Yesterday, the long-silent Harry Potter fandom received a bit of a shock when news leaked that 
JK Rowling admitted she would not have paired Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley today.
During an interview held by Potter actress Emma Watson for Wonderland magazine, Rowling admitted that her initial preference was to have Hermione and Ron remain friends:
I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really,” Rowling says in the interview. “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.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” she adds. “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.”
Watson, who played Ron’s future wife, seems to not have been surprised by this admission:
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.”
The “plot has she first imagined,” according to an interview Rowling and Potter star Daniel Radcliffe conducted in 2012 for the DVD extras of The Deathly Hallows, may have well included the death of Ron Weasley:
Funnily enough, I planned from the start that none of them would die. Then midway through, which I think was a reflection that I wasn’t in a very happy place, I started thinking I might punish one of them off. Out of sheer spite,” she says. “In my absolute heart of hearts of hearts — although I did seriously consider killing … Ron.”
Not surprisingly, fans, particularly those who ship (root for one pairing or another to end up in a relationship) Ron and Hermione were dismayed by this development.
Those comments, (courtesy of IGN) range from the elated:
“Harry is the perfect match for Hermonie.”
To the outraged:
“NOOOO!!!!!”
To the catty:
“JK is just going George Lucas/Spielberg and thinking of changes that would actually make her past franchise worse.”
We won’t know the full context of Rowling’s explanation or the reasons behind her change of heart until the Wonderland article publishes next Friday, but we’d love to know what you LitStackers, think. Does this news make sense to you or do you think Rowling has lost her touch? We want to hear from you. Give us your opinion in the comments below.