Harry and Hermione: the star-cross'd lovers of their time?

Hi everyone, for the last week or so I've been too busy to contribute to the blog but that doesn't mean my mind has wandered from the Tragedy of Harry and Hermione. In fact, far from wandering, my mind has been centering in on the beautiful Truths of this story. Of lately, I've been comparing this romance and its cruelly apparent termination with other such romantic engagings across the ages. Although many such sproutings of True Love have come into my mind, one stands out above all the rest, for its purity and its classicity: William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This all time epic story of love and betrayal and tears is alike in so many ways to my own generation's once-classic Harry Potter series that I cannot get the similarity of the love out of my mind. Harry and Hermione, like their ancestors Romeo and Juliet, have been torn apart because of senseless greed and hate. In Shakespeare's novel, the two "star-cross'd" lovers are forced to seperate because there is a plague on both their houses. In JRK's now-desecrated version, there is a similar - except positive - curse on Harry's house, which allows him to stay safely with the Durseley's. And, of course, Hermione is plagued in that she lives in a Muggle house. Talk about a plague on both houses!

Of course, this important similarity is minor compared to the main thematic singularity between them of TRAGEDY. Harry and Hermione, True Lovers from the starting point they met one another, have only been able to blossom together for a very short period in time. Like Romeo and Juliet, everyone has been working against them being together, including Dumbledore and all others who have forced Harry to live away from Hermione, at the Durseley's, while she and Ron are put together every summer at the Burrow. Like a burrowing mole, this plot has made an insidious and deep hole into the health of this young, volatile but passionate relationship. Trapped within these two opposing houses, one within the magical world and one within the human one, the two lovers can hardly ever even speak to one another. Like Romeo and Juliet using the Priest as a go-between messenger, Harry and Hermione have to use Hedwig. And in continuity with this point, Harry and Hermione are of course put into different dorms at Hogwarts, and their fellow students, in their immature teenagehood, selfishly conspire to attract them to themselves - much like the suiters after Romeo and Juliet.

Harry and Hermione are disposed- like Romeo and Juliet, respectively - irrespectively of their love, by JRK. Judging by the disregarding callousness of JRK towards my fellow True Fans of Harry and Hermione, the author (whose skill I do NOT mean to compare with Shakespeare, who wrote dozens of better novels) had it in for them from the start. Even as she wrote the springing, hopeful future love in the first books, and set up this true storyline, she was secretly conspiring to kill the romance off. Even though this would go against her own true story, she wanted to make a tragedy. Of course, her tragedy, unlike Shakespeare's which is made known to you in the PROLOGUE of the book, is a total about-face and not properly warned to the reader. Did she say that these lovers were "star-cross'd" in the first book? The second? The third? See where I'm going with this? Things were totally switched on a heartbeat, and my heart broke. Unlike with Romeo and Juliet, where you can see things coming and appreciate the tragic beauty of it all, in HBP things are just randomly changed.

And, as the R/H shippers like to so childishly remind the entire globe, JRK had this planned from the start. I now see this. The crime is no less a crime because of this - in fact, it is worse. More over, Harry and Hermione's love is no less true for the fact that it was cruelly "star-cross'd" from the beginning. Was Romeo and Juliet's love less fantastic, less honest, less classic simply because it was cursed? Of course not. Thirdly, the love of H/H was cursed from OUTSIDE the story, by the author, and not by things INSIDE the story that were properly set up, by the author. When R/H shippers look at H/H's tragic seperation and say "this proves the love was not True", I look at it and say "this proves the books were all a fraud." In honor of the beautiful similarities between these two classic epic-defining loves, both of which were destroyed for petty gain, I have prepared the image below.



Click on the image for a bigger version. Yes, it is photoshopped! I had some fun making all the guns into wands. The gangsters on both sides represent the forces trying to keep Harry/Romeo and Hermione/Juliet apart. If Hogwarts did a school play, surely this would be the poster!

In other news, it seems like some people have been mentioning my work on other sites, which is good publicity for the cause. But these particular two make especially little sense. Hey guys, how about you read my mission statement so you know what my cause is, before you go and make statements that are so non-sensory.

http://ocpundit.blogspot.com/2005/08/you-sunk-my-ship_29.html

http://www.livejournal.com/community/deleterius/1645454.html

Sigh. Trolls really enjoy the extra space they get at their own websites. But hey, it's a free country and there's no law against being ignorant.

Sincerely,

pumpkinhead