Strong Opinion

I can't stand cannon couples. I believe you're not a real fan until you ship something that's not cannon.

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Bonded For Life: How I Feel About Harmony

Harry and Hermione are, essentially (and in my opinion), soul mates. Not in the twue luv sense of soul mates but in the sense that there are two personalities that mold perfectly with one another. Much in the same way that I believe Neville and Ginny have the potential for, Harry and Hermione experience a relationship of checks and balances: His impulsive nature is checked by Hermione’s caution, whereas her bookish demeanour is balanced by his sports driven, male mind. He brings out a side of her that lets her allows herself to stop taking set rules as demands and see them as guidelines (Umbridge and the DA was her idea after all). On the other side of it, she challenges him to think before he acts - the Ministry invasion and Sirius’s torture; going to Godric’s Hollow; the Firebolt. However, in order to properly understand what I mean by soul mates and the concept of balance, I have to examine the entities separately first and then as a whole.

Harry:

Is an orphan without a loving family. He is constantly living in a state of not good enough or is perceived as ‘The Boy Who Lived’ and is oftentimes not given a reprieve from that. He is feared to an extent; certainly in Chamber of Secrets, his ability to speak to snakes turns many against him, the Tournament is another example and again in the fifth book when his adamancy at Voldemort’s return is flipped on him and people see him as a liar and a cheat. He has few friends, sometimes with only Hermione and Ron at his side, and on two occasions only Hermione. (More on that later.) He is, essentially, isolated almost his entire life, an interloper on the outside of the glass staring in and watching everyone else enjoying their lives just fine without him. He doesn’t see himself as important, even as useless when told he has to sit on his hands. His impulsivity gets the better of him on more than one occasion and if even the slightest thing went wrong in any of the occasions where he’s been in mortal danger - if Hermione had chosen the wrong bottle in the first book; if Lockhart’s spell hadn’t backfired or Fawkes hadn’t gotten there in time; if Buckbeak didn’t fight off Lupin just in time; if Voldemort had just killed him outright; if the DA hadn’t insisted on following him to the Ministry; if the Inferi had gotten the best of him; any number of occasions during the Deathly Hallows, especially at the Manor (again, I’ll talk about the torture in Hermiones section) - Harry would have been dead. There would be no second chance for him and I don’t think he really sees it. I think his escape in the first book sort of gives him an ‘invincible’ feeling that offers him a perverse enjoyment (not to be confused with a perverted enjoyment, he merely subconsciously likes the feeling of being invincible). I think the occasions when he is in danger after the first and second year only bolster his notion of untouchability and it only really occurs to him that he is going to die one of these days is in Dumbledores office when he notices his heartbeat and how fast its beating, just before he meets Voldemort in the forest. His lack of regard to his own safety makes him a danger to himself, much in the same way that Hermione’s undying passion for Harry’s safety eventually endangers her.

Hermione:

Not unlike Harry, she is also alone. While she does have a loving family, we are lead to believe that she has been a loner and an outcast her entire life, with Harry (and to an extent Ron, though I believe they don’t truly connect until the fifth book) being her first ever friend. That is a very sad thing for a child of eleven, especially considering that the unassuming nature of children allows them to make bonds that are not cruel or for gain, but are easy and you’re friends ‘just because’. She lives in her head 100% of the time, her passion for books levelling on obsession (believe me I’ve been there and looking back on that time it wasn’t pretty). She is so love starved by her peers that instead of going to dinner, she goes to a bathroom and cries for the whole day. There is no middle ground for her, no acquaintances that she could sit with, totally alone and she nearly dies because of it. So she does what any child would do when faced with the possibility of a new friend: She lies to protect Harry (and Ron, the reason why she’s in the bathroom). And this is the first occasion that we see Hermione ignoring her own self-instilled morals and rules in order to protect Harry. I think - and this is purely conjecture - that that moment in the bathroom is probably the first time Hermione has ever lied in her entire life, and it was for Harry. She breaks her hard-lined rule abiding nature to ensure that Harry is safe from the consequences of his rule-breaking nature. And this instance is repeated throughout the series, Hermione sacrificing parts of her original personality for Harry. It starts with that very first lie but escalates into stunning Neville, stealing from teachers for the Polyjuice Potion, using the Time Turner illegally so that she and Harry and jail-break a alleged murderer, starting an underground revolution, sacrificing her parents so that she can go on the run with Harry to destroy Voldemort and eventually, getting tortured. She lies through her teeth to protect Harry while Bellatrix carves mudblood into her arm. I don’t know about you but if someone carved ‘cuntface’ into my arm with a knife, I’d tell them where I got the fucking sword. Hermione’s devotion makes her danger to herself in much the same way that Harry’s disregard for his own safety and ridiculously high regard for everyone else’s makes him a danger to himself. 

And Together:

But together they balance. They both see the danger the other poses to themselves and they both try (sometimes too hard) to correct it. Hermione tries to get Harry to see reason and be careful about his actions, while Harry wants Hermione to stay behind and be with her parents and just live a normal life. “When are you going to get in your head that we’re in this together?” And this is where I believe the ‘soul mates’ argument can come in. They are, essentially, two human beings with an incredible amount of love to give and they both have a void in their lives that allows that love to enter. Harry, starved of love his entire life, receives his first kiss from Hermione, a girl who had no friends and has been starved of peer attention. Harry returns that love in kind in a way that Ron could not possibly provide for either of them. Ron, who is jealous of his famous best friend; Ron who cannot complete his Potions homework without Hermione’s help; Ron, who never wanted for affection in his whole life, could not possibly imagine what it could mean for Harry to receive a kiss on the cheek. 

They are a perfect foil for one another, an admirable match that I think anyone who fails to notice their connection must live in an unstable and pathetic state of obliviousness. Even if you only see them as friends or siblings, you have to acknowledge that they share in something great together. They have a bond that very few people know or witness. They have such promise, such potential as not only friends but as two great souls joining together. They both have so much love in their hearts for one another that it threatens to burst from the pages. 

This explanation/analysis of Harmony and the somewhat harsh judgement of Ron at the end might now be misconstrued as hate or Ron-bashing. It’s not. I’m not saying that Ron doesn’t love Harry or Hermione, I’m saying that Harry and Hermione each provide something for the other that Hermione’s parents, Ron, Neville, Luna, Ginny, Remus, Sirius, McGonagall cannot. I am not in anyway saying that Ron doesn’t love Hermione with his whole heart or that Harry loves Ginny any less because he has Hermione, I merely think that the canonical love is very different than the love that Harry and Hermione share. HHr have an very deep love, one that I don’t think even they understand. They have a love that I don’t think they even notice is there but should it disappear, they would feel it’s absence. I think Harry would have been an entirely different, more selfish, far more impulsive and less informed person if Hermione had not been there. 

I mean, really? Could you imagine if Ginny replaced Hermione? If Hermione had never existed? If she was just a background character like Pavarti or Seamus? Think of how much more differently things would have gone:

Voldemort would have gotten the stone because Harry wouldn’t have been able to get past the fire.
Harry never would have found out that it was through the pipes and therefore never would have realised that it was the girls bathroom where the Chamber was. 
Sirius would have been kissed.
No love for Harry when the tournament rolled around.
No DA.
Pretty much none of Deathly Hallows would have happened because, chances are, Harry would have died at the wedding when the Death Eaters attacked - Hermione as the one to Apparate them to London.  

And that is how I feel about Harmony. 

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I LOVE THIS .