Draco

[heidi.h.tandy.c92 at alumni.upenn.edu]

No: HPFGUIDX 18319

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Magda Grantwich <mgrantwich at y...> wrote:
Amber wrote:
> > Can anyone think of *anything*
> > redeemable that Draco has done within the four books? 
> > It seems to me that Draco is
> > emphatically in the Dark Lord camp and quite happy to be there.
> > Anyone have any views on this?
> 
> 
> And the problem with Draco repenting and turning good is that
> SOMEBODY has to be on the Dark Side and if everyone reforms it just
> won't be much fun when the retribution is handed out.

I don't think everyone is going to reform - I think that it's just as 
likely that someone believed to be on the side of good is going to 
become evil!Really....
As Cassie & I have discussed many times, we do not like the idea that 
someone who JKR introduced us to as a ten-or-eleven-year-old child is 
going to do nothing but follow some pre-ordained path to evil. If it 
is our choices that make us what we are, then shouldn't Draco get a 
choice at some point? Or is he just there to be hauled by Lucius 
Malfoy, who is evil, to Voldemort's side, then held down to get the 
Dark Mark, then trapped in the Evil!Universe forever? At a minimum, 
he could at least have a conflict about accepting the evil in him, 
and becoming evil - to be honest, that wouldn't bother me as much as 
it would if there's no demonstration of his making that decision. 
Right now he's spouting the vitriol he's been taught - but he also 
might be warning hermione (at the World Cup) and the rest of the (on 
the train). 
In terms of redeemable things he's done, it's not so much that he's 
done "good" things, but he has done ambiguous things/had ambiguous 
things happen around him, including the two potential warnings and 
the following:
1. He ran screaming from voldemort-drinking-dead-unicorn-blood in 
PS/SS
2. Part-kneazle Crookshanks doesn't react badly to him ever on the 
train rides, even when Scabbers isn't around and he's not distracted 
by that little rat
3. He doesn't hit hermione, or even report her for fighting, even 
though he has no problem tattling in other circumstances
4. Do you really think that in the fight in the begining of 4th year, 
right before he becomes a ferrett, he missed harry by accident? It 
could've been a deliberate attention-catching action, not a missed 
hex (if it had been a missed hex, it should've hit someone else with 
the curse, and we see nothing indicating that it did)
5. The ferrett incident itself, to me, seems to have generated some 
sympathy for him - I mean, reread it knowing who moody is, and all it 
can be is an attack by a death eater on the son of someone who he 
*hates* (probably more than he hates any other death eater because 
Lucius Malfoy kept his power and standing, as Crouch Jr. saw so well 
in the Top Box of the World Cup, where the Malfoys were being feted 
by the Minister himself, while wizards who were associated with 
convicted death eaters, like Crouch, Sr. was, were thrown far off 
track). If there is *one* backstory I would like to ask JKR about, in 
something more substantial than an online chat - it's that - what was 
Draco's 4th year in Fake!Moody's class like? It must've been *hell*