Draco Malfoy as Evil Child

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 124730

I've been following the debates about Draco on here, and it strikes me that, frankly, if JKR was intending him as a portrait of an evil child, he looks very lame indeed compared to some of the real masterpiece characters in this genre.  Next to Rhoda Penmark, the (anti!)heroine of _The Bad Seed,_ Rynn Jacobs of _The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane,_ or Henry Evans, the character Macaulay Culkin played in _The Good Son,_ Draco looks pretty pathetic and not at all menacing.  He's more of the "nasty rich kid who bullies others" than anything else.

I rather imagine that if Rhoda Penmark (one of the earliest "truly evil child" characters) were at Hogwarts, she'd regard Draco and his antics with contempt.  In the book (which I am following, being quite familiar with it, although I have also read the stage play), Rhoda made a point, at least around most adults, of being a perfectly angelic little girl, extremely polite, demure and well-mannered.  And most adults were fooled by her act.  Other children could sense something wrong, but not the extent of how wrong Rhoda was down deep.  At the end of _GoF,_ Rhoda would have been first on her feet (at the Hufflepuff table; she's described as not being a natural-born brain, but getting good grades through sheer tenacity and application, so I think she'd sort Hufflepuff) to toast Harry Potter, all the while thinking through her next five moves with icy clarity.  When Mrs. Norris was Petrified, Rhoda would have been all sympathy and concern for poor Mr. Filch, and kept her thoughts about things firmly to herself.  Nobody, and I mean _nobody,_ would be getting confidences from her.  She was all about control---every minute of every day.  

As a matter of fact, I wonder whether Tom Riddle, in his time at Hogwarts, wasn't a lot more like Rhoda Penmark than Draco Malfoy.  I'd bet that nobody grieved more (on the surface) at Moaning Myrtle's death than Tom did (he was older, of course, than Rhoda; one of Rhoda's few mistakes was not acting grieved at the death of one of her victims).   If Young Tom Riddle were to show up at Privet Drive, I could easily see him winding Petunia and Vernon Dursley right around his finger.  He says it himself---"I've always been able to charm the people I need."  

--Eric Oppen, list-iconoclast, envisioning the movie version of Rhoda Penmark cooing "What'll you give me for a basket of kisses?" to Lucius Malfoy, to lure him into range of the poisoned _gom jabbar_ needle she's got hidden in her robes.  

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