Anise’s Note:
Welcome to the next installment of Creamtea’s wonderful essays! Here, we’ll delve into the stunning mysteries of the otherwise inexplicable nature of H/G in HBP. We’ll see the surprising evidence, and the shockingly logical arguments will be laid bare and made clear. And at the end, you, too, may feel that at last, it all makes sense. Ready? Then get your scuba gear on, and let’s dive fearlessly into…
GIRLS AND LOVE POTIONS: HERMIONE, GINNY AND HARRY
By Creamtea
(Notes and Addendums by Anise)
(In the following all quotes and page numbers are as in the Bloomsbury standard edition.)
A bit about my attitude to the HP books. I view them not as adventure novels but as detective/mystery novels in which the author is essentially lying to the reader and challenging the reader to see through the lie - that's the whole point of the books. JKR references detective novels on her site 'bookshelf' (Dorothy L Sayers - twice, front and centre,) plus one of her mates (Ian Rankin - detective novelist) flat out said in an interview that 'her books are practically detective mysteries'.
In hunting about for clues in the HP books I DO NOT deal in ‘symbolism.’ As far as I’m concerned the clues are in the text, directly embedded in what the characters say and do; if I can’t find clues there but instead have to resort to ‘symbolism’ to prove a case, then I assume I have no case and I drop it.
My first reaction on the ‘Love Potion’ theory, and the reaction I held for some time (even on my first read-through of the book), was that the theory was simply a desperate attempt by those against an H/G pairing to find some way – any way - to deny it: that it was a result of people desperately attempting to reject JKR’s clear expression in canon. As to my own attitude to H/G, I felt disgust at the pairing and annoyance at the poor writing of it, but I accepted it as canon. I thought several things about it: that it was subject to a stunning lack of proper foreshadowing, that indeed it went against the previous theme of the five books, being that he hadn’t noticed her - and no, I don’t buy ‘chocolate Easter eggs’ as symbolic foreshadowing, I don’t buy ‘symbolism’ full stop. I thought that Harry’s reactions were ludicrously ‘Harlequin Hero’, that Ginny as seen via Harry was ludicrously perfect, that the dialogue was laughably cheesy, like something out of a teenage girls’ hopeless romance novel. Most of all though, I thought the whole theme of ‘girl pines after boy for YEARS, until one day her Cinderella devotion is rewarded and SHAZZAM he suddenly sees that She Is The One’ was morally bankrupt. I can’t begin to tell you how angry that last made me – that an author like JKR, who is in effect in Loco Parentis to millions of girls the world over, could peddle tripe like that, encouraging impressionable girls to pine away waiting for Him to notice them (whoever He is – the quarterback, the football captain, the ‘cool guy’ at school, their best friend’s elder brother, Tom Felton, Dan Radcliffe, whoever). To see JKR peddle the fantasy that after FIVE YEARS of Harry seeing Ginny as his ‘little sister’ figure/not really noticing her at all, that he’d suddenly ‘switch on’ to her as his Twu Wuv made me pretty cross. Nevertheless, even though I thought the plotline was ridiculous, I still didn’t entertain the ‘Love Potion’ theory. I just forced myself to swallow H/G as canon and instead thought it was a spectacularly poor piece of writing on JKR’s part.
Anyway, I read the book and I uncomfortably note that the theme of Love Potions does keep cropping up on page after page, but STILL I won’t believe it – I STILL think H/G is meant to be taken seriously but that it’s just rubbish writing. I look again at the book but I keep getting sidetracked by what I came to think of as ‘that love potion crap’ which keeps cropping up in the story. Finally I throw up my hands and decide to look into it – however stupid the theory may ostensibly seem and however little faith I have in it – just so I can prove to myself it’s rubbish and get past it.
I fish around for a while. I see Love Potion mentions and inferences all over, but I still don’t see any discernable pattern. In fact, the ‘Love Potion’ theory seems totally gutshot by the following canon:
Page 174, the first Potions lesson: from the Amortentia cauldron ‘was emitting one of the most seductive scents Harry had ever inhaled: somehow it reminded him simultaneously of treacle tart, the woody smell of a broomstick handle and something flowery he thought he might have smelled at The Burrow.’ It is further canon that Amortentia is (page 176) ‘the most powerful love potion in the world’ … ‘it’s supposed to smell … according to what attracts us’ (all from Hermione, who knows a lot about it). Now that seems to slam the Love Potion theory to a halt before it’s even started, because Harry smells ‘flowers’ (a.k.a., as is established later, Ginny) during his first official encounter with a love potion, i.e. he was already ‘attracted to’ Ginny BEFORE he came into contact with the love potion, and thus the love potion simply indicated that he was already naturally attracted to her. I realised that any Love Potion theory must address this fact and explain it – you can’t just ignore it because it doesn’t suit your ideas.
I knew that if the Amortentia evidence were to be disproved, and that Harry isn’t naturally attracted to Ginny and there were indeed Love Potion dirty dealings involved, then there could only be one logical explanation for the Amortentia episode ‘flowery smell’: Harry must have been dosed with a Love Potion to engineer an attraction to Ginny BEFORE he is exposed to the scent of the Amortentia. So, I drag my weary ass back to the first chapter in which he meets Ginny – the chapter when Harry first arrives at The Burrow, ‘An Excess of Phlegm’ – and flick about looking for an explanation. I don’t really expect to find anything as I’ve got no real faith in the Love Potion theory anyway. Partly I’m only looking into it to prove to myself that he couldn’t have been dosed before, so that I can shut up that nagging voice at the back of my mind and get on with the rest of the book. I haven’t even got anything to really go on, all I’ve got is that if anything DID happen it’s somehow got to have involved the scent of flowers. I’m fiddling about with the chapter, not really expecting to find anything , when !BAM!, I see it. I see those little clues that are the loose threads that allow me to start pulling away at the Love Potion strand that runs through the book, and I pull and I pull and I unravel it, and what I unravel is this:
SUMMARY
The summary doesn’t give canon evidence (quotes etc) it just lays out the overall theory. I chose to give a summary first and then back it up with a separate detailed, quote stuffed, canon referenced ‘full’ section giving the ‘evidence’, as otherwise people might be hard pushed to keep track. If you like, the summary provides the overall picture, which is then ‘coloured in’ in the detailed section.
Summary: Hermione dosed Harry with a home-made love potion during his first night at The Burrow. It was designed to make him fall for her Harry-crushing, love-lorn best mate, Ginny. Two points right now: Firstly, Ginny has no idea about this and doesn’t know anything about Hermione’s plans. Ginny is innocent of the entire scheme. Secondly, Hermione is content to try and dose Harry only because she does not see Love Potions as Dark or dangerous, and besides, she is sure that Ginny is the ideal girlfriend for Harry, she thinks Harry just needs a little push, that’s all, that the situation just needs a ‘helping hand’. If Hermione had thought it was dangerous or damaging to Harry, then I am convinced from all that we know of her that she would never have done it.
Hermione thinks her potion has failed as the next morning she looks for discernable change in Harry’s behaviour but can detect none. She drops the plan. Then, a few weeks later, everyone goes to Diagon Alley where Hermione spots the WWW Love Potions and she decides to give it a second try using a ‘proper’ love potion this time. She either buys the WWW love potion there and/or orders a supply via the Twins special Owl Delivery.
When school starts she comes across the Amortentia in the first Potions lesson. It reminds Harry – among other things – of something flowery he thought he had smelled at the Burrow (the smell later associated with Ginny). In fact, he is not reminded of Ginny per se, but reminded of the smell associated with the first ‘dose’ of love potion that he was exposed to wherein he was ‘set up’ to be attracted to Ginny anyway. During the lesson, Hermione may have stolen some Amortentia (we never know for sure).
Throughout the school year Hermione is periodically dosing Harry with various combinations of WWW Love Potion (and stolen Amortentia?) trying to engineer him to fall for Ginny. Ginny still has no idea that any of this is going on. Hermione carries on dosing, not believing she is having any real effect because Harry is hiding his newborn and unsettling ‘feelings’ for Ginny. He internalises them and is largely able to keep himself in check (he is a boy who was good at throwing off the Imperius) but in actual fact, she is having an effect: Harry is periodically given to wild, infatuated longings for Ginny, and they scare him. I repeat that Hermione never has any idea that what she is doing is in any way dangerous or injurious to Harry, she does not believe that love potions are Dark or dangerous magic. If she did believe they were Dark or dangerous, or if she knew the turmoil she was creating within Harry, I believe her own actions would have horrified her and that she would have stopped immediately.
At a point just prior to the Quidditch Cup match, Hermione tells Ginny what she has been doing. Ginny is angry at Hermione, but yet … this is the one chance she has to get what she believes she has always wanted: Harry’s ‘love’. After the match the gives in to temptation and makes a move on Harry. Prompted by his repeated dosings and chemically engendered infatuation/obsession, Harry responds and they are officially a couple.
Things seem okay and trickle along in a tame fashion – there are no great dates to report of, it’s just comfy. Harry might still be receiving the odd dose here and there to keep him ‘topped up’. Then all hell breaks loose, the DEs attack, Bill is marred and suddenly we get one of the strongest gestures of true love in the book: Fleur won’t hear of leaving the marred Bill, she loves him – it is a proper love, the kind you can’t get out of a bottle. Both Hermione and Ginny see this at first hand and are startled by it. It is a wake up call. Under the pressure of events, Harry (who does not know that he has ever been potioned) decides to break with Ginny, he still ‘cares’ about her though and it makes him miserable to do it. Ginny flares up slightly, she can see it all slipping away from her, and yet … she accepts it with a form of grace as she realises it would never have lasted as it was based on a falsity anyway, and could she have really borne to go on dosing Harry forever?
The book ends with Harry ‘turning his back’ on Ginny and spending what precious time he has left to him with his friends Ron and Hermione. He does not think about Ginny from the moment her ‘turns his back on her’ at Dumbledore’s funeral.
For the future: I believe the love potion scheme with come out and that it will send a destructive shockwave through Harry’s ‘relation’ with Ginny, and will also send a shockwave through the Trio as Hermione’s culpability is revealed. Ron will be affected as both Ginny’s brother and Hermione’s boyfriend, and will sympathise with Harry as he was a sufferer of the devastating effects of a love potion himself: he knows what Harry went through. Ginny will go into an emotionally devastated decline when Harry reveals his anger at what was done to him and he rejects her. Her magical ability/strength will be damaged by it. She will also be targeted by Voldemort, who will still believe that Harry cares for her as she was ‘Harry’s girlfriend’. Not counting possible character deaths: by the end of the book, Harry and Ginny will never be a couple – Harry could never trust her no matter what – and their ‘love’ was never real anyway, but based on a potion.
THE FULL THEORY: EVIDENCE FROM CANON
This is where I go into detail and flesh out the summary – adhering strictly to HBP canon.
WHAT IS GINNY’S MOTIVATION?
Ginny never really gave up on Harry, ever, even though by the end of OoTP he still hasn’t made a move on her. Indeed she has heard it straight from the mouth of the Boy Who Wouldn’t Date Her that he didn’t even remember one of the defining events of her life – her possession by Voldemort.
Ginny was so keen to ‘get’ Harry that her behavior in OoTP – getting a life and going out with other boys on the advice of her friend Hermione – was actually directed at getting Harry to notice her. It didn’t work. She admits it at the end of HBP. Page 603: “I never really gave up on you … I always hoped … Hermione told me to get on with my life, maybe go out with some other people, relax a bit around you, because I never used to be able to talk if you were in the room, remember? And she thought you might take a bit more notice if I was a bit more – myself.”
Now, I take this to mean she was up to this behaviour in OoTP, because that is when she ‘takes off’ as a character with her boyfriends etc. As an aside I find the lay out of the end of that passage interesting. It’s the little dash between the main body of the text and the word ‘myself’, she pauses before she utters that word, almost as though she has to think about what to say. I think there’s a possibility that OoTP Ginny (and then Super!Ginny) may all a bit of an act on her part really – a persona she adopted. Because the phrase “And she thought you might take a bit more notice if I was a bit more - ” feels to me as though it might have naturally ended in a word like, ‘brash’, ‘sassy’, something like that, or maybe she was going to say ‘a bit more like Cho Chang’(whom Hermione knew Harry fancied), in any case she catches herself, pauses and puts in ‘myself’.
So, we have a Ginny who never got over Harry, so much so that she spent the school year in OoTP (and since?) affecting her behaviour to catch his eye, and using other boys to get Harry to notice her. She didn’t date other boys for themselves (Michael, Dean, and even Neville, as she admitted she only accepted his invite to the Yule Ball so she could attend it and presumably have a chance to get next to Harry,) she dated them to get next to Harry/ to get Harry to notice her. Indeed, it makes sense of the ‘I chose Dean’ comment at the end of OoTP. Too right she ‘chose’ him, she may have liked him but it certainly served her purpose to go out with a boy who was one of only four boys who shared a dorm with Harry, only three of whom were available to her as Ron is her brother. It is a trick used the world over by girls (and maybe boys too): if you fancy someone you think is a little out of your reach and whom you my have to ‘work at’, then go out with an ‘easier catch’ mate of theirs so at least you are in their social orbit.
Ginny is someone who is desperate. She is someone who’ll go to quite some lengths to get Harry. Someone in fact, who doesn’t stop to consider the real feelings of boys in her blind, desperate struggle to get Harry’s ‘love’. This strikes me as someone who could find it within themselves to take advantage of an already existing love potion situation as she won’t necessarily see/want to see that Harry has real feelings that she is messing with, she is just desperate to be ‘loved’ by him.
WHAT IS HERMIONE’S MOTIVATION? AND WHY DOES HERMIONE DECIDE UPON, AND CARRY OUT, THE LOVE POTION PLAN? – IT SEEMS OUT OF CHARACTER.
This is going to be quite a long section, as Hermione appears to be OOC in this theory, but within the setting of her emotional development in HBP, I don’t think love potion shenanigans are OOC for her …
Reason 1: She is a friend of Ginny’s (page 496 ‘Hermione and Ginny who had always got on together very well’). Ginny wanted Harry to the extent of altering her own behaviour in OoTP in order to try and get him, but with no success. Hermione was already engaged enough to have suggested Ginny’s previous tactics to her, so when those tactics failed Hermione decides to ‘help out’ by going a little bit further.
Reason 2: She sees no harm in using a love potion. We know this because when Harry and Hermione are discussing how the cursed necklace and the love potions could have gotten past Hogwarts security. Hermione says (page 288)
Hr: Secrecy Sensors detect jinxes, curses and concealment charms, don’t they? They’re used to find Dark magic and Dark objects …. and anyway, love potions aren’t Dark or dangerous -”
H: Easy for you to say.
Okay, so from the above it is securely established in CANON that Hermione doesn’t think the love potions are Dark or dangerous, and acknowledging that is crucial because if she thought they were she’d never have done it. Note Harry’s little reply ‘easy for you to say’; yes it is easy for her to say, because she is not the one being dosed.
Indeed, why should she think they are Dark or dangerous? Lots of other girls are buying love potions off WWW and are planning to use them on Harry prior to Slughorn’s Christmas party. Why shouldn’t Ginny have the same advantage? After all, she ‘loved’ him first, way before any late-comers like Romilda Vane popped up – if anyone deserves Harry, Ginny does. Besides, if it was dangerous surely WWW wouldn’t be allowed to sell it?
Furthermore, although the ‘Birthday Surprise’ (page 371) Ron gets from the Romilda Vane love leaves him horrified, Hermione doesn’t know about it: ‘Then, very slowly, his grin sagged and vanished to be replaced by an expression of utmost horror’. He then ‘collapsed into an armchair looking devastated’. Note the ‘utmost horror’ and ‘devastated’; love potions are not a happy experience for the dosee, however girly and ‘fun’ they might seem as a concept. The point relating to Hermione is that there is no evidence that either Ron or Harry ever mentions the incident to Hermione (or anyone else except Slughorn.) In my opinion, they keep quiet on it- partly because it’s a horribly embarrassing experience for Ron, and partly because they just plain forget in the aftermath of Ron’s immediate near-death from the doped mead.
An extra point is that during the Potions class where we ‘meet’ the Amortentia, Slughorn asks Hermione “I assume you know what it does?” Hermione answers: “It’s the most powerful love potion in the world!” She then goes on to describe it purely in terms of its physical appearance, but she didn’t answer the question in terms of its emotional effects, which is actually what the question was asking: what does it do? It is left to Slughorn to go into the emotional effects on page 177.
“Amortentia doesn’t really create love of course. It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. No, this will simply cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. It is probably the most dangerous and powerful potion in this room – oh yes,” he said, nodding gravely at Malfoy and Nott, both of whom were smirking sceptically. “When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love …”
Not only does Hermione not consider love potions dangerous, she hasn’t thought about them in terms of their effects and consequences properly at all.
Reason 3: Hermione shows herself of a mind to magically ‘tweak events’ to get things to go the way she wants them, especially when she thinks that the way she wants them is they way they ought to be. See the chapter ‘Hermione’s Helping Hand’ wherein she’s quite happy to Confundus McLaggan out of the running for Quidditch Keeper to ensure that Ron keeps the spot. She also states (page 484) re the use of Felix Felicis “The situation with Slughorn was different, you just needed to tweak the circumstances a bit.” This is banged home on page 486 when the line is essentially repeated in Harry’s thoughts: “surely this was a case for, as Hermione put it, ‘tweaking the circumstances’?” Hermione is thus established in canon as someone who is prepared to use magic to ‘tweak’ events/circumstances to get them to go the way she wants. The use of the word ‘tweak’ (which she uses herself, it is her spoken phrase) strongly implies that she doesn’t see her actions as serious or as carrying heavy consequences, and that she regards the changes she engenders as small. I.e. that she sees that events would/should have turned out her way anyway – she just helped them along with ‘Hermione’s Helping Hand’.
The known ‘tweaking’ with McLaggan can be directly compared to the conjectured dosing of Harry: she used magic to affect a person’s mind and judgment with the aim of arranging a beneficial situation for a third party for whom she cared (Ron and Ginny Weasley) – without the third party knowing about it or requesting it.
I find the actual chapter title, ‘Hermione’s Helping Hand’, important in itself – as under my theory ‘a helping hand’ is her role in the love potion fiasco. I see the chapter title as a huge clue to her overarching role in that aspect of the story.
Reason 4: emotional control. Hermione’s own love life is a mess. She can’t get through to Ron (not since the great Krum debacle of GoF) and she is frustrated. Ron, in turn, is hurting her by having taken up with Lavender to get some snogging practice in and to get revenge on Hermione’s own ‘Krum snogging’(prompted in both cases, ironically enough, by Ginny’s attack on his ‘poor’ romantic reputation and her revealing of Hermione’s confidence that Hermione had ‘snogged Viktor Krum’ – page 269). The extent of her frustration in HPB is shown in the quite shocking end to the Chapter Felix Felicis (page 283) wherein she sets a charmed flock of little golden birds onto Ron (having witnessed him with Lavender). She is ‘shrieking’, her expression is ‘wild’ and she sets them on him ‘like a hail of fat golden bullets’ and Ron has to cover his face as they are ‘pecking and clawing at every bit of flesh they could reach’. Hermione departs abruptly, and to the reader it is clear that she is sobbing. This strikes me as a girl who, if her own romantic life is a mess, would have the motivation to ‘sort someone else out’ in an effort to give herself the illusion that she is in control.
This ‘control’ motivation is also shared by Ginny. Ginny believes that Molly is scheming to put a stop to the marriage of Fleur and Bill, and says so in front of Hermione who does not dispute it. (Page 93)
“You don’t really want her around forever?” Ginny asked Ron incredulously. When he merely shrugged, she said, “Well, mum’s going to put a stop to it if she can, I bet you anything.”
“How does she manage that?” asked Harry.
“She keeps trying to get Tonks round for dinner. I think she’s hoping Bill will fall for Tonks instead. I hope he does, I’d much rather have her in the family.”
Ginny thus believes, and Hermione is a witness to that belief, that ‘love’ is something you can affect, even if it is other people’s love, and that you have a right to affect it if you want to.
OPINION: Hermione is a person who needs to feel in control – JKR has said in interviews that Hermione is insecure, and in canon Hermione is given to controlling behaviour as a character. She has a very maternal ‘bossy’ attitude toward Ron and Harry (mentioned frequently in canon) she is also an organised person – often using lists and having detailed written timetables of various sorts (also canon). I think that this kind of character in real life – a list-maker - is often prompted by a need for control, that such people feel that if they can organise things on paper then they can organise life. They are scared of being out of control. Hermione is scared of being out of control; using a love potion to ‘tweak events’ and make sure they go her way would be fine by her.
JKR has stipulated that she created Ginny as the ‘perfect’ and ‘ideal’ girlfriend for Harry - yes, so that Hermione sees that they are meant to be together and is of the opinion that surely Harry must really love Ginny anyway but he just doesn’t know it yet, he just needs that little extra push to get him started and then his real feelings will kick in.
Anise’s Note: That could explain a lot which I think is otherwise very strange about JKR’s Ginny comments in that Mugglenet interview. For the moment, let’s leave aside the fact that one paragraph before the “ideal girl” comments, JKR says she had always intended for Ginny and Harry to get together and then part. And let’s not deal with the way she says earlier that Harry will have to go on alone. Nope, let’s just look at what is seemingly the most damning thing JKR’s ever said or written for those of us who were profoundly uncomfortable with the H/G of HBP. JKR certainly does say that Ginny fits the description of “Harry’s ideal woman.” And yet there is so much more she could say that she doesn’t. Are they in love? (Not a word about that!) What’s really the nature of the emotions that Harry feels for Ginny, and she for him? Are these emotions genuine? Will they last? Are they strong enough to get them back together? What is Harry for Ginny, no matter how great she may be for him? And so on.
Honestly, it sounds more like JKR is giving us a laundry list: Ginny is warm, compassionate, tough, and so on. It’s almost as if we’re looking at a list of qualities that someone is checking off, and now that Creamtea brings up this point, the conclusion is pretty irresistible: someone actually was, and it wasn’t Harry. Back to Creamtea’s commentary…
As an aside: in communication with poster Lysette at FAP, Lysette commented that Hermione was like ‘Emma’ in Jane Austen’s novel of the same name. Emma is a gifted young woman who only has marginal control over her own life, particularly in its romantic elements. As a reaction to that she tries to ‘organise’ the love lives of those around her to give herself a sense of control, she attempts to engineer people to go against their natural inclinations and to instead pair off with people she thinks are more suitable to them. In her machinations she almost brings emotional disaster and irretrievable heartache upon those involved – including upon herself. Note that Jane Austen is known to be one of JKR’s favourite novelists and that ‘Emma’ is one of the Austen novels shown as a ‘standing book’ in JKR’s ‘links’ bookshelf on her website. JKR does not have all of Austen’s books shown on her bookshelf – possibly indicating that those she does ‘show’ have particular significance.
Reason 5: emotional ruthlessness re boys – the emotional ability to deploy and manipulate them as though they were mere chess pieces which lacked feeling. Page 293, prior to the Christmas party, Hermione (in Ron’s hearing), with false sweetness and coyness ‘announces with a most un-Hermion-ish giggle’ that she is going to the party with McLaggen. Harry surveys the situation thus: “Ron looked strangely blank and said nothing. Harry was left to ponder in silence the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge.” This phrase ‘the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge’ resonates with me, as given my love potion theory you could also see it as alluding to the depths to which girls will sink to get control over a situation which scares them precisely because they have no control over it (the romantic reactions of others). ‘Girls’ here includes Ginny too, if it’s taken as a general statement. In effect Hermione is trying to control Ron, she is trying to manipulate his emotions. That’s not too far off dosing someone with a ‘harmless’ love potion. We know in canon that many girls actually are ‘sinking to the depths’ of attempting to use a love potion on Harry to get control of him and get an invite to that very same party. At the party itself Hermione’s willingness to coolly manipulate others is brought home when she’s trying to escape McLaggen, and Harry remonstrates that it serves her right for bringing him in the first place. The scene runs:
“I thought he’d annoy Ron most,” said Hermione dispassionately. I debated for a while about Zacharias Smith, but I thought, on the whole – ”
“You considered Smith?” said Harry, revolted.
“Yes, I did, and I’m starting to wish I’d chosen him …”
This little scene is quite alarming, as we clearly see a Hermione who can be dispassionate and debate with herself about who to wind Ron up with. She is quite at home with coolly manipulating boys to get what she wants, and does not take their feelings into account. I think it is important to note Harry’s response to her: he is revolted. Not only is he revolted at Smith per se (following his Quidditch commentary) but I think he is revolted at Hermione’s cold-blooded attitude. I repeat my Summary assertion here: that if Hermione and Ginny have been up to funny business with love potions, then when Harry finds out there will be hell to pay.
In the party scenes (before and at) we see a Hermione who is quite able and willing to manipulate boys in a cold, dispassionate fashion. Indeed, we know from Ginny’s own words (page 603 quoted above) that it was Hermione who suggested the tactic of manipulating other boys (dating them) to get Harry to notice Ginny in the first place. So it is canon that she is the kind of person who can think of a tactic like that, and in recommending it to someone else obviously sees nothing wrong with it.
Given all these reasons, I find it completely within character for HBP Hermione to help Ginny with a ‘harmless’ love potion designed to ‘tweak circumstances’ with Harry.
Reason 6: Hermione has a limited ‘emotional intelligence’. Throughout SPEW she totally failed to understand that the House Elves wanted to retain the social hierarchy in which the felt secure, but to be guaranteed kind treatment within it. She believes they want ‘freedom’ and won’t hear any differently because she is ‘right’. She is wrong, they don’t want it and that is made clear by both Winky’s reaction to ‘freedom’ and by the House Elves’ refusal to clean Gryffindor Tower when they realise Hermione is trying to trick them into ‘freedom’ by leaving clothes lying about for them to ‘accept’. My point is that she is someone who has shown signs of low emotional engagement in that when she thinks she is right in knowing ‘what is good’ for someone, she ploughs ahead with it despite all evidence that she is wrong. She thinks she knows best in the first place and won’t even see any counter-evidence. Conjecture: some have commented on the lack of SPEW in HBP. Perhaps Hermione dropped SPEW because her new ‘project’ was Harry/Ginny.
