…simply put, it’s because Hermione says so.

Yes, she gets that Harry wasn’t interested in entering the tournament, but there’s more to it.

Harry asks her right out if Ron still thinks Harry entered the tournament himself, but she evades the question.

And then goes and makes matters worse:


And this is the accepted explanation among the fandom. Because Hermione says it.

But Hermione has been wrong before. She thought Snape was the bad guy in PS—once she got past her initial refusal to even consider that a professor could be evil—and was at least considering the possibility that Harry was the Heir of Slytherin in CS. She also believed everything about Sirius being a murderer and Remus helping him in PA, and about Moody being Moody in GF. She also refused to consider the possibility that her cat might be after Ron’s rat until it very nearly cost her Ron’s friendship. Yes, she often grasps certain things more quickly than the other characters, but she’s not always right. (She doesn’t get Ron quite yet, for example.)

When we’re told the “obvious explanation” for Ron’s actions, it’s couched in terms that tell us we shouldn’t accept it at face value. Harry reacts “incredulously” to the assertion, Hermione uses the phrase “I suppose,” and the narrator makes it clear that Ron is upset by Harry’s fame “according to Hermione.”

So it’s fairly obvious that the explanation goes deeper than that.


I have mentioned how Ron does not come across as jealous in the first three books. And Harry doesn’t get a jealousy vibe from Ron, either—again, he reacts “incredulously” to Hermione’s assertion.

Hermione seems to think that “this is just one time too many”, but again, the evidence doesn’t add up.
This is especially true if we compare Ron’s actions to those of characters we know to be driven by jealousy.

Draco Malfoy, again, is one example—he is clearly extremely jealous of Harry’s fame for most of the series. As I’ve said, he only really wanted to befriend Harry once he knew who Harry was—for all the typists accuse Ron of wanting to get a bit of Harry’s fame by osmosis, it’s definitely what Draco seems to want. But Harry spurns him, and so Draco—spoiled brat that he is—acts like a total jackass, and does everything in his power to make Harry look bad at every opportunity. His attitude seems to be “Well, if I can’t enjoy your fame, then neither can you!”

Draco gets his chance to shine in HBP, when he’s the key component of Voldemort’s plan to invade the school and take Dumbledore out of the equation once and for all, part of Voldemort’s plan to seize control of wizarding Britain… and Draco buckles under the pressure, which probably leads him to hate Harry even more.

And then there’s Snape—Merlin’s baggy Y-fronts, Snape. We know Snape is driven by jealousy of James Potter—even Remus and Sirius figured that out, though they got the cause wrong. Snape’s hatred for James Potter ultimately endured because James got Lily and Snape didn’t. And it doesn’t help matters that Snape apparently takes everything personally and is quite prone to projection—he probably decided at one point that James didn’t really like Lily and was only going after her because Snape was interested in her.

Snape spent his school years openly experimenting with Dark magic and hanging out with pureblood fanatics, taking Lily’s friendship pretty much for granted, and trying to get James and his friends expelled—likely so he could have Lily to himself without James flirting with her. He pretty much wanted to have his cake and eat it too—keep a Muggleborn friend while openly dabbling in Dark magic. He then spent the rest of his life moping over the fact that he could only have one or the other—the choice he made bit him in the ass. And he was so unaware of Lily’s feelings that he was perfectly content for Harry and James to die so long as he had a chance to get Lily on the rebound. He took it for granted that she would remain a babe in the woods as far as the wizarding world was concerned, and assumed that she would come back to him no matter what kind of stupid crap he said or did. And he was so unwilling to let go of that picture that he assumed that once James was out of the picture, she’d revert to being the little girl Snape always saw her as. But he was wrong.

Snape is so screwed up by his jealousy that he continues to hate James years after his death—a hatred that extends to his son (Snape probably picked on Neville because he wanted Riddle to chose him instead, but I digress yet again). Snape apparently cannot stop himself from sneering at Harry’s every thought, accusing him of being a glory-hound at every turn. If Ron is experiencing jealousy toward Harry, he should be reacting to Harry’s good fortune the same way Draco and Snape do, at least to some degree. Draco even tries to get Harry in trouble over the Nimbus 2000, then goes whining to Daddy about how Harry has a better broom than Draco does.

