Draco. And yet more about Draco. Canon vs. fanon.

[Cassandra Claire]

No: HPFGUIDX 8514


Heidi: "1. Is Draco sexy?" 
Caius: "No" 
Simon: I have to agree here! Now if we were to ask if Ginny (in a 
certain picture findable on the PoU group) or Fleur are sexy then 
quite clearly the answer would be yes!"

Can I just say that Dr. Simon Branford is going to suffer for that? 
<g> For the record, (as everyone stares in shock)  I don't find Draco 
Malfoy sexy either. In the books. Canon Draco and fanon Draco are two 
entirely different creatures. Frankly, I don't find one single 
canonical character sexy, although I have some fond feelings for 
Sirius, and even the question "Do you think any of the HP characters 
are sexy?" would have reduced me to hysterical laughter eight months 
ago (my pre-fanfic/HP4GU/PoU days.) They're children! How can Draco 
be sexy? He's fourteen! I'm quite sure he's shorter than me.

Fanon Draco is quite a different matter. It's only in fanfiction that 
he's "pretty", that his nastiness is softened to wittiness, and that 
his bad attitude becomes endearing. But he certainly is popular. 
There are Draco egroups, Draco websites, and ff.net is groaning under 
the enormous weight of new Draco fanfictions that get uploaded every 
day. He is also the most frequently slashed character in fandom. 
Sometimes I think the slash group ought to change its name 
to "There's Just Something About Malfoy." The basis for all this 
might seem unclear, but I can't help thinking there must be * some * 
basis, or this huge fan base wouldn't exist.  And last time I was in 
the Warner Bros. Store I overheard a little girl asking her 
mother "Why there aren't any Draco toys?" Take that, Warner Bros.

Heidi:. Is Draco redeemable? 

Angela: Potentially. I do think he's a spoiled bigoted child - but 
there could be a cataclysmic event in the next books that may cause 
him to mature. 

Agreeing with Angela here. Maybe my hope that Draco will redeem 
himself in some way comes from my fondness for the character of 
Edmund in the Narnia Chronicles. It took the death of Aslan to help 
redeem Edmund; maybe an equally cataclysmic shock to the system could 
redeem Draco. In a lot of ways, their characters are similar. Draco 
is also still a child. That makes him salvageable in a way that, for 
instance, Lucius isn't. His personality isn't set in stone yet.


There's also the example of Snape. Now, I detest Snape with a 
passion. Horrible nasty man, but then he isn't *evil*. I have no 
problem whatsoever picturing him as being just like Draco as a child –
stuck-up, nasty, bigoted, and he shares Draco's talent of being able 
to spot his opponent's weak places and hit them where it hurts. Come 
right down to it, though, and Snape had his epiphany – prompted by 
what, we don't know – and turned away from Voldemort. That doesn't 
make him nice, and IMHO it doesn't excuse his verbally abusive 
behavior towards Harry, Hermione or poor Neville. But it does give 
Snape layers of complexity that save him from being a flat, evil 
character. I can't help wondering if she'll let Draco stay a flat, 
evil character now that she's shown that nice guys aren't always 
good, and the nasty guys aren't always bad.

Heidi asked me yesterday if I could think of anything to put for 
Draco under "positive characteristics." I couldn't, barring that he's 
smart and plays decent Quidditch. But I will say that there are Draco 
scenes in canon that I find could be read in a variety of ways – I 
think the scene at the Quidditch World Cup, where he almost seems to 
be warning Harry and Ron and Hermione about the Death Eaters, has 
been discussed here already; ditto the scene with the dementors on 
the train. And I will say that the "bouncing ferret" bit firmly 
engaged my sympathies towards him. I don't care how ratty he is, no 
child should be subjected to something like that, especially not at 
the hands of an authority figure like a teacher. Even Hermione, no 
big Draco fan, objected, "It's a good thing Mcgonagall stopped it 
when she did...he could really have hurt Malfoy." 

Neil: "I wonder if we can get through this without mention of leather 
trousers?"

Simon:  I think we failed by you mentioning them (and especially by 
me then replying!). I get back from a few weeks away and in fan 
fiction land there are mentions of males walking around in boxer 
shorts (and less) and Draco having a sponge bath. Will people just 
face up to the possibility that he is a scumbag? 

But it's much more fun to imagine that he isn't. <g> And I quite 
liked Alicia's boxer shorts story. Why shouldn't there be 
a "sansvetements!" spell? In my own defense I discovered while 
searching the Draco egroup messages to see if anyone there had come 
up with a positive characteristic for Draco, that I didn't invent the 
Draco in leather thing. It appears to have been a fixation for quite 
some time. Whole threads are taken up with what kind of leather 
trousers they would be – cut, color, fit, the works. <g> Apparently I 
am not as weird as I once thought.

Cassie