Anise’s Note: This is such an important point that once again, I feel moved to comment on it. It certainly would explain the very curious fact that we see neither hide nor hair of SPEW anywhere in HBP. And this is a fact that I don’t think most people have paid enough attention to, largely because it’s an absence rather than a presence: SPEW just plain isn’t there, and we don’t know why. It was very much present for the past two books. So why don’t we see it again in HBP? This would be the first halfway logical reason I’ve seen for that strange absence.
HOW DID HERMIONE DOSE HARRY AT THE BURROW SO THAT WHEN HE COMES ACROSS THE AMORTENTIA IN THE POTIONS CLASS, IT SMELLS OF ‘SOMETHING FLOWERY HE THOUGHT HE MIGHT HAVE SMELLED AT THE BURROW’?
Chapter five: An Excess of Phlegm. Harry arrives late at night at The Burrow (though he was expected very early the next morning). At first sight of The Burrow, he thinks of Ron. On entering The Burrow he asks after Hermione to Molly, (whereupon it is established that she arrived ‘the day before yesterday’) but note that not once does he think about, mention, or ask after Ginny. He has not thought about her once all through the book so far. She is simply not a blip on his radar. Molly has already arranged for Harry to sleep in Fred and George’s vacated room which Molly has prepared for him: (page 87) “I’ve got Fred and George’s room all ready for you, you’ll have it to yourself.” Note that as he will be sleeping alone, any ‘scent potion’ will affect only him and not some other boy. Note also that as Molly has arranged his accommodation, Hermione (who is already at The Burrow), thus KNOWS what room Harry will be sleeping in. Then he goes to his bedroom. On arriving in the room with Molly he notes immediately that (page 87)
‘Though a large vase of flowers had been placed on a desk in front of the small window, their perfume could not disguise the lingering smell of what Harry thought was gunpowder. A considerable amount of floor space was devoted to a vast number of unmarked cardboard boxes …”
(The unmarked cardboard boxes are shortly identified as Fred and George’s spare stock.)
Now that the passage about the vase of flowers is the ONLY mention of flowers or a flowery perfume at The Burrow in HBP. Also note that the flowers passage is ostensibly it is a completely unnecessary passage. It is not there to introduce the boxes, as they are of no account. Narratively we need never have had mention of the vase, flowers, smell or boxes, and the story would have been just the same (Hermione could have picked up the punching telescope anywhere in the Burrow, and the story still would have worked). So why is the passage there? Let’s look at it in detail:
“Though a large vase of flowers had been placed on a desk…”
Note that the flowers ‘had been placed’, they weren’t ‘on’ the desk, they ‘had been placed’, the text indicating not that they just happened to be there, but that they had been specifically put there by someone.
“ … their perfume could not disguise the lingering smell of what Harry thought was gunpowder.”
The flowers were put there to disguise the smell.
The passage taken as a whole tries to imply that the gunpowder smell is coming from the boxes – that is the reader’s first assumption because mention of the boxes abuts onto mention of the disguise of something Harry thought was gunpowder. It is simply assumed that the boxes contain gunpowder (or something very like it) and that Molly has been very considerate and tried to disguise the smell for Harry. However, knowing what we know about Molly this does this bear up to any kind of logic. Firstly, Molly would never have the risk of gunpowder being stashed in the house in ‘box sized’ quantities – not when there are sheds and outhouses for them to be stored in. And Molly would NEVER then allow Harry to sleep in the same room as the boxes of gunpowder. She’d be up the wall with worry, imagining (quite rightly) that one stray spark from a wand and it could blow him to Kingdom Come. The concept of Molly allowing Harry to sleep in a room full of gunpowder is plain stupid. So – we are driven to the conclusion that whatever ‘Harry thought was gunpowder’ it was NOT in the boxes, and indeed may not have been gunpowder at all (note that Harry only thinks it is gunpowder, it is not stated that it IS gunpowder). Also, if a heavy gunpowdery smell was coming from the boxes, so much so that it was unpleasant and needed to be disguised, then Molly wouldn’t disguise the smell, she’d just move the boxes. When (in the same chapter) Hermione roots in the boxes and unearths the punching telescope, there is a loud bang and a heavy puff of black smoke is emitted – but no-one comments on the gunpowdery smell. In real life, if a quantity of gunpowder had gone off, there would have been a heavy acrid stench in the room, and Ron certainly would have commented.
If there was no gunpowder, but just a gunpowdery smell, then what could have been causing the smell that the flowers were put there to disguise?
Okay, look back at the flower vase passage and note the use of the word ‘perfume’ and the word ‘disguise’; the perfume, it is clearly implied, is intended to disguise the lingering gunpowdery smell. Now, think back to the passage I quoted from pages 287 to 288 when Harry and Hermione are discussing how the cursed necklace and the love potions could have gotten past Hogwarts security. Hermione says of the love potions: “Fred and George send them disguised as perfumes.” Fred and George use ‘perfume’ to disguise the love potions, the ‘perfume’ of the flowers disguises the ‘gunpowder’ smell. This, for me, is a very indicative link.
I conjecture that the gunpowdery smell was a home-cooked love potion whisked up by Hermione during her stay at The Burrow. Harry breathed it in during the night, and breathed it in all night during his suspiciously ‘deep sleep’. It was disguised by the aroma of flowers, and Hermione placed the flowers in the room for that purpose. It was designed to make him fall for Ginny. The potion DID in fact have an effect on him and make him far more receptive to Ginny (which I will cover shortly).
Note that between the ‘flower perfume’ at The Burrow and ‘the flowery smell’ of the Amortentia, Harry does not ONCE get any hint of ‘flowery smell’ off Ginny. Not at the Burrow, not in Diagon Alley, not on the train - although he meets her plenty of times. The flowery smell is thus not Ginny per se, it is the scent associated with the love potion that made him fancy her. So when he comes across the Amortentia, he DOES smell ‘the flowery smell from The Burrow’ which is what ‘attracts’ him; he smells it because the flowery smell is the smell associated with the love-potion, not intrinsically of Ginny herself.
A bit of a stretch you might think, from one mention of a vase of flowers. Well so did I, so that’s why I went looking for corroborating evidence.
There is no indication at all that Molly notices any funny smell – only that Harry does. I believe that Molly cannot smell it at all. She also doesn’t apologise for the smell – and I think she would if she could smell it. Furthermore, Harry gets into one of the beds after she leaves and finds something in the bed (page 88):
‘There was something hard in the pillowcase. He groped inside it and pulled out a sticky purple and orange sweet, which he recognised as a Puking Pastille. Smiling to himself he rolled over and was instantly asleep.’
He has a deep, unbroken sleep from which he awakes as though he feels he has not slept at all. Note that Harry is ‘knocked out’ practically the instant he touches the sweet which it is written ‘he recognised it as a Puking Pastille’ NOT that ‘it was a Puking Pastille’. Harry may have thought it was a Puking Pastille, but I think it was part of Hermione’s love-drug effort and something cooked up by her. Why? Because not only do we have the stunning coincidence of Harry being ‘knocked out’ practically the instant he touches the sweet (and the manner of his awakening next morning: see below) but also: we know for a fact that Molly herself made the room up for him. Part of this process of preparing a room for a loved guest would be to change the sheets and change the pillows (ask any woman alive). Molly would have changed the pillows, no doubt about it. But what do we find? – a sweet stuck inside one. That sweet MUST have been put there after Molly changed the bed. Harry had a choice of two beds – I conjecture that Hermione stuck ‘a sweet’ in each one, to catch him whatever bed he was in. She put the vase of flowers there to disguise the smell thrown out by ‘the sweets’. Why did she do it the night before he was due to arrive? Because the obtrusive smell would be something he was more likely to investigate/comment upon if it ‘turned up’ during his stay. If it was there at the start, he would just let it ride.
More evidence that Harry was drugged throughout the night by a scented ‘potion’: next morning he awakes – from his deep but unsatisfying night’s sleep – in a condition akin to someone with a hangover, or akin to someone drugged.
‘There was something hard in the pillowcase. He groped inside it and pulled out a sticky purple and orange sweet, which he recognised as a Puking Pastille. Smiling to himself he rolled over and was instantly asleep.
Seconds later, or so it seemed to Harry, he was woken by what sounded like cannon-fire as the door burst open. Sitting bolt upright, he heard the rasp of the curtains being pulled back: the dazzling sunlight seemed to poke him hard in both eyes. Shielding them with one hand, he groped hopelessly for his glasses with the other.
“Wuzzgoinon?” ..”
“We didn’t know you were here already!” said a loud and excited voice, and he received a sharp blow to the top of the head.
“Ron, don’t hit him!” said a girl’s voice reproachfully.
Harry’s hand found his glasses and he shoved them on, though the light was so bright he could hardly see anyway. A long, looming shadow quivered in front of him for a moment; he blinked and Ron Weasley came into focus, grinning down at him.’
The too-loud rasping noises, the painfully too-bright light that hurts his eyes, the ‘groping hopelessly’, the slurred speech, the inability to focus (on Ron), this all sounds like someone who has the equivalent of a bad hangover. (And note Hermione’s cry of ‘don’t hit him!’ as Ron hits him on the head, which is the very first thing she says in the book and will be referred to later.)
Could Molly have been behind it? Could she have stuck the ‘sweet’ under the pillow and put the flowers in the room to disguise the smell? Yes she could have as she had the prime opportunity: she prepared the room for Harry. Could it have been Ginny? – after all she had the prime motive and a great opportunity (the same opportunity as Hermione). Well I am convinced it was neither Molly nor Ginny (both of whom knew nothing about it) and that indeed it was Hermione, for the following reason:
Logically, ‘the doser’ would check with all haste the next morning to see how Harry had responded to the dose. And there is only one person who does that: Hermione. She closely watches Harry the next morning, when in contrast Ginny and Molly do not pay special, close attention to Harry in the ‘breakfast in bed’ scene. However, as soon as Hermione comes into the room Hermione perches herself on his bed and (page 89)
“was scrutinising Harry as though he were sickening for something.”
Harry assumes it is connected with his grieving period over Sirius’ death, and this is thus the explanation implied to the reader to explain Hermione’s scrutiny. Well, obviously I think Harry was wrong and the given explanation is misleading. Harry and Ron then have a quick conversation about Slughorn, during which Hermione does not speak. Instead she is watching Harry. The passage runs: (still page 89):
“Something wrong Hermione?”
She was watching him as though expecting strange symptoms to manifest themselves at any moment. She rearranged her features hastily in an unconvincing smile.
“No, of course not! So, um, did Slughorn seem like he’ll be a good teacher?”
Ginny then arrives, behaves perfectly normally (if like an annoying brat), does not look at Harry strangely at all, is not watching for anything special, and after several pages Ginny leaves. Immediately Ginny departs, Hermione ‘was peering into Fred and George’s boxes, though every now and then she cast sideways looks at Harry’. In other words Hermione is now watching closely to see Harry’s reaction to Ginny. Ostensibly, there isn’t one – not one she notices. Eventually she gives up staring and asks about one of the spyglasses she’s holding up. It punches her in the eye (not unreasonably considering what she’s just done). The conversation between Harry, Ron and Hermione shifts to matters concerning Voldemort, and then their OWL results arrive. Hermione completely forgets about ‘watching Harry’ (especially as nothing seemed to happen) and the inhabitants of the Burrow spend several weeks going about their business.
HERMIONE’S NEXT CONNECTION WITH LOVE POTIONS
This takes place prior to the start of school when the characters visit Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes and the Twins introduce Hermione and Ginny to the Wonder Witch love potion range (page 117), ‘the best range of love potions you’ll find anywhere’. Ginny is skeptical; she ‘raised an eyebrow skeptically. ‘Do they work?’” Hermione, who you would expect to be sceptical, says nothing. The Twins are on record as saying they won’t sell the stuff to Ginny, but they’re perfectly happy to sell anything to anyone else (Galleons are the bottom line) – so they would be perfectly happy to sell to Hermione (and every other girl at Hogwarts it seems!). The potions work for up to 24 hours once the dose has been administered, (but we also know from Slughorn’s comment on page 371 that love potions can strengthen the longer they’re kept).
I believe that Hermione ordered WWW love potions for her use at Hogwarts. She may even have bought one whilst at the shop; Hermione could have dosed him up again at The Burrow, using a WWW potion, prior to school. We certainly know that she is fully aware of the WWW potions and of how to get them from what she says on pages 287 to 288:
H: But I thought all the owls were being searched? So how come these girls able to bring love potions into the school?
Hr: Fred and George send them disguised as perfumes and cough potions. It’s all part of their Owl Order Service.
H: You know a lot about it.
Hermione gave him the kind of nasty look she had just given his copy of Advanced Potion-Making.
Hr: “It was all on the back of the bottles they showed Ginny and me in the summer,” she said coldly. “I don’t go round putting potions in people’s drinks … or pretending to either, which is just as bad …”
Tackling something right now: if I am right, what do we make of Hermione’s flat denial “I don’t go round putting potions in people’s drinks” – because under my theory she did, she did not only put the pastille under Harry’s pillow (technically not a drink, so technically she was telling the truth on that) but she also liquid-dosed him later too (on at least one known occasion). What do I make of it? I think that she flat out LIED in the above, and that we can see her justifying her lies to herself in the end of the passage: “… or pretending to either, which is just as bad …”. At the above point in the story, Harry has already lied his way to Potions Class glory (riding along on the back of the Half-Blood Prince’s work), and Hermione is sick of it. She also sees Harry as someone who has already pretended to dose Ron with the Felix Felicis, which riled her at the time. In the above she was angry at Harry because they’d just been having another set-to over his Potions book, and so she knee-jerk defends herself as someone who doesn’t put potions in people’s drinks, and then she pauses (indicated by …) and recalls that actually she IS someone who puts potions in other people’s drinks, and then justifies it to herself by saying that Harry’s trick with the Felicis was just as bad. In other words, she knows she doses Harry, but lying about it’s okay because Harry’s just as bad.
The postage information is NOT the kind of information one would expect to see on the back of individual product ranges. We are also given a huge clue with Harry’s ‘you know a lot about it’ comment; Hermione knows all about the Owl Order Service and how the potions get past security because she herself has been using the Order Service to attain the potions.
In the Chapter Draco’s Detour (page 110) which also shows us events during the group’s visit to Diagon Alley, JKR slips in a cheeky little mention about Hermione’s black eye which Hermione got while spying on Harry in the bedroom the morning after his first dosing (she was punched by the ‘punching telescope’).
“Yeah, like you’d dare do magic out of school,” sneered Malfoy. “Who blacked your eye Granger, I want to send them flowers.”
No need to rub it in, is there? - both of the ‘out of school magic’ (which Hermione has been doing) and of the black eye (a direct referral to the drugging/spying), and of the mention of flowers? Indeed, apart from the ‘Ginny flower’ mentions, I think these two mentions of the word ‘flowers’ (in the ‘vase of flowers’, and the ‘send them flowers’,) are the only two mentions of the word in the entire book: one mention being a direct key to what Hermione actually did and the other being a referral back to that bedroom scene.
WHY I BELIEVE GINNY IS NOT IN ON HERMIONE’S PLAN – GINNY’S LACK OF FLIRTING TOWARD HARRY WHILST AT THE BURROW
My own logic forces me to believe that she is not in on it. Why isn’t she? Because if she was then she too would have been scrutinising Harry closely when she visits him the first morning at The Burrow. Furthermore, if she had known that Harry had been dosed up with a love potion to make him susceptible to her (and had colluded in the plan), then she would be flirting with him that morning. She is not flirting with Harry at all in that scene. In fact, if you look at it dispassionately you can see that throughout that scene she barely interacts with Harry, most of her interaction is with Ron and Hermione. In that scene Ginny comes in, vents about Fleur, then leaves. That is not the action of a scheming love-potion abuser. She is annoyed at the end of the scene where Molly orders her out of the room to help make lunch, but that is not from an urge to be with Harry, rather than an urge to stay with the group:
“I’m talking to this lot!” said Ginny, outraged.
And then a little later:
“You lot had better come down quickly too,” she said as she left.
‘You lot’, she is not fixating on Harry, she is cross at being forced to leave the group, not a being forced to leave Harry.
Indeed, if we look at Ginny’s behaviour toward Harry, she does not engage in active flirting behaviour toward him for most of the book – up until shortly before ‘the kiss’. There is no record of it in the weeks at The Burrow. Indeed, on the train into Hogwarts she turns down a chance to sit with Harry, sitting with Dean instead. I think her turning down his request was a form of ‘playing hard to get’, in that she was still playing the Hermione-suggested card of ‘look at me, I’m popular, I’ve got a boyfriend’ that had so ill-served her on OoTP (where Harry didn’t even notice that she was going out with Michael Corner for months, until he was actually told about it). I suspect
there is one further major point where she does this ‘boyfriend flaunting’ to try to impress Harry (the Dean-kiss scene, which I think she may have set up), but I do NOT think that she knew he had been dosed because if so then WHY would she play hard to get? She’s just wasting time instead of exploiting the finite window of opportunity (as potions do wear off).
For most of the time Ginny’s behaviour throughout most of the book (indeed, almost up until the moment she makes her move on him at the post-match party) is non-flirtatious toward Harry. She is simply there. Other characters refer to her prettiness, charm and attractiveness, she is canonically presented as popular and good at Quidditch and good with hexes (well, only one hex, the Bat Bogey), but she herself relates to Harry rarely, and almost right up until ‘the kiss’ she mostly relates to him with a functional straightforwardness. There is no strand of active flirting there.
HARRY AT THE BURROW – HIS REACTION TO THE DOSING.
Harry’s reaction is limited (recall that Harry is good at resisting ‘external control’ as he was with the Imperius) but it is there. Hermione can detect no difference in Harry’s behaviour toward Ginny, but we can – we can see the advent of what I’ve christened Prison!Bitch Harry, a Harry who reverses his often brusque attitude toward Ginny as shown in OoTP ( with no actual interaction between them after the DoM; they are in the same scenes but they are not speaking to each other) and instead starts (periodically) to increasingly hang off her every word.
It starts after a few minutes, Ginny arrives on page 90 of the ‘breakfast in bed’ scene and by page 92 of the same scene we see the first sign: Ginny calls Fleur ‘Phlegm’ for the first time in our hearing and Harry and Hermione laugh. Now Harry respected Fleur at the end of GoF, but now he is laughing at her? Then, on page 93, he rallies and tries to defend Fleur against Ginny and Hermione’s attack upon her:
“Fleur’s not stupid, she was good enough to enter the Triwizard Tournament,” said Harry.
“Not you as well!” said Hermione bitterly.
“I suppose you like they way Phlegm says “ ‘Arry”, do you?” asked Ginny scornfully.
“No,” said Harry, wishing he hadn’t spoken, “I was just saying, Phlegm – I mean, Fleur - ”
Harry ‘wishes he hadn’t spoken’, and then finds himself calling Fleur ‘Phlegm’ without meaning to, as if by magic; it is as though he is fighting for control of himself, feels impelled to agree with Ginny, but then he pulls it back by calling her Fleur. Over the next few weeks/pages we see very little Harry/Ginny direct interaction – we only get three instances. In effect we are given three snapshots of Harry and Ginny over the period prior to going to school – and they all revolve around Fleur, Ginny’s insults about her, and Harry’s changing reactions to those insults.
The first snapshot is the one we’ve just seen in the bedroom, where Harry fights back and regains control of himself. The second is the ‘vomiting’ incident at breakfast when Fleur strokes Bill’s nose (page 106)
‘Ginny mimed vomiting into her cereal behind Fleur. Harry choked over his cornflakes and Ron thumped him on the back.’
Note here that Ginny is puerile and unpleasant and is insulting someone behind their back – someone Harry traditionally liked. And Harry, though he says nothing, tacitly agrees. Ron does not laugh.
Then we have the laundry incident (page 126) when Harry bumps into Ginny on the landing:
“I wouldn’t go into the kitchen just now,” she warned him. “There’s a lot of phlegm around.”
“I’ll be careful not to slip in it,” smiled Harry.
Over the three snapshots Harry has traveled an arc from defending Fleur, to tacitly agreeing, to outright agreeing and even using Ginny’s insult of Fleur as an excuse to attempt to flirt with Ginny.
Note that the ‘flirting’ incident happens after the group visit to Diagon Alley where Hermione could have picked up a WWW love potion and dosed him again at the Burrow. Either way, Harry’s reaction to Ginny is growing stronger.
There is a fourth ‘Harry/Ginny’ incident in this section, where Harry specifically notices Ginny but does not speak to her. It is page 118 at WWW when Ginny defends herself against Fred’s statement that she is ‘moving through boyfriends a bit fast’. ‘Ginny turned to look at him, her hands on her hips. There was such a Mrs.Weasley-ish glare on her face that Harry was surprised that Fred didn’t recoil.’ In other words, Harry is projecting onto Fred a sudden fear Harry feels of displeasing Ginny.
HARRY AND GINNY – WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE BURROW? – FROM THE TRAIN TO THE SCHOOL.
Harry’s reaction to Ginny has grown stronger (see the Fleur insults argument above), and peaks on the train going into Hogwarts. He asks her if she wants to sit with him and she turns him down to sit with Dean. “Right,” said Harry. He felt a strange twinge of annoyance as she walked away, her long red hair dancing behind her.”
But then something happens: Harry meets Luna Lovegood and they share a compartment (also with Neville). Note that Harry’s reaction to Ginny (just prior to meeting Luna) was physical – he notes her physical attribute, her hair, and feels annoyance that she is physically rejecting him. In contrast Harry’s reaction to Luna is emotional, she makes him feel and his feelings are reported to us (admittedly written up as a squirming mixture of pity and embarrassment, at the embarrassingly honest things Luna says), but she makes him feel. He has ‘feelings’ for Luna, when we are not given any report of him having ANY feelings for Ginny so far apart from ‘a twinge of annoyance’.
Then Harry meets up with Ginny again in the Slug Club on the train. When he sees her there Harry evinces no emotional reaction at all to her, and shows no ‘physical’ reaction either, no mentions of ‘swinging red hair’, very surprising for a boy who ‘felt a strange twinge’ when he saw her moving away from him just minutes earlier. It’s as though he’s been cleansed of potion effects. Throughout that scene he doesn’t even speak to her, he only next speaks to her when they leave Slughorn’s compartment and only then to functionally ask her why she had been invited. Harry is then immediately concerned with Draco Malfoy’s actions, and breaks off from her to go and spy on Draco in his compartment. Harry is with Ginny and Neville in the train corridor, he issues a perfunctory goodbye to Ginny and Neville which does not differentiate Ginny at all: “I’ll see you two later’ and he is gone.
From a Harry/Ginny perspective the ‘Draco compartment’ scene is notable for one thing: Harry is there, he hears them discuss Ginny’s attractiveness to boys in a vaguely derogatory way, he hears Zabini directly insult Ginny, and his reaction is … nothing. It’s as though he now just doesn’t care inordinately about her – from the crescendo of asking her to sit with him and feeling a strange twinge of annoyance as she walked away, her long red hair dancing behind her, she’s just back to the status of ‘some girl he knows’.
For the whole of the next chapter (Snape Victorious) we only get one slight, and totally neutral, mention of Ginny: when she is in a group of Gryffindors ‘listening in’ on his conversation with Ron and Hermione (page 155). Harry has not spoken to her, or thought about her, since splitting off from her to track down Draco. Indeed he has not thought much of her since meeting Luna, at which point the potion effect wore off. Then we hit the infamous Chapter 9, ‘The Half-Blood Prince’, and the Amortentia.
HARRY AND GINNY AND HERMIONE – EVENTS FROM ARRIVING AT HOGWARTS UNTO THE ‘CLAWING MONSTER’ SCENE.
During his second day at Hogwarts Harry is exposed to the smell of Amortentia, which reminds him of ‘something flowery he thought he might have smelled at The Burrow’.
Shortly following the lesson he picks up a waft of ‘that flowery smell’ off Ginny. The reader is keyed to pick up that he is attracted to her as Amortentia smells like what you are attracted to, but no – I think he was smelling the flowers from back at The Burrow, the scent of which are now inextricably tangled up with the chemically induced attraction to Ginny that was imposed on him at The Burrow.
(ASIDE: AMORTENTIA – YOU SMELL WHAT YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO)
What you are attracted to is present tense: you can’t smell something you haven’t met yet and thus don’t know you will become attracted to. Also the smell has to remind you of the person, if not, it cannot smell like what you are attracted to.
We see that it works in this ‘present tense’ way from Hermione’s reaction to the scent of the Amortentia. Page 176.
“and it’s supposed to smell differently to each of us, according to what attracts us, and I can smell freshly mown grass and new parchment and -”
But she turned slightly pink and did not complete the sentence.’
Here I think that the ‘and -’ indicates Hermione abruptly coming to a halt, and then she goes pink with embarrassment. She halts and goes pink because she realises just before she says it that the next smell she was going to mention was one relating to a person she was attracted to.
To a person she was attracted to – she knew the connection from the smell instantly, because the smell reminded her of the person. Amortentia cannot give you the smell of someone you have not yet met, or a smell you do not associate with the person you are attracted to. And having said that I will say again, that the ONLY previous reference to a flowery smell (any at all) was to the vase of flowers at the Burrow. Between then and after the Amortentia lesson when Harry smells the flowery smell off Ginny, he does not smell any other flowery smell. The flowery smell is not Ginny per se, it is the scent associated with ‘being attracted’ in his dosing at The Burrow. We know that the flowery smell is not Ginny per se, as we can see directly inside Harry’s head in this scene: he does not associate the smell with Ginny. Indeed, the way we know Amortentia works (from watching Hermione’s reaction) we know that Amortentia gives you a smell which immediately links you to the person concerned: we do not get that with Harry/Ginny.
The Amortentia smell does not mean that Harry is attracted to Ginny.
After the Amortentia episode no great attraction is felt or evinced by Harry over the next three or four weeks, there are some inklings but nothing heated, they are slight mentions with no sense of Harry dwelling on Ginny. After the ‘Amortentia incident’ a week goes by and we get no mention of Ginny, or of Harry thinking about her/interacting with her. We see her next at the Quidditch try outs where it is established as canon that she is a good flyer – that is not Harry’s opinion, it is a fact. There are signs of some low level interest over the weeks – but they are mild and few and far between. Harry defending Ginny at the try outs against McLaggen’s accusation that she gave Ron an easy ride, Harry says that Ginny’s shot was the one Ron nearly missed, but this is proved to be a lie on the very next page (214) when Ron clearly states that Demelza’s shot was the one he nearly missed. At the end of the day (page 221) he glancingly notes that she is playing with Arnold, her Pygmy Puff. But then weeks go by and we get no real mention/thoughts of Ginny, except of a single neutral mention that Ron and Ginny and Harry together regularly laugh when Hermione gets stuck at Slughorn’s parties. It is all very tame and low key with no sense of fascination on Harry’s part.
