Fans Think This Line Proved Harry Potter And Hermione Belonged Together

In popular works of fiction, rooting for your favorite characters to get together is only natural. It's part of what drives fandom, and it's an incredibly common response to any story where there are lots of attractive people. The trouble comes when those relationships don't pan out, and fans are left wondering whether all of the signs they read into were wrong. 

Harry Potter had plenty of obvious relationships to root for, including a strong contingent of fans who believed that Harry and Hermione were supposed to be together. As any fan who has completed the series knows, that ultimately wasn't the case. Instead, Hermione and Ron wind up getting married, and Harry ends up with Ginny, Ron's sister. Those pairings seemed odd to some readers, in part because of certain lines that seemed to hint at different pairings near the end of the series. For some fans, one passage in Half-Blood Prince really stood out as foreshadowing an eventual relationship between Harry and Hermione.

The relationship drama in Harry Potter really reaches a fever pitch in Half-Blood Prince, as Harry begins his relationship with Ginny and Hermione finds herself jealous after Ron starts dating Lavender Brown. There's one moment in the book, though, where many see the potential for a romance between Harry and Hermione to form.

The moment happens after Harry has been named captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. He's holding trials for the year and is shocked by the number of people who show up. Hermione's able to explain the situation to him quite simply. "It's not Quidditch that's popular, it's you!" she says. "You've never been more interesting and, frankly, you've never been more fanciable."

In that moment, Ron gags "on a large piece of kipper." This isn't the only time when Ron expresses his jealousy, but it's one of the starkest examples. Ron's fears around Harry and Hermione's relationship reach their peak as Ron attempts to destroy the locket Horcrux in Deathly Hallows. In the novel before that, though, some fans saw the line as an indication that Harry and Hermione were meant to be.

Although the ending she wrote featured Ron and Hermione getting hitched, even JK Rowling eventually confirmed the fan theory, saying that she may have made a mistake. "I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That's how it was conceived, really," the author said during an interview with Wonderland in 2014, via CNN. "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."

Rowling went on to say that Harry should have ended up with Hermione, and she apologized to fans of the series for the heartbreak that may cause them. "I know, I'm sorry," she said. "I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I'm absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people's hearts by saying this? I hope not."