What do you think?
Australia
Fandom: Harry Potter
Relationship: Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
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While grieving the loss of his brother and trying to figure out life after the war, Ron and Hermione go on a journey to Australia to find Hermione's parents.
Words: 328163
Relationship: Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
--------------------------------------------------
While grieving the loss of his brother and trying to figure out life after the war, Ron and Hermione go on a journey to Australia to find Hermione's parents.
Words: 328163
856 pages, ebook
Published August 30, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 29, 2018
This fanfiction was touted as a #Rondemption fic so I eagerly started it, looking forward to seeing Ron and Hermione explore Australia in search of her parents. Romione is probably my favourite het pairing in the Harry Potter fandom so I was super excited for this.
It has not lived up to expectations.
So many words, so little said.
First off, the entire fic so far has been Ron acting like a complete jagweed and Hermione acting like his shit doesn't stink. The characterizations of both Ron and Hermione are just so incredibly off base for me that this doesn't even feel like a Romione. Honestly, the first half of the book has been like watching a slow-motion date rape as Ron just tries to grind Hermione down until she finally agrees to bone him. This is not romantic; this relationship is unhealthy. Ron is either screaming at her, drunk, or pawing at her and ignoring her repeated requests for him to keep his lips and hands to himself. We get it: he's grieving. But that doesn't give him a free pass to be an asshole. Here are a few random samplings of Ron slow-motion date raping Hermione:
Then, inexplicably, Ron starts having a homoerotic awakening at about 80% when he has a love at first sight moment with an OC character,deus ex machinaHugo. Okay, the homoeroticism is definitely between the lines, but it’s the only explanation for Ron’s behaviour. He has spent the entirety of the book intensely paranoid and distrustful of everyone and then he meets this random dude and all of a sudden he’s scolding Hermione in support of him, volunteering them to drive cross-country with him (he could have legit been a serial killer that could have murdered them and left their bodies in the Outback for lions to eat!) and inviting him to come back with them to Britain. It was such a weird and inexplicable plot twist/change of character that the only explanation that makes sense to me is that Ron wants to “give Hugo the wood” as they so crassly joke with each other (barf!)
Then there’s Hermione. I kept expecting Hermione to step up and be the total badass, strong, assertive female role model we know from canon, but I was left perpetually and forever disappointed. This is some bodysnatcher that is wearing Hermione's skin. Hermione spent almost the entire fic as a shrinking violet/milquetoast that just lets Ron use her as a verbal punching bag and/or sex doll. I am buddy-reading this with a group of people and we are all choosing to believe that, like the original series, we have to question the reliability of Ron as a narrator. This entire book is from his perspective (with the exception of a single paragraph which weirdly and jarringly shifts into Hermione's perspective) and I just have to question the veracity of everything I am reading. Maybe Hermione isn't sitting there blushing with girlish embarrassment at every stupid thing Ron says, but is, rather, flushing in annoyance as she tries to control her temper at his glaring buffoonery. Ron repeatedly comments on how impressed she looks over the stupidest things, like his ability to make a sandwich, which is just patently absurd. And, let's face it: There's no way that Hermione, uber-preparer that she is, would not have this Australia trip planned out fully with everything prepared and packed and every conceivable eventuality planned for!! This is simply not Hermione.
Oh, and she also barely talks. This is written so that we’re trapped in Ron’s mind, and he’s basically an incel with a white knight complex, so the only way we’re going to know what is going on in Hermione’s is through her dialogue, but she’s barely given any. I started keeping track of how many times she utters a sentence that is at least 10 unique words and does not include a name and it is BLEAK. She’s one of the main romantic leads and we get to hear about how she blushes approximately 2384128391820 times, but we barely get to hear her string together a full sentence.
And once we finally actually make it to Australia and you, reasonably, think that the fic will finally allow Hermione to shine, the author yanks away all of Hermione's drive and motivation and hands it over to Ron. Hermione becomes a catatonic zombie (which makes Ron's randiness really upsetting, honestly) and Ron becomes the driving force for them to find her parents and Hermione just takes a backseat. Think I'm kidding or reading too much into it? I'm not:
Hermione is nothing but a prop who is there to set up "her man" for success. Get out of here with this regressive, misogynistic crap. Why does this author seem to hate women? Hermione spends the entire time either being "meek", "weak", "embarrassed", "bashful", or ashamed. It's totally normal for her to have moments of feeling those things, but this Hermione is so flat and one-dimensional and doesn't seem to have any other emotions or feelings besides shame. It's boring to read, and completely out-of-character from canon.
