Scrimgeour/WerewolfBites/Legilimency/DDsecrecy/DarkMagic/Umbridge/Prefect/etc

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 179775

> a_svirn:
> It may be long past, but don't see the possibility for friendship. 
> There is nothing in Draco to command respect: he's not wicked, but 
> he's not good either. He's a weakling with good survival 
instincts. 
> His mother has ten times his guts. And we are told in the epilogue 
> that his son is his carbon copy, just as Al is Harry's. I really 
> can't see them becoming mates.

Magpie:
You know, I kept thinking about this post for some reason, and I 
realized it was because there was one qualification I would make for 
it. On the subject of Draco's mother having 10 times his guts, I 
think it's because his mother that she does. Whatever anyone thinks 
about how women are portrayed in general, despite most of the 
characters making things happen being men, being a mother is rather 
a superpower in itself. I think that relationship rather than the 
character of the woman is at work here. JKR has said that the series 
is a "litany of bad fathers" because she thinks evil flourish where 
people didn't get "good fathering," but mothers are awesome--the two 
relationships don't really seem to compare. 

In the book The Alienist a character talks about something 
called "the fallacy" (I think that's what he calls it) which refers 
to something that a person considers such a basic truth that they 
assume it's universal. In these books JKR seems to display similar 
ideas about mothers. I couldn't say whether or not she has this 
feeling in real life, but there is a pretty strong pattern in canon 
when it comes to mothers. 

Both Neville's parents were brave, and its his father that he hears 
about growing up, but it's Alice who performs the relatively 
superhuman feat of rousing herself out of her catatonia to give 
Neville something. (His grandmother is of course a mother herself 
and still fighting for her son via his own son.) Mr. Crouch may have 
screwed Barty up and caused a lot of misery, but his mother dies for 
her son in an incredibly brave way. It's no surprise that Molly, not 
Arthur, rises up to "surprise" us in the way she violently takes out 
a top DE because she's putting her daughter in danger. 

Even bad mothers show their power in the kinds of exceptions they 
are to the rule. Orion Black is a non-entity--its Mrs. Black's 
insane anger in the wake up Sirius' abandonment of the family that 
matters. Mother love gone wrong is a force of nature. Tom Riddle's 
mother, of course, had to be taken out completely. He could kill his 
own father, but his mother? No, she gets the rather bizarre judgment 
of having failed somehow by dying of natural causes and despair, and 
this total lack of mother love makes him unique. Hagrid's mother 
also abandoned him--the explanation stemming from her not being 
human. (And of course Hagrid spends the rest of his life acting out 
that lack with his animals.)

Meanwhile, of course, the whole basis for the series is the careful 
distinction JKR makes between James' sacrifice and Lily's. James 
does the best a father can do. He fights people when they attack the 
house. But Lily's protection of her child goes beyond that. She just 
has to stand there and say "No" and choose to die rather than her 
child and Voldemort's AK is nothing by comparison.

Iow, I don't know if Narcissa Malfoy's character is supposed to be 
that impressive. Had we known her in the MWPP era she might have 
been nothing more than a snooty, colder, prettier Pansy Parkinson. 
She gets her 10 times more guts from her weakling son.

-m (who totally agrees that there is no reason whatsoever that AS 
would be mates with Scorpius Malfoy)