I respect your opinion. However, as an anthropologist, my argument would be this: What defines the behavior of a "regular" teenager? What defines "regular" to begin with? One must take into account what culture said person was raised in, the kind of family they were raised with, what values they were raised with, the circumstances surrounding one's life, one's thought patterns, one's coping mechanisms, one's system of beliefs. The list can be quite endless, actually. Acting "true to one's age" is quite relative. The discrepancies can be astounding, even if one observes two teenagers of the same age, class, ethnicity, religion, and educational background in the same school! How one acts depends on a multitude of things. It doesn't matter how old one is. Personally, when I was 16/17 this is EXACTLY how I acted and thought. And I hadn't even gone through the traumatic events that Harry and Ginny had just gone through in the course of their young lives. If you would like a justification, then I would say that this is how they coped with the stress of their daily lives. They, like many young people who have had to live through a terrifying, devastating war, have chosen to protect themselves by "growing up" (as some societies in the modern-day western world choose to put it). Their priorities are entirely different than a "regular" (read, "stereotypical") muggle British teenager's priorities. Have that, if you will. Personally, as an author, as an anthropologist, and as a former/current misunderstood American teenager, I have NO definition of "normal" or "regular" or acting "true to one's age". I believe that the "general opinion" that society has of teenagers today merely consists of prejudices and stereotypes. *Shrugs* :) But truth is relative, in my opinion.

Given that, I COMPLETELY respect your opinion, though. This is just how I consciously chose to write my characters. Thank you for the review! :)