Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson
Warner Bros
In a new interview, the Harry Potter author, 48, admits she regrets not having Harry and indispensable friend Hermione Granger get together at the end of the series, rather than Hermione and fellow BFF Ron Weasley.
Rowling’s interviewer? None other than Hermione herself, AKA Emma Watson, who played the brainy heroine in all the Potter films.
“I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment,” Rowling tells Watson for the latest issue of Wonderland, a UK magazine the actress guest edited this month. (Excerpts of the interview were just published in the UK Sunday Times.) “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 admits the differences between the bookish, type-A Hermione and the laid-back Ron probably meant the two would have ended up in relationship counseling.
“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,” Rowling tells Watson, 23. “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,” she adds.
The author’s bombshell has one ardent supporter: Watson herself.
“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,” Watson said.
Harry and Ron have yet to weigh in.