Ron, meanwhile, has no reason to be jealous of Harry because Harry is all too happy to share whatever he has with Ron. It’s only fair—Ron happily shares his family with Harry. If anything, Ron is frustrated by his poverty—it means he can’t return the favor.

Since the day they met on the Express, Ron and Harry have been joined at the hip. Harry doesn’t want his fame and is embarrassed by his fortune, so he happily shares both. Ron would probably do the same if the situation were reversed.

Harry and Hermione need Ron. Again, he represents the everyman—or everywizard. He gets the Muggle-raised Harry and Hermione to think like wizards. We see that as early as PS, when he reminds Hermione that, hey, you know, you could just use MAGIC to light a fire! (It’s part of why her throwing his own words back at him in DH is so enjoyable—he’s had an effect on her.)


So what caused the rift between Ron and Harry in GF?

Well, it’s all there as background noise. JKR is a very clever writer—she can slip in emotional cues without having to bludgeon you over the head with them. You just have to pay attention.

Just look at the events between the beginning of the year and when Harry’s name comes out of the Goblet.

First, Ron—like most of Gryffindor—displays eagerness about getting into the Tournament. Fred and George are incensed by the age limit, and begin looking into ways to get past the Age Line. Ron is quite aware of this, and thinks it would be great to at least try and enter—he even asks Harry about it, if in a slightly roundabout fashion.


But Harry doesn’t seem all that gung-ho about it—if anything, he seems to be looking forward to watching some other poor schmuck put his life on the line for a change. Granted, he does fantasize about it a little—hey, he’s fourteen. At that age, I’d be doing the same thing.

So that’s the context—Ron wants to get into the tournament, or rather he wants him and Harry to try to get in. Harry, meanwhile, seems uninterested. Again, one can hardly blame Harry—he’d be perfectly content to go a year without being in some kind of mortal peril. Fred, George, and Lee—friends as inseparable as Harry and Ron—make a pact to try to get in together so they can split the winnings, and Ron points this out. Real subtle, Ron.

But then, to everyone’s shock (well, except the fake Moody’s), Harry’s name comes flying out of the Goblet, right out of nowhere. Harry—and the reader—knows what this means, but honestly, what’s Ron supposed to think at this point? Harry knows that someone else must have done it—and so does the reader, because not only does the narrative make Harry’s feelings about the matter very clear, but it would have mentioned it if Harry had decided to enter. We also know that Harry would rather be left alone—if he wants to be famous, he wants it to be about his actual accomplishments, like Quidditch, not the fact that Voldemort got blown away because Lily Potter gave her life for her son.

Ron, meanwhile, must have gone back over the events leading up to that moment to try to make sense of it all. He might not have noticed Harry’s lack of enthusiasm, but he does know that Harry never proposed a plan for fooling the Goblet. Not to him, anyway. Not the way the twins and Lee did.

The only conclusion that would make sense to him is that Harry was planning to go for it all along, deliberately cutting Ron out of his plans. This is actually because Harry never actually came up with a plan to fool the Goblet, but Ron doesn’t know that.

So suddenly Harry must seem like a very different person to Ron. After all, Harry’s never left him out of anything before—not since they met on the Hogwarts Express. Ron has been in on all of Harry’s decisions, all of his thoughts or ideas, and most definitely all of his adventures over the past three years (even if Harry ultimately has to go it alone, due to Ron either being unconscious, trapped behind a cave-in, or recovering from a broken leg). Harry lies to Hermione left and right, mainly to get her to butt out, but he’s very rarely dishonest with Ron.

But there seems to be evidence that Harry’s ditched him, right there in Ron’s face.

Later canon seems to support this thought process. We know from DH that Ron’s been harboring insecurities about his friendship with Harry and Hermione for some time—he wonders if they don’t need him, if they’d get along fine without him, if Hermione doesn’t actually love Harry rather than him. The locket-Horcrux seems to work a lot like the Diary, and seized on those anxieties, buried deep down, and exacerbated them, shoving them right in Ron’s face. Yes, he left Harry and Hermione behind, but it makes sense if you think about it. Ron is a human being—could most of us handle that kind of torment? No wonder they were snapping at each other after sharing that thing for so long—the Horcrux yanks at your psyche like Sauron’s Ring.

Ron’s nursing an inferiority complex—not jealousy. (See the previous post.)