Then we get the first Hogwarts weekend.
On the day of the trip, Harry casually asks Ginny if she wants to join the Trio for the Hogwarts visit, she turns him down saying she’s going with Dean (page 228). Harry does not react badly to this, in fact he does not react at all to it. Then the Trio leave for Hogsmeade and he has a drink in the Three Broomsticks, (page 232) bought for him by Hermione and given to him by Hermione:
“Go sit down, I’ll get you a drink.” …
‘Hermione returned to their table a few minutes later holding three bottles of Butterbeer.’
Then they quickly discuss Grimmauld Place and Mundungus’ thieving from it, and the very next mention of Harry’s drink (after having just been given it, so it might only be his first swig) is when Hermione says:
“Harry, I’d be annoyed too, I now it’s your things he’s stealing - ”
Harry gagged on his Butterbeer; he had momentarily forgotten that he owned number twelve Grimmauld Place.
Harry gagged on his Butterbeer, he gagged on the drink Hermione gave him, any ostensible reason JKR gives us is, I think, secondary to the fact that he gags on his drink. Ron and Hermione have one of their spats, this time over Ron’s attention to Rosmerta, and in the meantime Harry continues drinking. Hermione is keen to go because of Ron and Rosmerta.
‘The moment Harry drained the last drops in his bottle she said, “Shall we call it a day and go back to school, then?”
The other two nodded; it had not been a fun trip and the weather was getting worse the longer they stayed. Once again they drew their cloaks tightly around them, rearranged their scarves, pulled on their gloves; then followed Katie Bell and a friend out of the pub and back up the High Street. Harry’s thoughts strayed to Ginny as they trudged up the road to Hogwarts through the frozen slush. They had not met up with her, undoubtedly, thought Harry, because she and Dean were cosily closeted in Madame Puddifoots teashop, that haunt of happy couples. Scowling, he bowed his head against the swirling sleet and moved on.’
Throughout the whole of the Harry/Ginny arc so far, that is the first instance of Harry really dwelling on her and feeling irked/jealous and faintly bitter that she’s going out with Dean, when earlier that very same afternoon he had not even reacted to her direct news that ‘she was going with Dean’. In that passage, JKR does something tricksy: she puts in a lot of words between Harry finishing his drink (‘drained to the last drops’ you’ll note) and his thoughts on Ginny. That leaves the reader thinking that some time has elapsed, when actually only seconds have passed between Harry draining his bottle to the last drops and his thoughts about Dean/Ginny. All that business about pulling on their gloves etc. takes up a lot of words, but in real time lasts only seconds. So, that first instance of Ginny-thought happens IMMEDIATELY AFTER Harry’s been given a drink by Hermione. Do I really need to ram it home that I think Hermione had spiked the drink? As an aside here I can state that to my memory this is only one of two instances where someone explicitly offers Harry a drink, the other is on page 289 when Romilda Vane offers him a Gillywater which we know is spiked with love potion.
Following Harry’s scowling thoughts on Dean and Ginny, reality immediately kicks in and Ginny is driven out of his mind. Katie Bell is immediately poisoned and for he remainder of the day, and next day and then for a ‘few more’ days he does not speak to or think of Ginny at all. A cheeky little inflection which takes place during this period is the very next mention of Butterbeer (Hermione’s spiked drink) which comes when Harry is watching Ron and Hermione (who have fallen out a bit over Slughorn’s party):
‘Harry supposed he would just have to wait and see what happened under the influence of Butterbeer.’
The next time we get mention of anything Ginny-related is page 266 when Harry asks Dean to replace the ill Katie Bell as Chaser. Dean’s reaction is: “Right,” said Dean. “Cheers, Harry! Blimey, I can’t wait to tell Ginny.”
Here Dean has referenced Ginny, his girlfriend. And Harry’s reaction is … nothing. There is no reference to him being concerned by it. Even at the next Quidditch practice, Harry’s only reference to Dean and Ginny is that ‘… he saw Dean fly that evening; he worked well with Ginny and Demelza.’ In other words Harry only references them as Quidditch team members. This from a boy who, last time he was thinking of Dean and Ginny, he was scowling. The Quidditch practice sees Ginny factually shown as a good player, she scores most of the practice goals. There is an exchange between Ginny and Harry when Ginny has been criticising Ron.
H: “And Ginny, don’t call Ron a prat, you’re not the captain of this team -”
G: “Well, you seemed too busy to call him a prat and I thought someone should -”
Harry forced himself not to laugh.
H: “In the air, everyone, let’s go …”
In this scene Harry once more simply follows Ginny’s lead, even when he shouldn’t. He follows her lead because he does not shut her up in her continued criticism of Ron. Instead he does his best to just side-step the issue. Compare this to his abrupt quashing of McLaggan for the same offence on page 387. I think this scene does show some interest from Harry, but no-where near in proportion to his drink-spiked thoughts of Dean/Ginny: his ‘emotions’ have had tome to clear/fade.
Please note that throughout the above we have ‘spikes’ of Ginny-interest from Harry: the initial interest at The Burrow, peaking with his ‘twinge’ on the train, but then he meets Luna and seems to wipe clean of Ginny-interest. Then he is exposed to the Amortentia, and I believe ‘kick-started’ into Ginny interest again, but that tails off quickly. Then we have another spike after Hermione doses his drink at the pub. That tails away too. Harry’s interest is directly related to potions.
Then we have some interest at the Quidditch practice (though it does not reflect the intensity of his previous spike just after the pub, which if it were natural it should) and the scene continues with Ron and Harry walking back together to the Gryffindor Tower, and here we have the birth of the ‘clawing monster’
GINNY, HARRY AND THE CLAWING MONSTER
Quidditch practice had just finished, and Harry and Ron come back via their ‘usual short cut’ to find Dean and Ginny ‘locked in a close embrace and kissing fiercely as if glued together’ (page 268).
Harry’s reaction to this sight is instant:
“It was as though something large and scaly erupted into life in Harry’s stomach, clawing at his insides: hot blood seemed to flood his brain, so that all thought was extinguished, replaced by a savage urge to jinx Dean into a jelly. Wrestling with this sudden madness, he heard Ron’s voice as though from a great distance away.’ … ‘the new born monster inside him was roaring from Dean’s instant dismissal from the team.’
Ginny and Ron have a truly vicious brother and sister spat over her ‘behaviour’, in which gross insults are mutually flung and wands are drawn. Harry tries to mediate although ‘the monster was roaring its approval of Ron’s words.’ Ginny and Ron draw wands, and although Ginny draws first Harry only physically intercedes when Ron draws in turn. Harry forcibly stops Ron from hexing Ginny. Ginny storms off. The boys continue onto the Tower and Ron vents his spleen by roaring at a small girl who drops a bottle at his shout.
‘Harry hardly noticed the sound of shattering glass; he felt disorientated, dizzy; being struck by a lightning bolt must be something like this.’
‘Unbidden to his mind’ come thoughts of him kissing Ginny instead of Dean at which ‘the monster in his chest purred’.
Almost immediately we jump-cut to Harry in bed that night where he is fretting over his feelings for Ginny (page 271). He is worried about Ron’s reaction to finding out about ‘the monster’ feelings he has. Also:
‘They had lived, had they not, like brother and sister all summer, …he had known Ginny for years now … it was natural that he should feel protective … natural that he should want to look out for her … want to rip Dean limb from limb for kissing her’
He eventually gets to sleep, next day there is a single mention of Ginny at Quidditch practice (in the sense that Harry wants to get in the way of her possibly hexing Ron).
The day after, all have breakfast then Harry behaves OOC in the match – urging his Beater Coote to hit a Bludger at Zacharias Smith in response to Smith’s taunting match commentary. Then at the end of the match he laughs at Ginny’s startling physical attack on Smith (crashing into him on her broom and leaving him ‘feebly stirring’ under a ‘wreckage of wood’), and breaks free of the rest of the team to hug her.
Hermione then waylays Harry and Ron and accuses them of illegal potions use.
‘You know perfectly well what we’re talking about!” said Hermione shrilly. “You spiked Ron’s juice with lucky potion at breakfast! Felix Felicis!”
At the post match party, having been there some time Harry bumps into Ginny who makes unpleasant comments about Ron. Although he speaks to her he is not recorded as having any ‘monster’ reactions/obsessive indications/noticings of how pretty she is etc. Nothing in fact, until she touches him:
‘She patted him on the arm; Harry felt a swooping sensation in his stomach, but then she walked off to help herself to more Butterbeer.’
What do I make of all of the above? Well, a scaly monster clawing at his insides, hot blood rushing to his brain, savages urges, ‘sudden madness’, the roaring monster, feeling disorientated, dizzy; ‘being struck by a lightning bolt must be something like this’, ‘unbidden thoughts’ – lustful ones about a girl he sees as his sister. It is either the most laughably poor writing ever if it is supposed to state genuine romantic love or frighteningly good writing if it is evidence that Harry is actually under chemical effect. Remember, we are told that Amortentia creates infatuation and obsession, but not love, (and there is no evidence that other types of love potion can do any different), and what we have here is not love, it’s lust, it’s ‘thinking with your dick’. Given all the other evidence I’ve laid down so far, I go for this passage being a good depiction of chemical effect.
The effects are certainly not natural, as Harry knows. He regards it as ‘natural’ to feel protective of her and to look out for her, he does not use the word ‘natural’ when thinking about ripping Dean’s arm off. He doesn’t think it’s natural because it’s not natural.
What kicked off the birth of the monster? There is no particular reference to a dosing just prior, but at this stage we have no idea how many doses Harry has had – what we do know is that he was kick-started by the sight of his ‘chemically intended’ in a ferocious lip-lock with another boy. Oddly though, the monster was short lived. We get no ‘monster’ after the immediate impact itself. We do note though that when Ginny later touches him, he has a physical reaction.
Was Hermione dosing him throughout? We don’t know, she could have been. We do know that ‘breakfast’ (an eating and drinking scenario) is mentioned on the morning of the match, and that the post-match party was a drinking scenario and that Hermione was present. This is also the section of the book when we have Hermione’s shrill accusation that Harry ‘spiked Ron’s juice with lucky potion at breakfast!’ I think that is not only an authorial clue to people spiking others’ drinks at breakfast, but also I think that Hermione was very alert to potential drink spiking on the part of others precisely because she had been doing it herself.
NEXT
We are now at Chapter 15. Time passes and Christmas approaches. In this chapter we are directly introduced to the very real practice of girls slipping boys love potions (Romilda Vane’s efforts), and we have the passage indicating that Hermione knows a worrying amount of information about how to smuggle WWW love potions into Hogwarts. Prompted by Hermione to ‘invite someone’ (she probably intended Ginny) to Slughorn’s party to forestall being love-potioned by girls fishing for an invite. Harry’s response is:
“There isn’t anyone I want to invite,” mumbled Harry, who was still trying not to think about Ginny any more than he could help, despite the fact that she kept cropping up in his dreams in ways which made him devoutly thankful that Ron could not perform Leglimancy.’ (page 286).
Harry is obviously interested, but the monster seems to have shut up for the time being as we don’t hear from it. Instead of inviting Ginny however, Harry surprises himself by inviting Luna. Ginny is pleased for Luna, Harry ‘could not quite manage’ to be pleased at Ginny’s reaction. Harry goes to the party and has a good time. He doesn’t think of Ginny at all whilst he is at the party. Indeed, following that we have no text of him talking or thinking about her until Christmas Day at the Burrow (when he must have been there for at least a week prior) when she reaches across the Christmas dinner table and pulls something out of his hair, touching him (page 318):
“Harry, you’ve got a maggot in your hair,” said Ginny cheerfully, leaning across the table to pick it out; Harry felt goosebumps erupt up his neck that had nothing to do with the maggot.”
Immediately after that a nasty dose of reality descends: Scrimgeour visits with Percy and Harry has to engage with Scrimgeour.
We immediately jump to a few days after New Year, when the party leave for Hogwarts. Upon return Harry notes that Ginny does not sound very enthusiastic about sitting with Dean instead of Hermione and Harry, page 329, (after Hermione invites her). Our next mention of Ginny is a casual one on page 357 when Harry is checking up on Slughorn’s party invites, in which no conversation with or thought of Ginny is reported. We arrive at March 1st, Ron’s Birthday and realise that we have heard NOTHING of Harry’s thoughts or feelings toward Ginny since Harry’s arrival back at Hogwarts, two months earlier. On his birthday Ron is accidentally poisoned by the oak mead intended for Dumbledore.
At the hospital wing, all rally round. Harry and Ginny converse as part of the group but we get no mention of any ‘monster’ feelings for Ginny. There is no sense that Harry is especially interested in any romantic sense. There is no sense of concern or special sensitivity toward her. There is no other mention at all of Ginny (other than two purely functional mentions of her as a player at the Gryffindor/Hufflepuff Quidditch match) … and then at that match Harry gets knocked out by a blow to the head so hard it cracks his scull (page 389).
What do I make of this section? That the ‘clawing monster’ was a huge spike of interest, but its intensity fades. Admittedly, prior to taking Luna to the party Harry is ‘trying not to think about Ginny more than he could help’ and having dream/fantasies about her of a presumably sexual nature, but there is no roaring monster. He only gets an intense reaction when she actually touches him (at the post Quidditch match and at The Burrow). After taking Luna to the party we get no thoughts at all on Harry’s part about Ginny, until she physically touches him at Christmas dinner, when we get a physical reaction (goosebumps). Then we get nothing until she goes to sit with Dean upon the return to Hogwarts and Harry could not help noticing that she does not seem very enthusiastic about it. And then we get … nothing at all romantically. It seems to just fade away.
Is it the case that we get few mentions of Ginny in this period because the plot doesn’t allow interaction? I see no reason why this should have precluded JKR mentioning Harry’s feelings at any time, but she does not mention them. At the close of the ‘two month gap’ she could have made mention in a quick paragraph of how Harry had been thinking of Ginny all through the period, but she does not. I think she does not mention his feelings because they are not there. Indeed, I think it is important to note that we have not heard of the clawing monster at all since he saw her kissing Dean … and then, as I said, at the end of this long period of fading-to-nothing interest in Ginny, Harry gets knocked out by a blow to the head so hard it cracks his skull.
HARRY, GINNY AND HERMIONE FOLLOWING THE BLOW TO THE HEAD
This section was prompted by Anise of FAP.
Shortly after he awakes, Ron mentions that Ginny visited Harry when he was unconscious, and at the mention of her Harry is into full-on Ginny-mode.
‘Harry’s imagination zoomed into overdrive, rapidly constructing a scene in which Ginny, weeping over his lifeless form, confessed her feelings of deep attraction to him while Ron gave the his blessing …’
Note the use of the words ‘deep attraction’. This is very odd wording for a 15 year old boy, and JKR is very good at colloquialisms. By rights Harry should have said ‘confessed that she fancied him’, or if he was super-romantic, ‘confessed her love for him’, but ‘confessed her feelings of deep attraction’ – nah, that just doesn’t work. What it DOES work as though, is an authorial clue to direct us back to the affects of Amortentia/love potion: it smells according to what attracts us.
In any case Harry’s fantasy is quickly punctured by Ron stating that she actually queried why Harry had been late for the Gryffindor/Hufflepuff match. He and Ron leave the hospital wing on Monday morning (having been there Saturday night and all day/night Sunday). Hermione tells them that
‘Ginny had argued with Dean. The drowsing creature in Harry’s chest suddenly raised it’s head, sniffing the air hopefully.’
This is the first mention of the ‘creature’ we have had since the Ginny/Dean kiss, i.e. the monster only re-appeared after he’d been hit on the head. Harry is keenly interested to know the details of Dean/Ginny (page 397)
‘Yeah, well, there was no need for Ginny and Dean to split up over it,” said Harry, trying to sound casual. “Or are they still together?”
“Yes they are – but why are you so interested?” asked Hermione, giving Harry a sharp look.
“I just don’t want my Quidditch team messed up again!” he said hastily, but Hermione continued to look suspicious”
During the day it becomes clear that Ron and Lavender are running into difficulties. ‘Harry saw an inexplicable smirk cross her (Hermione’s) face. All that day she seemed to be in a particularly good mood’. But this was also the day when Hermione, for the first time ever, caught Harry’s interest in Ginny (her ‘sharp look’ and her suspicion), so she could have been happy for both reasons. Harry spends the evening with Dumbledore, ‘pensieving’ memories concerning Voldemort.
Time passes (at least a week, maybe two), the plot proceeds, and we get no mention of Ginny or any of Harry’s thoughts on Ginny. Then on page 441 we get the next reference to her when Harry’s thinking of taking some of his Felix Felicis:
‘The thought of that little golden bottle had hovered on the edges of his imagination for some time; vague and unformulated plans that involved Ginny slitting up with Dean, and Ron somehow being happy to see her with a new boyfriend, had been fermenting in the depths of his brain, unacknowledged except during dreams or the twilight time between sleeping and waking …”
In other words, here JKR specifically does what she DID NOT do at the end of the ‘two month gap’. Ginny is ‘missing’ for 44 pages of the story and about two weeks worth of time, but here JKR makes it fully clear that Harry HAS been thinking of her over that time, even if on a near subconscious level. This is different to how she wrote ‘the gap’ that occurred prior to his massive blow to the head.
That night Harry takes a swig of Felix Felicis as he goes on a mission (under cover of Invisibility Cloak), page 447:
‘Getting through the portrait hole was simple; as he approached it, Ginny and Dean came through it and Harry was able to slip between them. As he did so he brushed accidentally against Ginny.
“Don’t push me, please, Dean,” she said, sounding annoyed. You’re always doing that, I can get through perfectly well on my own …”
The portrait swung closed behind Harry, but not before he had heard Dean make and angry retort … his (Harry’s) feeling of elation increasing.’
He goes about his mission, and next day, Hermione tells him (page 481):
“Ginny and Dean have split up too, Harry.”
Harry thought there was a rather knowing look in her eye as she told him that, but she cold not possibly know that his insides were suddenly dancing the conga: keeping his face as immobile and his voice as indifferent as he could, he asked, “How come?”
“Oh something really silly … she said he was always trying to help her though the portrait hole, like she couldn’t climb it herself … but they’ve been a bit rocky for ages.”
Harry glanced over at Dean on the other side of the class-room. He certainly looked unhappy.
“Of course this puts you in a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it?” said Hermione.
“What d’you mean?” said Harry quickly.
“The Quidditch team,” said Hermione. “If Ginny and Dean aren’t speaking ..”
Note that Hermione specifically tells Harry about the bust up – she’s fishing for his reaction. She has a ‘rather knowing look’ in her eye (she can see he fancies Ginny) and she puts him on the spot with a leading question: ‘this puts you in a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it’. She can now see that Harry is interested in Ginny.
What have we had here? After Harry got hit on the head, his fixation on Ginny becomes much more intense. He melodramatically daydreams about her in the hospital, the monster is back ‘sniffing the air hopefully’, Harry is keen to get information about the state of Ginny and Dean’s relationship – particularly after they’d had a row. JKR makes it clear he has been thinking about her, if on an almost subconscious level, where he is hoping that she and Dean will split up. He is so interested that for the first time in the entire book Hermione finally sees clues in his behaviour and expression to suggest to her that he has an interest in Ginny. So far, i.e. prior to the bash on the head, Harry had successfully internalised any periodic turmoil.
Harry actually does cause the break up of Ginny and Dean, having drunk the Felix Felicis, when he brushes against her in the portrait hole (page 447) he gets what he had been wishing for earlier that day (page 441): Ginny and Dean split up, the direct cause being Harry brushing against her, as she thought it was Dean pushing her. As an aside, were Dean and Ginny ‘rocky for ages’? Maybe, but maybe not. They had rowed before, but Hermione might have only added that comment in the belated realisation that saying they broke up for a silly reason made Ginny look bad.
Ron split up with Lavender at the same time Ginny split up with Dean. At the end of this section (page 482) it is reported that ‘Hermione seemed cheery too, though when asked what she was grinning about she simply said, “It’s a nice day.”’ I don’t see any reason why Hermione could not have been smiling to herself at both Ron’s break up and Harry’s newly evident interest in Ginny, an interest which would please her as she has been campaigning for it with use of love potions.
HIT ON THE HEAD BY LOVE
I have obviously laboured the division of what Harry was like before he had his skull cracked, compared to what he was like after. Why? Because I believe we have some evidence that a blow to the skull affects the potency of a love potion. (This is a notion that Anise brought to my attention.)
What are the very first words Hermione speaks in this entire book, words she speaks after having dosed Harry with some love potion? (page 88)
“We didn’t know you were here already!” said a loud and excited voice, and he received a sharp blow to the top of the head.
“Ron, don’t hit him!” said a girl’s voice reproachfully.
‘Ron, don’t hit him!’ (and note the exclamation mark) as Ron has just given Harry a sharp blow to the top of the head. We then get the Twins teasing Ron about Lavender at The Burrow during the Christmas break. Fred is teasing him about what could possibly have happened to persuade Lavender to go out with Ron.
Fred: “No, what we really wanted to know was … how did it happen?”
Ron: What d’you mean?”
F: “Did she have an accident or something?”
R: “What?”
F: “Well, how did she sustain such extensive brain damage?”
Hermione dosed Harry, and she must have learned from her ‘love potion’ reading that you mustn’t strike the dosee on the head in the susceptible state. I think that is why she reacts so immediately and stridently to Ron hitting Harry. The fact is that knowing these two boys for five years she must have seen them ‘josh about’ like that countless times before, as ‘playful hitting’ is how boys actually touch each other: it is the excuse they use for touching their friends. Hence the hitting as such wasn’t the issue that concerned her – it was the exact timing of it that was the issue.
Fred teasing Ron that Lavender would have to have had an accident that gave her brain damage (i.e. an accident to her head) to get her to love him is a direct parallel to what happens to Harry. After a long period of waning interest (since the birth of the monster and the touching at The Burrow), he sustains a cracked skull and then wakes up obsessed with Ginny.
GINNY ON THE BRAIN – EVENTS UP UNTO ‘THE KISS’
Here I take up exactly where I left off when Hermione seems cheery and is grinning to herself (page 482). There is ‘a fierce battle raging inside Harry’s brain’, concerning his fear that showing an interest in Ginny could alienate Ron from him. It is also the case that ‘neither of them (Ron or Hermione) seemed to have noticed’ it; in other words Hermione still has no idea of the drastic and unsettling effect she has inflicted upon Harry. At this point Harry is obsessed with Ginny, so much so that only querying Katie Bell about the poison necklace ‘drove Ginny temporarily from his brain’ – and only then temporarily. It’s during this period that JKR lets us hear from Hermione that tweaking circumstances is okay (page 484).
Over the next two weeks life revolves around Quidditch practice and Ginny (page 485). “Ginny did not seem at all upset about her break up with Dean; on the contrary, she was the life and soul of the team’ – doing skits, imitations, joking. Let’s take an aside to discuss this. Ginny is the ‘life and soul’ of the team. There has been a lot of ire in the fanbase that Ginny was presented here as the ‘heart and soul of the team’. Well she wasn’t. It clearly states ‘life and soul’. There is a huge difference between the meaning and implication of ‘heart and soul’ and ‘life and soul’. Heart and soul implies that she was the spiritual core of the team, that she kept them going, that she alone kept up their spirits and had faith in their abilities when all else on the team doubted themselves. But that is NOT what JKR says, she says ‘life and soul’ which is a hugely different thing. In Brit-speak (I don’t know if it’s the same for Americans, if it isn’t it could explain the misunderstanding on this) ‘life and soul’ is a colloquial term, a reference to someone who is ‘the life and soul of the party’. This has NO spiritual import whatsoever. Instead it means someone who is a ‘party hearty’ the noisy, brash person in the party who keeps everyone laughing with their endless jokes and larky behaviour. This person can indeed be highly entertaining, but they are also someone who is somewhat self-consciously ‘being funny’, someone putting on a bit of an act, attention seeking slightly. This is what Ginny is doing here. She is being loudly funny, drawing attention to herself. Is she doing it deliberately to get Harry’s attention? Has Hermione told her that Hermione has been watching Harry watching Ginny, which we know she has been? It would certainly explain why she’s not bothered about losing Dean, and why she is drawing attention to herself. We know that this ‘life and soul’ of the team thing is a new thing for Ginny, as only now do we hear of it. Well, either way it works, because Harry is so busy looking at her in practice that ‘he had received several more Bludger injuries during practice because he had not been keeping his eyes on the snitch’ (page 485). Injuries to the head? The possibility is left dangling.
After the Bludger injuries are reported, Harry is ever more obsessed. ‘The battle still raged inside his head: Ginny or Ron?’ He can’t stop himself from taking opportunities to be with her: ‘Yet Harry could not stop himself talking to Ginny … wondering how best to get her on her own.’ Hermione notices his attentions to Ginny and is pleased at them (page 485): ‘Once or twice Harry considered asking for Hermione’s help, but he did not think he could stand seeing the smug look on her face; he thought he caught it sometimes when Hermione spotted him staring at Ginny, or laughing at her jokes.’
At that point JKR gives us a second direct reference to Hermione ‘tweaking circumstances’ (page 486) to drive the point home. Hermione has obviously noticed Harry’s attentions to Ginny and is smug about it – of course she is smug, she is congratulating herself on the success of her efforts.
Time slides on, ‘the balmy days slid gently through May’, and Harry is still obsessively fretting about how to get Ginny alone. In his mind he has conflated the coming Gryffindor-Ravenclaw match with success or failure in his plans for Ginny. He’s only flung out of his obsession with Ginny by his Sectumsempra fight with Draco, but even after half-killing Draco (for which Harry is filled with a horrified remorse) not even that can get his mind off Ginny for long and he’s back obsessing again on page 495, scared she’ll get back with Dean, ‘the thought went through Harry like an icy knife’.
Ginny and Hermione have a falling out, ostensibly over Harry’s use of the Sectumsempra and Quidditch (page 496); Hermione is critical of Harry, and Ginny defends him. Ginny ends up snapping at Hermione. ‘Hermione and Ginny, who had always got on together very well, were now sitting with their arms folded, glaring in opposite directions. Ron looked nervously at Harry, then snatched up a book at random and hid behind it. Harry, however, though he knew he little deserved it, felt unbelievably cheerful all of a sudden, even though none of them spoke again for the rest of the evening.’
