I know this is really late, but I disagree with you about the (SPOILER) conversation Harry and Cho had about Hermione's jinx. Harry was defending what Hermione did, and what she did was... pretty awful. It clearly wasn't meant to prevent anyone from telling about the DA, because if that was the idea, she would tell the DA (the entire DA) what would happen if they did. She just did it for revenge (Rowling's only explanation, in an interview, was, "I do so loathe a traitor."). And when Marietta appeared in HBP, the marks weren't gone; apparently, it was permanent. Granted, Harry didn't know that, but he didn't seem to be upset when he found out. Marietta may have been under a lot of pressure from her family; there was really just no good reason for Hermione to do that, and I think Cho had every right to be angry at Harry for acting like it was no big deal. I would've been, if that was my best friend. And it does appear that they were very close. If you pay close attention, you'll notice that in book 4, Cho is constantly surrounded by other girls, but after Cedric dies, when she needs support the most, you usually only see her with Marietta. Apparently, Harry isn't alone in finding her less enjoyable to be around at that time; regardless, it shows that Marietta can't have been all bad and was likely very close to Cho. Can you imagine how OotP!Harry would react if someone did that to one of his friends, even if they had done something clearly wrong like Marietta? I can't imagine he'd be as calm about it as Marietta.

Nope, I'm a girl. :) And yes, there were a few times when I would be so furious that I tunnel-visioned and wanted to just kill something.

But I'd disagree that boys are the only ones who get violent rages, though—have you ever seen someone try to break up a catfight? Scary stuff. Mostly because boys tend to punch or kick, whereas girls tend to go for the face. And eyes. I know my first impulse is to claw at the eyes (admittedly, this is partly because I have REALLY BAD vision — like off the charts, I think it's something like 20/500 — and consequently am constantly aware of how fragile and important one's vision is. Eye horror is the one kind of violence that I find truly disturbing. Because gah.)

**spoilerly discussion** 

@ Blonde Heroines Rule: Again: teenagers, sixteen-year-olds in particular, aren't exactly known for their ability to communicate coherently, or at all. It's the hormones. So while the Cho/Harry/Hermione thing was a really stupid misunderstanding, it's also an understandable one—I mean, I can see where she got the idea, and Harry was being really tactless. Couples I know personally have dissolved over less.

As for age differences: my parents met when my mother was 19 and my dad was 33. That's an awkward gap at the best of times, and especially considering that mother was still in her teens. One year—if that, Cho could easily have been older than Harry by anything from five months to a whole year—is nothing, believe me. I mean, you can't expect people to only date/marry/be attracted to people who are within a couple months of their own ages, can you? 

I submit that Cho was necessary, if only as a vehicle for character growth for Harry. Everyone has that awkward first crush (well, not me, but 99% of everyone has one), and the UTTER FAILURE of that provides a foundation for future relationships, because you know what not to do. Ditto every subsequent relationships.

By the by: I found a pretty in-depth chapter-by-chapter recap of Before You Meet Prince Charming (because I'm a broke college student and don't have money for the actual book). It might be an artifact of a more-biased-than-she-appears recapper, but the book seemed pretty... strict about the whole maintaining purity by not having any male friends EVER until you meet the one you're going to marry thing. (isn't that impossible? Don't you have to get to know someone before you can fall in love/get married?) And also the apparent discouraging of having any relationships at all outside of familial ones. Also, as a resoundly ace person, I resent the implication that I require a marriage to render me "complete." ...To say nothing of the undertones of "let your parents control your whole life and arrange your marriage for you, otherwise TERRIBLE THINGS will happen to you" ...So yeah. Just FYI.

Well, HBP was mostly filler anyway. I mean it was one giant exposition to set up DH, plus the WHAM! moment at the end. It's one of my favorites because TOM RIDDLE!! :D, but, you know, it didn't have much in the way of *plot*. Plus, see previous note about sixteen-year-olds. They're all insane.  

no, girls can & do have violent rages of anger. (hi! I'm a girl, & so is TNÖ) & the main thing I left out of my post was the extent to which I can relate to it, and think a lot of people can; being a teenager is, or can be, a horrible cycle of misery and self-loathing and fierce all-destroying fury.

I dunno, I just always assumed that Krum's "person he loves most" wasn't Hermione per se, but rather what she represented to him—that is, a nice, relatively friendly, and intelligent girl who wasn't interested in him solely because of his fame. I mean, if you were an internationally celebrated Quidditch star, you'd probably welcome the chance to talk to someone who doesn't squee over you and/or want to talk about nothing but Quidditch, too. Especially because Krum is implied to be a lot more intelligent then most people give him credit for, and he also seems to be a pretty solitary person by nature or by choice.

