(LONG) Canon Draco

[heidi]

No: HPFGUIDX 5857

This was getting very long, so I'll just hit the high points. I need to save
SOMETHING for the FAQ (and the malfoy family discussion which is only about
6 weeks away!)
And I really want to hear what others here have to say - I need some more
good quotes for the FAQ!

Basically, the way I've been looking at it, Draco in the JKR books is the
parallel of Lestat in Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice's first vampire
book). (I've read the first 5 vampire books but not in a few years, so this
parallel I'm drawing is all general impression)
In that book, Lestat is an evil, amoral, bullying, homicidal lunatic who
gets what's coming to him a few times but never gets completely knocked down
by it.
In its sequel, The Vampire Lestat, you learn that Lestat is probably more or
less amoral, can be a not nice companion, and is not someone you want to get
on the bad side of, but in his own way, he loves his friends, is devoted to
his mother, and a lot of the time, wants to do the right thing, but he has
absolutely no idea how to figure out what the right thing is. And even when
he tries, he doesn't necessarily get it right - and when he doesn't try, he
can appear very, very horribly evil.
And he's blond.
Now, I'm not saying that JKR is ever going to go into the depths of Draco's
psyche to explain why he is the way he is, but there's a few things that we
know about him.
1. His father is a homicidal maniac. Maybe not all the time - it seems like
he can hold it together under "normal circumstances" (i.e. he's not
stupifying the whole top box to get at Harry in GoF (hey, can anyone explain
why he didn't even accidentally pour a tankard of boiling somethingorother
on harry by "accident" at the World Cup?)) but he is one of Voldemort's
followers, and if various people hadn't had some lucky escapes, he would've
been the cause of at least one death during Harry's 2nd year, by his
placement of the Diary in Ginny's book.
2. He might be brighter than we assume. Lucius says that Draco should be
"ashamed" that Hermione did better than him in every class (even, it is
implied, potions, which is a surprise), which may imply that he's bright
enough that he should be able to be at or near the top of his class.
3. He may have a girlfriend by GoF (his relationship with Pansy is a little
unclear) but he doesn't have any good friends with brains. He seems to spend
most of his time flanked by Crabbe & Goyle and we know from the dungeon
scene in CoS that even when they're away from the public, they're pretty dim
bulbs (I had wondered in PS/SS whether they were just acting dumb in public
for some reason). Why doesn't he hang out with any other guys who has the
ability to string three multisyllabic words together? There are other boys
his age in Slytherin - well, at least one - blaise zabini. But Draco doesn't
ever show up in the stories in the company of any of them - just his
flunkies.
4. He doesn't talk much when he's around his father, in public. He doesn't
say *one word* in the scene in the Top Box - not to the trio, not to Fudge
when they are introduced. And in CoS, between the time Mr Borgin comes into
his shop and the end of the scene, he has *2* sentences, one of which is
only 4 words, and in the bookstore, doesn't speak at all between the time
his father comes over, and they leave. For some reason, the guy who has a
quip or an insult for every occasion is almost mute when Lucius is around.
And Lucius' comment that his grades aren't better than Hermione's makes him
"abashed and angry". I don't have a great explanation for it, but it just
strikes me as....well, as something.
5. One could read his horribleness regarding Hagrid as a combination of
reactions - (1) Lucius lost his position on the Hogwarts Board the previous
spring; and (2) Draco may've been instructed over the summer to, if an
appropriate situation arose, put Lucius in a position to throw some power
around, so as not to seem weakened by his ouster from the board. So when the
chance arose, he (or Lucius) took advantage of it - can't you just see
Lucius coming to see Draco after he was injured and saying "play this up as
much as you can - we'll get back at Dumbledore (and Hagrid (remember how
Hagrid spoke to him in CoS?)) for what they did to me" becuase Lucius wanted
Hagrid fired, and the execution of Buckbeak was just an ancillary "benefit"
6. The way he panicked when the dementors were on the train. He didn't just
get "freez[ing]" like the weasley twins, or like he'd \never be cheerful
again like Ron. His reaction was closer to Ginny or Neville, and we know
that they've been through some traumatic stuff. What's traumatized Poor
Little Rich Boy Draco?
7. Cassie briefly mentioned the theory some people on the even
more-"adult"-than-this-list (slash lists) are discussing - that in the
forrest at the world cup and at the end of GoF, Draco is trying to warn the
trio - the best evidence in the text I've found for this is that when he
comes to their compartment on the train, his "smirk [is] quivering" - in
other words, he may not be so steady with what he's come there to do, and is
using bravado to cover up for being nervous about warning them to be
careful. He also doesn't know just how careful Harry has been at the end of
hte year, at Sirius' insistence, and he may not know about Harry's
summertime protection (although his father now does, since Voldemort told
the Death Eaters about it) - plus, since he's always flanked by Crabbe &
Goyle, if he every did say anything nice to the trio, or any muggle-born
students, his father would likely hear about it within a day (IMHO, crabbe &
goyle are as much spies on draco as they are bodyguards - if he did anything
which Lucius would consider out of line, the would report it to him (likely
via their fathers) asap)
8. Does Draco have any idea that he was turned into a ferrett by a Death
Eater? By, in fact, the one who Voldemort describes as his most loyal
follower? We can presume that Draco wrote to Lucius about the ferret
incident, and Lucius ordered him not to make a big thing about it because of
Moody's status as an auror. But at that point, based on what Voldemort said
to the Death Eaters, Lucius would've had no idea that "Moody" was really a
Death Eater - but by now, Voldemort or Wormtail very well may've told him.
But Dumbledore never announces to the school that their DaDA teacher was
really not Moody but an imposter - so at the end of the book, it's certainly
presumable that Draco doesn't know yet. But when he gets home & finds out,
will it tip his worldview a little, to know that a Death Eater would hurt
the son of a fellow Voldemortician (I've been waiting for a chance to use
that term!)?
9.In his first scene, Draco acts like an idiot, but only in a way that
someone who has been taught that the world turns in a certain way would act.
By the time he tells Harry what he thinks of muggle-born witches & wizards,
he already knows that Harry's parents were both Magic, and his statement
about the house he wants to be in also sounds like something that's been
programmed into him - plus, Hagrid's statement about Hufflepuff ("load of
duffers") isn't so far different from Draco's (obviously exagerated) comment
that he would leave if he ended up in that house
10. In his second scene, on the train, Draco is trying, in a very inexpert
way, to make an overture of friendship to Harry - in a way that sounds like
he was told to Be Nice To The Potter Boy & See If We Can Get Him On OUr Side
by Lucius - and he offers to shake hands - it's HARRY (also very inexpert at
how to act with possible friends) who rebuffs him, in a way that probably
sounded very rude to the person who was being rebuffed. Only then does Draco
get all mean and (shudder!) SARCASTIC