I think this falling out section is quite important for two sets of reasons. The first is that the strength of the falling out seems to be very high: it scares Ron, the two girls are violently not talking (arms folded and glaring away) and the resulting silence lasts all evening. This seems to me to be well in excess of what was warranted by the evident argument. Instead it seems to me that it was one of those instances where two people are ostensibly arguing about one thing, but in actuality the real sore point between them is something else, something they are not voicing ‘in company’. That something else, the real cause of the flare up, is often far worse than what they are using to cover it up. I think that prior to this Hermione may have finally confided to Ginny what she had been doing with the potions (thinking it was a fun girly thing for one friend to do for another) – and THAT would certainly have justified the level of anger. Ginny knows full well what being affected by an ‘alien force’ is like – she was possessed by Voldemort. She and Hermione obviously could not talk about it in public, certainly not when the ‘public’ is Ron and Harry himself. The second point from the ‘row’ is Harry’s reaction: ‘Harry, however, though he knew he little deserved it, felt unbelievably cheerful all of a sudden’. ‘Unbelievably cheerful’ even though he knows he doesn’t deserve it. He was horrified at having slashed Draco, but now Ginny says it’s okay, he doesn’t mind at all. This is one more evidence of ‘influence’.
Harry is then in detention and next sees Ginny at the post-match party, when they kiss and become a couple (page 499).
‘Harry looked around; there was Ginny running towards him; she had a hard, blazing look in her face as she threw her arms around him. And without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about the fact that fifty people were watching, Harry kissed her. After several long moments – or possibly several sunlight days – they broke apart.’ … ‘Hermione was beaming.’ … ‘The creature in his chest roaring in triumph,’
There is a lot going on here, so let’s look at it. Ginny comes running toward Harry and flings her arms around him – she moves in him, not he on her. She has ‘a hard, blazing look in her face’. Well, that is such a strange description; it doesn’t strike me as remotely romantic. Try and put what you feel would be a hard, blazing look on your face right now, and what does it feel as though you are expressing? – my effort feels like determination. I think Ginny is screwing her courage up and finally making her move. She may have been angry at Hermione dosing Ginny (and that is conjecture) but if she was, then not angry enough not to capitalise on her one best chance to finally, after years of crushing on him, ‘get Harry’. Can you really blame her? It’s the equivalent of a starving beggar finding a dropped purse stuffed full of money and not giving it back: it’s wrong but you can understand why they did it.
Note that Ginny touches Harry – fully embraces him – and I’ve earlier written about what I feel the effect of Ginny’s actual touch is on Harry. Harry kisses her despite any natural embarrassment he might otherwise feel. The kiss is equated to ‘several sunlight days’. This seems a cheesy description, but it does something else, it directs us back to one of the known effects of love potions in the only seen example of love potion use that we have: the effect on Ron (page 367). “Romilda Vane,” said Ron softly, and his whole face seemed to illuminate as he said it, as though hit by a ray of purest sunlight.’ Sunlight.
Hermione is beaming; of course she is, her little plan came to fruition. The creature in Harry’s chest is roaring in triumph; of course it is, after an almost nine month struggle (if we count from the first dosing at The Burrow), the monster finally won.
BUT WHAT DOES THE MONSTER WIN?
Not much really. Because we get one page of anything romantic, and that’s yer lot (page 500). Here Harry is reported as very happy, ‘happier than he could remember being for a very long time’. Ginny is seen sitting against Harry’s legs in the common room. She cracks a joke, ‘Ron and Hermione roar with laughter’, but Harry ignores them. As the joke continues he simply grins, although ‘Hermione rolled round laughing’. Ron and Ginny quickly devolve to their tedious sniping at each other. And then we immediately move into June.
In the above we get an easy familiarity between Harry and Ginny, but we see no passion. What we do see is Hermione rolling round laughing – because she is still elated that her plan worked out? Time passes and from half way down page 501, Ginny disappears as a ‘first person’ presence and is simply reported upon. Harry is happy to be with her, daydreaming, ‘reliving a particularly happy hour he spent down by the lake with Ginny at lunch time’; on page 504 he resents that Snape’s Sectumsempra detentions keep him from Ginny, with whom he only has limited time anyway because of her exams. ‘Indeed, he had frequently wondered lately whether Snape did not know this, for he was keeping Harry later and later every time …” I think that is JKR putting it to us that Snape does know and he is doing it deliberately. Why is Snape doing it? We can always factor in sheer spite in Snape’s case, but we can also factor in something else: on page 490 (during the Sectumsempra disaster) it is canon that Snape Leglimenses Harry – he looks into his mind and in so doing would see his emotional state (Leglimens allows the ‘looker’ to see what you are feeling). Snape does it again on page 494. Did Snape detect abnormal emotional instability toward Ginny, as brought on by the potion? As we know that Ginny was busy with exams, and that they had little time together, slicing down on the Saturdays as Snape does would cut their time together to the minimum. If this was the case then we have a cheeky little reference to Harry not wanting a Leglimens to see inside his head re Ginny(page 286):
“There isn’t anyone I want to invite,” mumbled Harry, who was still trying not to think about Ginny any more than he could help, despite the fact that she kept cropping up in his dreams in ways which made him devoutly thankful that Ron could not perform Leglimancy.’
On page 501 (at the bottom) we get another cheeky little inflection. Harry’s performance in Potions is suffering because he has ‘lost’ his Half-Blood Prince potions book. Slughorn’s reaction is:
‘Slughorn, who approved of Ginny, had jocularly attributed this to Harry being lovesick.’
Now bear in mind this is several weeks after Harry and Ginny are officially a couple, which is why I enjoy the ‘lovesick’ reference here. Harry CANNOT be ‘lovesick’ in the traditional sense as the ‘lovesick’ are those who pine for a love they do not have. Harry has his love, he is lovesick because he is literally sick – he is under the effects of potion.
The next report we have of Ginny is on page 516 when Harry is leaving on his mission with Dumbledore and is in a rush to say goodbye. He does not say goodbye to Ginny (his clawing monster of luuurve) but asks Ron and Hermione to pass on his goodbyes for him. Obviously in the narrative we have the excuse that Harry is in a great hurry, but authorially JKR could have put Ginny in the common room with Ron and Hermione for Harry to say goodbye to. JKR is NOT reporting reality, she is not writing up what has happened elsewhere, she is making up a story over which she has total control. If she wanted Harry to say farewell to Ginny, she could have easily had him do so in any number of ways even within the tight timeframe for goodbye. She does not have him say goodbye because she does not choose to. During the goodbye, Harry forces the Felix Felicis on Ron, insisting ‘Share it between yourselves (Ron and Hermione) and Ginny too.’ Ginny is almost an add-on extra. The fact that JKR did not have Harry say goodbye to Ginny is rammed down our throats as it forms the next mention of Ginny (page 530): ‘He suddenly wished he had said a better goodbye to them (referencing Ron and Hermione) … and he hadn’t seem Ginny at all ...’
Harry goes through the trauma and horror of the cave and the escape from the cave, he and Dumbledore arrive on the tower and Draco reports that ‘one of your people is dead’. ‘Harry’s heart thundered unheard in his invisible chest … someone was dead … Malfoy had stepped over the body … but who was it?’ I think this is notable for what it does not say: Harry gives no specific thought to Ginny at all.
We see her next on page 558 when Harry notices her hair ‘flying like flames’ when she is dodging the DE who is trying to hex her. Harry blasts the DE senseless and runs past Ginny, she calls out to him but he does not have time to reply as he passes. It is written that he ‘had no time to answer her’ and under the narrative circumstances that is true, but once again we must note that JKR is the author, only she decided that Harry didn’t have the time, she could have had Harry respond if she wanted to.
What do we see in this part of the book? That Harry is still besotted with Ginny, right until reality bites *the start of the Dumbledore mission). And then she is almost entirely out of mind. JKR also takes the authorial decision to ‘distance’ the reader from the romance, as she simply does not show it. The reader has no emotional investment in it, as it is not there.
HARRY AND GINNY – MOVING TOWARD THE END
Chapter 28 (page 571). Harry is devastated after Dumbledore’s death, he cannot find it within himself to leave the body. Then: ‘A much smaller and warmer hand had enclosed his and was pulling him upwards. He obeyed its pressure without really thinking about it. Only as he walked blindly back through the crowd did he realise, from a trace of flowery scent on the air, that it was Ginny who was leading him back to the castle.’
Harry and Ginny converse on their way to the hospital wing, but it’s pure exposition (i.e. JKR uses their conversation to let the reader know what has happened plot-wise).
The above quoted passage was the one passage in the whole book when I thought there might have been any true feeling between Harry and Ginny – I wondered if he had come to care for her naturally, although he had been ‘started off’ by the potion. And then I remembered that Harry’s peaks of response to Ginny prior to being knocked unconscious where when she touched him, and what does she do at the start of the passage? – she touches him. After that, if we are reading it from the perspective of someone ‘loved up’ then what are we seeing? ‘He obeyed its (her hand’s) pressure without really thinking about it.’ He obeyed, and without really thinking about it: indicative of love potion control. He walks blindly, there is a trace of flowery scent in the air – which is the scent this theory associates with The Burrow ‘potion’, and not with Ginny herself.
Until page 581 any conversation Ginny has with anyone is purely expositional. Then we get on page 581 what I think is another clue to events. Fleur makes her stand for Bill and won’t be driven away or put off: she loves him and that’s that, she will not hear of leaving him. This is the young woman whom Ginny certainly believed Molly was scheming to get shut of because it wasn’t ‘real love’, and Hermione never demurred against that opinion. Both girls are given a smart lesson about real love in that scene, and it startles them. When Molly accepts Fleur in their mutual tearstained hug: ‘Ginny and Hermione were exchanging startled looks’.
If there was ever a wake-up point when Ginny and Hermione were given abrupt cause to question the morality of what they were doing to Harry, then that was it.
‘The Quartet’ spend all their time together in the days before the funeral, and Harry is unhappy at knowing that in order to protect her from Voldemort he is going to have to say goodbye to Ginny: ‘it was too hard to forego his best source of comfort’. (I think that happens to make her sound like a pair of comfy old slippers rather than the love of his life, but we’ll let that one slide.) Harry still shows an unsettling tendency to reverse his opinions in the face of a critical Ginny; when Ginny announces that she supposes she’ll have to accept that Bill really is going to marry Fleur after all (which makes Ginny sound very petulant), Harry replies:
“She’s not that bad,” said Harry. “Ugly, though,” he added hastily, as Ginny raised her eyebrows, and she let out a reluctant giggle.
“Well I suppose if mum can stand it I can.”
Looking at it now, is this the pivotal exchange? Is this the point when Ginny admits that ‘you can’t buck love’?
The Trio engage in discussion over Snape and Voldemort – the big event – but far from being interested enough to get involved in this major aspect of Harry’s life, Ginny yawns and goes to bed.
HARRY AND GINNY – PARTING AT THE FUNERAL
At the funeral Harry sees Neville and Luna and feels ‘a great rush of affection for both of them’ (page 598). He gets a ‘wonderful, momentary urge to laugh’ at the tragi-comedy of Hagrid and Grawp (page 600). It’s as though here he is somehow starting to emotionally thaw, to come back to himself. These are Harry’s emotions, not something from a bottle.
On pages 602 to 603, Harry leaves Ginny. I will quote almost the entire section as I believe all of it is significant.
‘She met Harry’s gaze with the same hard, blazing look that he had seen when she had hugged him after winning the Quidditch Cup in his absence, and he knew that at that moment they understood each other perfectly, and that when he told her what he was going to do now, she would not say ‘Be careful’ or ‘Don’t do it’, but accept his decision, because she would not have expected anything less of him.’
He says that they have to stop seeing each other.
“I can’t be involved with you any more. We’ve got to stop seeing each other. We can’t be together.”
She said, with an oddly twisted smile, “It’s for some stupid, noble reason isn’t it?”
“It’s been like … like something out of someone else’s life, these past weeks with you,” said Harry. “But I can’t … we can’t … I’ve got things to do alone now.”
She did not cry, she simply looked at him.’
“Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He’s already used you as bait once, and that was just because you’re my best friend’s sister. Think how much danger you’ll be in if we keep this up. He’ll know, he’ll find out. He’ll try and get to me through you.”
‘What if I don’t care?” said Ginny fiercely.
“I care,” said Harry. “How do you think I’d feel if this was your funeral .. and it was my fault …”
She looked away from him over the lake.
“I never really gave up on you,” she said. “Not really, I always hoped … Hermione told me to get on with my life, maybe go out with some other people, relax a bit around you, because I never used to be able to talk if you were in the room, remember? And she thought you might take a bit more notice if I was a bit more – myself.”
“Smart girl that Hermione,” said Harry, trying to smile. “I just wish I’d asked you sooner. We could have had ages … months … years maybe ..”
“But you were too busy saving the wizarding world,” said Ginny, half-laughing. “Well … I can’t say I’m surprised. I knew this would happen in the end. I knew you wouldn’t be happy unless you were hunting Voldemort. Maybe that’s why I like you so much.”
Harry is miserable, he could not bear to hear those things, ‘nor did he think his resolution would hold if he remained sitting beside her’ (no it would not, due to the proximity effects of potion: touching). He sees Ron embracing Hermione and stroking her hair as she weeps, the sight of Ron and Hermione is one of great intimacy, but even prompted by that, ‘with a miserable gesture, Harry got up, turned his back on Ginny’… he leaves her without JKR even giving us one kiss goodbye. From the moment he turns his back he does not think of her or speak of her.
He meets Ron and Hermione and tries to leave them behind too, but they won’t hear of it and it is clear that the Trio will go on. They make arrangements to meet up at The Burrow for Bill and Fleur’s wedding, and to attend that before they go on to fight the good fight. The book closes with Harry happy at the thought of the coming wedding: ‘he felt his heart lift at the thought that there was still one last golden day of peace left to enjoy with Ron and Hermione’.
Note that although Ginny will quite obviously be at the wedding (she is a Weasley and a bridesmaid), he does not think of her at all.
The above is packed with meaning and foreshadowing of events to come.
Harry says: “It’s been like … like something out of someone else’s life, these past weeks with you,” too right it has – it hasn’t been a real experience at all in that his ‘going out with Ginny’ period was full of chemically induced happiness. He was as genuinely happy as Merope Gaunt’s husband was before she quit dosing him.
Let’s go to that ‘hard, blazing look’. That seems t be a fiery determination, a stubbornness, but to what end? We have Harry telling us that ‘he knew that at that moment they understood each other perfectly’, but then the following text shows that they clearly do not. He explains three times that they can’t be together and why not, and her response after all is: “What if I don’t care?” said Ginny fiercely.’ Harry has to then drive the point home by saying: “How do you think I’d feel if this was your funeral .. and it was my fault …” He has to keep on explaining again and again why he thinks what he does: this is not ‘perfect agreement’.
Ginny then looks away, as though she knows at that point that she has lost and that he will not be persuaded. We have the “I never really gave up on you’ paragraph, which we have gone over before, but this is followed by a cheeky little inflection: “Smart girl that Hermione.” Yes, smart Hermione, with all her scheming to get H/G together. We then have one of the most absurd lines in the book if taken at face value, where Harry bemoans that if only he’d asked Ginny sooner they could have had months or even years. I laughed out loud when I read that, because it is palpable nonsense. Yes, they could have had months because Harry was fighting the potion for months and he could have given in months ago – but years? They could not have had years because in all five previous books Harry was not interested in Ginny and did not ask her out because he did not want to! He felt no urge to do so! Only a Harry who was loved-up could imagine he had always felt that way.
Then we have Ginny’s farewell, when she realises she’s lost Harry. “But you were too busy saving the wizarding world,” said Ginny, half-laughing. “Well … I can’t say I’m surprised. I knew this would happen in the end. I knew you wouldn’t be happy unless you were hunting Voldemort. Maybe that’s why I like you so much.”
‘Well … I can’t say I’m surprised. I knew this would happen in the end.’ Yes, she knew it would happen in the end, because she knew it was based on a potion and, from the evidence of true love in the hospital scene, that dosing Harry was wrong. She has an innate recognition that what is falsely induced cannot last. We have a full stop, and then her reason as to why she was not surprised. But the full stop differentiates the reason from her knowledge that he would leave in the end. If it was the genuine reason then JKR could simply have had a comma instead of a full stop, and it actually reads much better with a comma. Then we have her final sentence in the whole book: ‘Maybe that’s why I like you so much.’ Like? This is supposed to be the Twu Luv of All Time, and she ‘likes’ him? Where is ‘love’ where is ‘care for’? – Ginny herself seems to be viewing her emotion more clearly and realises she ‘likes’ him.
Note that he never tells her anything about The Prophecy (which he told Ron and Hermione about straight off the bat), he never tells her anything about the Horcruxes either, when he told Ron and Hermione all about those too.
The word ‘love’ is never used between or about Harry/Ginny in the entire book.
HOW EASY IS IT TO DOSE SOMEONE - COULD HERMIONE HAVE BEEN DOSING HARRY AT TIMES OTHER THAN THOSE STIPULATED (AT THE BURROW AND IN THE PUB)?
Yes, because dosing someone is easy. When Dumbledore is relating the tale of Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle Senior he says (page 202): “I do not think it would have been very difficult, some hot day, when Riddle was riding alone, to persuade him to take a drink of water.”
Before the Christmas party (page 287) Hermione says: “Well just be careful what you drink, because Romilda Vane looked like she meant business.” In other words, Harry has to watch all drinks because any could be affected.
After Ron had been poisoned with the mead, Fred wonders if Slughorn could have contaminated Ron’s glass (page 375):
“Would he have been able to slip something into Ron’s glass without you seeing?”
“Probably,” said Harry.
So even Harry recognises that it’s easy to spike a drink and go un-noticed.
The most direct statement comes from Hermione herself (page 421) when Harry is wondering if a potion will get Slughorn to divulge his memory, she says: “It’s not a question of slipping him a potion, anyone could do that - ”. Well she should know, she’s the expert on it.
Hermione could have been dosing him at any time. All she needed was a situation when Harry was drinking, and she has meals with him practically every day.
HOW OFTEN WAS HARRY BEING DOSED? WAS HARRY BEING DOSED AFTER THE KISS?
We don’t know. What we DO know comes from the only ‘documented’ incident of love potion abuse: that between Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle Senior, as related by Dumbledore.
Merope had a ‘secret burning passion’ for TRS (remind you of anyone?). She doses him up and gets him to run off with her. He leaves her when she is pregnant, saying on his return to normality that he had been ‘hoodwinked’ and ‘taken in’. Dumbledore says that he believes TRS left because Merope stopped giving him the potion. In other words, for ‘love’ to continue, the potion has to continue to be administered. This would suggest that Harry was still being ‘topped up’ after the kiss.
He is obviously still affected at the time of the funeral, but would appear to be coming out of it slightly.
WHY DIDN’T HARRY SHOW THE SAME SYMPTOMS AS RON?
One argument to refute a love potion theory is that Ron shows very evident signs that something is wrong the instant he has taken the Romilda Vane potion, so much so that Harry immediately suspects something is up. He has a ‘strangely unfocused’ look on his face, is ‘rather pale and looks like he is about to be sick’, he makes ‘desperate gestures’, he has a dreamy look about him ‘as though hit by a ray of purest sunlight’, he is instantly and openly obsessed with Romilda, he has glazed eyes and a pallid complexion, he turns violent when Romilda is insulted.
Harry evinces none of these reactions for two reasons. One, he is Harry and on current evidence Harry is a mentally tougher prospect that Ron (see Harry v The Imperius) but FAR more importantly than this is the second reason. Slughorn asks if the potion was within date (page 371), “They can strengthen, you know, the longer they’re kept.”
Romilda gives Harry the chocolates before the Christmas holidays, Ron ate the chocolates/drank the potion contained within, on his birthday: 1st March. By the time Ron drank it, the Romilda potion had been mixed up and raring to go for over two months. We don’t even know how ‘old’ it was when she got it out of the bottle. All told, the Romilda/Ron potion had strengthened significantly because if its age. Harry does not evince such dramatic responses because he will be drinking ‘fresh’. Hermione may be someone who is not concerned the consequences of what she is doing, but she is someone (we know for a fact) who will follow the ‘directions for use’ to the letter.
IS IT POSSIBLE THAT GINNY NEVER KNEW ABOUT THE LOVE-POTIONING AT ALL?
Yes it is possible. But I believe she did know by the time she made her move on Harry, if only because it gives a real reason for what I see as a disproportionate row between Hermione and Ginny, and it makes sense of Ginny’s farewell comments: ‘I knew it would end like this’.
Even if Ginny is not directly involved at all, I am convinced from the canon evidence that Hermione was in it up to her neck and that love potions were used to affect Harry/Ginny.
PREDICTIONS FOR THE FUTURE
The love potion endeavours are bound to come out, and I suspect they will start to emerge at the wedding as that is the next telegraphed grand occasion where drinks will be being passed around. What will the reaction be?
People will be shocked and horrified and angry. Ron will side with Harry (knowing full well what being dosed felt like). Molly will be horrified and blame Hermione (and maybe Ginny too). Ginny and Hermione may fall out over it, each blaming the other.
Harry will break with Ginny (and he won’t be too happy about Hermione either); Harry is, after all, the person who associates love potion with something as serious as The Imperius (page 201):
DD: “Can you not think of any measure Merope could have taken to make Tom Riddle forget his Muggle companion, and fall in love with her instead?”
H: “The Imperius Curse?” Harry suggested. “Or a love potion?”
Harry relates a love potion to an ‘Unforgivable’, and ‘unforgivables’ aren’t called unforgivable for nothing.
We also have the foreshadowing of the Merope/Riddle Snr ‘relationship’ when she dupes him with the potion, which as DD says “would have seemed more romantic to her” (once again hinting that the ‘girl’ concerned didn’t see it as cruel mind control, but as a desperate romance). The love potion ‘stops working’ because (page 203) “Merope, who was deeply in love with her husband, could not bear to continue enslaving him by magical means. I believe she made the choice to stop giving him the potion. Perhaps, besotted as she was, she had convinced herself that he would by now have fallen in love with her in return. Perhaps she thought he would stay for the baby’s sake. If so, she was wrong on both counts. He left her, never saw her again, and never troubled to discover what became of his son.”
Do I think this foreshadowing is so precise that it means Ginny is now secretly pregnant by Harry? Of course not, these aren’t those types of books. But I do see it as foreshadowing of a ‘relationship’ in which a besotted girl with romantic notions uses drugs to get a boy to love her. When she stops drugging him because she cannot bear to carry on with it, he stops loving her and then walks out on her forever when he realises what she did. Okay, so Ginny wasn’t the one who actively potioned Harry, but she took advantage of it, and that will be as bad.
We also have the foreshadowing of the Celestina Warbeck songs from the chapter ‘A Very Frosty Christmas’. Extract the song titles and the song verses from the surrounding text, and what we are left with is this:
A Cauldron Full of Hot Strong Love
‘Oh, come and stir my cauldron,
And if you do it right
I’ll boil you up some hot, strong love
To keep you warm tonight’
The above clearly refers to the creation of a love potion, which when deployed:
You Charmed the Heart Right Out of Me
Stole the heart of the dosed one. We then have:
‘Oh, my poor heart, where has it gone?
It’s left me for a spell …’
Which is a lovely little play on the word ‘spell’ which means both hex, and ‘a period of time’. In other words, the heart may have been fooled by a charm, but the trick won’t last forever, resulting in:
‘… and now you’ve torn it quite apart
I’ll thank you to give me back my heart!’
When the dosed person wakes up from the effects and/or realises events, goddammit they want their heart back! They are NOT happy about it.
The Merope and the song foreshadowing give us the same narrative: girl gets boy by use of potion, girl gets found out/stops, boy gets angry big-style: well angry enough to march out.
When it all comes out there will be hell to pay all round, especially when you consider that between them Hermione and Ginny were messing with Harry’s one real weapon against Voldemort – his ability to love.
What are the consequences for Ginny apart from Harry dumping her? Well here we go back to the ‘break up’ passage I quoted earlier and look at one little bit of it, as quoted from Harry:
“Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He’s already used you as bait once, and that was just because you’re my best friend’s sister. Think how much danger you’ll be in if we keep this up. He’ll know, he’ll find out. He’ll try and get to me through you.”
I think Voldemort will find out about ‘the relationship’ in any case, he will think it is still current but secret, and he will snatch Ginny for use as leverage. I think Ginny will not be in much of a position to defend herself as we know from both Merope and Tonks that severe emotional trauma (romantic in both cases) cause a drastic loss of ‘power’.
What will happen to Hermione? Unknown – she owes a lot of karmic debt for pulling a stunt like this, and I expect to see authorial payback Ron and Harry may try to go on without her, and in turn she may try to go it alone and get into trouble.
Anise’s Note:
Wow! What a theory, huh? I would add some more content to the end, too, to be expanded upon greatly in my next essay. ;). As y’all know if you read my love potion essay, I theorized that Harry was dosed not by Hermione, but by Draco and Snape. I actually think that there’s a lot more evidence for Creamtea’s version, but I also think that Draco and Snape’s involvement with H/G will be tremendously important in the next book. Snape certainly knows about H/G, and it’s canon now that Draco was extraordinarily interested in the subject of Ginny Weasley. So let’s look at this possible Book 7 scenario.
It’s going to be very hard to rehabilitate Draco with Voldemort, since four Death Eaters saw that he wouldn’t kill Dumbledore (and JKR revealed in the Mugglenet interview that Draco absolutely would not have done it, no matter what.) Yet Snape has sworn to protect Draco’s life, and he’s still got street cred with the DE’s. One of the few ways Snape could persuade Voldy to keep Draco alive is if he could help with a plan to get Harry, and by kidnapping Ginny, he could do exactly that. Once again, I think we’re seeing here the quadrangle connections between Draco, Ginny, Harry, and Tom Riddle/Voldemort. H/G and D/G are intertwined (which may very well turn out to be a parallel to the way that Snape/Lily and James/Lily were intertwined.) And they will all play important roles in the final showdown.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour through HBP H/G theories! And watch for Creamtea’s next essay, which has MUCH more to do with both Draco and Ginny…
Welcome to the next installment of Creamtea’s wonderful essays! Here, we’ll delve into the stunning mysteries of the otherwise inexplicable nature of H/G in HBP. We’ll see the surprising evidence, and the shockingly logical arguments will be laid bare and made clear. And at the end, you, too, may feel that at last, it all makes sense. Ready? Then get your scuba gear on, and let’s dive fearlessly into…
GIRLS AND LOVE POTIONS: HERMIONE, GINNY AND HARRY
By Creamtea
(Notes and Addendums by Anise)
(In the following all quotes and page numbers are as in the Bloomsbury standard edition.)
