You're gonna be bothered by how cool I am.

But she does mention H/Hr. She specifically says that anyone who ships it after HBP needs "to go back and reread." Yes, I know that many of your shipmates claim this is simply a call to keep examining the H/Hr clues, but ... can you not see how desperate that sounds? Let me put it this way, if she had said those things about R/Hr, I would seriously reexamine my past interpretations, and I am just not the kind of person who could believe that she was saying that as an encouragement to me.

And no, she hasn't flat out said "Harry and Hermione will never be together." But the whole point of my post was that she doesn't feel she has to. She doesn't want to hold people's hands and give absolute answers when it comes to this stuff, because it's boring and people just don't talk about romance in that kind of banal "X-loves-Y" way - unless they're being ironic or parodying something. It's just no FUN that way.

I understand how people might feel that it's also not fun to be on the losing end of JKR's "wink"s and "nudge"s. To that I can only say that, while it's regrettable, that's just life. That's what happens when you let yourself get attached to something that's in someone else's hands to bring about. If you put your own desires for the outcome ahead of getting to the bottom of what the author is actually doing, you're taking a great risk in having your heart broken.