and yet... it's still a significantly held opinion.
Rowling said in an interview, which I think was on the promotion tour for book 7, that she'd originally scripted for Ron and Percy to die, and Hermione end up married to Fred, helping the twins advance magic through the shop. But then things happened in her life, and she needed a happier outcome for personal reasons, with everybody being one big happy family.
When we first meet her, Luna laughs hard at his jokes, tells Ron that Padma was upset he didn't dance with her at the Yule Ball and would have been fine with that, and in general shows interest in him.
Because Harry's spent his life abused and is so desperate for a friend that he'll even forgive snape. And because Ron's not that bad most of the time.
5 and 6 he's an ass too. I've seen more people point to his weird ideas on how to treat Hermione across all 7 books than his issues in book 7, which mostly get forgiven due to him wearing The ONE RI *cough* I mean the locket.
A big problem with him, is that a lot of his positive scenes were stolen and given to Hermione and Harry. Like how he would explain things about the magical world being given to Hermine because "she would have read it in a book". They also added negative scenes to him when he was there, but not in focus in the book in an answer to the question of "what is Ron doing?". Like in book 2 when they're going into the forest, he's not very in focus, so in the movie they have him complaining about being scared of spiders instead. It doesn't help the the movie director was a bit of a Hermione fanboy, to Rowling's surprise, since she was so used to fan letters praising Ron.
Tbh I wouldn't be surprised if the students all had malnutrition. Meat and dessert heavy feasts are a nice fantasy, but if you let a tween pick their own food at Hogwarts feasts they're going to have serious health problems once teenage invincibility wears off.
meat heavy isnt a problem from a nutritional standpoint, it's actually a boon according to the last 40 years of research. You could argue red vs white vs fish, but that's a different issue.
I would - the feasts are one meal every ~3 months. That won't have any affect on their overall diet. Also keep in mind that unlike modern teens or tweens their access to sweets outside those feasts would be limited and access to soft drinks non-existent. Instead they drink pumpkin juice (or possibly fruit juices), which are much healthier than modern sodas.
Snipped for space.