A bit about my attitude to the HP books. I view them not as adventure novels but as detective/mystery novels in which the author is essentially lying to the reader and challenging the reader to see through the lie - that's the whole point of the books. JKR references detective novels on her site 'bookshelf' (Dorothy L Sayers - twice, front and centre,) plus one of her mates (Ian Rankin - detective novelist) flat out said in an interview that 'her books are practically detective mysteries'.
In hunting about for clues in the HP books I DO NOT deal in ‘symbolism.’ As far as I’m concerned the clues are in the text, directly embedded in what the characters say and do; if I can’t find clues there but instead have to resort to ‘symbolism’ to prove a case, then I assume I have no case and I drop it.
My first reaction on the ‘Love Potion’ theory, and the reaction I held for some time (even on my first read-through of the book), was that the theory was simply a desperate attempt by those against an H/G pairing to find some way – any way - to deny it: that it was a result of people desperately attempting to reject JKR’s clear expression in canon. As to my own attitude to H/G, I felt disgust at the pairing and annoyance at the poor writing of it, but I accepted it as canon. I thought several things about it: that it was subject to a stunning lack of proper foreshadowing, that indeed it went against the previous theme of the five books, being that he hadn’t noticed her - and no, I don’t buy ‘chocolate Easter eggs’ as symbolic foreshadowing, I don’t buy ‘symbolism’ full stop. I thought that Harry’s reactions were ludicrously ‘Harlequin Hero’, that Ginny as seen via Harry was ludicrously perfect, that the dialogue was laughably cheesy, like something out of a teenage girls’ hopeless romance novel. Most of all though, I thought the whole theme of ‘girl pines after boy for YEARS, until one day her Cinderella devotion is rewarded and SHAZZAM he suddenly sees that She Is The One’ was morally bankrupt. I can’t begin to tell you how angry that last made me – that an author like JKR, who is in effect in Loco Parentis to millions of girls the world over, could peddle tripe like that, encouraging impressionable girls to pine away waiting for Him to notice them (whoever He is – the quarterback, the football captain, the ‘cool guy’ at school, their best friend’s elder brother, Tom Felton, Dan Radcliffe, whoever). To see JKR peddle the fantasy that after FIVE YEARS of Harry seeing Ginny as his ‘little sister’ figure/not really noticing her at all, that he’d suddenly ‘switch on’ to her as his Twu Wuv made me pretty cross. Nevertheless, even though I thought the plotline was ridiculous, I still didn’t entertain the ‘Love Potion’ theory. I just forced myself to swallow H/G as canon and instead thought it was a spectacularly poor piece of writing on JKR’s part.
Anyway, I read the book and I uncomfortably note that the theme of Love Potions does keep cropping up on page after page, but STILL I won’t believe it – I STILL think H/G is meant to be taken seriously but that it’s just rubbish writing. I look again at the book but I keep getting sidetracked by what I came to think of as ‘that love potion crap’ which keeps cropping up in the story. Finally I throw up my hands and decide to look into it – however stupid the theory may ostensibly seem and however little faith I have in it – just so I can prove to myself it’s rubbish and get past it.
I fish around for a while. I see Love Potion mentions and inferences all over, but I still don’t see any discernable pattern. In fact, the ‘Love Potion’ theory seems totally gutshot by the following canon:
Page 174, the first Potions lesson: from the Amortentia cauldron ‘was emitting one of the most seductive scents Harry had ever inhaled: somehow it reminded him simultaneously of treacle tart, the woody smell of a broomstick handle and something flowery he thought he might have smelled at The Burrow.’ It is further canon that Amortentia is (page 176) ‘the most powerful love potion in the world’ … ‘it’s supposed to smell … according to what attracts us’ (all from Hermione, who knows a lot about it). Now that seems to slam the Love Potion theory to a halt before it’s even started, because Harry smells ‘flowers’ (a.k.a., as is established later, Ginny) during his first official encounter with a love potion, i.e. he was already ‘attracted to’ Ginny BEFORE he came into contact with the love potion, and thus the love potion simply indicated that he was already naturally attracted to her. I realised that any Love Potion theory must address this fact and explain it – you can’t just ignore it because it doesn’t suit your ideas.
I knew that if the Amortentia evidence were to be disproved, and that Harry isn’t naturally attracted to Ginny and there were indeed Love Potion dirty dealings involved, then there could only be one logical explanation for the Amortentia episode ‘flowery smell’: Harry must have been dosed with a Love Potion to engineer an attraction to Ginny BEFORE he is exposed to the scent of the Amortentia. So, I drag my weary ass back to the first chapter in which he meets Ginny – the chapter when Harry first arrives at The Burrow, ‘An Excess of Phlegm’ – and flick about looking for an explanation. I don’t really expect to find anything as I’ve got no real faith in the Love Potion theory anyway. Partly I’m only looking into it to prove to myself that he couldn’t have been dosed before, so that I can shut up that nagging voice at the back of my mind and get on with the rest of the book. I haven’t even got anything to really go on, all I’ve got is that if anything DID happen it’s somehow got to have involved the scent of flowers. I’m fiddling about with the chapter, not really expecting to find anything , when !BAM!, I see it. I see those little clues that are the loose threads that allow me to start pulling away at the Love Potion strand that runs through the book, and I pull and I pull and I unravel it, and what I unravel is this:
SUMMARY
The summary doesn’t give canon evidence (quotes etc) it just lays out the overall theory. I chose to give a summary first and then back it up with a separate detailed, quote stuffed, canon referenced ‘full’ section giving the ‘evidence’, as otherwise people might be hard pushed to keep track. If you like, the summary provides the overall picture, which is then ‘coloured in’ in the detailed section.
Summary: Hermione dosed Harry with a home-made love potion during his first night at The Burrow. It was designed to make him fall for her Harry-crushing, love-lorn best mate, Ginny. Two points right now: Firstly, Ginny has no idea about this and doesn’t know anything about Hermione’s plans. Ginny is innocent of the entire scheme. Secondly, Hermione is content to try and dose Harry only because she does not see Love Potions as Dark or dangerous, and besides, she is sure that Ginny is the ideal girlfriend for Harry, she thinks Harry just needs a little push, that’s all, that the situation just needs a ‘helping hand’. If Hermione had thought it was dangerous or damaging to Harry, then I am convinced from all that we know of her that she would never have done it.
Hermione thinks her potion has failed as the next morning she looks for discernable change in Harry’s behaviour but can detect none. She drops the plan. Then, a few weeks later, everyone goes to Diagon Alley where Hermione spots the WWW Love Potions and she decides to give it a second try using a ‘proper’ love potion this time. She either buys the WWW love potion there and/or orders a supply via the Twins special Owl Delivery.
When school starts she comes across the Amortentia in the first Potions lesson. It reminds Harry – among other things – of something flowery he thought he had smelled at the Burrow (the smell later associated with Ginny). In fact, he is not reminded of Ginny per se, but reminded of the smell associated with the first ‘dose’ of love potion that he was exposed to wherein he was ‘set up’ to be attracted to Ginny anyway. During the lesson, Hermione may have stolen some Amortentia (we never know for sure).
Throughout the school year Hermione is periodically dosing Harry with various combinations of WWW Love Potion (and stolen Amortentia?) trying to engineer him to fall for Ginny. Ginny still has no idea that any of this is going on. Hermione carries on dosing, not believing she is having any real effect because Harry is hiding his newborn and unsettling ‘feelings’ for Ginny. He internalises them and is largely able to keep himself in check (he is a boy who was good at throwing off the Imperius) but in actual fact, she is having an effect: Harry is periodically given to wild, infatuated longings for Ginny, and they scare him. I repeat that Hermione never has any idea that what she is doing is in any way dangerous or injurious to Harry, she does not believe that love potions are Dark or dangerous magic. If she did believe they were Dark or dangerous, or if she knew the turmoil she was creating within Harry, I believe her own actions would have horrified her and that she would have stopped immediately.
At a point just prior to the Quidditch Cup match, Hermione tells Ginny what she has been doing. Ginny is angry at Hermione, but yet … this is the one chance she has to get what she believes she has always wanted: Harry’s ‘love’. After the match the gives in to temptation and makes a move on Harry. Prompted by his repeated dosings and chemically engendered infatuation/obsession, Harry responds and they are officially a couple.
Things seem okay and trickle along in a tame fashion – there are no great dates to report of, it’s just comfy. Harry might still be receiving the odd dose here and there to keep him ‘topped up’. Then all hell breaks loose, the DEs attack, Bill is marred and suddenly we get one of the strongest gestures of true love in the book: Fleur won’t hear of leaving the marred Bill, she loves him – it is a proper love, the kind you can’t get out of a bottle. Both Hermione and Ginny see this at first hand and are startled by it. It is a wake up call. Under the pressure of events, Harry (who does not know that he has ever been potioned) decides to break with Ginny, he still ‘cares’ about her though and it makes him miserable to do it. Ginny flares up slightly, she can see it all slipping away from her, and yet … she accepts it with a form of grace as she realises it would never have lasted as it was based on a falsity anyway, and could she have really borne to go on dosing Harry forever?
The book ends with Harry ‘turning his back’ on Ginny and spending what precious time he has left to him with his friends Ron and Hermione. He does not think about Ginny from the moment her ‘turns his back on her’ at Dumbledore’s funeral.
For the future: I believe the love potion scheme with come out and that it will send a destructive shockwave through Harry’s ‘relation’ with Ginny, and will also send a shockwave through the Trio as Hermione’s culpability is revealed. Ron will be affected as both Ginny’s brother and Hermione’s boyfriend, and will sympathise with Harry as he was a sufferer of the devastating effects of a love potion himself: he knows what Harry went through. Ginny will go into an emotionally devastated decline when Harry reveals his anger at what was done to him and he rejects her. Her magical ability/strength will be damaged by it. She will also be targeted by Voldemort, who will still believe that Harry cares for her as she was ‘Harry’s girlfriend’. Not counting possible character deaths: by the end of the book, Harry and Ginny will never be a couple – Harry could never trust her no matter what – and their ‘love’ was never real anyway, but based on a potion.
THE FULL THEORY: EVIDENCE FROM CANON
This is where I go into detail and flesh out the summary – adhering strictly to HBP canon.
WHAT IS GINNY’S MOTIVATION?
Ginny never really gave up on Harry, ever, even though by the end of OoTP he still hasn’t made a move on her. Indeed she has heard it straight from the mouth of the Boy Who Wouldn’t Date Her that he didn’t even remember one of the defining events of her life – her possession by Voldemort.
Ginny was so keen to ‘get’ Harry that her behavior in OoTP – getting a life and going out with other boys on the advice of her friend Hermione – was actually directed at getting Harry to notice her. It didn’t work. She admits it at the end of HBP. Page 603: “I never really gave up on you … I always hoped … Hermione told me to get on with my life, maybe go out with some other people, relax a bit around you, because I never used to be able to talk if you were in the room, remember? And she thought you might take a bit more notice if I was a bit more – myself.”
Now, I take this to mean she was up to this behaviour in OoTP, because that is when she ‘takes off’ as a character with her boyfriends etc. As an aside I find the lay out of the end of that passage interesting. It’s the little dash between the main body of the text and the word ‘myself’, she pauses before she utters that word, almost as though she has to think about what to say. I think there’s a possibility that OoTP Ginny (and then Super!Ginny) may all a bit of an act on her part really – a persona she adopted. Because the phrase “And she thought you might take a bit more notice if I was a bit more - ” feels to me as though it might have naturally ended in a word like, ‘brash’, ‘sassy’, something like that, or maybe she was going to say ‘a bit more like Cho Chang’(whom Hermione knew Harry fancied), in any case she catches herself, pauses and puts in ‘myself’.
So, we have a Ginny who never got over Harry, so much so that she spent the school year in OoTP (and since?) affecting her behaviour to catch his eye, and using other boys to get Harry to notice her. She didn’t date other boys for themselves (Michael, Dean, and even Neville, as she admitted she only accepted his invite to the Yule Ball so she could attend it and presumably have a chance to get next to Harry,) she dated them to get next to Harry/ to get Harry to notice her. Indeed, it makes sense of the ‘I chose Dean’ comment at the end of OoTP. Too right she ‘chose’ him, she may have liked him but it certainly served her purpose to go out with a boy who was one of only four boys who shared a dorm with Harry, only three of whom were available to her as Ron is her brother. It is a trick used the world over by girls (and maybe boys too): if you fancy someone you think is a little out of your reach and whom you my have to ‘work at’, then go out with an ‘easier catch’ mate of theirs so at least you are in their social orbit.
Ginny is someone who is desperate. She is someone who’ll go to quite some lengths to get Harry. Someone in fact, who doesn’t stop to consider the real feelings of boys in her blind, desperate struggle to get Harry’s ‘love’. This strikes me as someone who could find it within themselves to take advantage of an already existing love potion situation as she won’t necessarily see/want to see that Harry has real feelings that she is messing with, she is just desperate to be ‘loved’ by him.
WHAT IS HERMIONE’S MOTIVATION? AND WHY DOES HERMIONE DECIDE UPON, AND CARRY OUT, THE LOVE POTION PLAN? – IT SEEMS OUT OF CHARACTER.
This is going to be quite a long section, as Hermione appears to be OOC in this theory, but within the setting of her emotional development in HBP, I don’t think love potion shenanigans are OOC for her …
Reason 1: She is a friend of Ginny’s (page 496 ‘Hermione and Ginny who had always got on together very well’). Ginny wanted Harry to the extent of altering her own behaviour in OoTP in order to try and get him, but with no success. Hermione was already engaged enough to have suggested Ginny’s previous tactics to her, so when those tactics failed Hermione decides to ‘help out’ by going a little bit further.
Reason 2: She sees no harm in using a love potion. We know this because when Harry and Hermione are discussing how the cursed necklace and the love potions could have gotten past Hogwarts security. Hermione says (page 288)
Hr: Secrecy Sensors detect jinxes, curses and concealment charms, don’t they? They’re used to find Dark magic and Dark objects …. and anyway, love potions aren’t Dark or dangerous -”
H: Easy for you to say.
Okay, so from the above it is securely established in CANON that Hermione doesn’t think the love potions are Dark or dangerous, and acknowledging that is crucial because if she thought they were she’d never have done it. Note Harry’s little reply ‘easy for you to say’; yes it is easy for her to say, because she is not the one being dosed.
Indeed, why should she think they are Dark or dangerous? Lots of other girls are buying love potions off WWW and are planning to use them on Harry prior to Slughorn’s Christmas party. Why shouldn’t Ginny have the same advantage? After all, she ‘loved’ him first, way before any late-comers like Romilda Vane popped up – if anyone deserves Harry, Ginny does. Besides, if it was dangerous surely WWW wouldn’t be allowed to sell it?
Furthermore, although the ‘Birthday Surprise’ (page 371) Ron gets from the Romilda Vane love leaves him horrified, Hermione doesn’t know about it: ‘Then, very slowly, his grin sagged and vanished to be replaced by an expression of utmost horror’. He then ‘collapsed into an armchair looking devastated’. Note the ‘utmost horror’ and ‘devastated’; love potions are not a happy experience for the dosee, however girly and ‘fun’ they might seem as a concept. The point relating to Hermione is that there is no evidence that either Ron or Harry ever mentions the incident to Hermione (or anyone else except Slughorn.) In my opinion, they keep quiet on it- partly because it’s a horribly embarrassing experience for Ron, and partly because they just plain forget in the aftermath of Ron’s immediate near-death from the doped mead.
An extra point is that during the Potions class where we ‘meet’ the Amortentia, Slughorn asks Hermione “I assume you know what it does?” Hermione answers: “It’s the most powerful love potion in the world!” She then goes on to describe it purely in terms of its physical appearance, but she didn’t answer the question in terms of its emotional effects, which is actually what the question was asking: what does it do? It is left to Slughorn to go into the emotional effects on page 177.
“Amortentia doesn’t really create love of course. It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. No, this will simply cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. It is probably the most dangerous and powerful potion in this room – oh yes,” he said, nodding gravely at Malfoy and Nott, both of whom were smirking sceptically. “When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love …”
Not only does Hermione not consider love potions dangerous, she hasn’t thought about them in terms of their effects and consequences properly at all.
Reason 3: Hermione shows herself of a mind to magically ‘tweak events’ to get things to go the way she wants them, especially when she thinks that the way she wants them is they way they ought to be. See the chapter ‘Hermione’s Helping Hand’ wherein she’s quite happy to Confundus McLaggan out of the running for Quidditch Keeper to ensure that Ron keeps the spot. She also states (page 484) re the use of Felix Felicis “The situation with Slughorn was different, you just needed to tweak the circumstances a bit.” This is banged home on page 486 when the line is essentially repeated in Harry’s thoughts: “surely this was a case for, as Hermione put it, ‘tweaking the circumstances’?” Hermione is thus established in canon as someone who is prepared to use magic to ‘tweak’ events/circumstances to get them to go the way she wants. The use of the word ‘tweak’ (which she uses herself, it is her spoken phrase) strongly implies that she doesn’t see her actions as serious or as carrying heavy consequences, and that she regards the changes she engenders as small. I.e. that she sees that events would/should have turned out her way anyway – she just helped them along with ‘Hermione’s Helping Hand’.
The known ‘tweaking’ with McLaggan can be directly compared to the conjectured dosing of Harry: she used magic to affect a person’s mind and judgment with the aim of arranging a beneficial situation for a third party for whom she cared (Ron and Ginny Weasley) – without the third party knowing about it or requesting it.
I find the actual chapter title, ‘Hermione’s Helping Hand’, important in itself – as under my theory ‘a helping hand’ is her role in the love potion fiasco. I see the chapter title as a huge clue to her overarching role in that aspect of the story.
Reason 4: emotional control. Hermione’s own love life is a mess. She can’t get through to Ron (not since the great Krum debacle of GoF) and she is frustrated. Ron, in turn, is hurting her by having taken up with Lavender to get some snogging practice in and to get revenge on Hermione’s own ‘Krum snogging’(prompted in both cases, ironically enough, by Ginny’s attack on his ‘poor’ romantic reputation and her revealing of Hermione’s confidence that Hermione had ‘snogged Viktor Krum’ – page 269). The extent of her frustration in HPB is shown in the quite shocking end to the Chapter Felix Felicis (page 283) wherein she sets a charmed flock of little golden birds onto Ron (having witnessed him with Lavender). She is ‘shrieking’, her expression is ‘wild’ and she sets them on him ‘like a hail of fat golden bullets’ and Ron has to cover his face as they are ‘pecking and clawing at every bit of flesh they could reach’. Hermione departs abruptly, and to the reader it is clear that she is sobbing. This strikes me as a girl who, if her own romantic life is a mess, would have the motivation to ‘sort someone else out’ in an effort to give herself the illusion that she is in control.
This ‘control’ motivation is also shared by Ginny. Ginny believes that Molly is scheming to put a stop to the marriage of Fleur and Bill, and says so in front of Hermione who does not dispute it. (Page 93)
“You don’t really want her around forever?” Ginny asked Ron incredulously. When he merely shrugged, she said, “Well, mum’s going to put a stop to it if she can, I bet you anything.”
“How does she manage that?” asked Harry.
“She keeps trying to get Tonks round for dinner. I think she’s hoping Bill will fall for Tonks instead. I hope he does, I’d much rather have her in the family.”
Ginny thus believes, and Hermione is a witness to that belief, that ‘love’ is something you can affect, even if it is other people’s love, and that you have a right to affect it if you want to.
OPINION: Hermione is a person who needs to feel in control – JKR has said in interviews that Hermione is insecure, and in canon Hermione is given to controlling behaviour as a character. She has a very maternal ‘bossy’ attitude toward Ron and Harry (mentioned frequently in canon) she is also an organised person – often using lists and having detailed written timetables of various sorts (also canon). I think that this kind of character in real life – a list-maker - is often prompted by a need for control, that such people feel that if they can organise things on paper then they can organise life. They are scared of being out of control. Hermione is scared of being out of control; using a love potion to ‘tweak events’ and make sure they go her way would be fine by her.
JKR has stipulated that she created Ginny as the ‘perfect’ and ‘ideal’ girlfriend for Harry - yes, so that Hermione sees that they are meant to be together and is of the opinion that surely Harry must really love Ginny anyway but he just doesn’t know it yet, he just needs that little extra push to get him started and then his real feelings will kick in.
Anise’s Note: That could explain a lot which I think is otherwise very strange about JKR’s Ginny comments in that Mugglenet interview. For the moment, let’s leave aside the fact that one paragraph before the “ideal girl” comments, JKR says she had always intended for Ginny and Harry to get together and then part. And let’s not deal with the way she says earlier that Harry will have to go on alone. Nope, let’s just look at what is seemingly the most damning thing JKR’s ever said or written for those of us who were profoundly uncomfortable with the H/G of HBP. JKR certainly does say that Ginny fits the description of “Harry’s ideal woman.” And yet there is so much more she could say that she doesn’t. Are they in love? (Not a word about that!) What’s really the nature of the emotions that Harry feels for Ginny, and she for him? Are these emotions genuine? Will they last? Are they strong enough to get them back together? What is Harry for Ginny, no matter how great she may be for him? And so on.
Honestly, it sounds more like JKR is giving us a laundry list: Ginny is warm, compassionate, tough, and so on. It’s almost as if we’re looking at a list of qualities that someone is checking off, and now that Creamtea brings up this point, the conclusion is pretty irresistible: someone actually was, and it wasn’t Harry. Back to Creamtea’s commentary…
As an aside: in communication with poster Lysette at FAP, Lysette commented that Hermione was like ‘Emma’ in Jane Austen’s novel of the same name. Emma is a gifted young woman who only has marginal control over her own life, particularly in its romantic elements. As a reaction to that she tries to ‘organise’ the love lives of those around her to give herself a sense of control, she attempts to engineer people to go against their natural inclinations and to instead pair off with people she thinks are more suitable to them. In her machinations she almost brings emotional disaster and irretrievable heartache upon those involved – including upon herself. Note that Jane Austen is known to be one of JKR’s favourite novelists and that ‘Emma’ is one of the Austen novels shown as a ‘standing book’ in JKR’s ‘links’ bookshelf on her website. JKR does not have all of Austen’s books shown on her bookshelf – possibly indicating that those she does ‘show’ have particular significance.
Reason 5: emotional ruthlessness re boys – the emotional ability to deploy and manipulate them as though they were mere chess pieces which lacked feeling. Page 293, prior to the Christmas party, Hermione (in Ron’s hearing), with false sweetness and coyness ‘announces with a most un-Hermion-ish giggle’ that she is going to the party with McLaggen. Harry surveys the situation thus: “Ron looked strangely blank and said nothing. Harry was left to ponder in silence the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge.” This phrase ‘the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge’ resonates with me, as given my love potion theory you could also see it as alluding to the depths to which girls will sink to get control over a situation which scares them precisely because they have no control over it (the romantic reactions of others). ‘Girls’ here includes Ginny too, if it’s taken as a general statement. In effect Hermione is trying to control Ron, she is trying to manipulate his emotions. That’s not too far off dosing someone with a ‘harmless’ love potion. We know in canon that many girls actually are ‘sinking to the depths’ of attempting to use a love potion on Harry to get control of him and get an invite to that very same party. At the party itself Hermione’s willingness to coolly manipulate others is brought home when she’s trying to escape McLaggen, and Harry remonstrates that it serves her right for bringing him in the first place. The scene runs:
“I thought he’d annoy Ron most,” said Hermione dispassionately. I debated for a while about Zacharias Smith, but I thought, on the whole – ”
“You considered Smith?” said Harry, revolted.
“Yes, I did, and I’m starting to wish I’d chosen him …”
This little scene is quite alarming, as we clearly see a Hermione who can be dispassionate and debate with herself about who to wind Ron up with. She is quite at home with coolly manipulating boys to get what she wants, and does not take their feelings into account. I think it is important to note Harry’s response to her: he is revolted. Not only is he revolted at Smith per se (following his Quidditch commentary) but I think he is revolted at Hermione’s cold-blooded attitude. I repeat my Summary assertion here: that if Hermione and Ginny have been up to funny business with love potions, then when Harry finds out there will be hell to pay.
In the party scenes (before and at) we see a Hermione who is quite able and willing to manipulate boys in a cold, dispassionate fashion. Indeed, we know from Ginny’s own words (page 603 quoted above) that it was Hermione who suggested the tactic of manipulating other boys (dating them) to get Harry to notice Ginny in the first place. So it is canon that she is the kind of person who can think of a tactic like that, and in recommending it to someone else obviously sees nothing wrong with it.
Given all these reasons, I find it completely within character for HBP Hermione to help Ginny with a ‘harmless’ love potion designed to ‘tweak circumstances’ with Harry.
Reason 6: Hermione has a limited ‘emotional intelligence’. Throughout SPEW she totally failed to understand that the House Elves wanted to retain the social hierarchy in which the felt secure, but to be guaranteed kind treatment within it. She believes they want ‘freedom’ and won’t hear any differently because she is ‘right’. She is wrong, they don’t want it and that is made clear by both Winky’s reaction to ‘freedom’ and by the House Elves’ refusal to clean Gryffindor Tower when they realise Hermione is trying to trick them into ‘freedom’ by leaving clothes lying about for them to ‘accept’. My point is that she is someone who has shown signs of low emotional engagement in that when she thinks she is right in knowing ‘what is good’ for someone, she ploughs ahead with it despite all evidence that she is wrong. She thinks she knows best in the first place and won’t even see any counter-evidence. Conjecture: some have commented on the lack of SPEW in HBP. Perhaps Hermione dropped SPEW because her new ‘project’ was Harry/Ginny.
