First Impression of Draco (was:Re: Further Notes on Literary Uses of Magic...)

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 168296

> >>Alla:
> <snip>
> What does JKR do with House Slytherin? The first kid she makes me   
> to meet is Draco Malfoy. I hated him on the spot, hated him, hated 
> him, hated him. Oh, and in case anybody wonders that initially had 
> so very little to do with Harry, it is not even funny. I despised   
> him, I think first and foremost for passing a judgment on the       
> person (Hagrid) he never even met, I despised him for being a      
> snob... <snip>

Betsy Hp:
This is fascinating to me because I had *such* a different first 
impression of Draco.  My first thought was actually, "ah, here's 
Harry's soon to be best friend".

Of course, I was looking at PS/SS as a sort of "school days" genre 
with a magical twist.  And in my experience with that sort of story 
the protagonist almost always hates and despises the person destined 
to become their bosom friend.

So I spent the entirety of PS/SS waiting for the Harry and Draco 
equivalent of fighting a troll in the bathroom.  I thought the dragon 
was going to be it.  (And gosh, it came *so* close.)  And then I 
thought it'd happen in CoS (especially with Draco being Harry's 
representative of the WW in the opening chapters there).  I think it 
was finally OotP that broke me of looking for that "and from then on 
they were inseparable" scene.

But anyway, that expectation encouraged me to look at Draco's 
introduction in a different light.  Sure *Harry* might see him as a 
snob, but since he's going to be Harry's best friend by the end of 
the year, there's obviously something more going on here.  So I saw a 
nervous kid doing his best to get to know this other boy and doing it 
in all the wrong ways and won't they share a chuckle about this on 
graduation day.

I do wonder though, JKR *must* have read "school days" books before.  
I mean, she's British and she's spoofed the genre in other ways in 
her books.  So did she *mean* to get her readers (at least, some of 
them) thinking that way during this scene?  I'd be surprised, I 
think, if she didn't.

Betsy Hp