And Harry’s name coming out of the Goblet of Fire has the same effect as the locket-Horcrux—bringing anxieties that have probably lingered in the back of Ron’s mind for some time now right in his face. His fears of being inferior and not worth it compared to Harry are being brought to the fore, just like they were with the Horcrux. Is Ron feeling jealous of Harry because “everything happens to [him]”? I doubt it. Instead, Ron almost certainly feels deeply betrayed. And given what he and Harry have been through together, that’s gotta be a serious knife-twist to the heart. Ron’s also got to be wondering why Harry would leave him behind.

As he casts about for an explanation, only one seems to make sense: Draco and Snape have been right all along; Harry really does seek the spotlight. The proof’s right under his nose. And the events that follow seem to bear that out.

Ron refuses to participate in the festivities in Gryffindor Tower and instead goes up to bed, but then Harry comes upstairs, wrapped in a Gryffindor banner, convincing Ron that Harry must have been a part of the festivities—Ron might even have known how long Harry was down there from the way the crowd reacted when he came through the portrait hole. This could only confirm his suspicions that Harry really does enjoy the spotlight.

It takes Harry about a half-hour to get to the stairs. He gets into his room and finds Ron lying on the bed, still fully dressed.


Ron is trying—and failing—to hide his emotions here. Harry doesn’t seem to understand it, but the narration does a pretty good job of pointing it out.


Good grief, Ron might as well be screaming it—”Why didn’t you bring me along?”

But Harry doesn’t get this—what he hears is Ron calling him a liar.


It probably would have been, but I can’t help thinking it would have spared them both a lot of trouble if Harry had—but then we’d have much shorter books if Harry were more prone to thinking things through.

But I digress yet again.

Ron’s eyebrows rise “so high that they were in danger of disappearing into his hair.” The impression I get is that Ron thinks Harry’s still hiding something.

He even remarks on Harry’s apparent secret plan for fooling the Goblet and how he’d left Ron out of them.


Ron is being extremely subtle here (for a teenage boy, anyway), trying to get Harry to talk about it, but Harry (also a teenage boy) doesn’t catch on—again, Harry thinks only that Ron is calling him a liar.


*sigh* An unnecessary cheap shot. But, again, teenage boys.


Ron comes out of this with the impression that Harry is still leaving Ron out of the plans. He won’t even tell Ron how he did it. Again, Harry knows otherwise—and so do we readers, since nearly the entire story is told from inside Harry's head—but not Ron.

Also, Harry didn’t make the offer Fred, George, and Lee did to each other—to split the winnings. So Ron thinks that Harry isn’t only in it for the fame, but the money as well.

Hence the Parthian shot: “You want to get to bed, Harry. I expect you’ll need to be up early tomorrow for a photo-call or something.” This remark, I think, is where most of the Jealous!Ron kuso comes from.

But here’s the thing—Ron doesn’t seem to be revealing jealousy here—he’s striking out, going right for the jugular.

This isn’t jealousy, this is betrayal.

Harry has hurt him a great deal, and when Ron tries to hint as to why he’s hurt, Harry doesn’t even try to catch on. So what seems like the obvious conclusion is that Harry doesn’t even care how Ron feels. The accusation of being a glory-hound was meant to hurt Harry back, and to let Harry know that Ron was on to him and wasn’t impressed.

Imagine if Ron and Harry had done what Ron had hoped they’d do—that they’d figured out a way to fool the Goblet together, promised to split the winnings, then did it, and the Goblet still spat out Harry’s name. Do you think that Ron wouldn’t have reacted with happiness, cheering Harry on? We’re talking about the same Ron, right? The same Ron we saw enthusing over Harry’s place on the Quidditch team and two top-of-the-line broomsticks?

Seriously, if prior canon is any indication, Ron would probably already be planning what he was going to do with his half of the prize—because he’d be sure that with Harry, it would be in the bag. And with Harry, it probably would be.

Even if they’d tried together and failed, it would have been a fun adventure. At least they would have tried.

It’s fairly apparent that Ron isn’t jealous—he’s deeply, deeply hurt and trying not to show it. He thinks Harry has finally decided he doesn’t need Ron anymore, and it hurts him deep. But Ron is a fourteen-year-old boy (well, rising fifteen), and isn’t going to articulate this in so many words. JKR seems to understand the male mind better than a lot of female writers, and she knows that fourteen-year-old boys do not discuss their feelings candidly—hell, most men don’t. You have to read between the lines quite a bit.