Anise’s Note: This is such an important point that once again, I feel moved to comment on it. It certainly would explain the very curious fact that we see neither hide nor hair of SPEW anywhere in HBP. And this is a fact that I don’t think most people have paid enough attention to, largely because it’s an absence rather than a presence: SPEW just plain isn’t there, and we don’t know why. It was very much present for the past two books. So why don’t we see it again in HBP? This would be the first halfway logical reason I’ve seen for that strange absence.
HOW DID HERMIONE DOSE HARRY AT THE BURROW SO THAT WHEN HE COMES ACROSS THE AMORTENTIA IN THE POTIONS CLASS, IT SMELLS OF ‘SOMETHING FLOWERY HE THOUGHT HE MIGHT HAVE SMELLED AT THE BURROW’?
Chapter five: An Excess of Phlegm. Harry arrives late at night at The Burrow (though he was expected very early the next morning). At first sight of The Burrow, he thinks of Ron. On entering The Burrow he asks after Hermione to Molly, (whereupon it is established that she arrived ‘the day before yesterday’) but note that not once does he think about, mention, or ask after Ginny. He has not thought about her once all through the book so far. She is simply not a blip on his radar. Molly has already arranged for Harry to sleep in Fred and George’s vacated room which Molly has prepared for him: (page 87) “I’ve got Fred and George’s room all ready for you, you’ll have it to yourself.” Note that as he will be sleeping alone, any ‘scent potion’ will affect only him and not some other boy. Note also that as Molly has arranged his accommodation, Hermione (who is already at The Burrow), thus KNOWS what room Harry will be sleeping in. Then he goes to his bedroom. On arriving in the room with Molly he notes immediately that (page 87)
‘Though a large vase of flowers had been placed on a desk in front of the small window, their perfume could not disguise the lingering smell of what Harry thought was gunpowder. A considerable amount of floor space was devoted to a vast number of unmarked cardboard boxes …”
(The unmarked cardboard boxes are shortly identified as Fred and George’s spare stock.)
Now that the passage about the vase of flowers is the ONLY mention of flowers or a flowery perfume at The Burrow in HBP. Also note that the flowers passage is ostensibly it is a completely unnecessary passage. It is not there to introduce the boxes, as they are of no account. Narratively we need never have had mention of the vase, flowers, smell or boxes, and the story would have been just the same (Hermione could have picked up the punching telescope anywhere in the Burrow, and the story still would have worked). So why is the passage there? Let’s look at it in detail:
“Though a large vase of flowers had been placed on a desk…”
Note that the flowers ‘had been placed’, they weren’t ‘on’ the desk, they ‘had been placed’, the text indicating not that they just happened to be there, but that they had been specifically put there by someone.
“ … their perfume could not disguise the lingering smell of what Harry thought was gunpowder.”
The flowers were put there to disguise the smell.
The passage taken as a whole tries to imply that the gunpowder smell is coming from the boxes – that is the reader’s first assumption because mention of the boxes abuts onto mention of the disguise of something Harry thought was gunpowder. It is simply assumed that the boxes contain gunpowder (or something very like it) and that Molly has been very considerate and tried to disguise the smell for Harry. However, knowing what we know about Molly this does this bear up to any kind of logic. Firstly, Molly would never have the risk of gunpowder being stashed in the house in ‘box sized’ quantities – not when there are sheds and outhouses for them to be stored in. And Molly would NEVER then allow Harry to sleep in the same room as the boxes of gunpowder. She’d be up the wall with worry, imagining (quite rightly) that one stray spark from a wand and it could blow him to Kingdom Come. The concept of Molly allowing Harry to sleep in a room full of gunpowder is plain stupid. So – we are driven to the conclusion that whatever ‘Harry thought was gunpowder’ it was NOT in the boxes, and indeed may not have been gunpowder at all (note that Harry only thinks it is gunpowder, it is not stated that it IS gunpowder). Also, if a heavy gunpowdery smell was coming from the boxes, so much so that it was unpleasant and needed to be disguised, then Molly wouldn’t disguise the smell, she’d just move the boxes. When (in the same chapter) Hermione roots in the boxes and unearths the punching telescope, there is a loud bang and a heavy puff of black smoke is emitted – but no-one comments on the gunpowdery smell. In real life, if a quantity of gunpowder had gone off, there would have been a heavy acrid stench in the room, and Ron certainly would have commented.
If there was no gunpowder, but just a gunpowdery smell, then what could have been causing the smell that the flowers were put there to disguise?
Okay, look back at the flower vase passage and note the use of the word ‘perfume’ and the word ‘disguise’; the perfume, it is clearly implied, is intended to disguise the lingering gunpowdery smell. Now, think back to the passage I quoted from pages 287 to 288 when Harry and Hermione are discussing how the cursed necklace and the love potions could have gotten past Hogwarts security. Hermione says of the love potions: “Fred and George send them disguised as perfumes.” Fred and George use ‘perfume’ to disguise the love potions, the ‘perfume’ of the flowers disguises the ‘gunpowder’ smell. This, for me, is a very indicative link.
I conjecture that the gunpowdery smell was a home-cooked love potion whisked up by Hermione during her stay at The Burrow. Harry breathed it in during the night, and breathed it in all night during his suspiciously ‘deep sleep’. It was disguised by the aroma of flowers, and Hermione placed the flowers in the room for that purpose. It was designed to make him fall for Ginny. The potion DID in fact have an effect on him and make him far more receptive to Ginny (which I will cover shortly).
Note that between the ‘flower perfume’ at The Burrow and ‘the flowery smell’ of the Amortentia, Harry does not ONCE get any hint of ‘flowery smell’ off Ginny. Not at the Burrow, not in Diagon Alley, not on the train - although he meets her plenty of times. The flowery smell is thus not Ginny per se, it is the scent associated with the love potion that made him fancy her. So when he comes across the Amortentia, he DOES smell ‘the flowery smell from The Burrow’ which is what ‘attracts’ him; he smells it because the flowery smell is the smell associated with the love-potion, not intrinsically of Ginny herself.
A bit of a stretch you might think, from one mention of a vase of flowers. Well so did I, so that’s why I went looking for corroborating evidence.
There is no indication at all that Molly notices any funny smell – only that Harry does. I believe that Molly cannot smell it at all. She also doesn’t apologise for the smell – and I think she would if she could smell it. Furthermore, Harry gets into one of the beds after she leaves and finds something in the bed (page 88):
‘There was something hard in the pillowcase. He groped inside it and pulled out a sticky purple and orange sweet, which he recognised as a Puking Pastille. Smiling to himself he rolled over and was instantly asleep.’
He has a deep, unbroken sleep from which he awakes as though he feels he has not slept at all. Note that Harry is ‘knocked out’ practically the instant he touches the sweet which it is written ‘he recognised it as a Puking Pastille’ NOT that ‘it was a Puking Pastille’. Harry may have thought it was a Puking Pastille, but I think it was part of Hermione’s love-drug effort and something cooked up by her. Why? Because not only do we have the stunning coincidence of Harry being ‘knocked out’ practically the instant he touches the sweet (and the manner of his awakening next morning: see below) but also: we know for a fact that Molly herself made the room up for him. Part of this process of preparing a room for a loved guest would be to change the sheets and change the pillows (ask any woman alive). Molly would have changed the pillows, no doubt about it. But what do we find? – a sweet stuck inside one. That sweet MUST have been put there after Molly changed the bed. Harry had a choice of two beds – I conjecture that Hermione stuck ‘a sweet’ in each one, to catch him whatever bed he was in. She put the vase of flowers there to disguise the smell thrown out by ‘the sweets’. Why did she do it the night before he was due to arrive? Because the obtrusive smell would be something he was more likely to investigate/comment upon if it ‘turned up’ during his stay. If it was there at the start, he would just let it ride.
More evidence that Harry was drugged throughout the night by a scented ‘potion’: next morning he awakes – from his deep but unsatisfying night’s sleep – in a condition akin to someone with a hangover, or akin to someone drugged.
‘There was something hard in the pillowcase. He groped inside it and pulled out a sticky purple and orange sweet, which he recognised as a Puking Pastille. Smiling to himself he rolled over and was instantly asleep.
Seconds later, or so it seemed to Harry, he was woken by what sounded like cannon-fire as the door burst open. Sitting bolt upright, he heard the rasp of the curtains being pulled back: the dazzling sunlight seemed to poke him hard in both eyes. Shielding them with one hand, he groped hopelessly for his glasses with the other.
“Wuzzgoinon?” ..”
“We didn’t know you were here already!” said a loud and excited voice, and he received a sharp blow to the top of the head.
“Ron, don’t hit him!” said a girl’s voice reproachfully.
Harry’s hand found his glasses and he shoved them on, though the light was so bright he could hardly see anyway. A long, looming shadow quivered in front of him for a moment; he blinked and Ron Weasley came into focus, grinning down at him.’
The too-loud rasping noises, the painfully too-bright light that hurts his eyes, the ‘groping hopelessly’, the slurred speech, the inability to focus (on Ron), this all sounds like someone who has the equivalent of a bad hangover. (And note Hermione’s cry of ‘don’t hit him!’ as Ron hits him on the head, which is the very first thing she says in the book and will be referred to later.)
Could Molly have been behind it? Could she have stuck the ‘sweet’ under the pillow and put the flowers in the room to disguise the smell? Yes she could have as she had the prime opportunity: she prepared the room for Harry. Could it have been Ginny? – after all she had the prime motive and a great opportunity (the same opportunity as Hermione). Well I am convinced it was neither Molly nor Ginny (both of whom knew nothing about it) and that indeed it was Hermione, for the following reason:
Logically, ‘the doser’ would check with all haste the next morning to see how Harry had responded to the dose. And there is only one person who does that: Hermione. She closely watches Harry the next morning, when in contrast Ginny and Molly do not pay special, close attention to Harry in the ‘breakfast in bed’ scene. However, as soon as Hermione comes into the room Hermione perches herself on his bed and (page 89)
“was scrutinising Harry as though he were sickening for something.”
Harry assumes it is connected with his grieving period over Sirius’ death, and this is thus the explanation implied to the reader to explain Hermione’s scrutiny. Well, obviously I think Harry was wrong and the given explanation is misleading. Harry and Ron then have a quick conversation about Slughorn, during which Hermione does not speak. Instead she is watching Harry. The passage runs: (still page 89):
“Something wrong Hermione?”
She was watching him as though expecting strange symptoms to manifest themselves at any moment. She rearranged her features hastily in an unconvincing smile.
“No, of course not! So, um, did Slughorn seem like he’ll be a good teacher?”
Ginny then arrives, behaves perfectly normally (if like an annoying brat), does not look at Harry strangely at all, is not watching for anything special, and after several pages Ginny leaves. Immediately Ginny departs, Hermione ‘was peering into Fred and George’s boxes, though every now and then she cast sideways looks at Harry’. In other words Hermione is now watching closely to see Harry’s reaction to Ginny. Ostensibly, there isn’t one – not one she notices. Eventually she gives up staring and asks about one of the spyglasses she’s holding up. It punches her in the eye (not unreasonably considering what she’s just done). The conversation between Harry, Ron and Hermione shifts to matters concerning Voldemort, and then their OWL results arrive. Hermione completely forgets about ‘watching Harry’ (especially as nothing seemed to happen) and the inhabitants of the Burrow spend several weeks going about their business.
HERMIONE’S NEXT CONNECTION WITH LOVE POTIONS
This takes place prior to the start of school when the characters visit Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes and the Twins introduce Hermione and Ginny to the Wonder Witch love potion range (page 117), ‘the best range of love potions you’ll find anywhere’. Ginny is skeptical; she ‘raised an eyebrow skeptically. ‘Do they work?’” Hermione, who you would expect to be sceptical, says nothing. The Twins are on record as saying they won’t sell the stuff to Ginny, but they’re perfectly happy to sell anything to anyone else (Galleons are the bottom line) – so they would be perfectly happy to sell to Hermione (and every other girl at Hogwarts it seems!). The potions work for up to 24 hours once the dose has been administered, (but we also know from Slughorn’s comment on page 371 that love potions can strengthen the longer they’re kept).
I believe that Hermione ordered WWW love potions for her use at Hogwarts. She may even have bought one whilst at the shop; Hermione could have dosed him up again at The Burrow, using a WWW potion, prior to school. We certainly know that she is fully aware of the WWW potions and of how to get them from what she says on pages 287 to 288:
H: But I thought all the owls were being searched? So how come these girls able to bring love potions into the school?
Hr: Fred and George send them disguised as perfumes and cough potions. It’s all part of their Owl Order Service.
H: You know a lot about it.
Hermione gave him the kind of nasty look she had just given his copy of Advanced Potion-Making.
Hr: “It was all on the back of the bottles they showed Ginny and me in the summer,” she said coldly. “I don’t go round putting potions in people’s drinks … or pretending to either, which is just as bad …”
Tackling something right now: if I am right, what do we make of Hermione’s flat denial “I don’t go round putting potions in people’s drinks” – because under my theory she did, she did not only put the pastille under Harry’s pillow (technically not a drink, so technically she was telling the truth on that) but she also liquid-dosed him later too (on at least one known occasion). What do I make of it? I think that she flat out LIED in the above, and that we can see her justifying her lies to herself in the end of the passage: “… or pretending to either, which is just as bad …”. At the above point in the story, Harry has already lied his way to Potions Class glory (riding along on the back of the Half-Blood Prince’s work), and Hermione is sick of it. She also sees Harry as someone who has already pretended to dose Ron with the Felix Felicis, which riled her at the time. In the above she was angry at Harry because they’d just been having another set-to over his Potions book, and so she knee-jerk defends herself as someone who doesn’t put potions in people’s drinks, and then she pauses (indicated by …) and recalls that actually she IS someone who puts potions in other people’s drinks, and then justifies it to herself by saying that Harry’s trick with the Felicis was just as bad. In other words, she knows she doses Harry, but lying about it’s okay because Harry’s just as bad.
The postage information is NOT the kind of information one would expect to see on the back of individual product ranges. We are also given a huge clue with Harry’s ‘you know a lot about it’ comment; Hermione knows all about the Owl Order Service and how the potions get past security because she herself has been using the Order Service to attain the potions.
In the Chapter Draco’s Detour (page 110) which also shows us events during the group’s visit to Diagon Alley, JKR slips in a cheeky little mention about Hermione’s black eye which Hermione got while spying on Harry in the bedroom the morning after his first dosing (she was punched by the ‘punching telescope’).
“Yeah, like you’d dare do magic out of school,” sneered Malfoy. “Who blacked your eye Granger, I want to send them flowers.”
No need to rub it in, is there? - both of the ‘out of school magic’ (which Hermione has been doing) and of the black eye (a direct referral to the drugging/spying), and of the mention of flowers? Indeed, apart from the ‘Ginny flower’ mentions, I think these two mentions of the word ‘flowers’ (in the ‘vase of flowers’, and the ‘send them flowers’,) are the only two mentions of the word in the entire book: one mention being a direct key to what Hermione actually did and the other being a referral back to that bedroom scene.
WHY I BELIEVE GINNY IS NOT IN ON HERMIONE’S PLAN – GINNY’S LACK OF FLIRTING TOWARD HARRY WHILST AT THE BURROW
My own logic forces me to believe that she is not in on it. Why isn’t she? Because if she was then she too would have been scrutinising Harry closely when she visits him the first morning at The Burrow. Furthermore, if she had known that Harry had been dosed up with a love potion to make him susceptible to her (and had colluded in the plan), then she would be flirting with him that morning. She is not flirting with Harry at all in that scene. In fact, if you look at it dispassionately you can see that throughout that scene she barely interacts with Harry, most of her interaction is with Ron and Hermione. In that scene Ginny comes in, vents about Fleur, then leaves. That is not the action of a scheming love-potion abuser. She is annoyed at the end of the scene where Molly orders her out of the room to help make lunch, but that is not from an urge to be with Harry, rather than an urge to stay with the group:
“I’m talking to this lot!” said Ginny, outraged.
And then a little later:
“You lot had better come down quickly too,” she said as she left.
‘You lot’, she is not fixating on Harry, she is cross at being forced to leave the group, not a being forced to leave Harry.
Indeed, if we look at Ginny’s behaviour toward Harry, she does not engage in active flirting behaviour toward him for most of the book – up until shortly before ‘the kiss’. There is no record of it in the weeks at The Burrow. Indeed, on the train into Hogwarts she turns down a chance to sit with Harry, sitting with Dean instead. I think her turning down his request was a form of ‘playing hard to get’, in that she was still playing the Hermione-suggested card of ‘look at me, I’m popular, I’ve got a boyfriend’ that had so ill-served her on OoTP (where Harry didn’t even notice that she was going out with Michael Corner for months, until he was actually told about it). I suspect
there is one further major point where she does this ‘boyfriend flaunting’ to try to impress Harry (the Dean-kiss scene, which I think she may have set up), but I do NOT think that she knew he had been dosed because if so then WHY would she play hard to get? She’s just wasting time instead of exploiting the finite window of opportunity (as potions do wear off).
For most of the time Ginny’s behaviour throughout most of the book (indeed, almost up until the moment she makes her move on him at the post-match party) is non-flirtatious toward Harry. She is simply there. Other characters refer to her prettiness, charm and attractiveness, she is canonically presented as popular and good at Quidditch and good with hexes (well, only one hex, the Bat Bogey), but she herself relates to Harry rarely, and almost right up until ‘the kiss’ she mostly relates to him with a functional straightforwardness. There is no strand of active flirting there.
HARRY AT THE BURROW – HIS REACTION TO THE DOSING.
Harry’s reaction is limited (recall that Harry is good at resisting ‘external control’ as he was with the Imperius) but it is there. Hermione can detect no difference in Harry’s behaviour toward Ginny, but we can – we can see the advent of what I’ve christened Prison!Bitch Harry, a Harry who reverses his often brusque attitude toward Ginny as shown in OoTP ( with no actual interaction between them after the DoM; they are in the same scenes but they are not speaking to each other) and instead starts (periodically) to increasingly hang off her every word.
It starts after a few minutes, Ginny arrives on page 90 of the ‘breakfast in bed’ scene and by page 92 of the same scene we see the first sign: Ginny calls Fleur ‘Phlegm’ for the first time in our hearing and Harry and Hermione laugh. Now Harry respected Fleur at the end of GoF, but now he is laughing at her? Then, on page 93, he rallies and tries to defend Fleur against Ginny and Hermione’s attack upon her:
“Fleur’s not stupid, she was good enough to enter the Triwizard Tournament,” said Harry.
“Not you as well!” said Hermione bitterly.
“I suppose you like they way Phlegm says “ ‘Arry”, do you?” asked Ginny scornfully.
“No,” said Harry, wishing he hadn’t spoken, “I was just saying, Phlegm – I mean, Fleur - ”
Harry ‘wishes he hadn’t spoken’, and then finds himself calling Fleur ‘Phlegm’ without meaning to, as if by magic; it is as though he is fighting for control of himself, feels impelled to agree with Ginny, but then he pulls it back by calling her Fleur. Over the next few weeks/pages we see very little Harry/Ginny direct interaction – we only get three instances. In effect we are given three snapshots of Harry and Ginny over the period prior to going to school – and they all revolve around Fleur, Ginny’s insults about her, and Harry’s changing reactions to those insults.
The first snapshot is the one we’ve just seen in the bedroom, where Harry fights back and regains control of himself. The second is the ‘vomiting’ incident at breakfast when Fleur strokes Bill’s nose (page 106)
‘Ginny mimed vomiting into her cereal behind Fleur. Harry choked over his cornflakes and Ron thumped him on the back.’
Note here that Ginny is puerile and unpleasant and is insulting someone behind their back – someone Harry traditionally liked. And Harry, though he says nothing, tacitly agrees. Ron does not laugh.
Then we have the laundry incident (page 126) when Harry bumps into Ginny on the landing:
“I wouldn’t go into the kitchen just now,” she warned him. “There’s a lot of phlegm around.”
“I’ll be careful not to slip in it,” smiled Harry.
Over the three snapshots Harry has traveled an arc from defending Fleur, to tacitly agreeing, to outright agreeing and even using Ginny’s insult of Fleur as an excuse to attempt to flirt with Ginny.
Note that the ‘flirting’ incident happens after the group visit to Diagon Alley where Hermione could have picked up a WWW love potion and dosed him again at the Burrow. Either way, Harry’s reaction to Ginny is growing stronger.
There is a fourth ‘Harry/Ginny’ incident in this section, where Harry specifically notices Ginny but does not speak to her. It is page 118 at WWW when Ginny defends herself against Fred’s statement that she is ‘moving through boyfriends a bit fast’. ‘Ginny turned to look at him, her hands on her hips. There was such a Mrs.Weasley-ish glare on her face that Harry was surprised that Fred didn’t recoil.’ In other words, Harry is projecting onto Fred a sudden fear Harry feels of displeasing Ginny.
HARRY AND GINNY – WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE BURROW? – FROM THE TRAIN TO THE SCHOOL.
Harry’s reaction to Ginny has grown stronger (see the Fleur insults argument above), and peaks on the train going into Hogwarts. He asks her if she wants to sit with him and she turns him down to sit with Dean. “Right,” said Harry. He felt a strange twinge of annoyance as she walked away, her long red hair dancing behind her.”
But then something happens: Harry meets Luna Lovegood and they share a compartment (also with Neville). Note that Harry’s reaction to Ginny (just prior to meeting Luna) was physical – he notes her physical attribute, her hair, and feels annoyance that she is physically rejecting him. In contrast Harry’s reaction to Luna is emotional, she makes him feel and his feelings are reported to us (admittedly written up as a squirming mixture of pity and embarrassment, at the embarrassingly honest things Luna says), but she makes him feel. He has ‘feelings’ for Luna, when we are not given any report of him having ANY feelings for Ginny so far apart from ‘a twinge of annoyance’.
Then Harry meets up with Ginny again in the Slug Club on the train. When he sees her there Harry evinces no emotional reaction at all to her, and shows no ‘physical’ reaction either, no mentions of ‘swinging red hair’, very surprising for a boy who ‘felt a strange twinge’ when he saw her moving away from him just minutes earlier. It’s as though he’s been cleansed of potion effects. Throughout that scene he doesn’t even speak to her, he only next speaks to her when they leave Slughorn’s compartment and only then to functionally ask her why she had been invited. Harry is then immediately concerned with Draco Malfoy’s actions, and breaks off from her to go and spy on Draco in his compartment. Harry is with Ginny and Neville in the train corridor, he issues a perfunctory goodbye to Ginny and Neville which does not differentiate Ginny at all: “I’ll see you two later’ and he is gone.
From a Harry/Ginny perspective the ‘Draco compartment’ scene is notable for one thing: Harry is there, he hears them discuss Ginny’s attractiveness to boys in a vaguely derogatory way, he hears Zabini directly insult Ginny, and his reaction is … nothing. It’s as though he now just doesn’t care inordinately about her – from the crescendo of asking her to sit with him and feeling a strange twinge of annoyance as she walked away, her long red hair dancing behind her, she’s just back to the status of ‘some girl he knows’.
For the whole of the next chapter (Snape Victorious) we only get one slight, and totally neutral, mention of Ginny: when she is in a group of Gryffindors ‘listening in’ on his conversation with Ron and Hermione (page 155). Harry has not spoken to her, or thought about her, since splitting off from her to track down Draco. Indeed he has not thought much of her since meeting Luna, at which point the potion effect wore off. Then we hit the infamous Chapter 9, ‘The Half-Blood Prince’, and the Amortentia.
HARRY AND GINNY AND HERMIONE – EVENTS FROM ARRIVING AT HOGWARTS UNTO THE ‘CLAWING MONSTER’ SCENE.
During his second day at Hogwarts Harry is exposed to the smell of Amortentia, which reminds him of ‘something flowery he thought he might have smelled at The Burrow’.
Shortly following the lesson he picks up a waft of ‘that flowery smell’ off Ginny. The reader is keyed to pick up that he is attracted to her as Amortentia smells like what you are attracted to, but no – I think he was smelling the flowers from back at The Burrow, the scent of which are now inextricably tangled up with the chemically induced attraction to Ginny that was imposed on him at The Burrow.
(ASIDE: AMORTENTIA – YOU SMELL WHAT YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO)
What you are attracted to is present tense: you can’t smell something you haven’t met yet and thus don’t know you will become attracted to. Also the smell has to remind you of the person, if not, it cannot smell like what you are attracted to.
We see that it works in this ‘present tense’ way from Hermione’s reaction to the scent of the Amortentia. Page 176.
“and it’s supposed to smell differently to each of us, according to what attracts us, and I can smell freshly mown grass and new parchment and -”
But she turned slightly pink and did not complete the sentence.’
Here I think that the ‘and -’ indicates Hermione abruptly coming to a halt, and then she goes pink with embarrassment. She halts and goes pink because she realises just before she says it that the next smell she was going to mention was one relating to a person she was attracted to.
To a person she was attracted to – she knew the connection from the smell instantly, because the smell reminded her of the person. Amortentia cannot give you the smell of someone you have not yet met, or a smell you do not associate with the person you are attracted to. And having said that I will say again, that the ONLY previous reference to a flowery smell (any at all) was to the vase of flowers at the Burrow. Between then and after the Amortentia lesson when Harry smells the flowery smell off Ginny, he does not smell any other flowery smell. The flowery smell is not Ginny per se, it is the scent associated with ‘being attracted’ in his dosing at The Burrow. We know that the flowery smell is not Ginny per se, as we can see directly inside Harry’s head in this scene: he does not associate the smell with Ginny. Indeed, the way we know Amortentia works (from watching Hermione’s reaction) we know that Amortentia gives you a smell which immediately links you to the person concerned: we do not get that with Harry/Ginny.
The Amortentia smell does not mean that Harry is attracted to Ginny.
After the Amortentia episode no great attraction is felt or evinced by Harry over the next three or four weeks, there are some inklings but nothing heated, they are slight mentions with no sense of Harry dwelling on Ginny. After the ‘Amortentia incident’ a week goes by and we get no mention of Ginny, or of Harry thinking about her/interacting with her. We see her next at the Quidditch try outs where it is established as canon that she is a good flyer – that is not Harry’s opinion, it is a fact. There are signs of some low level interest over the weeks – but they are mild and few and far between. Harry defending Ginny at the try outs against McLaggen’s accusation that she gave Ron an easy ride, Harry says that Ginny’s shot was the one Ron nearly missed, but this is proved to be a lie on the very next page (214) when Ron clearly states that Demelza’s shot was the one he nearly missed. At the end of the day (page 221) he glancingly notes that she is playing with Arnold, her Pygmy Puff. But then weeks go by and we get no real mention/thoughts of Ginny, except of a single neutral mention that Ron and Ginny and Harry together regularly laugh when Hermione gets stuck at Slughorn’s parties. It is all very tame and low key with no sense of fascination on Harry’s part.
