Analytical - Happily Ever After?

Harry is a hero. Did he chose to be one? No. Did he want to be one? No again. Would he chose to do it all again, if given a choice to relive his life any way he wanted to. Your guess.

That said, he is still a hero. It's bred into him, he can't change that fact no more than he can stop himself from wanting to save others. (More on heroism here.) If that person happens to be Ginny, so what? This brings me to the real purpose of this section: the age old adage of the hero slaying the dragon and saving the damsel in distress. Basilisk, dragon - it's all very familiar, isn't it? Yes, and no.

I've seen a lot of shippers criticize H/G as a fairy-tale with a forced 'happily ever after' ending. While I understand that the hero marrying his best friend's younger sister is a common (and perhaps cliche) literary plot device in the Boarding School [genre], I also see this as a direct result of fandomism. The sheer amount of Harry/Ginny fluff out there could give us all diabetes, and can certainly have misleading consequences.

H/G seems to have been labelled the 'fluff ship' of this fandom (something I don't totally agree with, but that's another rant for another day) - is it because H/G fluff is popular? Possibly, we are the biggest Harry ship, apparently, followed by H/H at half our numbers. Why do we write so much of the stuff? Because we like it? Because we (as writers) are trying to make up for four years of unrequited affection? Maybe, maybe not. There's no clear cut answer either way, but I beg you to take a look at the canon factuals before dismissing H/G as nothing but 'wishful thinking'.

When Harry saved Ginny in the chamber of secrets, he wasn't just saving her from possible mastication in the mouth of a giant snake - he was stopping Tom Riddle from completely consuming her life. This is important, since in OoTP, Harry states that he saved Ginny from the basilisk, when in reality, she had been in immediate danger of having her 'life force', so to speak, absorbed into the Dark Lord. She was distressed, all right.

For a fairy-tale, that seems incessantly dark. Contrary to popular belief, the Harry Potter series are not written for children - they're meant to be read by teenagers and young adults. Several themes explored in the stories are somewhat mature - death being a prime example. Granted, the first book, Philosopher's Stone, is quite kid-friendly, but as the series goes on, the plots get thicker and more emotionally draining for readers. Does that mean older audiences don't deserve fairy-tales? No, of course not - fairy tales are rare in this day and age, and if anything, the masses could do with a bit of cheering up. In some ways, yes, H/G is a fairy-tale. As it's meant to be. The series is a fantasy, and for the most part, JKR follows very specific literary patterns. Having her hero partake in a relationship that echoes the familiar romance epitomized by medieval tales is no big leap. The brilliant part of it is how everything is laid out, how the romance and wonder is juxtaposed with deeper currents of fear and good vs evil interaction. The ending of CoS seamlessly flows with the major plot arc of the novel, while maintaining a sort of independance, in comparison with the other books. Read CoS carefully - is it not different from PS/SS, PoA, GoF, OoTP?

Moving away from that, the crush could have gone two ways from there: disappeared completely or intensify much, much stronger. After all, what's more romantic than being saved by your One True Love? Since Ginny evidently didn't give up on Harry until OoTP, we can assume that the romance endured. Here is when the fangirl crush was replaced by true... well, whatever it is. I won't say 'love' because at this stage that word still seems a bit extreme.

The ideal route would have been for Harry to suddenly realise he cannot live without her and kiss her senseless after professing his undying love - in which case I'd gladly go eat my boot and bow down to you critics.

But that didn't happen now, did it?

The fact that Harry continues to ignore Ginny's affection after this spectacle only undermines the 'fairy-tale' aspect of it all. He doesn't even consciously recognize that Ginny isn't shy around him anymore in OoTP, not until Hermione practically spells it out to him. Given that the girl's been languishing after him for four years, that's pretty harsh. But Ginny doesn't seem to mind - in fact, she's just as caring and attentive to Harry as she ever was, with the addition of being helpful, understanding, and a staunch, courageous ally.

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