Harry Draco symmetry (was:The DDM or ESE Snape debate Continues!!)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 162406

Betsy Hp:
<snip>
> 
> I'm still not sure that I'd put Draco and Harry on an equal level. 
For so many of the books Draco is just a sort of annoying knat in
Harry's life.  HBP is when he really hits anything close to equal
status.  But I do think it's interesting that after Harry, it's Draco
who seems to suffer the most from Voldemort and his minions.  As far
as the students go, anyway.

Carol responds:
I'd say that Draco starts out ahead of Harry in terms of his
familiarity with the WW but his status soon changes. As soon as he
finds out who Harry is, he approaches him on terms of equality,
offering what passes for his friendship so that Harry can get to know
"the right sort" of people. Quite possibly Draco is under the delusion
that Snape attributes to some of the DEs: Harry must be a powerful
Dark Wizard in the making or he could not have vanquished LV as an
infant. Nevertheless, Draco realizes that Harry is something of an
outsider who doesn't even play Quidditch whereas he, Draco, is a
member of an influential Wizarding family. If Draco can't be as famous
as Harry Potter, he can at least be chief hanger-on and adviser
(rather like his father's role before Voldemort's fall as Draco
probably visualizes it). Harry rejects this offer, recognizing Draco's
values from his treatment of Ron (and forming his unfavorable view of
Slytherin in the process).

Until CoS, as you say, Harry views Draco as a real threat, perhaps a
Voldemort in the making, and both he and Ron suspect Draco as being
the Heir of Slytherin. After their discovery that he knows little more
than they do about it (though he supports the Heir's goal of ridding
the school of "Mudbloods"), he becomes less of a threat--just a bigot
who bullies with words rather than actions and always has two large,
silent bodyguards who crack their knuckles threateningly but only
occasionally take action. (IIRC, it's Ron and Neville(!) who initiate
the fight at the Quidditch match in SS/PS.)

>From that point onward, Draco operates differently, still knowing more
than Harry in certain respects ("I'd want revenge if I were you"
suggests that he knows that Sirius Black is Harry's godfather) but
using his father's influence to try to get Hagrid fired and Buckbeak
executed or making "Potter Stinks" badges or writing song lyrics to
make fun of Ron's lack of confidence at Quidditch. The ferret
incident, humiliating and painful as it is for him, has no effect on
his methods or personality that I can see. Nor, as far as I can see,
does the return of Voldemort--except to make him cockier: he's now
sure that he's on the winning side and HRH are doomed as,
respectively, the Boy who Lived, a blood traitor, and a "Mudblood."
Draco's methods demonstrate some ingenuity and some skill at Charms
(the badges and, late, the coins to communicate with Rosmerta), some
skill at psychological manipulation (though he also resorts to simple
bullying on occasion), and a penchant for eavesdropping not unlike
Harry's. But once Harry begins to see him not as a threat in himself
but as a Death Eater's son who uses his father's influence to make
trouble, who has been slapped by Hermione and bounced around by
Fake!Moody, only worth fighting when he insults someone's mother (a
tactic Harry doesn't hesitate to use himself in retaliation). 

Draco, it seems to me, is chiefly motivated by a growing envy of
Harry's status as a celebrity and Dumbledore's favorite, combined with
spite because Harry prefers the company of "Mudbloods" and the (in his
view) poverty-stricken "blood traitor" Weasleys to rich purebloods
like himself. He has his followers, not only Crabbe and Goyle but
Pansy Parkinson and her gang of girls and occasionally other
Slytherins. In GoF he's even able to influence non-Slytherins to
resent Harry for upstaging Cedric Diggory. And in OoP, he gets a taste
of power, first as a prefect and then as a member of the Inquisitorial
Squad, but still he's not Harry's equal in his own mind or
Harry's--just, as you say, an annoying gnat whom Harry has learned to
dismiss (but still hates enough to attack physically when he starts
insulting people's mothers). As an aside, I wonder if Harry's respect
for Draco, or at least, his view of him as a threat, would have
increased if Draco resorted to James-style tactics, hexing anyone who
annoyed him. Oddly, Draco's talents (and he assuredly has them) seem
to be more intellectual (Potions and poetry and Occlumency among
them--hmmm. Who does that remind me of?), but he's probably no slouch
at duelling if he hasn't just been caught crying in a bathroom. (He
cast Serpensortia in his second year and certainly can use
Expelliarmus. He's probably better at nonverbal spells than Harry,
too, since he can do rudimentary Occlumency, though by HBP he's not on
much better terms with Snape than Harry is and may not be taking his
lessons to heart.

It's only after Harry and Dumbledore (and Snape, though Draco doesn't
know it) have through their combined efforts sent Draco's father to
Azkaban that Draco becomes seriously interested in revenge, as we see
at the end of OoP. Harry at that point sneeringly dismisses him, and
it seems that Ron and Hermione share this view. They continue to
dismiss him as a minor troublemaker throughout HBP. (It's unclear
whether their view of him changes after the Sectumsempra/attempted
Crucio incident or even Dumbledore's death. Harry's focus is on Snape,
so he and his friends don't talk about Draco.) But Harry's view of him
changes in HBP. For the first time since CoS, he's a serious threat in
Harry's view, and this time he's right. 

Paradoxically, Draco's view of Harry also changes. He's no longer
eaten up with envy. He catches Harry spying on him, Petrifies him,
breaks his nose, and stomps on his hand. So much for Potter. Draco now
has bigger fish to fry. He has a mission: a cabinet to fix, DEs to
bring into Hogwarts, and a murder to commit that will earn him eternal
glory and the lasting gratitude of the Dark Lord. Of course, Draco's
attitude alters drastically as, for the first time, he finds himself
and his family in real danger and again on the tower when he finds
that murdering an old man isn't quite as easy, or glorious, as he thought.

I'm not sure that Draco's character arc parallels Harry's. In fact,
it's not so much an arc as a decline, gradual at first and the steep
and swift, followed by a plateau, a moment of decision that has yet to
 be made. Will he, having become more fully human in his new awareness
of fear and pain and death, rise and become a reluctant ally of HRH
against Voldemort, or will he sink into the depths of ignominy and
cruelty by following the Wizard who would have killed him and his
family? Or will he simply be killed off, having served his purpose in
Harry's story? Each seems as unlikely as the others at this point, at
least to me.

Carol, who is not presenting any kind of hypothesis but just exploring
her thoughts in this post