It would be very very easy to bash Ron in any fan fiction, and very very hard write a fan fiction in which he actually deserves the prefect’s badge he gets, or the happy ending of the cannon epilogue. Despite my own positive words about him as he returns to Harry and Hermione in the forest, I think the side comment about confounding the driving examiner shows that Ron still has a ways to go. Thus, I would, if they were real people, worry about his and Hermione’s marriage. Ron has shown solid signs of growth over the latter half of the seventh book, but his anger issues are major red flags, and it is hard to feel confident that he has really matured past the jealousies that have up through the seventh book been a core part of his character.
For all my criticism of Ron, there are places where I feel many authors go too far, one way or the other. On one hand, Ron is good at chess, therefore he is a master strategist who, with just a little extra reading (or maybe even with no extra study at all), is a master of military strategy, small unit tactics, and sometimes even related fields. On the other hand, because Hermione berates him for his study habits, Ron is an ignoramus, a buffoon, and at times a poltroon.
Both of these are over simplified caricatures of Ron’s true character. Ron gets the same seven owls that Harry gets, albeit with lower grades.[^20210618-5] That being said, his grades could not be that much lower. Professor McGonagall does not accept students with “Acceptable” into her N.E.W.T. class,[^20210618-6] and we have no reason to think that Professor Flitwick has a differing policy. This means that Ron’s grades differ from Harry’s by one letter in one class, not counting history, in which Ron might well have done better than Harry.
The problem is that the chess master version of Ron should do better, and the jock version of Ron should not be able to do this much. Military academies teach strategy, analysis of enemy patterns, tactics, and so on. None of these are fields Ron can realistically pick up almost overnight. If he could, then he would be one of those incredibly annoying students, of whom I have run into more than one, who simply do not need to study to effortlessly get top marks. On the other hand, if he is an idiot, no amount of copying Hermione’s homework would allow him to get seven O.W.L.s with at least five Exceeds Expectations with a practical portion for many (all?) of the ones he did (relatively) well in. Sure, Ron does not get top marks, but he is expected to be able to at least pass the advanced N.E.W.T classes.
The other place that fan fiction authors do Ron an injustice is his supposed intolerant attitude towards all things Slytherin. In an admittedly cursory review of the first book to review my own impressions, I can find only one biased remark from Ron on the topic, when he discusses his upcoming sorting with Harry while still on the train. He states that he cannot imagine what would become of him if sorted into Slytherin, but he is hardly happier with the thought of Ravenclaw.[^221213-1]. Other than that, Ron’s comments seem to largely stem from a fairly black and white view of the world and Malfoy’s over the top behaviour.