Draco is Evil and Lame

[antoshachekhonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 124823


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "northsouth17" <northsouth17 at y...> wrote:
> 
> > Antosha:
> <snip>
> > Imagine a black student at a newly integrated high school in the 
> > sixties being threatened by three sons of prominent KKK members
> > swinging chains and baseball bats. Are the threatened student and
> > his friends wrong to treat the attackers with a certain level of 
> > emphasis and force? In this case (and in the previous year's train 
> > attack), I think the response is justified.
> > <snip>
> 
> Now that's very serious, but that's not the way Draco and Co's attack 
> on Harry is described. Objectively, we could view it this way, but 
> Harry, and after him the text, aren't objective. This event is so 
> insignificant to Harry that it dosen't even warrant a description, 
> it's just mentioned in passing, and D&C&G don't seem dangerous at any 
> time during it, they're silly and pathetic. Maybe, objectively, they 
> deserved it, but the way it's written makes me, as a reader, think 
> they didn't, since Harry didn't feel threatened by them at all. The 
> way Harry treats it, it's not so much the local KKK thugs with bats 
> getting hexed into pulp, as their 8 year old brothers with water 
> pistols. 
> 
> Northsouth

Well, they're silly and pathetic because all we see of them is the messy aftermath.

But the words JKR uses to describe their approach to Harry on his way back from the WC 
are "ambush" and "attack." Draco, at the very least, is a capable wizard, one we know to 
have been exposed to Dark Arts, above and beyond the training that the rest of the 
Hogwarts kids get. So I have a hard time dismissing him and his cohorts as an non-
credible threat.

It seems to me that you can't claim moral outrage at the DA kids' actions at the same time 
as you apologize for Malfoy and his gang.

The previous year--immediately after Harry has just witnessed Cedric's murder--Draco 
accosts Harry and his friends in their compartment, telling them that as Mudbloods and 
Muggle-Lovers (his actual words) they'll "be next." That is a death threat, no two ways 
about it. Mind, he's threatening Harry with pain and death all of the time, so perhaps it is 
unwise to take him seriously after a while; if I were Harry, though, I'd have a hard time 
discounting the constant threats entirely. Draco has attempted attacks on Harry 
before--once the curse hit Hermione instead and the other time, Moody!Crouch turned 
him into a ferret for pulling his wand on Harry while his back was turned. He's shown a 
propensity for racist rhetoric and violence, his father (and those of his cronies) have very 
recently attempted to KILL Harry... So I'm not sure that I see why the "ambush" should be 
viewed as anything less than a serious attack. When I first read it, I understood it as such, 
and figured that JKR was simply placing more emphasis on the fact that Harry's friends 
were there to watch his back. And that the DA students are more advanced than their 
classmates when it comes to combat skills. Which we knew.

Now, the previous year (I've just reread it--GoF, Ch. 37 "The Beginning") shows a slightly 
extreme reaction by Harry, Hermione and the Weasleys. All Draco was doing was spewing 
his standard brand of hatred and vitriol. The trio, Fred and George all explode... with 
curses that cause boils and rubbery legs. No stunners, no Unforgivables. That the 
cumulative effect is rather stronger than what was originally intended is cause for some 
rather macabre humor. They would have been better off turning the other cheek, clearly. 
But again, I think it is a bit much to condemn the Gryffindors overmuch. How many 
fourteen, fifteen or sixteen year olds could be provoked to such an extent and NOT react?

Hogwarts shows more in common with Elizabethan Eton than it does with the modern-day 
equivalent. All of the students are armed and have demonstrated a willingness to use 
those arms from time to time. That Harry's friends and erstwhile Defense students took 
the sight of three known enemies approaching Harry--presumably from behind, since it is 
described as an ambush--with raised wands as a serious attack strikes me as reasonable.

Antosha