Re: [HPforGrownups] Draco Unredeemed and the Cabinet That Won't Die (long)

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 159124

Cheryl:
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.

Magpie:
I know JKR's got a bit of a thing about that subject, but I don't think 
Draco's not having a change of heart is necessary to make that point.  If he 
is redeemed, for lack of a better word, he'll have changed due to things far 
more serious than the love of a good woman, and JKR is free to continue to 
warn against him as a potential boyfriend as she does Snape (who may have 
switched sides).  She does like the story of the reformed DE, it seems to 
me.

Ironically, of course, she shows us James as a jerk whom Lily is attracted 
to anyway (you know what we're like, girls!) who later grew up and changed. 
Obviously he was always a very different character than her Death Eaters, 
but still.

Cheryl:
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.

Magpie:
I don't see how the Vanishing Cabinet is so helpful to Draco there.  He 
doesn't need it to get out of Hogwarts himself.  I think the book tries to 
make it plain that the idea is that Draco was breaching the defenses by 
getting DEs in.

Cheryl:
 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.

Magpie:
LV doesn't need to be distracted to allow the lame plans to fail--lame plans 
failing *is* LV's plan.  He wants Draco to try, fail, and get killed for it.

Draco's options don't actually run out after they fail.  He could always try 
something else (still hasn't used that Polynesian native with the blow 
dart!).  He chooses to just focus on the Cabinet (the first plan we saw him 
working on to begin with).

Cheryl:
No, I think they were supposed to distract DD long enough for Draco to 
administer the coupe de grace.

Magpie:
Yes, I think that was definitely the idea.  They have orders that Draco has 
to do it.

Cheryl:
Would Draco have done it?  JKR says not, but I think he would.

Magpie:
If JKR says not, then the answer is not, isn't it?

Cheryl:
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.

Magpie:
But that's pretty much what he was choosing when he started to put his wand 
down--Dumbledore's offer was for protection for Draco as well as his 
parents. (Draco himself was already on Voldemort's hit list.)  Draco's not 
being a killer is central to the story.  That's the one choice he can't make 
no matter how logical it seems to be (he's not Peter Pettigrew, for 
instance, who always makes that choice).  The unknown factor is what he will 
do instead.  In HBP he was frozen and unable to act since he couldn't kill. 
Dumbledore's offer would in a way have allowed him to stay that way, being 
protected and opting out.  That was taken away, so he'll have to choose 
something else.

Cheryl:
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.

Magpie:
I hope not.  HBP ends with Harry thinking that his feelings about the 
character have changed in a small way, and given that the houses need to 
reunite and heal the split I'd think anything that moves Harry towards the 
Slytherin characters is important.  Plus Dumbledore spent pretty much his 
whole last scene talking to the kid.  It's the first time we see Dumbledore 
in philosophical action.  I'd be surprised if JKR just tossed that away. 
(She might find some other way to use it, I suppose, but I'd hope Draco 
would have a significant reaction.)

-m