Then we get the first Hogwarts weekend.
On the day of the trip, Harry casually asks Ginny if she wants to join the Trio for the Hogwarts visit, she turns him down saying she’s going with Dean (page 228). Harry does not react badly to this, in fact he does not react at all to it. Then the Trio leave for Hogsmeade and he has a drink in the Three Broomsticks, (page 232) bought for him by Hermione and given to him by Hermione:
“Go sit down, I’ll get you a drink.” …
‘Hermione returned to their table a few minutes later holding three bottles of Butterbeer.’
Then they quickly discuss Grimmauld Place and Mundungus’ thieving from it, and the very next mention of Harry’s drink (after having just been given it, so it might only be his first swig) is when Hermione says:
“Harry, I’d be annoyed too, I now it’s your things he’s stealing - ”
Harry gagged on his Butterbeer; he had momentarily forgotten that he owned number twelve Grimmauld Place.
Harry gagged on his Butterbeer, he gagged on the drink Hermione gave him, any ostensible reason JKR gives us is, I think, secondary to the fact that he gags on his drink. Ron and Hermione have one of their spats, this time over Ron’s attention to Rosmerta, and in the meantime Harry continues drinking. Hermione is keen to go because of Ron and Rosmerta.
‘The moment Harry drained the last drops in his bottle she said, “Shall we call it a day and go back to school, then?”
The other two nodded; it had not been a fun trip and the weather was getting worse the longer they stayed. Once again they drew their cloaks tightly around them, rearranged their scarves, pulled on their gloves; then followed Katie Bell and a friend out of the pub and back up the High Street. Harry’s thoughts strayed to Ginny as they trudged up the road to Hogwarts through the frozen slush. They had not met up with her, undoubtedly, thought Harry, because she and Dean were cosily closeted in Madame Puddifoots teashop, that haunt of happy couples. Scowling, he bowed his head against the swirling sleet and moved on.’
Throughout the whole of the Harry/Ginny arc so far, that is the first instance of Harry really dwelling on her and feeling irked/jealous and faintly bitter that she’s going out with Dean, when earlier that very same afternoon he had not even reacted to her direct news that ‘she was going with Dean’. In that passage, JKR does something tricksy: she puts in a lot of words between Harry finishing his drink (‘drained to the last drops’ you’ll note) and his thoughts on Ginny. That leaves the reader thinking that some time has elapsed, when actually only seconds have passed between Harry draining his bottle to the last drops and his thoughts about Dean/Ginny. All that business about pulling on their gloves etc. takes up a lot of words, but in real time lasts only seconds. So, that first instance of Ginny-thought happens IMMEDIATELY AFTER Harry’s been given a drink by Hermione. Do I really need to ram it home that I think Hermione had spiked the drink? As an aside here I can state that to my memory this is only one of two instances where someone explicitly offers Harry a drink, the other is on page 289 when Romilda Vane offers him a Gillywater which we know is spiked with love potion.
Following Harry’s scowling thoughts on Dean and Ginny, reality immediately kicks in and Ginny is driven out of his mind. Katie Bell is immediately poisoned and for he remainder of the day, and next day and then for a ‘few more’ days he does not speak to or think of Ginny at all. A cheeky little inflection which takes place during this period is the very next mention of Butterbeer (Hermione’s spiked drink) which comes when Harry is watching Ron and Hermione (who have fallen out a bit over Slughorn’s party):
‘Harry supposed he would just have to wait and see what happened under the influence of Butterbeer.’
The next time we get mention of anything Ginny-related is page 266 when Harry asks Dean to replace the ill Katie Bell as Chaser. Dean’s reaction is: “Right,” said Dean. “Cheers, Harry! Blimey, I can’t wait to tell Ginny.”
Here Dean has referenced Ginny, his girlfriend. And Harry’s reaction is … nothing. There is no reference to him being concerned by it. Even at the next Quidditch practice, Harry’s only reference to Dean and Ginny is that ‘… he saw Dean fly that evening; he worked well with Ginny and Demelza.’ In other words Harry only references them as Quidditch team members. This from a boy who, last time he was thinking of Dean and Ginny, he was scowling. The Quidditch practice sees Ginny factually shown as a good player, she scores most of the practice goals. There is an exchange between Ginny and Harry when Ginny has been criticising Ron.
H: “And Ginny, don’t call Ron a prat, you’re not the captain of this team -”
G: “Well, you seemed too busy to call him a prat and I thought someone should -”
Harry forced himself not to laugh.
H: “In the air, everyone, let’s go …”
In this scene Harry once more simply follows Ginny’s lead, even when he shouldn’t. He follows her lead because he does not shut her up in her continued criticism of Ron. Instead he does his best to just side-step the issue. Compare this to his abrupt quashing of McLaggan for the same offence on page 387. I think this scene does show some interest from Harry, but no-where near in proportion to his drink-spiked thoughts of Dean/Ginny: his ‘emotions’ have had tome to clear/fade.
Please note that throughout the above we have ‘spikes’ of Ginny-interest from Harry: the initial interest at The Burrow, peaking with his ‘twinge’ on the train, but then he meets Luna and seems to wipe clean of Ginny-interest. Then he is exposed to the Amortentia, and I believe ‘kick-started’ into Ginny interest again, but that tails off quickly. Then we have another spike after Hermione doses his drink at the pub. That tails away too. Harry’s interest is directly related to potions.
Then we have some interest at the Quidditch practice (though it does not reflect the intensity of his previous spike just after the pub, which if it were natural it should) and the scene continues with Ron and Harry walking back together to the Gryffindor Tower, and here we have the birth of the ‘clawing monster’
GINNY, HARRY AND THE CLAWING MONSTER
Quidditch practice had just finished, and Harry and Ron come back via their ‘usual short cut’ to find Dean and Ginny ‘locked in a close embrace and kissing fiercely as if glued together’ (page 268).
Harry’s reaction to this sight is instant:
“It was as though something large and scaly erupted into life in Harry’s stomach, clawing at his insides: hot blood seemed to flood his brain, so that all thought was extinguished, replaced by a savage urge to jinx Dean into a jelly. Wrestling with this sudden madness, he heard Ron’s voice as though from a great distance away.’ … ‘the new born monster inside him was roaring from Dean’s instant dismissal from the team.’
Ginny and Ron have a truly vicious brother and sister spat over her ‘behaviour’, in which gross insults are mutually flung and wands are drawn. Harry tries to mediate although ‘the monster was roaring its approval of Ron’s words.’ Ginny and Ron draw wands, and although Ginny draws first Harry only physically intercedes when Ron draws in turn. Harry forcibly stops Ron from hexing Ginny. Ginny storms off. The boys continue onto the Tower and Ron vents his spleen by roaring at a small girl who drops a bottle at his shout.
‘Harry hardly noticed the sound of shattering glass; he felt disorientated, dizzy; being struck by a lightning bolt must be something like this.’
‘Unbidden to his mind’ come thoughts of him kissing Ginny instead of Dean at which ‘the monster in his chest purred’.
Almost immediately we jump-cut to Harry in bed that night where he is fretting over his feelings for Ginny (page 271). He is worried about Ron’s reaction to finding out about ‘the monster’ feelings he has. Also:
‘They had lived, had they not, like brother and sister all summer, …he had known Ginny for years now … it was natural that he should feel protective … natural that he should want to look out for her … want to rip Dean limb from limb for kissing her’
He eventually gets to sleep, next day there is a single mention of Ginny at Quidditch practice (in the sense that Harry wants to get in the way of her possibly hexing Ron).
The day after, all have breakfast then Harry behaves OOC in the match – urging his Beater Coote to hit a Bludger at Zacharias Smith in response to Smith’s taunting match commentary. Then at the end of the match he laughs at Ginny’s startling physical attack on Smith (crashing into him on her broom and leaving him ‘feebly stirring’ under a ‘wreckage of wood’), and breaks free of the rest of the team to hug her.
Hermione then waylays Harry and Ron and accuses them of illegal potions use.
‘You know perfectly well what we’re talking about!” said Hermione shrilly. “You spiked Ron’s juice with lucky potion at breakfast! Felix Felicis!”
At the post match party, having been there some time Harry bumps into Ginny who makes unpleasant comments about Ron. Although he speaks to her he is not recorded as having any ‘monster’ reactions/obsessive indications/noticings of how pretty she is etc. Nothing in fact, until she touches him:
‘She patted him on the arm; Harry felt a swooping sensation in his stomach, but then she walked off to help herself to more Butterbeer.’
What do I make of all of the above? Well, a scaly monster clawing at his insides, hot blood rushing to his brain, savages urges, ‘sudden madness’, the roaring monster, feeling disorientated, dizzy; ‘being struck by a lightning bolt must be something like this’, ‘unbidden thoughts’ – lustful ones about a girl he sees as his sister. It is either the most laughably poor writing ever if it is supposed to state genuine romantic love or frighteningly good writing if it is evidence that Harry is actually under chemical effect. Remember, we are told that Amortentia creates infatuation and obsession, but not love, (and there is no evidence that other types of love potion can do any different), and what we have here is not love, it’s lust, it’s ‘thinking with your dick’. Given all the other evidence I’ve laid down so far, I go for this passage being a good depiction of chemical effect.
The effects are certainly not natural, as Harry knows. He regards it as ‘natural’ to feel protective of her and to look out for her, he does not use the word ‘natural’ when thinking about ripping Dean’s arm off. He doesn’t think it’s natural because it’s not natural.
What kicked off the birth of the monster? There is no particular reference to a dosing just prior, but at this stage we have no idea how many doses Harry has had – what we do know is that he was kick-started by the sight of his ‘chemically intended’ in a ferocious lip-lock with another boy. Oddly though, the monster was short lived. We get no ‘monster’ after the immediate impact itself. We do note though that when Ginny later touches him, he has a physical reaction.
Was Hermione dosing him throughout? We don’t know, she could have been. We do know that ‘breakfast’ (an eating and drinking scenario) is mentioned on the morning of the match, and that the post-match party was a drinking scenario and that Hermione was present. This is also the section of the book when we have Hermione’s shrill accusation that Harry ‘spiked Ron’s juice with lucky potion at breakfast!’ I think that is not only an authorial clue to people spiking others’ drinks at breakfast, but also I think that Hermione was very alert to potential drink spiking on the part of others precisely because she had been doing it herself.
NEXT
We are now at Chapter 15. Time passes and Christmas approaches. In this chapter we are directly introduced to the very real practice of girls slipping boys love potions (Romilda Vane’s efforts), and we have the passage indicating that Hermione knows a worrying amount of information about how to smuggle WWW love potions into Hogwarts. Prompted by Hermione to ‘invite someone’ (she probably intended Ginny) to Slughorn’s party to forestall being love-potioned by girls fishing for an invite. Harry’s response is:
“There isn’t anyone I want to invite,” mumbled Harry, who was still trying not to think about Ginny any more than he could help, despite the fact that she kept cropping up in his dreams in ways which made him devoutly thankful that Ron could not perform Leglimancy.’ (page 286).
Harry is obviously interested, but the monster seems to have shut up for the time being as we don’t hear from it. Instead of inviting Ginny however, Harry surprises himself by inviting Luna. Ginny is pleased for Luna, Harry ‘could not quite manage’ to be pleased at Ginny’s reaction. Harry goes to the party and has a good time. He doesn’t think of Ginny at all whilst he is at the party. Indeed, following that we have no text of him talking or thinking about her until Christmas Day at the Burrow (when he must have been there for at least a week prior) when she reaches across the Christmas dinner table and pulls something out of his hair, touching him (page 318):
“Harry, you’ve got a maggot in your hair,” said Ginny cheerfully, leaning across the table to pick it out; Harry felt goosebumps erupt up his neck that had nothing to do with the maggot.”
Immediately after that a nasty dose of reality descends: Scrimgeour visits with Percy and Harry has to engage with Scrimgeour.
We immediately jump to a few days after New Year, when the party leave for Hogwarts. Upon return Harry notes that Ginny does not sound very enthusiastic about sitting with Dean instead of Hermione and Harry, page 329, (after Hermione invites her). Our next mention of Ginny is a casual one on page 357 when Harry is checking up on Slughorn’s party invites, in which no conversation with or thought of Ginny is reported. We arrive at March 1st, Ron’s Birthday and realise that we have heard NOTHING of Harry’s thoughts or feelings toward Ginny since Harry’s arrival back at Hogwarts, two months earlier. On his birthday Ron is accidentally poisoned by the oak mead intended for Dumbledore.
At the hospital wing, all rally round. Harry and Ginny converse as part of the group but we get no mention of any ‘monster’ feelings for Ginny. There is no sense that Harry is especially interested in any romantic sense. There is no sense of concern or special sensitivity toward her. There is no other mention at all of Ginny (other than two purely functional mentions of her as a player at the Gryffindor/Hufflepuff Quidditch match) … and then at that match Harry gets knocked out by a blow to the head so hard it cracks his scull (page 389).
What do I make of this section? That the ‘clawing monster’ was a huge spike of interest, but its intensity fades. Admittedly, prior to taking Luna to the party Harry is ‘trying not to think about Ginny more than he could help’ and having dream/fantasies about her of a presumably sexual nature, but there is no roaring monster. He only gets an intense reaction when she actually touches him (at the post Quidditch match and at The Burrow). After taking Luna to the party we get no thoughts at all on Harry’s part about Ginny, until she physically touches him at Christmas dinner, when we get a physical reaction (goosebumps). Then we get nothing until she goes to sit with Dean upon the return to Hogwarts and Harry could not help noticing that she does not seem very enthusiastic about it. And then we get … nothing at all romantically. It seems to just fade away.
Is it the case that we get few mentions of Ginny in this period because the plot doesn’t allow interaction? I see no reason why this should have precluded JKR mentioning Harry’s feelings at any time, but she does not mention them. At the close of the ‘two month gap’ she could have made mention in a quick paragraph of how Harry had been thinking of Ginny all through the period, but she does not. I think she does not mention his feelings because they are not there. Indeed, I think it is important to note that we have not heard of the clawing monster at all since he saw her kissing Dean … and then, as I said, at the end of this long period of fading-to-nothing interest in Ginny, Harry gets knocked out by a blow to the head so hard it cracks his skull.
HARRY, GINNY AND HERMIONE FOLLOWING THE BLOW TO THE HEAD
This section was prompted by Anise of FAP.
Shortly after he awakes, Ron mentions that Ginny visited Harry when he was unconscious, and at the mention of her Harry is into full-on Ginny-mode.
‘Harry’s imagination zoomed into overdrive, rapidly constructing a scene in which Ginny, weeping over his lifeless form, confessed her feelings of deep attraction to him while Ron gave the his blessing …’
Note the use of the words ‘deep attraction’. This is very odd wording for a 15 year old boy, and JKR is very good at colloquialisms. By rights Harry should have said ‘confessed that she fancied him’, or if he was super-romantic, ‘confessed her love for him’, but ‘confessed her feelings of deep attraction’ – nah, that just doesn’t work. What it DOES work as though, is an authorial clue to direct us back to the affects of Amortentia/love potion: it smells according to what attracts us.
In any case Harry’s fantasy is quickly punctured by Ron stating that she actually queried why Harry had been late for the Gryffindor/Hufflepuff match. He and Ron leave the hospital wing on Monday morning (having been there Saturday night and all day/night Sunday). Hermione tells them that
‘Ginny had argued with Dean. The drowsing creature in Harry’s chest suddenly raised it’s head, sniffing the air hopefully.’
This is the first mention of the ‘creature’ we have had since the Ginny/Dean kiss, i.e. the monster only re-appeared after he’d been hit on the head. Harry is keenly interested to know the details of Dean/Ginny (page 397)
‘Yeah, well, there was no need for Ginny and Dean to split up over it,” said Harry, trying to sound casual. “Or are they still together?”
“Yes they are – but why are you so interested?” asked Hermione, giving Harry a sharp look.
“I just don’t want my Quidditch team messed up again!” he said hastily, but Hermione continued to look suspicious”
During the day it becomes clear that Ron and Lavender are running into difficulties. ‘Harry saw an inexplicable smirk cross her (Hermione’s) face. All that day she seemed to be in a particularly good mood’. But this was also the day when Hermione, for the first time ever, caught Harry’s interest in Ginny (her ‘sharp look’ and her suspicion), so she could have been happy for both reasons. Harry spends the evening with Dumbledore, ‘pensieving’ memories concerning Voldemort.
Time passes (at least a week, maybe two), the plot proceeds, and we get no mention of Ginny or any of Harry’s thoughts on Ginny. Then on page 441 we get the next reference to her when Harry’s thinking of taking some of his Felix Felicis:
‘The thought of that little golden bottle had hovered on the edges of his imagination for some time; vague and unformulated plans that involved Ginny slitting up with Dean, and Ron somehow being happy to see her with a new boyfriend, had been fermenting in the depths of his brain, unacknowledged except during dreams or the twilight time between sleeping and waking …”
In other words, here JKR specifically does what she DID NOT do at the end of the ‘two month gap’. Ginny is ‘missing’ for 44 pages of the story and about two weeks worth of time, but here JKR makes it fully clear that Harry HAS been thinking of her over that time, even if on a near subconscious level. This is different to how she wrote ‘the gap’ that occurred prior to his massive blow to the head.
That night Harry takes a swig of Felix Felicis as he goes on a mission (under cover of Invisibility Cloak), page 447:
‘Getting through the portrait hole was simple; as he approached it, Ginny and Dean came through it and Harry was able to slip between them. As he did so he brushed accidentally against Ginny.
“Don’t push me, please, Dean,” she said, sounding annoyed. You’re always doing that, I can get through perfectly well on my own …”
The portrait swung closed behind Harry, but not before he had heard Dean make and angry retort … his (Harry’s) feeling of elation increasing.’
He goes about his mission, and next day, Hermione tells him (page 481):
“Ginny and Dean have split up too, Harry.”
Harry thought there was a rather knowing look in her eye as she told him that, but she cold not possibly know that his insides were suddenly dancing the conga: keeping his face as immobile and his voice as indifferent as he could, he asked, “How come?”
“Oh something really silly … she said he was always trying to help her though the portrait hole, like she couldn’t climb it herself … but they’ve been a bit rocky for ages.”
Harry glanced over at Dean on the other side of the class-room. He certainly looked unhappy.
“Of course this puts you in a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it?” said Hermione.
“What d’you mean?” said Harry quickly.
“The Quidditch team,” said Hermione. “If Ginny and Dean aren’t speaking ..”
Note that Hermione specifically tells Harry about the bust up – she’s fishing for his reaction. She has a ‘rather knowing look’ in her eye (she can see he fancies Ginny) and she puts him on the spot with a leading question: ‘this puts you in a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it’. She can now see that Harry is interested in Ginny.
What have we had here? After Harry got hit on the head, his fixation on Ginny becomes much more intense. He melodramatically daydreams about her in the hospital, the monster is back ‘sniffing the air hopefully’, Harry is keen to get information about the state of Ginny and Dean’s relationship – particularly after they’d had a row. JKR makes it clear he has been thinking about her, if on an almost subconscious level, where he is hoping that she and Dean will split up. He is so interested that for the first time in the entire book Hermione finally sees clues in his behaviour and expression to suggest to her that he has an interest in Ginny. So far, i.e. prior to the bash on the head, Harry had successfully internalised any periodic turmoil.
Harry actually does cause the break up of Ginny and Dean, having drunk the Felix Felicis, when he brushes against her in the portrait hole (page 447) he gets what he had been wishing for earlier that day (page 441): Ginny and Dean split up, the direct cause being Harry brushing against her, as she thought it was Dean pushing her. As an aside, were Dean and Ginny ‘rocky for ages’? Maybe, but maybe not. They had rowed before, but Hermione might have only added that comment in the belated realisation that saying they broke up for a silly reason made Ginny look bad.
Ron split up with Lavender at the same time Ginny split up with Dean. At the end of this section (page 482) it is reported that ‘Hermione seemed cheery too, though when asked what she was grinning about she simply said, “It’s a nice day.”’ I don’t see any reason why Hermione could not have been smiling to herself at both Ron’s break up and Harry’s newly evident interest in Ginny, an interest which would please her as she has been campaigning for it with use of love potions.
HIT ON THE HEAD BY LOVE
I have obviously laboured the division of what Harry was like before he had his skull cracked, compared to what he was like after. Why? Because I believe we have some evidence that a blow to the skull affects the potency of a love potion. (This is a notion that Anise brought to my attention.)
What are the very first words Hermione speaks in this entire book, words she speaks after having dosed Harry with some love potion? (page 88)
“We didn’t know you were here already!” said a loud and excited voice, and he received a sharp blow to the top of the head.
“Ron, don’t hit him!” said a girl’s voice reproachfully.
‘Ron, don’t hit him!’ (and note the exclamation mark) as Ron has just given Harry a sharp blow to the top of the head. We then get the Twins teasing Ron about Lavender at The Burrow during the Christmas break. Fred is teasing him about what could possibly have happened to persuade Lavender to go out with Ron.
Fred: “No, what we really wanted to know was … how did it happen?”
Ron: What d’you mean?”
F: “Did she have an accident or something?”
R: “What?”
F: “Well, how did she sustain such extensive brain damage?”
Hermione dosed Harry, and she must have learned from her ‘love potion’ reading that you mustn’t strike the dosee on the head in the susceptible state. I think that is why she reacts so immediately and stridently to Ron hitting Harry. The fact is that knowing these two boys for five years she must have seen them ‘josh about’ like that countless times before, as ‘playful hitting’ is how boys actually touch each other: it is the excuse they use for touching their friends. Hence the hitting as such wasn’t the issue that concerned her – it was the exact timing of it that was the issue.
Fred teasing Ron that Lavender would have to have had an accident that gave her brain damage (i.e. an accident to her head) to get her to love him is a direct parallel to what happens to Harry. After a long period of waning interest (since the birth of the monster and the touching at The Burrow), he sustains a cracked skull and then wakes up obsessed with Ginny.
GINNY ON THE BRAIN – EVENTS UP UNTO ‘THE KISS’
Here I take up exactly where I left off when Hermione seems cheery and is grinning to herself (page 482). There is ‘a fierce battle raging inside Harry’s brain’, concerning his fear that showing an interest in Ginny could alienate Ron from him. It is also the case that ‘neither of them (Ron or Hermione) seemed to have noticed’ it; in other words Hermione still has no idea of the drastic and unsettling effect she has inflicted upon Harry. At this point Harry is obsessed with Ginny, so much so that only querying Katie Bell about the poison necklace ‘drove Ginny temporarily from his brain’ – and only then temporarily. It’s during this period that JKR lets us hear from Hermione that tweaking circumstances is okay (page 484).
Over the next two weeks life revolves around Quidditch practice and Ginny (page 485). “Ginny did not seem at all upset about her break up with Dean; on the contrary, she was the life and soul of the team’ – doing skits, imitations, joking. Let’s take an aside to discuss this. Ginny is the ‘life and soul’ of the team. There has been a lot of ire in the fanbase that Ginny was presented here as the ‘heart and soul of the team’. Well she wasn’t. It clearly states ‘life and soul’. There is a huge difference between the meaning and implication of ‘heart and soul’ and ‘life and soul’. Heart and soul implies that she was the spiritual core of the team, that she kept them going, that she alone kept up their spirits and had faith in their abilities when all else on the team doubted themselves. But that is NOT what JKR says, she says ‘life and soul’ which is a hugely different thing. In Brit-speak (I don’t know if it’s the same for Americans, if it isn’t it could explain the misunderstanding on this) ‘life and soul’ is a colloquial term, a reference to someone who is ‘the life and soul of the party’. This has NO spiritual import whatsoever. Instead it means someone who is a ‘party hearty’ the noisy, brash person in the party who keeps everyone laughing with their endless jokes and larky behaviour. This person can indeed be highly entertaining, but they are also someone who is somewhat self-consciously ‘being funny’, someone putting on a bit of an act, attention seeking slightly. This is what Ginny is doing here. She is being loudly funny, drawing attention to herself. Is she doing it deliberately to get Harry’s attention? Has Hermione told her that Hermione has been watching Harry watching Ginny, which we know she has been? It would certainly explain why she’s not bothered about losing Dean, and why she is drawing attention to herself. We know that this ‘life and soul’ of the team thing is a new thing for Ginny, as only now do we hear of it. Well, either way it works, because Harry is so busy looking at her in practice that ‘he had received several more Bludger injuries during practice because he had not been keeping his eyes on the snitch’ (page 485). Injuries to the head? The possibility is left dangling.
After the Bludger injuries are reported, Harry is ever more obsessed. ‘The battle still raged inside his head: Ginny or Ron?’ He can’t stop himself from taking opportunities to be with her: ‘Yet Harry could not stop himself talking to Ginny … wondering how best to get her on her own.’ Hermione notices his attentions to Ginny and is pleased at them (page 485): ‘Once or twice Harry considered asking for Hermione’s help, but he did not think he could stand seeing the smug look on her face; he thought he caught it sometimes when Hermione spotted him staring at Ginny, or laughing at her jokes.’
At that point JKR gives us a second direct reference to Hermione ‘tweaking circumstances’ (page 486) to drive the point home. Hermione has obviously noticed Harry’s attentions to Ginny and is smug about it – of course she is smug, she is congratulating herself on the success of her efforts.
Time slides on, ‘the balmy days slid gently through May’, and Harry is still obsessively fretting about how to get Ginny alone. In his mind he has conflated the coming Gryffindor-Ravenclaw match with success or failure in his plans for Ginny. He’s only flung out of his obsession with Ginny by his Sectumsempra fight with Draco, but even after half-killing Draco (for which Harry is filled with a horrified remorse) not even that can get his mind off Ginny for long and he’s back obsessing again on page 495, scared she’ll get back with Dean, ‘the thought went through Harry like an icy knife’.
Ginny and Hermione have a falling out, ostensibly over Harry’s use of the Sectumsempra and Quidditch (page 496); Hermione is critical of Harry, and Ginny defends him. Ginny ends up snapping at Hermione. ‘Hermione and Ginny, who had always got on together very well, were now sitting with their arms folded, glaring in opposite directions. Ron looked nervously at Harry, then snatched up a book at random and hid behind it. Harry, however, though he knew he little deserved it, felt unbelievably cheerful all of a sudden, even though none of them spoke again for the rest of the evening.’