Finally, in both Cassandra's and Lori's stories, it took a major shock to
the system to make Draco chose not to support the insane, homicidal maniacs
(note: I do not say "became nice" - he's never going to be, and that's
fine). It will probably take something like seeing his father kill someone
in cold blood (or having his father try to kill, or assent to kill, him) -
he may not be able to handle the former, and would never be able to handle
the latter.

Earlier, Michelle wrote:

>   Well I dunno. There has to be a baddie amongst Harry's peers. If
>   he has
>   to fight grownups from now until book 7, it could be a bit boring.
>   And
>   if all the children can be redeemed, would that really be realistic ?
>

I think she's saying a few different things here. Harry is going to keep
battling Draco - they're each other's foils - and the books definitely need
that. And yes, I think it's realistic to say that all children *can* be
redeemed, even the ones who seem evil - but only if someone in their world
is able to make a connection to them and pull them back from Very Bad
Things. At this point, the universe is open for Snape to do that for/to
Draco, but only if Snape is able to reveal (to draco if not to the geenral
public) that he is no longer a death eater - and also reveal why. MHO only -
I don't believe in the "Bad Seed" theories - I do believe in the maxim A
Child Learns What He Lives - and in the HP universe, Draco Malfoy is living
in a world where people who *should* love him do some pretty horrible things
to other children (and, at a minimum, say pretty unplesant things to him
(see # 2 & 4 above)) That's not a healthy atmosphere, even if Lucius isn't
the major child abuser that some fanfics have proposed.

I recognize that this isn't a children's series, but it does make me a
little uncomfortable to think that by Book 7, JKR will have taken someone
who was introduced to us when he was no older than 11, and possibly still
10, and turned him into a evil murderer, because if Draco does become a
Death Eater, that is what he will be.
And I'm just not sure that's right.



Cassandra Claire wrote:

> --- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, heidi <heidi.h.tandy.c92 at a...>
> wrote:
> >
> > From working on my Malfoy FAQ, I've gone back ^ read basically
> every scene from the books that he's in, and there actually is
> support for the idea that JKR could make him into someone who steps
> back from completely becoming a homicidal maniac, which would be what
> he more or less would have to turn into if he goes the Death Eater
> route. I'll flip through it later & try to find some examples to post
> here if anyone is interested...
>
> ---------------------------------------
>
> *waves at Heidi* Color me interested as well. Like I said, I've read
> some of the 're-interpretations' of various Draco scenes from the
> text (the scene in the Forbidden Forest, the scene with the dementors
> on the train in PoA, the scene at the Quidditch world cup where he
> actually seems to be 'warning' the Invincible Trio) over on the
> hpslash and draconian egroups. They've put a lot of work into it and
> wow, darned if it isn't kind of convincing. So, yes post your
> arguments here I want to see how it all stacks up.
> (And Kathleen made a good point. If they make Voldemort t-shirts and
> pens, maybe it wouldn't be so weird to make Malfoy t-shirts and pens.
> I know people who express fondness for his character who have never
> read a stitch of fanfiction in their lives.)
>
> cass
>
>
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