Harmony.

Harry/Ginny shippers, putting their trust in fate, are able to believe what they were told happened.
Harry/Hermione shippers, knowing that love requires work and commitment, saw what was shown.

It's just that simple. Let the H/G fans keep their sappy soul bond, fated, destined, preordained ship. It fits well with canon; Harry, a boy with the features of his father but his mother's eyes and Ginny, a girl with features superficially similar to Harry's mother and eyes the colour of his father's; they are mirror images of James and Lily and having them be 'destined for one another' fits with the whole Prophecy theme in canon. I think anyone reasonable thinks of prophecy as a crock of shite though and rejects that whole concept, preferring to see Harry end up with someone with whom he shares a sense of togetherness and is well able to cooperate with, someone he has shared experiences with as well as a shared commitment, rather than some odd conceptualisation of what his twin sister would have looked and acted like, someone who looks very much like he would have if born a girl (I don't know why 'Holly' or 'Rose' Potter always have green eyes in fics where she appears) and who has his father's mischievous and somewhat sneering attitude and pureblooded upbringing compared to his own attitude of his mother's kind heart with a propensity for righteous indignation on the behalf of others and muggle childhood.

I think it's really ridiculous when people say Hermione is like his sister in the face of the fact that Ginny is EXACTLY what you'd expect his sister to be. Right down to the talent on a broom.

Love is not lust nor emotion
Love is of trust and devotion.

Love does not happen at first sight
Love can not be made overnight
Love happens through purpose, intent
Love made known by the effort spent.

Love is not waiting to be found
Love needs built up, starting at ground.

A note about stories where Harry and Hermione acknowledge that they love each other and want to be together but then end up marrying their respective Weasleys and eventually having a passionate affair and divorce and then winding up happily ever after together. You know the trope. I left this as a review for someone and liked it so much that I have added it here. It was written straight out in in like an hour so don't expect it to be as polished as something that's been well edited. (or edited at all actually)

I always hate these sort of stories, with the reasoning of, "Oh, we love each other and want to be together but it would be so cruel to Ron and Ginny, how could we do that to them? Just dump them like that? It would destroy them?" It's such a ridiculous teenager reasoning, the kind of storyline that only someone who thinks Romeo and Juliet is a romance would be able to find appealing. I always just want to see one of these stories start, and then Hermione presents her mum with this dilemma and her mum looks at her like she's an idiot and tells her, "You think marrying someone you would prefer not to is doing him some kind of favour? You don't want to hurt his feelings by telling him the truth? You think he'll be happy when he's married to someone who is always going to live in regret over her decision to marry him, who didn't marry him because it was what she wanted to do nor because she loved him more than anyone and wanted more than anything to spend the rest of her life with him but rather because she didn't want to hurt his feelings by breaking it off. That he'll be happy to have a wife who married him under false pretences, a wife who can't or won't be honest with him, a wife who would have preferred someone else, a wife who knowingly settled for second best when she could have easily had her first choice, a wife who will grow to resent her choice, her deception, her husband? Hermione, you're a smart girl but you are being incredibly stupid right now. You think he loves you so much that his heart would be broken if you broke up with him? If he really loves you he'll want you to do what would make you the happiest. If he would prefer that you marry him, even though you'd prefer someone else, someone who would be just as glad to be with you then he obviously doesn't care for you at all and there is no reason you should be trying to sacrifice your own happiness, your own future, for his sake. When you love someone you have to be willing to let them go if that's what they want. If he loves you then he'll want you to follow your heart to the best of your ability.

"Further, if you have even an ounce of respect or care for the boy then you won't try and make this decision for him. It's not just yourself you'd be trapping, you'd be the one smiling the false smiles and trying to keep up appearances but he'd be the one left wondering why it seemed like you couldn't match his level of genuine affection, you'd both be miserable and end up resenting each other for reasons neither of you could voice. Mostly though, if you can't be honest with him in all things, then you absolutely should not even be considering marrying him. If you are willing to lie about something this major, keep this large a piece of your heart from him it can end in nothing but heartbreak and misery. For the both of you. And the longer you drag it on the worse it will be."

