So J.K Rowling has discussed how she wished Harry and Hermoine had become a couple at the end of the Harry Potter series, and while this has ignited a debate abut whether people agree with that, it's also definitely making people think about the author/reader relationship.
And while everyone is on the topic of the readers having ownership over the narrative: (even though the idea of Hermoine and Harry makes me grumpy) I do fully believe that readers can contest ideas which are ‘cannon’ by authors; that they can criticize, re-imagine, interpret, and believe whatever they want.
But I don’t believe that the authorial intent can be expanded on once the story is over. I love J.K and she has full right to reflect on her writing decisions, (as all authors do at the end of the day), but I don’t like the idea that once an author makes a claim after the book has been published, that every reader has to agree and believe that - because that claim is suddenly part of the narrative. It isn’t. Just like Dumbledore’s ‘supposed’ representation of homosexuality, it fails to be supported because it just felt like something J.K added in to make her seem ‘headline’ news worthy. Obviously a character representing the lgbt*q community’s plot should never just solely rely around that fact, (a character should not solely be written for queer representation, it should be fully fleshed out and complex like every other character) there is just no real evidence in the text to support it all.
And I think that's what's disappointing. If things aren't valid enough, they become really hard to believe.
I don't really think there is a clear cut answer to this debate, I think it's always a personal stance: But I do think my opinion is that if J.K wanted to write Harry and Hermoine, she probably should have,
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