I think this falling out section is quite important for two sets of reasons. The first is that the strength of the falling out seems to be very high: it scares Ron, the two girls are violently not talking (arms folded and glaring away) and the resulting silence lasts all evening. This seems to me to be well in excess of what was warranted by the evident argument. Instead it seems to me that it was one of those instances where two people are ostensibly arguing about one thing, but in actuality the real sore point between them is something else, something they are not voicing ‘in company’. That something else, the real cause of the flare up, is often far worse than what they are using to cover it up. I think that prior to this Hermione may have finally confided to Ginny what she had been doing with the potions (thinking it was a fun girly thing for one friend to do for another) – and THAT would certainly have justified the level of anger. Ginny knows full well what being affected by an ‘alien force’ is like – she was possessed by Voldemort. She and Hermione obviously could not talk about it in public, certainly not when the ‘public’ is Ron and Harry himself. The second point from the ‘row’ is Harry’s reaction: ‘Harry, however, though he knew he little deserved it, felt unbelievably cheerful all of a sudden’. ‘Unbelievably cheerful’ even though he knows he doesn’t deserve it. He was horrified at having slashed Draco, but now Ginny says it’s okay, he doesn’t mind at all. This is one more evidence of ‘influence’.
Harry is then in detention and next sees Ginny at the post-match party, when they kiss and become a couple (page 499).
‘Harry looked around; there was Ginny running towards him; she had a hard, blazing look in her face as she threw her arms around him. And without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about the fact that fifty people were watching, Harry kissed her. After several long moments – or possibly several sunlight days – they broke apart.’ … ‘Hermione was beaming.’ … ‘The creature in his chest roaring in triumph,’
There is a lot going on here, so let’s look at it. Ginny comes running toward Harry and flings her arms around him – she moves in him, not he on her. She has ‘a hard, blazing look in her face’. Well, that is such a strange description; it doesn’t strike me as remotely romantic. Try and put what you feel would be a hard, blazing look on your face right now, and what does it feel as though you are expressing? – my effort feels like determination. I think Ginny is screwing her courage up and finally making her move. She may have been angry at Hermione dosing Ginny (and that is conjecture) but if she was, then not angry enough not to capitalise on her one best chance to finally, after years of crushing on him, ‘get Harry’. Can you really blame her? It’s the equivalent of a starving beggar finding a dropped purse stuffed full of money and not giving it back: it’s wrong but you can understand why they did it.
Note that Ginny touches Harry – fully embraces him – and I’ve earlier written about what I feel the effect of Ginny’s actual touch is on Harry. Harry kisses her despite any natural embarrassment he might otherwise feel. The kiss is equated to ‘several sunlight days’. This seems a cheesy description, but it does something else, it directs us back to one of the known effects of love potions in the only seen example of love potion use that we have: the effect on Ron (page 367). “Romilda Vane,” said Ron softly, and his whole face seemed to illuminate as he said it, as though hit by a ray of purest sunlight.’ Sunlight.
Hermione is beaming; of course she is, her little plan came to fruition. The creature in Harry’s chest is roaring in triumph; of course it is, after an almost nine month struggle (if we count from the first dosing at The Burrow), the monster finally won.
BUT WHAT DOES THE MONSTER WIN?
Not much really. Because we get one page of anything romantic, and that’s yer lot (page 500). Here Harry is reported as very happy, ‘happier than he could remember being for a very long time’. Ginny is seen sitting against Harry’s legs in the common room. She cracks a joke, ‘Ron and Hermione roar with laughter’, but Harry ignores them. As the joke continues he simply grins, although ‘Hermione rolled round laughing’. Ron and Ginny quickly devolve to their tedious sniping at each other. And then we immediately move into June.
In the above we get an easy familiarity between Harry and Ginny, but we see no passion. What we do see is Hermione rolling round laughing – because she is still elated that her plan worked out? Time passes and from half way down page 501, Ginny disappears as a ‘first person’ presence and is simply reported upon. Harry is happy to be with her, daydreaming, ‘reliving a particularly happy hour he spent down by the lake with Ginny at lunch time’; on page 504 he resents that Snape’s Sectumsempra detentions keep him from Ginny, with whom he only has limited time anyway because of her exams. ‘Indeed, he had frequently wondered lately whether Snape did not know this, for he was keeping Harry later and later every time …” I think that is JKR putting it to us that Snape does know and he is doing it deliberately. Why is Snape doing it? We can always factor in sheer spite in Snape’s case, but we can also factor in something else: on page 490 (during the Sectumsempra disaster) it is canon that Snape Leglimenses Harry – he looks into his mind and in so doing would see his emotional state (Leglimens allows the ‘looker’ to see what you are feeling). Snape does it again on page 494. Did Snape detect abnormal emotional instability toward Ginny, as brought on by the potion? As we know that Ginny was busy with exams, and that they had little time together, slicing down on the Saturdays as Snape does would cut their time together to the minimum. If this was the case then we have a cheeky little reference to Harry not wanting a Leglimens to see inside his head re Ginny(page 286):
“There isn’t anyone I want to invite,” mumbled Harry, who was still trying not to think about Ginny any more than he could help, despite the fact that she kept cropping up in his dreams in ways which made him devoutly thankful that Ron could not perform Leglimancy.’
On page 501 (at the bottom) we get another cheeky little inflection. Harry’s performance in Potions is suffering because he has ‘lost’ his Half-Blood Prince potions book. Slughorn’s reaction is:
‘Slughorn, who approved of Ginny, had jocularly attributed this to Harry being lovesick.’
Now bear in mind this is several weeks after Harry and Ginny are officially a couple, which is why I enjoy the ‘lovesick’ reference here. Harry CANNOT be ‘lovesick’ in the traditional sense as the ‘lovesick’ are those who pine for a love they do not have. Harry has his love, he is lovesick because he is literally sick – he is under the effects of potion.
The next report we have of Ginny is on page 516 when Harry is leaving on his mission with Dumbledore and is in a rush to say goodbye. He does not say goodbye to Ginny (his clawing monster of luuurve) but asks Ron and Hermione to pass on his goodbyes for him. Obviously in the narrative we have the excuse that Harry is in a great hurry, but authorially JKR could have put Ginny in the common room with Ron and Hermione for Harry to say goodbye to. JKR is NOT reporting reality, she is not writing up what has happened elsewhere, she is making up a story over which she has total control. If she wanted Harry to say farewell to Ginny, she could have easily had him do so in any number of ways even within the tight timeframe for goodbye. She does not have him say goodbye because she does not choose to. During the goodbye, Harry forces the Felix Felicis on Ron, insisting ‘Share it between yourselves (Ron and Hermione) and Ginny too.’ Ginny is almost an add-on extra. The fact that JKR did not have Harry say goodbye to Ginny is rammed down our throats as it forms the next mention of Ginny (page 530): ‘He suddenly wished he had said a better goodbye to them (referencing Ron and Hermione) … and he hadn’t seem Ginny at all ...’
Harry goes through the trauma and horror of the cave and the escape from the cave, he and Dumbledore arrive on the tower and Draco reports that ‘one of your people is dead’. ‘Harry’s heart thundered unheard in his invisible chest … someone was dead … Malfoy had stepped over the body … but who was it?’ I think this is notable for what it does not say: Harry gives no specific thought to Ginny at all.
We see her next on page 558 when Harry notices her hair ‘flying like flames’ when she is dodging the DE who is trying to hex her. Harry blasts the DE senseless and runs past Ginny, she calls out to him but he does not have time to reply as he passes. It is written that he ‘had no time to answer her’ and under the narrative circumstances that is true, but once again we must note that JKR is the author, only she decided that Harry didn’t have the time, she could have had Harry respond if she wanted to.
What do we see in this part of the book? That Harry is still besotted with Ginny, right until reality bites *the start of the Dumbledore mission). And then she is almost entirely out of mind. JKR also takes the authorial decision to ‘distance’ the reader from the romance, as she simply does not show it. The reader has no emotional investment in it, as it is not there.
HARRY AND GINNY – MOVING TOWARD THE END
Chapter 28 (page 571). Harry is devastated after Dumbledore’s death, he cannot find it within himself to leave the body. Then: ‘A much smaller and warmer hand had enclosed his and was pulling him upwards. He obeyed its pressure without really thinking about it. Only as he walked blindly back through the crowd did he realise, from a trace of flowery scent on the air, that it was Ginny who was leading him back to the castle.’
Harry and Ginny converse on their way to the hospital wing, but it’s pure exposition (i.e. JKR uses their conversation to let the reader know what has happened plot-wise).
The above quoted passage was the one passage in the whole book when I thought there might have been any true feeling between Harry and Ginny – I wondered if he had come to care for her naturally, although he had been ‘started off’ by the potion. And then I remembered that Harry’s peaks of response to Ginny prior to being knocked unconscious where when she touched him, and what does she do at the start of the passage? – she touches him. After that, if we are reading it from the perspective of someone ‘loved up’ then what are we seeing? ‘He obeyed its (her hand’s) pressure without really thinking about it.’ He obeyed, and without really thinking about it: indicative of love potion control. He walks blindly, there is a trace of flowery scent in the air – which is the scent this theory associates with The Burrow ‘potion’, and not with Ginny herself.
Until page 581 any conversation Ginny has with anyone is purely expositional. Then we get on page 581 what I think is another clue to events. Fleur makes her stand for Bill and won’t be driven away or put off: she loves him and that’s that, she will not hear of leaving him. This is the young woman whom Ginny certainly believed Molly was scheming to get shut of because it wasn’t ‘real love’, and Hermione never demurred against that opinion. Both girls are given a smart lesson about real love in that scene, and it startles them. When Molly accepts Fleur in their mutual tearstained hug: ‘Ginny and Hermione were exchanging startled looks’.
If there was ever a wake-up point when Ginny and Hermione were given abrupt cause to question the morality of what they were doing to Harry, then that was it.
‘The Quartet’ spend all their time together in the days before the funeral, and Harry is unhappy at knowing that in order to protect her from Voldemort he is going to have to say goodbye to Ginny: ‘it was too hard to forego his best source of comfort’. (I think that happens to make her sound like a pair of comfy old slippers rather than the love of his life, but we’ll let that one slide.) Harry still shows an unsettling tendency to reverse his opinions in the face of a critical Ginny; when Ginny announces that she supposes she’ll have to accept that Bill really is going to marry Fleur after all (which makes Ginny sound very petulant), Harry replies:
“She’s not that bad,” said Harry. “Ugly, though,” he added hastily, as Ginny raised her eyebrows, and she let out a reluctant giggle.
“Well I suppose if mum can stand it I can.”
Looking at it now, is this the pivotal exchange? Is this the point when Ginny admits that ‘you can’t buck love’?
The Trio engage in discussion over Snape and Voldemort – the big event – but far from being interested enough to get involved in this major aspect of Harry’s life, Ginny yawns and goes to bed.
HARRY AND GINNY – PARTING AT THE FUNERAL
At the funeral Harry sees Neville and Luna and feels ‘a great rush of affection for both of them’ (page 598). He gets a ‘wonderful, momentary urge to laugh’ at the tragi-comedy of Hagrid and Grawp (page 600). It’s as though here he is somehow starting to emotionally thaw, to come back to himself. These are Harry’s emotions, not something from a bottle.
On pages 602 to 603, Harry leaves Ginny. I will quote almost the entire section as I believe all of it is significant.
‘She met Harry’s gaze with the same hard, blazing look that he had seen when she had hugged him after winning the Quidditch Cup in his absence, and he knew that at that moment they understood each other perfectly, and that when he told her what he was going to do now, she would not say ‘Be careful’ or ‘Don’t do it’, but accept his decision, because she would not have expected anything less of him.’
He says that they have to stop seeing each other.
“I can’t be involved with you any more. We’ve got to stop seeing each other. We can’t be together.”
She said, with an oddly twisted smile, “It’s for some stupid, noble reason isn’t it?”
“It’s been like … like something out of someone else’s life, these past weeks with you,” said Harry. “But I can’t … we can’t … I’ve got things to do alone now.”
She did not cry, she simply looked at him.’
“Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He’s already used you as bait once, and that was just because you’re my best friend’s sister. Think how much danger you’ll be in if we keep this up. He’ll know, he’ll find out. He’ll try and get to me through you.”
‘What if I don’t care?” said Ginny fiercely.
“I care,” said Harry. “How do you think I’d feel if this was your funeral .. and it was my fault …”
She looked away from him over the lake.
“I never really gave up on you,” she said. “Not really, I always hoped … Hermione told me to get on with my life, maybe go out with some other people, relax a bit around you, because I never used to be able to talk if you were in the room, remember? And she thought you might take a bit more notice if I was a bit more – myself.”
“Smart girl that Hermione,” said Harry, trying to smile. “I just wish I’d asked you sooner. We could have had ages … months … years maybe ..”
“But you were too busy saving the wizarding world,” said Ginny, half-laughing. “Well … I can’t say I’m surprised. I knew this would happen in the end. I knew you wouldn’t be happy unless you were hunting Voldemort. Maybe that’s why I like you so much.”
Harry is miserable, he could not bear to hear those things, ‘nor did he think his resolution would hold if he remained sitting beside her’ (no it would not, due to the proximity effects of potion: touching). He sees Ron embracing Hermione and stroking her hair as she weeps, the sight of Ron and Hermione is one of great intimacy, but even prompted by that, ‘with a miserable gesture, Harry got up, turned his back on Ginny’… he leaves her without JKR even giving us one kiss goodbye. From the moment he turns his back he does not think of her or speak of her.
He meets Ron and Hermione and tries to leave them behind too, but they won’t hear of it and it is clear that the Trio will go on. They make arrangements to meet up at The Burrow for Bill and Fleur’s wedding, and to attend that before they go on to fight the good fight. The book closes with Harry happy at the thought of the coming wedding: ‘he felt his heart lift at the thought that there was still one last golden day of peace left to enjoy with Ron and Hermione’.
Note that although Ginny will quite obviously be at the wedding (she is a Weasley and a bridesmaid), he does not think of her at all.
The above is packed with meaning and foreshadowing of events to come.
Harry says: “It’s been like … like something out of someone else’s life, these past weeks with you,” too right it has – it hasn’t been a real experience at all in that his ‘going out with Ginny’ period was full of chemically induced happiness. He was as genuinely happy as Merope Gaunt’s husband was before she quit dosing him.
Let’s go to that ‘hard, blazing look’. That seems t be a fiery determination, a stubbornness, but to what end? We have Harry telling us that ‘he knew that at that moment they understood each other perfectly’, but then the following text shows that they clearly do not. He explains three times that they can’t be together and why not, and her response after all is: “What if I don’t care?” said Ginny fiercely.’ Harry has to then drive the point home by saying: “How do you think I’d feel if this was your funeral .. and it was my fault …” He has to keep on explaining again and again why he thinks what he does: this is not ‘perfect agreement’.
Ginny then looks away, as though she knows at that point that she has lost and that he will not be persuaded. We have the “I never really gave up on you’ paragraph, which we have gone over before, but this is followed by a cheeky little inflection: “Smart girl that Hermione.” Yes, smart Hermione, with all her scheming to get H/G together. We then have one of the most absurd lines in the book if taken at face value, where Harry bemoans that if only he’d asked Ginny sooner they could have had months or even years. I laughed out loud when I read that, because it is palpable nonsense. Yes, they could have had months because Harry was fighting the potion for months and he could have given in months ago – but years? They could not have had years because in all five previous books Harry was not interested in Ginny and did not ask her out because he did not want to! He felt no urge to do so! Only a Harry who was loved-up could imagine he had always felt that way.
Then we have Ginny’s farewell, when she realises she’s lost Harry. “But you were too busy saving the wizarding world,” said Ginny, half-laughing. “Well … I can’t say I’m surprised. I knew this would happen in the end. I knew you wouldn’t be happy unless you were hunting Voldemort. Maybe that’s why I like you so much.”
‘Well … I can’t say I’m surprised. I knew this would happen in the end.’ Yes, she knew it would happen in the end, because she knew it was based on a potion and, from the evidence of true love in the hospital scene, that dosing Harry was wrong. She has an innate recognition that what is falsely induced cannot last. We have a full stop, and then her reason as to why she was not surprised. But the full stop differentiates the reason from her knowledge that he would leave in the end. If it was the genuine reason then JKR could simply have had a comma instead of a full stop, and it actually reads much better with a comma. Then we have her final sentence in the whole book: ‘Maybe that’s why I like you so much.’ Like? This is supposed to be the Twu Luv of All Time, and she ‘likes’ him? Where is ‘love’ where is ‘care for’? – Ginny herself seems to be viewing her emotion more clearly and realises she ‘likes’ him.
Note that he never tells her anything about The Prophecy (which he told Ron and Hermione about straight off the bat), he never tells her anything about the Horcruxes either, when he told Ron and Hermione all about those too.
The word ‘love’ is never used between or about Harry/Ginny in the entire book.
HOW EASY IS IT TO DOSE SOMEONE - COULD HERMIONE HAVE BEEN DOSING HARRY AT TIMES OTHER THAN THOSE STIPULATED (AT THE BURROW AND IN THE PUB)?
Yes, because dosing someone is easy. When Dumbledore is relating the tale of Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle Senior he says (page 202): “I do not think it would have been very difficult, some hot day, when Riddle was riding alone, to persuade him to take a drink of water.”
Before the Christmas party (page 287) Hermione says: “Well just be careful what you drink, because Romilda Vane looked like she meant business.” In other words, Harry has to watch all drinks because any could be affected.
After Ron had been poisoned with the mead, Fred wonders if Slughorn could have contaminated Ron’s glass (page 375):
“Would he have been able to slip something into Ron’s glass without you seeing?”
“Probably,” said Harry.
So even Harry recognises that it’s easy to spike a drink and go un-noticed.
The most direct statement comes from Hermione herself (page 421) when Harry is wondering if a potion will get Slughorn to divulge his memory, she says: “It’s not a question of slipping him a potion, anyone could do that - ”. Well she should know, she’s the expert on it.
Hermione could have been dosing him at any time. All she needed was a situation when Harry was drinking, and she has meals with him practically every day.
HOW OFTEN WAS HARRY BEING DOSED? WAS HARRY BEING DOSED AFTER THE KISS?
We don’t know. What we DO know comes from the only ‘documented’ incident of love potion abuse: that between Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle Senior, as related by Dumbledore.
Merope had a ‘secret burning passion’ for TRS (remind you of anyone?). She doses him up and gets him to run off with her. He leaves her when she is pregnant, saying on his return to normality that he had been ‘hoodwinked’ and ‘taken in’. Dumbledore says that he believes TRS left because Merope stopped giving him the potion. In other words, for ‘love’ to continue, the potion has to continue to be administered. This would suggest that Harry was still being ‘topped up’ after the kiss.
He is obviously still affected at the time of the funeral, but would appear to be coming out of it slightly.
WHY DIDN’T HARRY SHOW THE SAME SYMPTOMS AS RON?
One argument to refute a love potion theory is that Ron shows very evident signs that something is wrong the instant he has taken the Romilda Vane potion, so much so that Harry immediately suspects something is up. He has a ‘strangely unfocused’ look on his face, is ‘rather pale and looks like he is about to be sick’, he makes ‘desperate gestures’, he has a dreamy look about him ‘as though hit by a ray of purest sunlight’, he is instantly and openly obsessed with Romilda, he has glazed eyes and a pallid complexion, he turns violent when Romilda is insulted.
Harry evinces none of these reactions for two reasons. One, he is Harry and on current evidence Harry is a mentally tougher prospect that Ron (see Harry v The Imperius) but FAR more importantly than this is the second reason. Slughorn asks if the potion was within date (page 371), “They can strengthen, you know, the longer they’re kept.”
Romilda gives Harry the chocolates before the Christmas holidays, Ron ate the chocolates/drank the potion contained within, on his birthday: 1st March. By the time Ron drank it, the Romilda potion had been mixed up and raring to go for over two months. We don’t even know how ‘old’ it was when she got it out of the bottle. All told, the Romilda/Ron potion had strengthened significantly because if its age. Harry does not evince such dramatic responses because he will be drinking ‘fresh’. Hermione may be someone who is not concerned the consequences of what she is doing, but she is someone (we know for a fact) who will follow the ‘directions for use’ to the letter.
IS IT POSSIBLE THAT GINNY NEVER KNEW ABOUT THE LOVE-POTIONING AT ALL?
Yes it is possible. But I believe she did know by the time she made her move on Harry, if only because it gives a real reason for what I see as a disproportionate row between Hermione and Ginny, and it makes sense of Ginny’s farewell comments: ‘I knew it would end like this’.
Even if Ginny is not directly involved at all, I am convinced from the canon evidence that Hermione was in it up to her neck and that love potions were used to affect Harry/Ginny.
PREDICTIONS FOR THE FUTURE
The love potion endeavours are bound to come out, and I suspect they will start to emerge at the wedding as that is the next telegraphed grand occasion where drinks will be being passed around. What will the reaction be?
People will be shocked and horrified and angry. Ron will side with Harry (knowing full well what being dosed felt like). Molly will be horrified and blame Hermione (and maybe Ginny too). Ginny and Hermione may fall out over it, each blaming the other.
Harry will break with Ginny (and he won’t be too happy about Hermione either); Harry is, after all, the person who associates love potion with something as serious as The Imperius (page 201):
DD: “Can you not think of any measure Merope could have taken to make Tom Riddle forget his Muggle companion, and fall in love with her instead?”
H: “The Imperius Curse?” Harry suggested. “Or a love potion?”
Harry relates a love potion to an ‘Unforgivable’, and ‘unforgivables’ aren’t called unforgivable for nothing.
We also have the foreshadowing of the Merope/Riddle Snr ‘relationship’ when she dupes him with the potion, which as DD says “would have seemed more romantic to her” (once again hinting that the ‘girl’ concerned didn’t see it as cruel mind control, but as a desperate romance). The love potion ‘stops working’ because (page 203) “Merope, who was deeply in love with her husband, could not bear to continue enslaving him by magical means. I believe she made the choice to stop giving him the potion. Perhaps, besotted as she was, she had convinced herself that he would by now have fallen in love with her in return. Perhaps she thought he would stay for the baby’s sake. If so, she was wrong on both counts. He left her, never saw her again, and never troubled to discover what became of his son.”
Do I think this foreshadowing is so precise that it means Ginny is now secretly pregnant by Harry? Of course not, these aren’t those types of books. But I do see it as foreshadowing of a ‘relationship’ in which a besotted girl with romantic notions uses drugs to get a boy to love her. When she stops drugging him because she cannot bear to carry on with it, he stops loving her and then walks out on her forever when he realises what she did. Okay, so Ginny wasn’t the one who actively potioned Harry, but she took advantage of it, and that will be as bad.
We also have the foreshadowing of the Celestina Warbeck songs from the chapter ‘A Very Frosty Christmas’. Extract the song titles and the song verses from the surrounding text, and what we are left with is this:
A Cauldron Full of Hot Strong Love
‘Oh, come and stir my cauldron,
And if you do it right
I’ll boil you up some hot, strong love
To keep you warm tonight’
The above clearly refers to the creation of a love potion, which when deployed:
You Charmed the Heart Right Out of Me
Stole the heart of the dosed one. We then have:
‘Oh, my poor heart, where has it gone?
It’s left me for a spell …’
Which is a lovely little play on the word ‘spell’ which means both hex, and ‘a period of time’. In other words, the heart may have been fooled by a charm, but the trick won’t last forever, resulting in:
‘… and now you’ve torn it quite apart
I’ll thank you to give me back my heart!’
When the dosed person wakes up from the effects and/or realises events, goddammit they want their heart back! They are NOT happy about it.
The Merope and the song foreshadowing give us the same narrative: girl gets boy by use of potion, girl gets found out/stops, boy gets angry big-style: well angry enough to march out.
When it all comes out there will be hell to pay all round, especially when you consider that between them Hermione and Ginny were messing with Harry’s one real weapon against Voldemort – his ability to love.
What are the consequences for Ginny apart from Harry dumping her? Well here we go back to the ‘break up’ passage I quoted earlier and look at one little bit of it, as quoted from Harry:
“Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He’s already used you as bait once, and that was just because you’re my best friend’s sister. Think how much danger you’ll be in if we keep this up. He’ll know, he’ll find out. He’ll try and get to me through you.”
I think Voldemort will find out about ‘the relationship’ in any case, he will think it is still current but secret, and he will snatch Ginny for use as leverage. I think Ginny will not be in much of a position to defend herself as we know from both Merope and Tonks that severe emotional trauma (romantic in both cases) cause a drastic loss of ‘power’.
What will happen to Hermione? Unknown – she owes a lot of karmic debt for pulling a stunt like this, and I expect to see authorial payback Ron and Harry may try to go on without her, and in turn she may try to go it alone and get into trouble.
Anise’s Note:
Wow! What a theory, huh? I would add some more content to the end, too, to be expanded upon greatly in my next essay. ;). As y’all know if you read my love potion essay, I theorized that Harry was dosed not by Hermione, but by Draco and Snape. I actually think that there’s a lot more evidence for Creamtea’s version, but I also think that Draco and Snape’s involvement with H/G will be tremendously important in the next book. Snape certainly knows about H/G, and it’s canon now that Draco was extraordinarily interested in the subject of Ginny Weasley. So let’s look at this possible Book 7 scenario.
It’s going to be very hard to rehabilitate Draco with Voldemort, since four Death Eaters saw that he wouldn’t kill Dumbledore (and JKR revealed in the Mugglenet interview that Draco absolutely would not have done it, no matter what.) Yet Snape has sworn to protect Draco’s life, and he’s still got street cred with the DE’s. One of the few ways Snape could persuade Voldy to keep Draco alive is if he could help with a plan to get Harry, and by kidnapping Ginny, he could do exactly that. Once again, I think we’re seeing here the quadrangle connections between Draco, Ginny, Harry, and Tom Riddle/Voldemort. H/G and D/G are intertwined (which may very well turn out to be a parallel to the way that Snape/Lily and James/Lily were intertwined.) And they will all play important roles in the final showdown.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour through HBP H/G theories! And watch for Creamtea’s next essay, which has MUCH more to do with both Draco and Ginny…
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