And if you think it's just Ron and Hermione's characters that are assassinated, don't worry. Other characters are shredded too. This casual misogyny is a prime example of everything I hated about this fic and the gender politics within it:
HYUCK HYUCK! Isn't that just HILARIOUS?! Laughing about abusing the invisibility cloak to violate your supposed friend's expectation of privacy while bathing. But it's cool because it didn't actually pay off. You will note that Ron shows zero regrets in that, except for that it didn't work and that he ratted on himself that he did it while he got pissed drunk to the point of blacking out. And Harry just laughs about the whole thing. Such great friends to Hermione. What the hell is this shit?? You know what? Maybe let's not normalize this abusive and violating behaviour that is the epitome of rape culture by having two beloved male characters do it?? There is so much casual misogyny peppered throughout this work that it is shocking. The female characters are routinely described as “nagging”, “scolding”, etc, words commonly used as insults for women that are seen as too aggressive (i.e. confident women who don’t tolerate patriarchical bullshit.)
And there's nothing to distract from the terrible characters because very little actually happens in this fic. Things that happened:
1) Fred’s funeral
2) They take an unnecessary side trip to Bulgaria because Ron is paranoid and then he gets into a pissing contest with Krum
3) They make it to Australia and spend 1 week looking for her parents (though the way Ron waxes on about this in the last 10% of the book, you’d think they’ve been on this monumental task for 10 years...felt like that long reading it though)
4) They meet a stranger who is the solution to their insolvable problem and decide to go on a road trip with him despite having known him for approximately 10 minutes.
5) They have sex
6) They find her parents (who basically already half remember her and there is absolutely zero problems with returning their memories, despite them stating earlier in the fic that it’s very complex.
That’s it! 856 pages! This fic's pacing is so slow that it's practically glacial. Honestly, at least half of the chapters could easily be scrapped and you wouldn't miss anything important, and Ron and Hermione would be infinitely more relatable. Reading 35-page chapters where all that happens is they have dinner, take (separate) showers, and then make out is not what I’m looking for in a fic.
The first 20% of the book was just the author repeatedly telling the reader how sad it was, but never actually making me feel sad. Less telling, more showing! And maybe don't repeatedly vacillate between talking about Fred's dead body and then waxing poetic for 6 pages about how delectable Hermione's lips are. And this happens REPEATEDLY. Snooze. Over half of this fic is just Ron’s thought vomit and it is really tedious to read. Write SCENES, not Ron’s tedious, repetitive thoughts.
The entire fic also seems to have an almost puritanical approach to sex. Molly spends approximately the first 30-40% of the book trying to cock block Ron even though, as far as she knows, Ron and Hermione have been travelling practically alone together for the past year… The lady had 7 children, she knows how tempting sex can be. To me, she’d just assume they’re already boning down, so this attitude made no sense to me. I'd conservatively guess that 50% of the book is waxing poetic about kissing or holding hands. There's a lot of talk about sex, but neither of them seems to realize that there are other things they could do besides penetrative sex… except we know that's not true because Ron got a handie from Lavender and they talk that to death, so it doesn't make any sense to me that neither of them would propose starting with hand/oral sex. This reads like it was written by a conservative American raised within a strict Christian household. There’s so much obsessing over sex and yet both of them are apparently complete newbies to it and Hermione, inexplicably, seems to have never cracked a book about it (COME ON! You know our girl has read the Kama Sutra!) When they do finally have sex, Hermione is a disgustingly tropey woman who thinks it’s all her fault that she isn’t orgasming rather than the fact that Ron does practically NOTHING to help her orgasm. Again, this isn’t Hermione.
There are also inconsistencies that scattered throughout the entire fic. It seems very clear that this was written as an in-progress work and minimal effort was put towards verifying new content against past content. For example, it discusses how Percy and his dad will have to work with multiple Ministry employees to try to work out a series of Portkeys, all of which would have a very set schedule when they depart. Yet then Ron decides randomly that they will leave the next morning in a later chapter. It breaks its own canon repeatedly. These aren't huge glaring plotholes, but as a reader reading this straight through they are quite obvious and kind of irritating. Here's a rather humorous example:
How tall do you think trains are that the top bunk would be taller than Ron, who is canon-wise, quite tall? This train must be at least 12 ft tall (hint: trains are not that tall.) But then that same chapter ends with:
HOW LONG ARE THEIR ARMS?! There are things like this sprinkled repeatedly through the text that are really distracting and evidence that this needs a good edi. Here's another good one:
Countries they have been to: United Kingdom, France, Bulgaria, Turkey, India, Thailand, Australia.