So when Ron comes down from the dormitory the next morning, he probably makes some snide comment to Hermione about how Harry was “catching up on his beauty rest” or that “champions don’t interact with lowlifes like me.” Hermione’s mind leaps to what is—to her—the “obvious” explanation, and never even stops to consider an alternative. This gives Harry a handy explanation for Ron’s actions. It’s obvious that Harry didn’t read jealousy into Ron’s reaction, but since Hermione is usually right…

The very idea of Ron being jealous really ticks Harry off—Ron knows damn well that Harry doesn’t enjoy being famous, that he’d give it all back in a heartbeat for eighteen years of mundanity with his parents. Or at least he should know it.

And so Ron seems like a very different person to Harry all of a sudden. His disgust over Ron’s apparent childishness prevents him from wanting to deal with the problem directly.

And thus Hermione—who cannot stop herself from butting into matters that don’t concern her—*coughSPEWcough*—sets Harry off, and inadvertently widens the rift, which should have been resolved right away, to the point where it takes several months to heal. And she tells Harry that she’s not talking to Ron—it’s Harry’s problem as far as she’s concerned. She doesn’t even try to disabuse Ron of his notion that Harry didn’t put his name in the Goblet.

And makes things a whole lot worse than they had to be.

“Emotional depth of a teaspoon”, my swinging left… ahem.

I’m pretty sure JKR was setting up a red herring with Hermione’s assertions—and trying to show that Hermione isn’t always right. After all, as previously mentioned, we see how Ron acts when he’s jealous—and in the SAME BOOK. It’s as if JKR was trying to tell us “this isn’t what it looks like, folks!” She’s done it before—making Snape seem to be the villain in PS, making it look like Percy was up to something in CS (granted, he was, but it wasn’t what anyone thought), and painting Sirius as a psychotic murderer for most of PA. You could argue that there are red herrings in every one of the books—and PS alone is an armory of Chekhov’s Guns.

But I digress yet again.


As noted above, we see Ron react with jealousy in this same book, so it’s telling that Ron reacts completely differently here.

When Ron was jealous of Krum, he was very adamant about it.

But when Ron is supposedly jealous of Harry, he gives him the silent treatment. This seems to be done to punish Harry—Harry seems to think this is the case—but more often when you give someone the silent treatment, you’re communicating that they’ve hurt you very badly, that you’re worried that if you interact with them again you’ll be hurt again, and that the ball’s in their court.

And in this case, the ball is quite clearly in Harry’s court.

We’ve seen in canon that characters motivated by jealousy usually react with spite. But we don’t see that with Ron.

Ron passed on some opportunities to stick it to Harry but good. The Slytherins (and, pre-First Task, a lot of the other students) take every opportunity to take shots at Harry—Draco shows his talent for projection by calling Harry a fame-hound and teasing him about the fact that he might not come out of this alive. Ron is also there, but says nothing.

When Draco shows off the “Potter Stinks” badges, the narrator takes a moment to point out that Ron is staying out of it: “Ron was standing against the wall with Dean and Seamus. He wasn’t laughing, but he wasn’t sticking up for Harry either.”

Ron could have laughed along with Draco after the “I See No Difference” incident (which is Snape at his most unfair and biased, literally unable to see his students’ wrongdoings and going out of his way to take a shot at Hermione). Instead Ron comes to Hermione’s defense, cursing out Snape right along with Harry (and Snape again gets his jollies out of provoking people he doesn’t like—and is apparently looking forward to poisoning Harry in the middle of class, figuring Harry could never manage a decent potion, so Snape would have to bail him out, not only humiliating him but possibly even canceling out the life-debt he owes James, but that’s another essay).

When Colin came into Potions to tell Snape that Harry was wanted for a photo shoot, Ron could have hit Harry with a cheap shot, but instead he’s “staring determinedly at the ceiling.“ Perfect opportunity—and in front of people who already hate Harry, no less—and Ron passes it up.


Ron finally speaks to Harry after the photo shoot.


Harry passes on the opportunity to unload on Ron—unsure whether he wants to talk to him or hit him—because he knows the letter is from Sirius. The next night, after their detentions, they both pass on the opportunity to either talk things out or have it out once and for all.


