâagain, she was not an individualâwhy would she stand out in a crowd? why would she go against the grain so dramatically? was she desperate? okay. why? was she frightened? okay. why? was it a commentary on war in general, that it had fundamentally altered something inside of this non-character, this girl without a personality? what were her motivations? why was she alone in wanting to stop this battle before it started?
itâs an absolutely fascinating about-face for the character.
and it certainly sheds an interesting light on what the dynamic between her and harry might have looked like had it ever been explored.
despite sirius blackâs words of wisdomââwe all have both light and dark inside of us, harryââharry doesnât really buy into the duality of human nature at any point in the series. even snape, one of the most morally grey characters behind dumbledore, has to be proven a long-standing double agent, a spy for The Good Guys, before heâs given any kind of in-text redemption. harry sees the world in strict delineations of black-and-white. dumbledoreâs rampant shadiness is excused because, ultimately, he was trying to do the Right Thing. snapeâs completely broken moral compass is excused because, ultimately, he was trying to do the Right Thing. harry values these grand gestures enough, posthumous or otherwise, that he literally names his children after these men. (whatâs that? a grand gesture?) harry doesnât ever learn how to fully appreciate an approach to problem-solving that isnât rooted in braveryâin these huge, sweeping, powerful acts of gallantry and sacrifice. the subtleties of surviving a war are lost on him, and thatâs a very real, very relatable flaw in his character.
which is why i love the potential of hansy.
thereâs nothing unequal about how their relationship would have to pan out. they would each have to grow, and change, and compromise. i canât emphasize that enough. so often in shipping culture, especially when thereâs an ideological disparity between the two characters in question, thereâs this theme of one saving the other, or fixing them, or teaching them, and it always leaves a sour taste in my mouth. relationships are about give and take. balance. harry and pansy are depicted as radically different in virtually every way. just putting post-war versions of them in the same room would result in friction, and given enough time, i like to think certain aspects of the otherâs character would bleed out a little bit. make them both wonder.
because harry would have to start understanding that there are layers to people, to their motives and their weaknessesâand their strengths, even. blanket statements and generalizations about slytherins, about enemies, are inherently wrong. thereâs nuance to everyone and everything. so often in canon, he glosses over the details and relies on hermione to point them out. i would love a harry who grows up and realizes that the people around him arenât shaped precisely as heâs always thought they were.
similarly, pansyâs perception of the worldâas well as harry & co.âis also pretty narrow. we know significantly less about how her mind works than we do about how harryâs does, so thereâs some obvious room for interpretation here, but even with a bare-bones, totally factual reading of her character, we can infer that sheâs as disdainful of gryffindors as they are of slytherins. she surrounds herself with people who share her prejudices, and sheâs smart. (sheâs a prefect, remember?) she latches onto draco malfoy with alacrityâwealthy, politically savvy, pureblood draco malfoyâand, if her act of rebellion at the end of the series is any indication, she has no qualms about placing her own well-being above that of everyone else. i quite like the idea of a pansy parkinson who just doesnât get it, doesnât get why harry was willing to die to save the world, doesnât get why anyone was willing to die to save him. i like the idea of a pansy who learns to see the bigger picture.
hansy is important. in canon, outside of canonâtheyâre two characters who could have a positive impact on each other, whose wildly opposing viewpoints could clash, and then settle, and then meld.
