Last week, “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling threw the Muggle world into a frenzy when she made comments about a central relationship in the series. She overstepped her boundaries, even as the creator of the series, and should have left well enough alone.
In an interview conducted by Emma Watson for Wonderland magazine, Rowling said that Hermione Granger (Watson’s character) should not have ended up with Ron Weasley, Harry Potter’s best friend. She acknowledged that it could have worked out between Harry and Hermione, who spent the series as best friends.
“I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really,” Rowling said in the interview. “For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron.”
This part of the interview was leaked before the full discussion was released. After the rest of it was revealed, we saw that Rowling also said she believed Ron and Hermione just need some marriage counseling, and she thinks they will turn out fine. This slightly makes amends for what she said before, but the point still stands that she shouldn’t have said anything in the first place.
The last Harry Potter book came out seven years ago, the last movie nearly three. The story has been done and set for a such a long time that it does not make any sense for Rowling to release these kinds of doubts now. The series has been remarkably successful, and the fans are fiercely devoted to the series. It has become the iconic series of our generation and will be one of the greatest contributions to literature for years to come.
With this kind of success, there is no reason to bring up these major doubts after such a long period of time. Maybe a year after the last book was released, it would have been OK for Rowling to say she might have made a mistake. But since she waited so long to say such a dramatic realization, she’s basically committed blasphemy in the eyes of Potter fans.
Now Harry Potter fans are thrown into the world of “what-ifs.” What Rowling has done is cast doubt on the validity of the entire series. If the fate of Ron and Hermione, one of the most beloved couples in the series, could be altered, how can we be sure that every other aspect of the books is safe? For all we know, Rowling could have doubts about other major decisions she made in the series. Fans can’t trust an author who can’t trust her own decisions and stick by them.
This is not the first time she has done something like this. Two years ago, she said that she seriously considered killing off Ron at some point in the middle of the books.
Other authors have made mistakes like this but dealt with them in much better ways. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off the beloved Sherlock Holmes in “The Reichenbach Fall,” but when the fans of that time demanded to have him brought back, Doyle did not set up an interview to say that maybe he shouldn’t have had it happen. Instead, he wrote a whole new story bring Holmes back from the dead and reversed his problem by adding on to what he had already established.
Rowling (as far as we know) isn’t going to write a new book in the series because she now thinks she made a mistake in crucial character development. At the end of the series, she gave the fans a very satisfying, happily-ever-after ending.
Instead of allowing what’s finished to be finished, Rowling has dug up unnecessary chaos. She should have let her devoted fans rest in literary peace.