Draco Unredeemed and the Cabinet That Won’t Die (long)

[Cheryl]

No: HPFGUIDX 159117

I've been reading the Draco/Vanishing Cabinet posts all afternoon and 
I'm glad to see Draco finally getting some controversy.  He was such 
a cardboard bully in the first five books that it was nice to see him 
growing some character.  My question is this:  Will Draco be redeemed 
in the final book?  I hope so, because I am a hopeless romantic that 
always seeks to find the good in people.  I also hope not, because I 
am a Gemini, which means that the realist in me tends to stomp the 
hopeless romantic flat whenever she becomes annoying.

Based on JKR's many comments on the subject of bad boys and the fact 
that she has daughters that she firmly hopes do not grow up to 
be "stupid girls" I fear that Draco will be a lost cause.  In real 
life, stupid girls are ever attracted to the bad boys, the selfish, 
the cruel, the bitter, the unrepentant, because they believe they 
can "fix" them.  They believe the pure, unselfish power of their love 
will heal the scars of the bad boy and make them anew.  In real life, 
this never happens.  They only grow more selfish, more cruel, more 
bitter, and they suck the life out of the one that is trying to fix 
them.  This either destroys the stupid girl's self esteem until she 
the soulless shell of her former self, or she wakes up and finally 
realizes she is wasting her time on someone that will never change 
and wisely flees to find herself a nice, stable Harry or Ron to 
settle down with.  Only in fiction do the bad boys ever change.  So I 
ask:  Will JKR redeem Draco, or is Draco doomed?

And on the subject of Draco's mission, I never saw anyone with my 
particular take on it, which is that the Vanishing Cabinet was never 
intended to bring anyone into Hogwarts.

I never had much of a problem with LV recruiting Draco to kill LV, 
after all, who better to infiltrate Hogwarts than someone who is 
already there?  The "plant a teacher" scheme didn't work out too 
well.  Draco was cock-of-the-walk at the beginning of the book.  He 
was a junior DE, he had a secret mission – he was running with the 
big dogs.  Then reality set in.  He was supposed to kill the one man 
that even LV was afraid of.  How was he supposed to do that?  And how 
was he supposed to GET OUT of Hogwarts once he had accomplished the 
mission?  He'd be dead meat if anyone saw him do it.  Thus, the 
vanishing cabinet scheme was born.  I don't think it was initially 
intended to bring anyone into Hogwarts.  I think it was supposed to 
get Draco OUT.  Draco then cooks up the wine scheme and the necklace 
scheme because, one, he won't be getting his hands dirty with any 
actual murdering, and two, he won't need to flee unless someone 
manages to trace the scheme back to Draco, and three, he's never been 
shown to be extraordinarily clever.  LV is obviously distracted with 
something else at the time because he allows these lame plans to be 
tried.  When both fail, Draco runs out of options.  His plans have 
failed, LV threatens him, he's upset, and he has no choice but to 
confront DD openly and then try to get out of Hogwarts alive.  Then, 
he astonishingly manages to fix the cabinet and LV steps in to help 
him, seeing how The Plan might now actually have a chance of 
working.  The DEs could not possibly have expected a weak, mostly-
dead Dumbledore to return to Hogwarts.  They were expecting a fully 
functional, probably enraged, super-powered wizard to return to 
Hogwarts.  I think they were supposed to take on DD as a group the 
instant he returned, as a distraction.  Does anyone actually think 
that group of misfits could take on Dumbledore and win?  They barely 
succeeded against a couple of Order members and some kids!  No, I 
think they were supposed to distract DD long enough for Draco to 
administer the coupe de grace.  "I'll help you, Professor!"  Blam 
blam blam!  Avada Kedavra, mission accomplished.  That was The Plan.  
But the alarm was raised and instead of fighting DD, they were 
fighting before DD even returned.  Draco amazingly still got his 
chance to kill DD, except that he discovered killing someone with 
poison when you were conveniently out of the room was a far different 
thing from looking them in the eye when you smashed the life out of 
them.  Would Draco have done it?  JKR says not, but I think he 
would.  What choice did he have?  Kill DD and live up to the rhetoric 
you've been spouting your entire life, or throw your lot in with the 
other side?  He would have handed over Lucius's life to LV, probably 
killed his mother from the shock of it, and placed himself on the LV 
Hit List right next to his arch-nemesis, Harry Potter.  I think not.

Now Draco is on the run with Snape and the DEs, and I fear he'll have 
a minimal part in the next book and will be forever unredeemed 
because that's just the way it is for boys like him, even in fiction 
sometimes.

Nicky Joe, Draco Hater/Draco Lover