Was JK Rowling right to admit she was wrong about Ron and Hermione?

When JK Rowling admitted that she regretted pairing Ron and Hermione, Harry Potter fans were furious. Should she have kept her doubts to herself?

• Stephanie Merritt and Alex Clark - The Observer, Saturday 8 February 2014 

The wrong guy for Hermione? Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley in the film version of JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Photograph: Jaap Buitendijk

Stephanie Merritt, Observer critic and the novelist SJ Parris

The problem with books is that they are never finished, at least not from their author's point of view. I don't believe there's a writer – or any other artist – in the world who wouldn't like the opportunity to revisit an old work and improve it, because artists are a) perfectionists and b) exasperatingly self-critical. But with every book there comes a point (as my editor likes gently to remind me) when you have to draw a line, release your white-knuckle grip on the manuscript and let it take its chances in the world. And once it does that, it's no longer exclusively yours – the book and its characters belong in part to the readers.
I don't blame JK Rowling for having second thoughts about pairing up Ron with Hermione at the end of the Harry Potter series (I was never convinced by that relationship), but she should have kept those regrets to herself. The story is written and it feels like a betrayal of her characters to now undermine the decisions she made in writing it.
I can see why fans felt insulted. They've made an emotional investment in those characters and in the storyline as it exists.
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