Also, my guess as to how the second task was set up goes something like this:

We need someone close to each champion who also happens to not be in a different country! Well, Harry Potter's friends with that Ron kid, isn't he? They're always together. Let's use him! Not so sure about Cedric, he's always in a big group of people. But he brought Cho Chang to the Yule Ball, he must like her a lot. She'll do. Fleur's easy, her sister's here to watch the tournament. As for Krum... well, his family's in Bulgaria, we can't very well use *them*. And he doesn't seem to care much about any of the other Durmstrang students... Hm... What about that girl he took to the ball? Hermione Granger? Isn't she Harry Potter's other friend? ...Well, it's not ideal, but it'll have to do. 

I mean, it's not like they plopped each champion in front of the mirror of Erised and took a poll. Like I said, Harry's easy—he's famous, people will notice that he's always hanging out with one kid in particular, especially since Ron's really tall and has bright red hair and is therefore noticeable himself. It's logical to assume that Fleur very much loves her sister. Cedric, on the other hand, is described as being popular and therefore probably has a lot of people he hangs out with consistently, but his close friends would be harder to pick out than loner!Harry. Krum, similarly, doesn't have any family around for the second task (that we hear about), and he doesn't appear to have any close friends among his classmates. That makes Yule Ball dates a pretty safe bet—it's not like people ask people out for no reason, after all.

I don't think Krum's an orphan, necessarily. I just think that he, like Harry, is more than a little isolated by his fame, but didn't have the good fortune to make any really good friends like Harry did—or if he did, they stayed in Durmstrang for the championship. 

But again — as I understand it, simply being attracted to someone isn't something you can help. Conscious thought has nothing to do with it, that only comes in when you start to process and react to the emotions. (In the same way that one can't actually stop oneself from experiencing the emotion of anger, but one CAN stop oneself from, say, attacking the object of one's ire with a baseball bat). 

And of course I can see the wisdom in not obsessing over the object of one's crush *coughBELLASWANcough*, but what confuses me is the extent to which Mally (apparently—again, this could have been skewed or exaggerated by the recapper, so I may be wrong in this) takes it. It seems to me that that a happy medium ought to be found. I see little harm in acknowledging that one has a crush and that one will therefore be unusually aware of that person's existence for the duration of the crush. A little emotional awareness and acceptance never hurt anyone — quite the opposite, since there's plenty of evidence to the effect that repressing emotion of any kind is really, really bad and can do terrible things to one's mental health.

As to the dating/courting distinction, that bothers me primarily because of the suggestion that I, in the quite hypothetical event that I ever decided I wanted to do such a thing, am only allowed to be attracted to/pursue a romantic relationship with/date and eventually marry one person EVER, and that if I do not manage to find my One True and Perfect Ordained-by-God Love the first time up to bat, I am somehow damaged (see: the rosebud analogy Mally is so fond of). That strikes me as an extremely dangerous suggestion, and a highly insulting one. 

I'm all for chaperones, when one is in one's teens. Teenagers are, to a one, idiots. There have to be rules. My sister, f'rinstance, in the event of a date, has to be picked up from and then returned (promptly at or before curfew, i.e. 10:30) to her house by the boy du jour, and in the interim she is expected to be with a group of friends (with whom my parents can and WILL check, and I know for a fact that the friend my sister's most likely to be with every time will tell the truth about any potential shenanigans, since she has in the past).

The teenagers with the strictest guidelines are also the ones most likely to sneak out. In comparison, the much-less-restricted friends of my sister don't feel the need to rebel against the perceived oppression.

So the point I'm trying to make is that a return to a traditional courting system is nice in theory, but imposing it upon today's youth and their dating culture will not work, because it will be perceived as a challenge to be worked around rather than a safety net to protect people. 

On the whole, anyway, Mally's vision smacks of One True Love At First Sight, an idea which does and always has seemed unrealistic and vaguely creepy to me, particularly since the ONLY way to fall in "love" with someone at first sight is to be smitten with the way they look, and possibly personality traits that you assign to them if they're in the middle of doing something out of the ordinary. It's shallow and ultimately it doesn't work, because love is based on a thorough knowledge of a person's, er, person. You can't get that by "just knowing", you have to do the actual "getting to know" bit first.

Yes.  Anyway, back to the subject at hand...