I know I was saying marriage in there but, ideally, Hermione would be getting this talk summer of 1998 when it's still dating, or considering dating and the points ring all the more true. In the context of this story though, they are admitting they love each other more than anyone in the TENT! At this point Harry had went out with Ginny for like 3 weeks before breaking up with her, Hermione has never done more than dance around the issue and share a bit of tension with Ron, they've got nothing more than an unexplored mutual crush. The worst part of the whole trope though has got to be this; Hermione is treating herself as object, as a prize to be awarded. She thinks it's some noble self-sacrificing thing that she's doing (and forcing Harry to do as well, she's willing to break his heart and her own by keeping them apart in order to 'spare' Ron and Ginny from feeling betrayed for a couple of weeks until they get over it and their parents tell them you can't choose who you love.) but it's her doing something that's universally condemned as unconscionable and intolerable should anyone else try to hand her off, or win her, like some sort of prize. Why is she allowed to be so cruel to herself? To treat herself as a mere object with no value as a person, one with no real feelings and no right to make decisions for herself, looking out for her own interests? Absurd.

Well, that was the review. Probably ruined someone's enthusiasm for a project, which sucks and isn't something I like to do but maybe they'll be inspired to write something different or make a brilliant rebuttal. I think Mrs. Granger was pretty damn spot on in what she said though. If you can't be honest with someone, especially about the contents of your heart, then you shouldn't even be considering marrying them. Well, maybe if it's some sort of arranged/political/business marriage but even then... probably still best to avoid it where at all possible and you wouldn't be going into something like that under a false pretext, your spouse to be would know why you were there, there would be no illusions and when there are no illusions no one will end up being disillusioned and dejected because of it. I wanted to touch on the 'condemning not only themselves but also their best friends into unfulfilling marriages with reluctant partners without even bothering to seek Ron or Ginny's consent' angle but I hit the character limit for the review and I think it would have mostly been rehashing and beating a dead horse at that point. Dr. Granger got all the essentials out there.

I am a firm believer in letting the characters drive the action. This is the most important thing I look for when reading a story. Sadly this made Harry Potter canon (post GoF), one of the most disappointing things I've ever read, especially H-BP where the characters were completely warped to fit what limited action there was. Reading that book felt like watching a Matthew McCanaughey movie without the redeeming quality of getting to see him take his shirt off and run around a bit and the added disappointment that you used to like these characters before they all turned into arseholes. Honsetly only Luna, Neville, and Fleur come out of the last 2 books looking as good or better than they were at the end of the 5th, maybe Hagrid as well. Every single other non-ancillary character though, and most of the ancillary ones as well, regress in the final two books. They become less capable, less sympathetic (not more), less fervent in their determination to do what is right.

It's not just the shift fully into young adult from children's and the introduction of grey into a black and white world of the kindly sage Dumbledore and evil incarnate Voldemort; it's Hermione erasing her parent's memories of their only child, what could they possibly cherish more? Do you think they wouldn't have preferred death? I wonder how much of that death eater's memory was left after she was done with him in the café. It's not that moral ambiguity being added, that's good and had the potential to be one of the redeeming features of the end of the series if handled more in depth. Harry gets the worst of it, do you think the younger Harry would have walked into the woods and meekly let Voldemort kill him and leave that mess for someone else to clean up? Who defeats Voldemort now that Harry is dead? Or would he have fought to finish off Voldemort himself, and if he dies in the fight then at least he softened him up for the people behind him and if he manages to win then he takes things into his own hands and does what needs to be done to prevent Voldemort from ever coming back? Young Harry isn't the sort to leave a job half finished and someone else on the hook to finish mopping up.

