J.K. Rowling: More of her thoughts on the Harry Potter romance controversy

Harry Potter fans were incensed when J.K. Rowling said – in excerpts released from an interview –  that she'd had misgivings about Hermione and Ron as a couple. The full text of the interview offers more clarity, along with Rowling's feeling about a controversial scene from the movie series.

The interview with J.K. Rowling conducted by “Harry Potter” actress Emma Watson for Wonderland Magazine has now been released in full and the text may offer some solace for those Harry Potter fans who weren’t pleased by Rowling’s comments that she’d wondered whether characters Ron and Hermione would have been happy together romantically.

Some fans immediately cried foul when an excerpt was made public in the Sunday Times in which Rowling told Watson, “I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. 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.”

Watson agreed, saying, “I think there are fans out there who know that too and who wonder whether Ron would have really been able to make her happy.”

In the full interview for Wonderland Magazine, which Watson guest-edited, Rowling discussed her misgivings about the relationship further.

“I think the attraction itself is plausible but the combative side of it.... I'm not sure you could have got over that in an adult relationship, there was too much fundamental incompatibility,” she said.

However, fans of the romantic pairing can hold on to some hope. In the Sunday Times teaser, it merely stated that Rowling thinks the two would have gone to marriage counseling. However, after stating that "maybe she and Ron will be all right with a bit of counseling" (and musing, “I wonder what happens at wizard marriage counseling?”), the author said, “They'll probably be fine. He needs to work on his self-esteem issues and she needs to work on being a little less critical.”

In addition to Rowling’s previously published remark that she thinks Harry and Hermione might have been better together, the author discussed her feelings about a scene in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One” in which Harry and Hermione dance together in a tent while on the run from villain Voldemort’s forces. Some fans liked the scene; others disagreed with what they saw as subtext of feelings between the two.

However, Rowling said she was surprised by the scene (which is original to the movie) because she’d also thought there might have been attraction between the two in the time when Ron was gone.

“When I wrote Hallows, I felt this quite strongly when I had Hermione and Harry together in the tent!” she told Watson. “I hadn't told [Steve] Kloves that and when he wrote the script he felt exactly the same thing at exactly the same point.”

Watson then tells Rowling that she expressed concern to director David Heyman at the time that the scene strayed too far from Rowling’s original intent.

“I liked that scene in the film, because it was articulating something I hadn't said but I had felt,” Rowling said. “I think you do feel the ghost of what could have been in that scene.”

Check out the full interview here.