Draco's Personality

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 165049

Betsy Hp wrote:
<snip>
> Betsy Hp:
> And this is where I realized I'd pegged this post all wrong. <g>  
> It's the old, "too cowardly to kill a sick and helpless old man" 
> argument, that I've frankly never understood.  What's brave about 
> killing an unarmed opponent?

> I do agree though that Draco wasn't embracing his "innate goodness".  
> I don't think he was accepting or taking anything, rather he was 
> rejecting the "evilness", if you will, of the Death Eater 
> philosophy.  Draco made a choice to *not* be a killer, but I don't 
> think he made an active choice to become something else.  I think he 
> left the Tower in the middle of his crises of faith. <snip>
> 
> 
Carol responds:
I don't think it's a matter of courage or cowardice, exactly. Despite
his own brush with death, which I don't think had an *immediate*
effect in terms of what he was trying to do because he was still
focused on the cabinet, he still thinks, as he rushes up to the tower
and disarms Dumbledore, that killing the old Muggle lover will be
easy. It's only when he's actually faced with murdering a weak,
disarmed, obviously ill and helpless old man that he starts to realize
what Dumbledore states for him later: Killing isn't as easy as the
innocent think it is. He realizes that he doesn't *want* to kill DD.
He may even be *afraid* to do it. That fear isn't cowardice; it's a
natural fear of doing something terribly wrong. At the same time, he's
terrified that he and his parents will be killed if he doesn't do it.

I don't think he made a choice on the tower at all. Lowering the wand
a "fraction" is not an emphatic refusal to do the Death Eater's will.
It's simply a sign that he can't do what they want him to do. If it
were a courageous, deliberate choice, he'd have tried to fight them,
or at least said, "You'll have to kill me because I'm not going to do
this." But, because he doesn't want to kill *or* be killed, and
perhaps because his parents are involved, too, he simply lowers the
wand so slightly that Harry isn't even sure of what he's seeing, and
stands there "more irresolute than ever" until Snape comes.

> Betsy Hp:
> Draco was in a rather overwhelming position though, wouldn't you 
agree?  Kill the most powerful wizard in the world or your family 
gets it.  I'd be a tad weepy myself. <g>  And really, I think the 
tears weren't just fear-based.  I think it must have been very hard to
start realizing that the person you'd always pretended to be is> not
who you really are.  Draco the junior Death Eater is realizing  he's
not really a Death Eater at heart.
> 
Carol:
I've mostly agreed with you up to this point. Draco may not be the
bravest kid at Hogwarts (and I don't think the detention in the
Forbidden Forest was his greatest moment), but he's not the whimpering
coward he's depicted as being in the films. He certainly has
determination, and he's trying to do the job that the Dark Lord gave
him. But he's feeling increasing pressure as the cabinet plan takes
longer and longer, resorting to ill-judged substitutes (necklace and
mead) until Snape puts an end to those "amateurish" tactics and he
returns to his plan. By April, when we first hear about a boy crying
in a bathroom, he's apparently receiving death threats, and by May,
when Harry discovers him (certainly by early June, when he finally
fixes the cabinet), the threats have escalated to cover his parents as
well. He's crying in the bathroom because he's afraid of failing,
afraid of being killed if he fails, but I see no indication that he's
talking about anything other than fixing the cabinet and getting the
DEs into Hogwarts. The part about killing the "stupid old man" hasn't
kicked in yet. He's just trying to do something that seemed easy and
clever when he first proposed it and now it seems to be beyond his
skill, and the price of failure is death. No wonder he's distraught.
But he doesn't yet know what he'll be facing when he actually tries to
kill Dumbledore. He certainly doesn't show any remorse for what
happened to "that Bell girl," and we don't know whether he even knows
what happened to Ron or connects it with himself. When he sees Harry
reflected in a mirror, Harry is still an enemy seeing him at a weak
moment, and his instinct is to fight. He doesn't hesitate to attempt
to use the Death Eater's weapon, Crucio, because in his mind, he's
still a Death Eater, still trying desperately to fill his father's
shoes. He's terrified of Voldemort, but he hasn't rejected him and all
he stands for. And Harry Potter is Voldemort's enemy as well as his.