Countries that border the Caspian Sea: Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan.
Why wouldn't you just google that to fact check??
Final Verdict
Give this fic a wide berth. The relationship dynamics of the Ron/Hermione relationship are, quite frankly, upsetting. Ron treats Hermione like crap (he thinks nice things sometimes, but then his behaviours do not back up his thoughts, and actions speak louder than thought vomit), the plot is super boring, none of the characters are characterized well (with the exception of Krum, who is FANTASTIC!!! Seriously, this should have been a Krumione and a Rogo fic! Krum is confident enough to let Hermione soar and rock her world between the sheets!), and the ending just limped across the finish line with a thoroughly unfulfilling resolution to the search for Hermione's parents (who, by the way, also shit all over Hermione. Literally everyone shits all over Hermione in this fic and it bums me out!)
It has not lived up to expectations.
So many words, so little said.
First off, the entire fic so far has been Ron acting like a complete jagweed and Hermione acting like his shit doesn't stink. The characterizations of both Ron and Hermione are just so incredibly off base for me that this doesn't even feel like a Romione. Honestly, the first half of the book has been like watching a slow-motion date rape as Ron just tries to grind Hermione down until she finally agrees to bone him. This is not romantic; this relationship is unhealthy. Ron is either screaming at her, drunk, or pawing at her and ignoring her repeated requests for him to keep his lips and hands to himself. We get it: he's grieving. But that doesn't give him a free pass to be an asshole. Here are a few random samplings of Ron slow-motion date raping Hermione:
"Ron, I'm tired," she protested wearily when he attempted to kiss her a third time.
"I know, but we can sleep in a bit."
"We can sleep now," she groaned. "I'm tired."
"You can be tired - " Ron placed several inviting kisses on her collarbone. " - and still…"
"Stop." The firm tone of her voice caused Ron to finally relent and roll away from her.
[...] but every time he moved in to try to be affectionate, she had resisted.
"It's cute." He grinned then and placed a wet kiss just below her ear, sucking at her skin teasingly.
"Look, we're going to have a really long day." She scrunched up her shoulders this time so he had to relent. "We get into Sofia at 8 AM so let's just sleep."
"Okay." His curt reply did little to hide his disappointment as he withdrew his arm from behind her head.
"Don't be angry," she groaned, "don't be angry about this."
"Let's just sleep." He ignored her and fluffed up the pillow behind his head [...]
Then, inexplicably, Ron starts having a homoerotic awakening at about 80% when he has a love at first sight moment with an OC character,
Then there’s Hermione. I kept expecting Hermione to step up and be the total badass, strong, assertive female role model we know from canon, but I was left perpetually and forever disappointed. This is some bodysnatcher that is wearing Hermione's skin. Hermione spent almost the entire fic as a shrinking violet/milquetoast that just lets Ron use her as a verbal punching bag and/or sex doll. I am buddy-reading this with a group of people and we are all choosing to believe that, like the original series, we have to question the reliability of Ron as a narrator. This entire book is from his perspective (with the exception of a single paragraph which weirdly and jarringly shifts into Hermione's perspective) and I just have to question the veracity of everything I am reading. Maybe Hermione isn't sitting there blushing with girlish embarrassment at every stupid thing Ron says, but is, rather, flushing in annoyance as she tries to control her temper at his glaring buffoonery. Ron repeatedly comments on how impressed she looks over the stupidest things, like his ability to make a sandwich, which is just patently absurd. And, let's face it: There's no way that Hermione, uber-preparer that she is, would not have this Australia trip planned out fully with everything prepared and packed and every conceivable eventuality planned for!! This is simply not Hermione.
Oh, and she also barely talks. This is written so that we’re trapped in Ron’s mind, and he’s basically an incel with a white knight complex, so the only way we’re going to know what is going on in Hermione’s is through her dialogue, but she’s barely given any. I started keeping track of how many times she utters a sentence that is at least 10 unique words and does not include a name and it is BLEAK. She’s one of the main romantic leads and we get to hear about how she blushes approximately 2384128391820 times, but we barely get to hear her string together a full sentence.