Everyone becomes lesser than they were. In an attempt at redemption Snape is revealed as even more petty, pathetic and mostly false. Dumbledore trusts Snape because he believes Snape loved Lily and Voldemort killed Lily, betraying Snape, and thusly Snape is clearly a good man. For wanting revenge. And he should be trusted to be on the side of light because, "The enemy of my enemy is my best and truest friend and most trusted advisor and confidante." I think I may be misquoting someone with a few extraneous additions there. In an attempt at exposition Dumbledore turns into a ruthless Machiavelli with his fingers wrapped about the strings of the Marionettes. Well, at least Neville grew up well while staying true to himself. Too bad he got cut from the roster before he could deal with that Devil's Snare that was put there for him and then ended up just being written out of the series.

Walburga Black was an unrelenting harridan who never deigned to imagine she knew anything other than best. Always screaming and pushing her children into doing what she wants to see them doing without any regard for their opinions or proclivities. Sinister, bigoted, domineering, disdainful towards Sirius and his ideas about what is 'right', showing him nothing but scorn, ridicule and a casual dismissal of him and his 'foolish' opinions without any consideration, as well as just being generally all around contemptuous of anything that dares disagree with her and not shy about making it known, nor quiet about it either. She is the counter to, and mirror of, another canon character who also takes up the running of #12, with the loud belittlement of and disregard shown to Sirius that comes standard with the role; Walburga is dark!Molly.

I find it a little disconcerting that in a series where the overall message is supposed to be love conquers all there are only two examples of one person demonstrating that they love someone (non-familial) that we get to see 'on-screen' as it were. It's obvious that Hermione loves Harry (Whether it's entirely platonic or not is debatable but I think it's most likely that she just gave up on him recirprocating at some point in 5th year), and that Fleur loves Bill; all the other relationships could easily be passed off as just a case of lust or infatuation, some because they happen so much off screen and some because that's all that's there. I hope for JKR's sake she is in possession of a better understanding of love than she gives to her characters. It's also quite troubling how frequently love potions appear, they sound like glorified date rape drugs to me. I'm not sure why people believe they would work on Harry though; he shrugs off Voldemort's Imperius as though it were an ill-fitted and unfastened cloak. Why would a potion be able to work on him? Ron isn't even infatuated enough with Romilda Vane to burst into action for her, instead content with just following Harry around on a vague promise. You'll remember that is the same kid that skipped to class even after the curse was lifted.

On R/Hr: Everyone will tell you that opposites attract but they always forget to mention that when you add them together you invariably end up with nothing as a result.

If you are looking around in here, and are willing to take a suggestion or two I have some. Go click on my favorite authors, go to the one that says lorien829 and read her stuff especially 'Resistance' and 'Eigth'. It's some of the best writing, not just on this site but anywhere that I've ever read. And I'm old and I read a lot. Desert island with only one book to ever be able to read? I'll take Resistance over Tale of Two Cities. Yeah, I'd pick this fanfic over Dickens. Also 'Behind Blue Eyes' by Paffy, despite being H/OC (and she's a muggle girl whose early life, by comparison, makes Harry's time with the Dursleys seem like a happy and sheltered childhood) and not H/Hr, is the best romance story I've come across on this site. The only fanfic romance I've seen done better is a one shot (there is a part 2 but I'd recommend pretending there isn't) Evangelion fic, if you've seen Evangelion and enjoyed seeing Hermione punch Draco in the face in PoA (I know I did) then you'll like this quite a lot; it's called 'Holding Hands' by Strike Fiss. It's not on this site but if you google it it's not hard to find. If you like Evangelion fics you might recognize him as the guy who wrote 'Higher Learning' and if you don't know what that is then you need to read it as well, it's pretty much the gold standard in that fandom.

The Ending of an Epic, by fantasyra, Chapter 3. Hermione pours her heart out to her parents in the single best scene in the HP universe. Better than anything you'll find anywhere else in fanon, canon, or Hollywood. Highly recommend reading this fic.