Obviously, Hermione and Ron don’t technically become official boyfriend and girlfriend until the closing moments of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. By this time, they only get about five minutes more screen time, so there isn’t really enough to find a multitude of reasons to break up.
As such, we’ve scoured the entire Harry Potterfranchise to find six moments where Hermione should have ended her friendship with Ron and never agreed to date him all those years later, and four times when Ron should have done the same.
SHE SHOULD HAVE DUMPED HIM: When He Deserted Her And Harry
One of Ron’s more aggressive, stupid moves came when he decided to leave Harry and Hermione alone on the quest to find Horcruxes during The Deathly Hallows. It was a brazen idea because it not only put his friends in danger but could have easily ended up killing him.
That should have been the last straw for Hermione; she should have realized that if Ron was willing to leave her in danger like that then it probably wouldn’t be a wise move to be together.
HE SHOULD HAVE DUMPED HER: When She Attacked Him With Birds
The most brutal Hermione moment came directly from her jealous rage at Ron for his involvement with Lavender Brown. Not only did her use of this particular spell suggest that she wasn’t happy to respect Ron and his romantic choices, but it showed a weirdly aggressive side to her. Those birds really went shooting at Ron, sharp beak first, so she might have ended up injuring her future husband.
SHE SHOULD HAVE DUMPED HIM: When He Used Lavender To Make Her Jealous
Having said that, Hermione did sort of have a reason to be annoyed at Ron. It was pretty clear to everyone involved (and everyone watching from afar) that Ron was only with Lavender to make Hermione jealous. Lavender was annoying, over the top and such a strange new addition to the series that it made no sense for Ron to truly love her. And he didn’t. So using her to get to Hermione should have been a massive warning sign to Hermione about Ron’s true temperament.
HE SHOULD HAVE DUMPED HER: When She Looked Down On Him
This isn’t even a specific moment, because looking down on people is basically Hermione’s favorite hobby. Whether it’s because she is annoyed she only got 99% in a test, or because Ron wasn’t able to perform a spell as well as her, she would quite frequently overexplain and talk down to him.
Then again, he did get her to do his homework quite a lot, so maybe she had a reason to think she needed to talk down to him.
SHE SHOULD HAVE DUMPED HIM: When He Mocked Her For A Year Straight
The first year that Hermione and Ron knew each other was littered with mocking and condescension. Ron laughed at her personality from the moment they met, with a whole lot of it happening with Hermione right in earshot. While he changed his tune by the end of the film, maybe Hermione should have remembered the fact that Ron was once a borderline bully.
SHE SHOULD HAVE DUMPED HER: When He Judged Her For Being With Victor Krum
Hermione can make her own decisions as she pleases. It’s obvious from very early on in the series that Hermione was into Ron, and he never noticed or bothered to reciprocate, so she moved on.
The fact that Victor Krum was effectively an adult and Hermione was about fourteen should have been Ron’s point, then his opposition to their involvement might have been legit, but instead, he came up with some really poor points such as “you are fraternizing with the enemy” in order to try and get her to stop seeing Krum. On top of that, a couple of years later he shamed her for kissing Krum, despite his own weird spite relationship with Lavender Brown.
SHE SHOULD HAVE DUMPED HIM: When He Ruined The Yule Ball
Ron’s hatred and jealousy of the Krum-Hermione partnership came to a head at the Yule Ball. Hermione had clearly put a lot of effort in and had a genuinely good time with Krum, before Ron decided to ruin everything at the end, leaving her running off to bed crying. Despite Ron certainly being the bad guy in this situation, Hermione does deliver an absolute zinger when she commands “off to bed, both of you”, encompassing the totally innocent Harry.
HE SHOULD HAVE DUMPED HER: When She Ignored Advice About S.P.E.W
One of the major storylines the films decided to leave out entirely was Hermione’s devotion to house-elf welfare which is explored in detail in the books. Not only do we get to see the cook elf-led kitchen underneath Hogwarts, but Hermione also starts her own charity organization called S.P.E.W in order to free house-elves from their enslavement. The only problem with it was that the elves actually wanted to do their work. Ron (and Harry) frequently tried to explain to her that what she was doing was far more offensive to the elves than the reverse, but she simply ignored them and carried on.
SHE SHOULD HAVE DUMPED HIM: When He Said Crookshanks Ate Scabbers
During The Prisoner Of Azkaban, Ron suddenly seemed to really care about his previously unimportant rat. Conveniently, this rat ended up being a major plot device. When Scabbers went missing, he ferociously and persistently blamed Hermione and her cat Crookshanks, who he thought had eaten Scabbers. When they found out this wasn’t the case at all, Ron got on with life without anything even close to an apology despite tormenting Hermione about it for weeks.
HE SHOULD HAVE DUMPED HER: When She Used A Confundus Charm To Help Him
This one certainly has more wholesome intentions than many of the points above, but it was still a bold and bad move from Hermione that Ron should have thought about more.
When Hermione confunded Cormac McLaggen during Ron’s quidditch trials, it created a number of issues: it might have ended up putting Ron in an embarrassing situation when he ended up getting the role and not being good enough (which actually did happen), it showed Hermione’s own lack of faith in Ron, and it showed that she was willing to dangerous, rule-breaking things out of commitment to him. That last one isn’t exactly a bad thing, but it could lead to some tough situations for Ron down the line.
