Malfoy's Redemption

[cassandraclaire at mail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 25349

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Haggridd" <jkusalavagemd at y...> wrote:
> > Perhaps it was just that lack of foreshadowing in Pettigrew's 
case   that prompted the New Yorker criticism."

No, it was a general, overall complaint. *goes to dig up article.* I 
know it also bemoaned the Sirius Black twist, among others. I'm in 
agreement with Cindy on this one.


  I must disagree with you 
> about foreshadowing in general.  It is just this foreshadowing that 
> makes the better mystery stories work as well as they do, it is 
this 
> foreshadowing that allows the reader to see that, if he or she had 
> been perceptive enough, they would have realized what was really
> meant by the earlier passages, and that the author didn't pull a 
> surprise out of her ear, the old "deus ex machina." "

*Blinks.* We may be arguing at cross-purposes here. I am *pro* 
foreshadowing in general. I do think JKR doesn't always use 
particularly heavy foreshadowing and I don't see the fact of her not 
having telegraphed any future possibility of Draco's redemption as 
ruling it out entirely. I'd rule out pretty entirely an eventual 
Voldemort redemption, sure. But I wouldn't rule out a Wormtail 
redemption, and here's someone who has done much worse things than 
Draco ever has. Maybe I'm just sunnily optimistic, but, like Rita, I 
believe in the improveability of human beings and I simply cannot see 
that even though Draco is a rotten, evil little scumbag right now 
this dooms him to therefore be one forever regardless of even the 
most extreme of circumstances.


 "Draco may yet turn out to be good, but if JKR writes this 
> without having laid a proper foundation, it will be a tired old 
> rabbit-out-of-a-hat-magic-trick, and not the real magic we all know 
> she can write.

Agreed, but she has three more books in which to lay that foundation 
should she so choose. I do not think anyone on this list is arguing 
that Draco is currently a pleasant guy, nor that all he needs is the 
love of a good woman. So far everyone has said that were Draco to be 
redeemed, it wouild require some kind of sea-change in his life: a 
dreadful loss, a terrible betrayal. This, I think, is what we regard 
as a proper foundation.

 And I agree with what Pippin said earlier re: Snape; I can't see a 
Draco redemption as somehow being greater than Snape's redemption. 
Snape was a Death Eater and as Pippin pointed out this doubtless 
required a great deal more in the way of proving oneself to the Dark 
Side than trying to get a hippogriff executed and one's fellow 
students expelled.

Cassandra