Author says she mistakenly wrote Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley as a couple "as a form of wish fulfilment" and not for "reasons of credibility"
JK Rowling has admitted that she made a mistake by pairing off Hermione Granger with Ron Weasley rather than with Harry Potter in her best-selling books.
The author disclosed that she brought Hermione and Ron together for “very personal reasons”, not because they were a “credible” couple.
She told Wonderland magazine in a rare interview: "I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfilment. 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."
Rowling, 48, revealed in an epilogue to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the series, that Ron and Hermione were to marry and have two children, while Harry would wed Ron’s younger sister, Ginny.
She said: "I know, I'm sorry, 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."
Emma Watson, who played Hermione in the Harry Potter films, said she tended to agree with Rowling, whom she interviewed as guest editor of the new issue of Wonderland.
The 23-year-old actress said: "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."
Many Harry Potter devotees reacted with horror to the suggestion that two of their best loved characters were not meant to be together.
Writing on MuggleNet, a popular fan site, one said: “What? I am heartbroken! Ron and Hermione's relationship is wonderful because it is far from perfect at the beginning of the series and slowly (and ingeniously) develops into my favourite couple in the whole series!”
Another added: “I am shocked beyond belief that Jo would feel that Harry/Hermione would be a better match. I’m seriously in shock.”
This is not the first time that Rowling has stunned fans by making pronouncements about her characters outside the pages of her books.
In 2007 she told an audience in New York that she “always thought” that Albus Dumbledore, the wizard and headmaster of Hogwarts School, was gay.
Pamela Ingleton, an academic who has written about Rowling’s habit of revealing more about her stories after their publication, said some passionate Harry Potter fans felt angry that she was “entering on their territory”.
She said: “She is still constantly intervening in the process of understanding and reading these characters and these stories.
“In some ways she is speaking for the books instead of letting the books speak for themselves.”
The Harry Potter books have sold more than 450 million copies and have been made into films that made £4.7 billion at the box office, inspiring passionate devotion among readers, many of whom write their own fan fiction about the series.
Ms Ingleton, who is writing a PhD on theories of authorship and social media at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada, said Rowling had added details to her characters in “interview after interview”.
She added: “She wants to exert her control. She wants to be the one we depend on for information so that readers become reliant on her authority.”
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