And once we finally actually make it to Australia and you, reasonably, think that the fic will finally allow Hermione to shine, the author yanks away all of Hermione's drive and motivation and hands it over to Ron. Hermione becomes a catatonic zombie (which makes Ron's randiness really upsetting, honestly) and Ron becomes the driving force for them to find her parents and Hermione just takes a backseat. Think I'm kidding or reading too much into it? I'm not:
This wasn't just a mission. This was his mission now.
Hermione is nothing but a prop who is there to set up "her man" for success. Get out of here with this regressive, misogynistic crap. Why does this author seem to hate women? Hermione spends the entire time either being "meek", "weak", "embarrassed", "bashful", or ashamed. It's totally normal for her to have moments of feeling those things, but this Hermione is so flat and one-dimensional and doesn't seem to have any other emotions or feelings besides shame. It's boring to read, and completely out-of-character from canon.
And if you think it's just Ron and Hermione's characters that are assassinated, don't worry. Other characters are shredded too. This casual misogyny is a prime example of everything I hated about this fic and the gender politics within it:
"That you once stole my Invisibility Cloak to spy on her in the Prefect's Bathroom." Harry laughed and he stepped back down into his room.
"That wasn't – that was only – I didn't!" Ron followed after Harry, stammering protest.
"Oh, it keeps going," his friend grinned. "But don't worry, your secrets are safe for now."
"I don't remember saying anything," Ron admitted wearily.
"Well, I don't reckon Charlie would make it up. Seeing as he doesn't even know I have an Invisibility Cloak," Harry teased.
"I didn't steal it!" Ron clarified. "I mean, I just borrowed it and I – I didn't really see anything."
Harry sputtered with laughter at the confession and, for some reason, it made Ron smile too.
"She was already in the bath and there were too many fucking bubbles." He recalled the fifth year memory and how all he'd been able to see was her head and her toes. He'd chickened out and ran before Myrtle gave him away. Harry kept laughing. "She'd still kill me if she ever found out." Ron grinned just imagining her fury at his randy sixteen-year-old self.
"I'll take it to the grave."
Their laughter hung in the air a moment, but then Ron could see something else weighing on Harry. He wished he wouldn't say anything. He just wanted to keep laughing with his friend, even if it was at his own expense.
HYUCK HYUCK! Isn't that just HILARIOUS?! Laughing about abusing the invisibility cloak to violate your supposed friend's expectation of privacy while bathing. But it's cool because it didn't actually pay off. You will note that Ron shows zero regrets in that, except for that it didn't work and that he ratted on himself that he did it while he got pissed drunk to the point of blacking out. And Harry just laughs about the whole thing. Such great friends to Hermione. What the hell is this shit?? You know what? Maybe let's not normalize this abusive and violating behaviour that is the epitome of rape culture by having two beloved male characters do it?? There is so much casual misogyny peppered throughout this work that it is shocking. The female characters are routinely described as “nagging”, “scolding”, etc, words commonly used as insults for women that are seen as too aggressive (i.e. confident women who don’t tolerate patriarchical bullshit.)
And there's nothing to distract from the terrible characters because very little actually happens in this fic. Things that happened:
1) Fred’s funeral
2) They take an unnecessary side trip to Bulgaria because Ron is paranoid and then he gets into a pissing contest with Krum
3) They make it to Australia and spend 1 week looking for her parents (though the way Ron waxes on about this in the last 10% of the book, you’d think they’ve been on this monumental task for 10 years...felt like that long reading it though)
4) They meet a stranger who is the solution to their insolvable problem and decide to go on a road trip with him despite having known him for approximately 10 minutes.
5) They have sex
6) They find her parents (who basically already half remember her and there is absolutely zero problems with returning their memories, despite them stating earlier in the fic that it’s very complex.
That’s it! 856 pages! This fic's pacing is so slow that it's practically glacial. Honestly, at least half of the chapters could easily be scrapped and you wouldn't miss anything important, and Ron and Hermione would be infinitely more relatable. Reading 35-page chapters where all that happens is they have dinner, take (separate) showers, and then make out is not what I’m looking for in a fic.
The first 20% of the book was just the author repeatedly telling the reader how sad it was, but never actually making me feel sad. Less telling, more showing! And maybe don't repeatedly vacillate between talking about Fred's dead body and then waxing poetic for 6 pages about how delectable Hermione's lips are. And this happens REPEATEDLY. Snooze. Over half of this fic is just Ron’s thought vomit and it is really tedious to read. Write SCENES, not Ron’s tedious, repetitive thoughts.
