Harry Potter is a cultural icon, and while not exactly timeless, it still stands strong today. With its one-hit-wonder of an author being quite controversial (to say the least), it falls to the Harry Potter fandom to keep the legacy alive. Like most fandoms, HP is no exception to shipping. So, this is why Harry Potter should have actually ended up with Hermione in the book series, as compared to Ginny.

While both Hermione and Ginny are in the same house as Harry, we will compare different traits within them to see who is objectively better, and who is more compatible with Harry.

Achievements. On this Hermione massively outweighs Ginny as she’s gone on each of Harry’s adventures excluding going into the chamber of secrets on account of her being petrified. On the other hand, Ginny’s most impressive accomplishment stands as helping Neville attempt (and fails of course, like most things Neville does) to steal the sword of Gryffindor. Hermione has, in addition to helping Harry, had adventures of her own such as her time turner classes, which worked to save both Sirius and Buckbeak.

Harry relation-Many times in real life, you date someone you already know, rather than out of the blue dating someone you know next-to-nothing about and who’s barely in your life. Hermione and Harry have this strong friendship built on mutual respect and trust and they like spending time with each other—all key points in any good relationship. Ginny, however, is barely in the books and only appears as Ron’s little sister, awkward enough without the fact Ginny’s personality hops all over the place. One minute she blindly follows a diary’s orders, the next she’s apparently a master of the “Bat-Boogey Hex”, and later she kneels down to tie shoelaces. While that last one is only in the movie, it’s only in the movie because they were guessing her character because Ginny doesn’t have a personality.

Character analysis-Hermione is a genius who saves Harry and Ron on many occasions. She relies heavily on her knowledge and wit, but she’s not flawless and knows it. She’s humble enough to admit when someone is better than her, like how Harry scored higher than her in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Despite her ‘shortcomings’, it’s just a fact that no one can be the best at everything and Hermione knows what she’s good at, is smart, and despite being one of the smartest people in the school, she never uses her brains to be mean because she’s a genuinely kind person and the only one who cares enough to try to get humane treatment for the house-elves.

Ginny, meanwhile, serves only as a basic, two-dimensional love interest whose only purpose is to serve as the object of Harry’s school-inappropriate desires in the fifth and sixth books. Despite her only role being as a love interest, she is too skimpy written to be worth Harry’s time. When introduced early in the series, she’s a quiet introvert only to do a sudden, unprompted 360-degree character arc, actually, character flip and is meant to be cool and tough, but she falls flat in this, like most roles she dons.

So given her strong friendship laying the basis for a greater relationship, their history and endeavors, and the fact that her character can stand without a protagonist to cling to, Hermione is much better than Ginny all around and much better suited for Harry.