Draco and redemption potential (long)

[marinafrants]

No: HPFGUIDX 37897

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "arcleveland" <arclevel at m...> wrote:

> 	However, I don't believe that this quote makes Draco 
> hopeless.  It could make him a teenaged kid who has never had to
come 
> to terms with death and doesn't grasp the hard reality of the 
> situation.  He's glad to see the Dark Lord back because he's
> always been told that the Dark Lord was good, and so far he's 
> never seen anything to make him question that.  

Hi, Manda!  Welcome to the list.  You make a lot of interesting points
here, and I'm not quite ready to deal with them all, but I do want to
address this one.

First of all, I agree that Draco does come across as a kid who doesn't
really understand what death and suffering is really about (which is
one of the reasons why I don't buy the "he's abused" theory).  But if
Cedric Diggory's death hasn't made him start questioning if Voldemort
is really good, then what the heck will it take?  Cedric was not a
Mudblood, and while he may have been a Muggle-lover, we don't see him
conspicuously hanging around with any Muggle-borns the way Ron and
Harry do.  He's a nice, pureblood wizard from an inoffensive house. 
There's no indication that he ever had any problems with Draco.  Now
he's dead just 'cause he happened to be standing next to Harry at the
wrong time -- and Draco doesn't seem to see anything wrong with that. 
Would it have been different if he actually saw Cedric's dead body, or
heard Voldemort coldly saying "Kill the spare?"  I don't know.

That said, I don't think any of Draco's actions to date make him
irredeemable.  Snape, after all, has probably done a lot worse than
make himself obnoxious in a train compartment, and he got a shot at
redemption, so why not Draco?  But it would take loads and loads of
character development, since so far I think he hasn't been shown as
anything more than a shallow bully.

Marina
rusalka at ix.netcom.com