The entire fic also seems to have an almost puritanical approach to sex. Molly spends approximately the first 30-40% of the book trying to cock block Ron even though, as far as she knows, Ron and Hermione have been travelling practically alone together for the past year… The lady had 7 children, she knows how tempting sex can be. To me, she’d just assume they’re already boning down, so this attitude made no sense to me. I'd conservatively guess that 50% of the book is waxing poetic about kissing or holding hands. There's a lot of talk about sex, but neither of them seems to realize that there are other things they could do besides penetrative sex… except we know that's not true because Ron got a handie from Lavender and they talk that to death, so it doesn't make any sense to me that neither of them would propose starting with hand/oral sex. This reads like it was written by a conservative American raised within a strict Christian household. There’s so much obsessing over sex and yet both of them are apparently complete newbies to it and Hermione, inexplicably, seems to have never cracked a book about it (COME ON! You know our girl has read the Kama Sutra!) When they do finally have sex, Hermione is a disgustingly tropey woman who thinks it’s all her fault that she isn’t orgasming rather than the fact that Ron does practically NOTHING to help her orgasm. Again, this isn’t Hermione.
There are also inconsistencies that scattered throughout the entire fic. It seems very clear that this was written as an in-progress work and minimal effort was put towards verifying new content against past content. For example, it discusses how Percy and his dad will have to work with multiple Ministry employees to try to work out a series of Portkeys, all of which would have a very set schedule when they depart. Yet then Ron decides randomly that they will leave the next morning in a later chapter. It breaks its own canon repeatedly. These aren't huge glaring plotholes, but as a reader reading this straight through they are quite obvious and kind of irritating. Here's a rather humorous example:
They both got to their feet then and looked at the bunk, which was only slightly taller than Ron.
How tall do you think trains are that the top bunk would be taller than Ron, who is canon-wise, quite tall? This train must be at least 12 ft tall (hint: trains are not that tall.) But then that same chapter ends with:
Then without a word, as if to answer him, her hand dropped down from the top bunk.
She dangled it loosely over the side, but he knew she was reaching for him and his hand immediately flew up to hers. Her fingers closed around his instinctively and he thought back to that night in Grimmauld Place when he'd first taken her hand and how wonderful it had first felt.
HOW LONG ARE THEIR ARMS?! There are things like this sprinkled repeatedly through the text that are really distracting and evidence that this needs a good edi. Here's another good one:
He'd come close to thinking somewhere along the banks of the Caspian Sea, that he'd lost Hermione.
Countries they have been to: United Kingdom, France, Bulgaria, Turkey, India, Thailand, Australia.
Countries that border the Caspian Sea: Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan.
Why wouldn't you just google that to fact check??
Final Verdict
Give this fic a wide berth. The relationship dynamics of the Ron/Hermione relationship are, quite frankly, upsetting. Ron treats Hermione like crap (he thinks nice things sometimes, but then his behaviours do not back up his thoughts, and actions speak louder than thought vomit), the plot is super boring, none of the characters are characterized well (with the exception of Krum, who is FANTASTIC!!! Seriously, this should have been a Krumione and a Rogo fic! Krum is confident enough to let Hermione soar and rock her world between the sheets!), and the ending just limped across the finish line with a thoroughly unfulfilling resolution to the search for Hermione's parents (who, by the way, also shit all over Hermione. Literally everyone shits all over Hermione in this fic and it bums me out!)
January 24, 2023
This is officially canon to me. I loved this so much.
March 3, 2024
So many words. This was recommended on a Reddit sub recently and got gushing support. I just don’t get it.
October 4, 2023
I had never read a fanfiction before, but this one was recommended to me. I’ve always been a huge Ron/Hermoine fan (from the movies, I’m only currently reading the books).
To me, this was just okay. There were some parts that were really sweet and other parts that made me want to throw my phone across the room. Ex: Ron gets belligerently drunk multiple times in the story and acts like a jerk. It also felt like the story was much longer than it needed to be, with a lot of fluff and sections that didn’t really add anything. If it was less drawn out I feel like it would have been more enjoyable.
The cute parts were still cute, though.
To me, this was just okay. There were some parts that were really sweet and other parts that made me want to throw my phone across the room. Ex: Ron gets belligerently drunk multiple times in the story and acts like a jerk. It also felt like the story was much longer than it needed to be, with a lot of fluff and sections that didn’t really add anything. If it was less drawn out I feel like it would have been more enjoyable.
The cute parts were still cute, though.
August 21, 2024
Good story
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