Defecting Draco?

[gwen_of_the_oaks]

No: HPFGUIDX 149592

Geoff wrote :
> <Snipping, for brevity's sake, much of an interesting post, which 
ends in comparing Draco on the tower to the biblical figure of Saul 
on the road to Damascus> 

> Taking the line of parallels  between real Christian experience and 
>the event of the Harry Potter books, I would like to 
> see something happen to young Mr.Malfoy and would also be 
interested to know whether 
> there are other candidates who members of the group feel might be 
put forward to be 
> "turned" to the good.
>

Now Gwen:

Thoughtful post, Geoff.  I don't know how many candidates there are 
for redemption, because to be redeemed requires that there first be 
some overt evil act.  The only ones who have really set themselves up 
for redemption in that sense are Pettigrew and Snape. Snape, at least 
according to DD, has repented and sacrificed to redeem his attachment 
to LV.  So either he is already redeemed or he never truly repented.  
If the latter is true, I can't see how a second, "for-real" 
redemption is in the cards for him.  IMHO, to get a second bite at 
the apple seems very unsatisfying.  The better candidate is Pettigrew 
who, because of the breadth and depth of his evil acts, would require 
an ultimate sacrifice to redeem himself.

Draco is redeemable, but it is not in the same way as Pettigrew.  I 
see his case, as you alluded to by comparing him to Saul, as more of 
a conversion than a redemption. There is the same potential for 
conversion in all of the other Death-Eater offspring, because they 
have not consciously chosen evil – they are being towed in the wake 
of their parents' choices. They have not, on page, been forced to 
choose a side. Draco, as we have seen, has been blinded by vengence 
and seduced by power.  But he chose evil without understanding it.  
Since he ultimately failed to perform he has not "sealed the deal" as 
it were, and he could very well recant in book 7. 

After OOTP I had considered Petunia a candidate for a Saul-like 
conversion:

"All of a sudden, for the very first time in his life, Harry fully 
appreciated that Aunt Petunia was his mother's sister.  He could not 
have said why this hit him so very powerfully at this moment...Her 
large, pale eyes ...were wide and fearful. The furious pretense that 
Aunt Petunia had maintained all Harry's life – that there was no 
magic and no world other than the world she inhabited with Uncle 
Vernon – seemed to have fallen away"  OOTP  pg 38 Am. Hardcover.

This life-changing epiphany followed by the disembodied voice coming 
from the howler is very much a parallel to Saul on the road to 
Damascus. After years of persecuting Harry and denying the reality of 
his life and his mother's death, the dementor attack opens her eyes 
to the truth of fighting Voldemort a second time.  She could become 
an invaluable aid to Harry, bringing him closer to his mother's past 
and giving him an insight to her love that he could find nowhere else.

Of course, after this brief surfacing as a character with the 
potential for depth, by HBP she had reverted back to being a one-
dimensional wicked stepmother with a hankering for cleanser.  We'll 
see what book 7 brings.

Gwen