Malfoy's Redemption

[Haggridd]

No: HPFGUIDX 25353

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., cassandraclaire at m... wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Haggridd" <jkusalavagemd at y...> wrote:

> 
>   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.

We probably are doing just as you say.  Neither your nor my opinion re 
the prefectability of man-- or of Draco-- is relevant to whether there 
is any indication of a possible redemption yet written by JKR.


>  "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.

Which foundation has not yet been written.  This is precisely my 
point.  We can return to this issue if JKR writes anything of the 
sort.

 
>  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.
 
I am not arguing at all that Snape's redemption would or would not be 
of greater magnitude that that of Draco, should it occur, only that 
JKR has written in such fashion about Snape and I can find no current 
similar writing about Draco.  

We may wish the same end for Draco, Cassandra.  I hope you have better 
luck with predictions than your namesake.

Until Book Seven (I am sure that this will not be resolved until 
then), you and I and all of us happy HP fanatics can only speculate.

Haggridd