But Harry has no way of knowing what Ron thought of the article.

And we see that Ron had still more opportunities to stick it to Harry good—it’s not like the Slytherins are lacking for ammunition, thanks to Skeeter. But Ron never brings up the article, or its contents.

It doesn’t help that Hermione is actually trying to get involved now—if she hadn’t in the first place, it wouldn’t have gotten to that point. She badgers Harry in her usual style—and, in his usual style, he blocks her out. I’d argue that this is one of Hermione’s main problems—she doesn’t realize that with Harry, badgering him to do something makes him less inclined to do it, not more.

But Harry does admit—if only to himself, after once again lying to Hermione to get her off his case—that he misses Ron. He misses the laughter Ron brings to the table. He doesn’t enjoy being alone with Hermione—spending all day in the library with your nose in a book will never be his idea of a good time.

And this brings us to the scene where everything changes.


After going to see the dragons, Harry speaks briefly with Sirius in the fireplace.

Say whatever you want about Sirius, but if nothing else, he has good listening skills. He does what Hermione doesn’t—instead of badgering Harry and giving orders, he sits back and listens. Hermione talks about SPEW; Sirius says, seriously (heh), “Never mind me, how are you?”

This is enough to get Harry talking. And Sirius listens. (Ginny does the same thing in the famous “chocolate in the library” scene in OP, but that too is another essay.)

After a bit of exposition about Karkaroff and Bertha Jorkins, Sirius—knowing he hasn’t got much time—finally gets around to the point.


Then Harry hears someone coming and cuts him off. Sirius cuts the connection.

Panicked, Harry turns…


Interesting. JKR could have had anyone interrupt the call—any other boy or girl in Gryffindor Tower—but she chose to have Ron do it. There has to be a reason.

And this is when Ron has been giving Harry the silent treatment for some time.


Ron could easily have just gone back upstairs when Harry yelled at him, but here we get the first indication that it isn’t all it seems to be.


Ron almost admits that he went downstairs because he wanted to know where Harry was, but cuts himself off. This is understandable—it’s one in the morning, after all, and Harry isn’t in bed. Ron might even have been waiting for him. You don’t worry about someone if you’re trying to punish them.


Harry is already angry enough at Ron, but now Ron has stopped Sirius from giving Harry hints about how to deal with the dragon.

But Ron gets the wrong message. This whole thing seems to fit with his belief that Harry’s ditched him and is still locking him out.

So Ron gets defensive and lobs off another Parthian shot.


Harry reacts with a Heroic Spaz Attack.


Think about this. Harry unloads on Ron, vents a lot of wrath Ron’s way, and how does Ron react?

He just stands there and takes it.

Ron. Hot-tempered, easily-provoked, quintessential-Gryffindor, almost-stereotypical-redhead Ronald Bilius Weasley just stands there.

Now that says something.

If this was as simple as jealousy, Ron would have instantly denied it. And then we’d have a Yule Brawl on our hands, with Harry and Ron exchanging insults and screaming at each other. But what we get is something very different.

Harry has just accused Ron of wanting to be famous, too. Of wanting to be him.

Think about that for a minute. What must Ron have thought of that? It was the first time Harry voiced any suspicions about Ron’s motives.

Ron’s reaction to this bit of vindictiveness reads a lot like shock. Again, Harry’s earlier words seem to validate Ron’s “I’ve ditched you” theory, because he was flat-out telling Ron to butt out. But Harry’s accusation of jealousy—that “you want to be just like me, right?” shot—would have come entirely out of nowhere from Ron’s perspective, leaving him too stunned to react.

He’s bowled over. You can almost hear Ron’s thoughts: He just said… he thinks… WHAT?!

Harry had to go right by Ron to get to the dorms, and, as is noted in the narrative, Ron could easily have given Harry a good punch—or at least a sharp retort. But Ron once again passed on the opportunity to lash out at Harry, despite being flat-out attacked.

This is perfectly in character.

Why?

Because—guess what, fanits? Ron is not vindictive! It just isn’t in his character, and that’s often overlooked.

Vindictiveness is in the same category as jealousy, and is usually a result of it. Snape and Draco are both jealous and vindictive, as we see on a regular basis—Snape especially so; he goes out of his way to snipe at Harry at every opportunity. Draco does the same.