But, after he finds himself lying in a pool of his own blood thanks to
Sectumsempra, something changes. It's likely that he stops
underestimating Harry though we don't hear about it. It's also likely
that, on a subconscious level, he now understands what death is. On a
conscious level, though, nothing has changed, and he goes back with
renewed determination to his Vanishing Cabinet plan, celebrating with
an excited whoop when he finally succeeds. It's a moment of triumph, a
moment of anticipated glory. He brings in the Death Eaters (Fenrir
Greyback and all) as planned, leads them to the tower entrance as
planned so that Gibbon can send up the Dark Mark and Draco can run up
to the tower, uses his Peruvian Darkness Powder as planned. The Order
showing up provides a bit of a hitch, and Draco arrives on the tower
without his backup, but he immediately disarms Dumbledore. And then,
like Harry faced with killing Sirius Black in the Shrieking Shack, he
finds that killing isn't as easy as he expected. Unlike Harry in PoA,
he knows the Killing Curse, and he raises his wand and points it at
Dumbledore's heart, but without the DEs behind him, he loses his
nerve, and, as Dumbledore talks, the realization that he doesn't
really want to do "the job" kicks in. The talk is comforting; he can
put off doing it as long as they're talking. The "stupid old man"
trusts Snape (doesn't he understand that Snape is just out to "steal
[Draco's] glory"?) and he's offering mercy (doesn't he understand that
Draco is holding the wand and he's the one in a position to offer
mercy?), but he's also offering Draco a chance to talk about what he's
done, a chance to get credit for his cleverness (even though his
listener is going to die any minute, as soon as the DEs arrive and
Draco gets up his nerve). And then the DEs arrive and he still can't
do it. He finds himself revolted by Fenrir Greyback (it's one thing to
use him to threaten Borkin, another to actually be on the tower with
him after he's bitten and perhaps killed somebody with his horrible
teeth). Maybe he remembers his own brush with death. And so, even with
the DEs at his back, ordering him to kill Dumbledore, he can't say the
words. He has not made up his mind to reject the Death Eaters, and
he's still proud of his accomplishments (no one--not Dumbledore, not
Snape, not Voldemort--thought he could get Death Eaters into Hogwarts
and he's done it despite them all), but fixing a cabinet and leading
the DEs to the tower is one thing; killing a sick, probably dying old
man who's been talking to him all this time, understanding and
appreciating what he's done, is quite another, and with every second
that passes, it becames harder.

I don't think that Draco will become a full-fledged Death Eater, but
his moment of choice hasn't come. I think that Snape will continue to
protect him, persuading Voldemort not to torture him because he did,
after all, get the DEs into Hogwarts and make the murder of Dumbledore
possible. Voldemort may even "forgive" Lucius and decide to give him a
third chance. After all, he's short on competent Death Eaters, so
another prison break seems like a necessary means of supplementing his
army. That being the case, Draco will be faced with a choice: become a
Death Eater for real (whether or not he has the Dark Mark now and I
think he does) or turn against Voldemort, not because Draco rejects
the pureblood supremacy ethic but because, as Dumbledore said, he's
not a killer. Draco is ripe for the picking, and I anticipate a tug of
war for his soul between Voldemort and secretly DDM!Snape, who, I
predict, will subvert the pro-Voldemort loyalties of the entire Malfoy
family--offpage, unfortunately. The only question is how.


> Betsy Hp:
> I don't think Draco is going to back-track.  JKR spent too much time
getting Draco to a point where he realized what he *wasn't*, IMO.  So
I doubt Draco will decide he really is a killer after all and that the
Tower scene (and all of HBP for that matter) was some sort of stress
glitch.
> 
> I do think JKR will give us a scene where Draco makes an active 
decision to *become* something else.  I'm not sure it will entail 
becoming a full fledged member of the Order, but I do think it will 
mean working towards the destruction of Voldemort.  And for that
matter, most of the angst of making that sort of decision can occur 
off page.  What will interest Harry is active proof of change which I
think would only take a scene or two to establish.
> 
> But I don't think the driving factor of Draco's personality is fear
or cowardice. 

Carol:
Here, I agree with you. I just think that the realization that he
wasn't a killer came much later than you think it did, right there in
that climactic scene on the tower. Until then, he was torn between
fear and the desire for "glory." His principles, his loyalty to
Voldemort and his belief in his father's values, remained unchanged.
Now that Voldemort has been unmasked as a merciless dictator as ready
to murder his followers as his enemies and Draco himself has learned
"what he isn't," I think that he will come around--not as a champion
of the rights of Muggleborns, much less Muggles or house-elves, but at
least as an enemy of Voldemort, a temporary ally of the people he
believed were his enemies. But I don't think he can do it alone.

Carol, wondering if CrabbenGoyle will go back to Hogwarts with Draco
or follow him into exile