[HPforGrownups] Pre-Godric's Hollow: How dark is Dark?/Draco

[Catherine Keegan]

No: HPFGUIDX 31932

At 03:01 PM 12/19/01 +0000, Heather N Moore wrote:
>  *we* don't have much of a clue how dark those days "really" were. 
> Apparently they weren't so dark that the larger society has any clue what 
> was going on in the magical subculture; they're still willing to send 
> their kids to Hogwarts if circumstances work so that they find out about 
> it. They may well have not been as very dark as would turn the stomach of 
> an elitist prat like young Draco Malfoy.
>I mean, there's what normal people like us would consider dark (say 
>antebellum South), and then there's summer-of-sam dark, and then there's 
>me-and-the-droogies-out-for-a-bit-of-ultraviolence dark, and then there's 
>jews-in-the-Secret-Annexe dark. Somehow I'm suspecting that nobody had 
>reached the secret annexe phase as of 1981.

I've been wondering for quite awhile how well Voldemort's rise to power was 
known outside of the UK.  Karkaroff was a DE but was he living in England 
at that time?  Did V recruit from the continent?  I keep turning it over 
and have half convinced myself that it was a very local problem and that 
the rest of the world either didn't know about it, didn't care about it or 
didn't perceive it as a problem that affected them yet.  (Very WW II)

I've been going through the series again (along with everyone else who's 
impatiently waiting for OotP) and I haven't seen anything that makes me 
believe that there were any foreigners involved in helping rid the UK of 
Voldemort and his DEs.  Sounds like a smallish local conflict that the MoM 
was able to deal with all by itself.  It certainly seemed to take them long 
enough to do it, too.

And as for Draco...

If you get a chance to listen to Jim Dale's wonderful readings and try not 
to impose your own views on top of his (which is pretty tough to do at 
times), Draco comes off as a really horrid boy.  Nothing nice about him at 
all.  Not one clue that he's worth redeeming.  The incredible sneer in his 
(Dale's) voice makes you want to take him out back and beat him up.  While 
it would be lovely if all of the kid characters turn out to be little 
angels in disguise, I think it would be rather sad if JKR took the easy way 
out and let the silver lining show.  Kids reflect their upbringing.  Draco 
has been brought up listening to his father and possibly his mother talk 
about the purity of their blood and the eliteness of their kind, how it's 
proper that their kind should run things, blah blah blah...  Give me your 
children until they are five...   At 14 in GoF he sounds like he's bought 
the whole thing.  Why shouldn't he?   He is the product of pure bloods who 
have a ton of money, whose money and status seem to have brought them above 
the law, and whose status and money (hmmm, a recurring theme) have 
bought/brought Draco a position on the House Quidditch team.  I'm rather 
hoping that Draco holds to his rather nasty viewpoint and doesn't become 
yet another cardboard redeemed character once he either falls in love with 
a good woman or sees the error of his ways.  Wouldn't it be rather more 
interesting if he switched sides to further his own causes or Lucius wants 
to save Draco from Azkaban  and has Draco back the "good" side?  I think it 
would be.

More coffee!

Catherine in California


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