It’s unlikely that Ron would indulge in jealousy yet not in vindictiveness. And, as noted, it’s not like Ron lacked for opportunities to do so.

The ice seems to start to melt after this incident, at least on Ron’s end. Ron seems to have gotten the message, or at least he’s trying to extend an olive branch. Ron even nearly laughs at Harry’s reply to one of Trelawney’s predictions—Trelawney predicts that “people born in July are in great danger of sudden, violent deaths”, to which Harry responds “just as long as it’s not drawn-out. I don’t want to suffer.” Ron usually laughs at this kind of gallows humor (Hermione, meanwhile, who was probably at the library the day they handed out senses of humor, tends to snap “that’s not funny”)—heck, Ron even tries to catch Harry’s eye. But Harry is still pissed off. Now Harry is giving Ron the silent treatment, which means the ball’s in Ron’s court now.

Ron seems to have altered his perspective on the situation slowly, not just suddenly during the First Task. Hermione must have told Ron that Harry thought someone was trying to kill him, and given the fact that when Harry doesn’t look for trouble, trouble apparently gets lonely and goes to find him, Ron must have at least put it in the back of his mind as a possibility. He might even have been entertaining the idea that Harry was telling the truth. But if he was, why did Harry refuse to speak to him, too? Why didn’t Harry try further to persuade him?

I’m guessing that by the time Harry tackled the dragon, Ron was still hurting—but for a different reason.
While the general assumption in the fandom is that Ron finally figured out that Harry wouldn’t put himself at risk of being killed by a dragon on purpose, I doubt it. It was articulated from the very beginning that the tournament was deadly dangerous—that it hadn’t been held in centuries for that very reason. It was why Dumbledore put that Age Line in place—only seventh-years and a few sixth-years (like Cedric) would have been able to compete, since they would have had the most knowledge of magic of all the students.

No, Ron must have known from the start that Harry would be putting himself in terrible danger if he were to enter. Hell, that’s part of why Ron was so put out—why else would Harry deliberately put himself in harm’s way if he didn’t stand to gain from it? Why else would anyone?

However, even if no one were trying to kill Harry, he’d still be tackling dragons. So it must be something else about the First Task that convinced Ron to make the first move toward reconciliation.

Ron seems to have gotten the message that Harry didn’t put his name in the Goblet. But more importantly, Ron seems to have realized he could lose Harry—lose him for good--and the hurt of that blows the current hurt he’s feeling completely out of the water. It wasn’t worth it anymore for Ron to not be the best friend of Harry Potter anymore.


Perfectly in character, and a great scene to boot. (Though the way they did it in the movie is pretty good; they could have gone without Kloves' tendency to want to keep Hermione from even appearing less than perfect, bu I digress again.)

It’s a credit to Ron that he went ahead and at least tried to apologize. And it’s a credit to Harry that when he saw that Ron was sincere, he forgave him at once.

All three of them—Harry, Ron, and Hermione—made honest mistakes. Because they’re flawed human beings, which makes them more interesting characters. Hermione is socially stunted and figures she’s always right—almost especially when she isn’t. Harry is also stunted in a lot of ways. Ron and Harry are teenage boys—it’s not like they were going to sit down and explain their feelings to each other or anything.
I’m sure it helped Ron’s feelings significantly to find out that he’s the person Harry would miss most.


But, unfortunately, Ron’s insecurities didn’t go away, though he was finally able to confront them in DH when he killed the locket Horcrux.


JKR seems to have had numerous purposes for this scene—first is the obvious, that the locket needs to be destroyed. Second, that Ron is finally getting his own bit of the glory.

But my belief is that this scene was really written for the fans—the Ron fans and the Ron-haters alike. For us fans, it’s a great moment. For the haters, it’s arguably a Take That, showing that their criticism of Ron is invalid.

Kind of telling that the Horcrux practically spouts Harmonian talking points. But Ron used the sword and killed the Horcrux, and Harry finally stated flat-out that he didn’t even think of Hermione the way Ron worried Harry might. Harry helped Ron past it.


Great moment—I hope they do it justice in the movie.

I imagine Ron was able to banish those demons once and for all after that.

And in the end, Ron managed to outshine all his brothers after all.