The full conversation between J.K. Rowling and Emma Watson for Wonderland Magazine is now available.

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Since Saturday’s article in The Sunday Times teased interesting revelations from the Harry Potter author about Ron and Hermione’s relationship, readers have been eager to see the full transcript.

The extended, unabbreviated interview certainly offers more insight into Rowling’s feelings about Ron/Hermione. For example, the author says that the couple has “fundamental incompatibility,” and that in “some ways Hermione and Harry are a better fit.”

Rowling tells a brief story about the first time she realized the potential between the two characters, pointing to when they were together in the tent in Deathly Hallows, and says she felt it “quite strong.”

After Rowling and Watson discuss how Hermione was there for Harry all the way through – which can’t be said for Ron – Rowling seems to have a little sympathy for Ron/Hermione. “Oh, maybe she and Ron will be alright with a bit of counseling,” she says. “He needs to work on his self-esteem issues and she needs to work on being a little less critical.”

The full transcript for your interpretation follows…

Watson: I thought we should discuss Hermione… I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times but now that you have written the books, do you have a new perspective on how you relate to Hermione and the relationship you have with her or had with her?

Rowling: I know that Hermione is incredibly recognizable to a lot of readers and yet you don’t see a lot of Hermiones in film or on TV except to be laughed at. I mean that the intense, clever, in some ways not terribly self-aware, girl is rarely the heroine and I really wanted her to be the heroine. She is part of me, although she is not wholly me. I think that is how I might have appeared to people when I was younger, but that is not really how I was inside.

What I will say is that I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. 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 with Ron.

Watson: Ah.

Rowling: I know, I’m sorry, 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: I don’t know. 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.

Rowling: Yes exactly.

Watson: And vice versa.

Rowling: It was a young relationship. I think the attraction itself is plausible but the combative side of it… I’m not sure you could have got over that in an adult relationship, there was too much fundamental incompatibility. I can’t believe we are saying all of this – this is Potter heresy!

In some ways Hermione and Harry are a better fit, and I’ll tell you something very strange. When I wrote Hallows, I felt this quite strongly when I had Hermione and Harry together in the tent! I hadn’t told [Steven] Kloves that and when he wrote the script he felt exactly the same thing at exactly the same point.

Watson: This is just so interesting because when I was doing the scene, I said to David [Heyman]: “This isn’t in the book, she didn’t write this.” I’m not sure I am comfortable insinuating something however subtle it is!

Rowling: Yes, but David and Steve – they felt what I felt when writing it.

Watson: That is so strange.

Rowling: And actually I liked that scene in the film, because it was articulating something I hadn’t said but I had felt. I really liked it and I thought that it was right. I think you do feel the ghost of what could have been in that scene.

Watson: It’s a really haunting scene. It is funny because it really divided people. Some people loved that scene and some people really didn’t.

Rowling: Yes, some people utterly hated it. But that is true of so many really good scenes in books and films; they evoke that strong positive/negative feeling. I was fine with it, I liked it.

Watson: I remember really loving shooting those scenes that don’t have any dialogue, where you are just kind of trying to express a moment in time and a feeling without saying anything. It was just Dan and I spontaneously sort of trying to convey an idea and it was really fun.

Rowling: And you got it perfectly, you got perfectly the sort of mixture of awkwardness and genuine emotion, because it teeters on the edge of “What are we doing? Oh come on let’s do it anyway,” which I thought was just right for that time.

Watson: I think it was just the sense that in the moment they needed to be together and be kids and raise each others morale.

Rowling: That is just it, you are so right. All this says something very powerful about the character of Hermione as well. Hermione was the one that stuck with Harry all the way through that last installment, that very last part of the adventure. It wasn’t Ron, which also says something very powerful about Ron. He was injured in a way, in his self-esteem, from the start of the series. He always knew he came second to fourth best, and then he had to make friends with the hero of it all and that’s a hell of a position to be in, eternally overshadowed. So Ron had to act out in that way at some point.

But Hermione’s always there for Harry. I remember you sent me a note after you read Hallows and before you starting shooting, and said something about that, because it was Hermione’s journey as much as Harry’s at the end.

Watson: I completely agree and the fact that they were true equals and the fact that she really said goodbye to her family makes it her sacrifice too.

Rowling: Yes, her sacrifice was massive, completely. A very calculated act of bravery. That is not an “in the moment” act of bravery where emotion carries you through, that is a deliberate choice.

Watson: Exactly.

Rowling: I love Hermione.

Watson: I love her too.

Rowling: Oh, maybe she and Ron will be alright with a bit of counseling, you know. I wonder what happens at wizard marriage counseling? They’ll probably be fine. He needs to work on his self-esteem issues and she needs to work on being a little less critical.

Watson: I think it makes sense to me that Ron would make friends with the most famous wizard in the school because I think life presents to you over and over again your biggest and most painful fear – until you conquer it. It just keeps coming up.

Rowling: This is so true, it has happened in my own life. The issue keeps coming up because you are drawn to it and you are putting yourself in front of it all the time. At a certain point you have to choose what to do about it and sometimes conquering it is choosing to say: I don’t want that anymore, I’m going to stop walking up to you because there is nothing there for me. But yes, you’re so right, that’s very insightful. Ron’s used to playing second fiddle. I think that’s a comfortable role for him, but at a certain point he has to be his own man, doesn’t he?

Watson: Yes, and until he does it is unresolved. It is unfinished business. So maybe life presented this to him enough times until he had to make a choice and become the man that Hermione needs.

Rowling: Just like her creator, she has a real weakness for a funny man. These uptight girls, they do like them funny.

Watson: They do like them funny, they need them funny.

Elsewhere in their interview in Wonderland Magazine, Rowling touches on the Fantastic Beasts movie amongst other things about her life and career.

This magazine is available for purchase now. Watch a behind the scenes look at one of Watson’s photoshoots for Wonderland, and visit their official site for more.