**spoilerly discussion**

About Krum: He is an internationally famous Quidditch star, and I've heard plenty of people, of both genders and of far lesser fame, express similar sentiments. It's rarely meant to be taken seriously and it's usually more self-deprecating than not.

I think it's important to bear in mind that, while it's true that people who aren't necessarily good looking are nonetheless just as likely as pretty people to have wonderful personalities (and vice versa—actually sociopaths tend to be better-than-average, appearance-wise, or at least give the impression of being prettier through their ridiculous charisma), it's also true that humans are wired to go for pretty (or at least healthy-looking) people.

...Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that I wouldn't read too much into Krum's comment, there. It's a common idiomatic phrase meaning "I'm frustrated that the person I'm interested in is already involved with someone else." If that makes sense. 

Plus, bear in mind that Hermione's not described as conventionally attractive; she's bushy-haired, not particularly svelte and not particularly curvy, she slouches (Harry notices how different she looks when she's not hauling around thirty pounds of books) and generally gives the impression of being plain and ordinary. It's not as if she's a knock-out (that would be Ginny), and it's made pretty clear in GoF that Krum only asked her out because she was sensible and he could carry on an intelligent conversation with her. He never struck me as the type who just goes for pretty faces. That was one of the reasons I hated the GoF movie so much, because they made it out like Krum was just a big idiot, like Crabbe or Goyle only talented at Quidditch and nicer.

I see what you're getting at. Being a Christian myself, I am very
familiar with all these discussion-y things and I'm a little conflicted
with how to reply to this.

I've never read this book, but from
what I can tell, this person sounds like she is being rather
narrow-minded about dating and the general idea of people getting into a
relationship with each other. As a rather rude person who says the
first thing that comes to her head without any kind of monitor, I will
try very hard to be courteous and not make any new enemies. I don't need
any more.

Dating isn't some kind of evil force that makes
teenagers want to hook up with the first person they lay their eyes on.
It can't really be eradicated and replaced with something else.
It's not inherently bad. Sure, one can go about it in the wrong way, but
that doesn't make it bad. What you're suggesting sounds good in theory,
but in the real world I think it would be highly impractical.

Teenagers
are social creatures (barring those like me who like books more than people). They
want to get to know each other and they are insanely sensitive to
awkward situations. Having a chaperone around, hanging over their heads
while they're trying to become comfortable in each other's presence
would be ALL KINDS OF AWKWARD. And this is coming from the girl who is so oblivious to people that is had to be formally brought to her attention that interrupting people is not okay.

Think about it: if you have a
friend who happens to be a guy and he invites you to go, say, to a big
collab thing with a bunch of other people you're friends with, that's
entirely different from working on a project for school at your house
while your older brother is sitting at the kitchen table staring at you.
The first scenario involves a lot of people that you're familiar with
and one who just might be one that you're interested in, while
the second scenario is made ten times more awkward by the prescence of
your brother, who, while more familiar than a friend, is by himself. A
single person nearby who you know is watching you two interact
makes infinitely more difficult to do so, while many other people who
you know are probably not watching you (unless you have romantics in
your friend circle who like to ship you with people) has a lot less
pressure on you. If chaperones attend dates, the two people involved will be a lot less likely to open up to each other and this does not help a relationship to grow at all.

That said, I'm not encouraging people to isolate themselves entirely. If a couple is cut off entirely from reality, there's no telling what kind of things could be happening to them, not only physically, but emotionally and mentally. For example, I'm an ardent follower of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and, through them, the Lydia Bennet... channel thing. As you watch Lydia's videos, you are slowly starting to realize that this girl is screwing herself over majorly. She recently released a video in which she confesses that she loves George Wickham, a person who is a... a liar and a cheater and all kinds of horrible in every way and I want to tell her to make good choices but she thinks this is a good choice and it's NOT and...

And I should get to the point. Lydia-n-George are completely cut off (well, Lydia is, at least, and that's what matters). And it's so not good for her. I am going to be kicked right in the feels come Monday and I totally look forward to it (this is why LBD is awesome).

But I digress. Nobody should be completely separated from society, not even people like me who deal better in the written word than the spoken one. Ideally, dating doesn't ever happen with the two absolutely alone. I'm not talking doule dates, here. I'm talking you, your BF and some of your mutual friends go to see a movie or do an activity (oh Sokka -.-).

To tie up this thread of feels and opinions, I'll say that... well, I don't think what you're proposing is a good idea. People should get to know each other, but that's very hard to do when you feel like you're under close scrutiny, as in a chaperone situation.

I respectfully disagree with you, and I hope you respect my opinion as well.