OoP: Abused!Draco, Hermione, Snape

[Jennifer Boggess Ramon]

No: HPFGUIDX 67295

At 7:45 PM +0000 7/3/03, dropaad wrote:
>Can someone point me to the passages that indicate Draco was an
>abused child?

Ch. 4 of CoS gave me that impression, very strongly, the first time I 
read it.  It still does.

This appears to be a matter of interpretation - some readers do not 
get that impression at all from the exact same words.  All the 
"coldly" remarks and the "snapped" add up to a distant and uncaring 
parent, at best, to me.

Besides, Lucius is Evil.  Evil people rarely make good parents.

>I wonder if the abused idea stemmed from the way Lucius Malfoy was
>portrayed in the Chamber of Secrets movie.  The actor had
>deliberately put the abusive, mean father spirit into his acting.

In my case, at least, it's not movie contamination at all; I was 
delighted that TCWMNBN2 played Lucius and Draco's relationship 
precisely as I had always imagined it based on that scene in the 
books.  (Non-canon, but: the actors, in the DVD extras, confirm that 
they're playing the relationship that way.  If JKR intended for 
Draco's home life to be perfectly happy, I imagine she'd have said 
something to someone - so I feel relatively safe in guessing that 
either abused!Draco isn't far from the truth, or his home life 
doesn't matter at all to JKR one way or the other.)

At any rate, fanfic starring abused!Draco was being written well 
before the movie came out, too.  So there must be some justification 
for it in the text - otherwise so many of us wouldn't have picked up 
on it.  Doesn't mean JKR's going to do anything with it, just that 
it's at the very least ambiguous.


At 8:15 PM +0000 7/3/03, kiricat2001 wrote:
>Hermione is 15 going on 45. <snip> What I find a bit off-putting 
>about her is that she seems blessed with very precise insights on 
>lots of people, including adults, that I find a little too 
>precocious for someone of her age.

Actually, that sort of insight isn't that rare in very gifted 
children.  Not that it's common, either, but it isn't unrealistic. 
In particular, having a deep insights into other people with odd 
blind spots (SPEW, anyone?) is not uncommon among gifted kids.

Note that just because she can diagnose these sorts of things in 
other people doesn't mean she will be able to see them in herself - 
or, she might find that she can see them, but not do anything 
(effective) about them!  (Nope, not speaking from experience here, 
no, not at all, oh, look, what's that down the other corridor?)


At 4:09 AM +0000 7/4/03, yue27crane wrote:
>During the occlumency lessons, I found it rather
>interesting to note that, as much as he abuses Harry, he did not
>savor Harry's unpleasant memories more.  Instead of enjoying Harry's
>memories of being abused by others and using them as weapons against
>him, Snape is actually angry that Harry is unable to repel him. 
>Doesn't this appear to be evidence in favor of Snape's character or
>am I seeing things that aren't there?

I think we're seeing something similar to something we saw in GoF. 
Fake!Moody obviously gets a really big thrill out of seeing Harry 
fight off the Imperius curse - so much so that he trains him to do it 
well enough to throw off Voldemort's Imperio.  Obviously, rendering 
the Boy Who Lived effectively immune to one of the Big Three Bad Guy 
Weapons isn't in Voldemort's best interest - so why did Crouch Jr. do 
it?  I think he hated the Imperius curse itself, having suffered 
under it for years, and so seeing anyone defeat it thrilled him to 
the bones.  It was like he was throwing it off again, vicariously.

Similarly, I think Snape isn't enjoying Harry's memories of abuse 
because they're too similar to what happened to him.  Remember, 
Snape's a sadist - he could only take pleasure in those memories of 
Harry's if he could effectively place himself in the position of the 
tormentor in those scenes.  I don't think he can - Harry's position 
is too familiar to him, and the tormentor is almost always a Muggle, 
with whom (if Snape's bloodist epithet in the Pensieve is any 
indication) he is incapable of identifying.  (Narrow, dark-haired, 
clever Snape probably couldn't empathize with found, fair-haired, 
billiard-ball-for-brains Dudley if he tried all week, anyway.)

-- 

  - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon			boggles(at)earthlink.net
"It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the 
act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. "
	- Gauss, in a Letter to Bolyai, 1808.