Dark Magic (+ a little Marietta)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 176821

 Hermione.  It's a pretty mean way to treat a child.
> 
> Renee:
> In fact, Marietta is older than Hermione, being in the year above 
her.
> That means she was sixteen at the start of OotP and could very well
> have turned seventeen before the incident took place (it was some 
time
> after Christmas). Hardly a child, in terms of the Wizarding World. 
And
> even if she was a child at the time - well, she gets a very much
> better treatment than Pettigrew.  
> 
> And scarred for life? JKR says she had a few scars left at the 
end. I
> know several people in RL with visible acne scars. They don't look
> particularly bad and lead perfectly normal lives. Some people seem 
to
> be suggesting that Marietta was doomed to live unhappily ever 
after,
> which IMO is really overdone. (She doesn't even have to cope with a
> bad conscience, as she was obliviated.) I think the scars she was 
left
> with are no big deal.

Magpie:
Just a factual point, but that probably makes her a few months older 
than Hermione at most. Hermione is also be 16 in OotP.

As for acne scars being no big deal, well, that's nice of you to 
decide for someone else, but I think it is a big deal when they're 
given to you by somebody else in a situation set up by the other 
person's flaws as much as your own. JKR doesn't even inflict regular 
acne on her good guys, so I hardly think the kind that scars and 
requires lots of covering up is not a big deal in her universe (or 
in any other). Whether acne scars are livable and whether it's okay 
to give someone facial scars are two different things. And I don't 
think her not having to live with remorse is any plus for her--for 
all you know any remorse she might have had would be completely 
dried up by that OTT punishment.

prep0sterous:
Buckbeak is an innocent animal. Draco deliberately
ignored the rules, and did so by acting in a way that would have been
horrible and inappropriate even if he WASN'T warned. Then he lied, to
cause the death of a creature, and he had no reason other than his 
own amusement. He had no reason to expect anything bad to happen to 
him because of Buckbeak. Buckbeak isn't a griffindor. Buckbeak is 
just another clear example of how horrible Draco is.

Magpie:
Even while basically disagreeing with this view of Draco's actions 
with Buckbeak, I unfortunately do agree this is how it's supposed to 
come across and agree with your general point of his being the 
author's whipping boy. He's set up for pleasure in his nastiness all 
around--we get to cheer when he gets attacked by Buckbeak (who is 
not a Gryffindor so Draco has no reason to pre-emptively fear him, 
but certainly does act the part of the Gryffindor in this scene by 
simply smacking Draco down because of an insulting remark just as 
Hermione, Fred, George, Ron and Harry do). Then we get to boo and 
hiss as he rejoices in the idea of Hagrid's pet being punished--he 
never behaves in a way that lets us sympathize with his desire for 
revenge against Buckbeak the way we are encouraged to sympathize 
with the Gryffindor's desire for revenge against...anybody. And then 
more stuff is added and not challenged, like the idea that 
he's "deliberately" not following the rules--for what reason, I 
don't know--and that he's bearing false witness even though there 
doesn't seem to be any reason for him to do so. The only lying we 
actually see him doing is playing up the paing of his injury after 
it's cared for. Not to mention that Buckbeak is an "innocent animal" 
even though Buckbeak was actually a sentient being who simply 
slashed somebody because they insulted him. It's a clever bait and 
switch, that, the way he can be both.

It's set up all around to make Draco mostly a hate object. It takes 
a classic situation of kids' lit--trying to protect a beloved animal 
from being put down--and carefully removes all the usual elements of 
injustice by making the first attack a Draco-smackdown in itself. 
Because it's Draco, because he's so awful, there's never any reason 
to look at anything else going on, and any other possible mistakes 
are obscured by his.

Then there's Draco's odd storyline, for me, in the last two books, 
where he's put through hell and "grows up a lot" according to the 
author, only to be more of a child than ever in the last book who, 
no matter how many times we're shown he recognizes his previous 
thoughts about Voldemort were wrong and he's being punished for 
them, still can't take any definitively good actions *at all.* The 
best he can do to help himself is not actually identify the Trio 
when they're in front of him (he doesn't even lie and say it isn't 
them). Yet he somehow can still wander into the RoR at the end when 
he's needed for the plot, on a mission to do the very thing we were 
shown earlier he didn't want to do--did he just stay behind to hide 
and when Crabbe and Goyle saw the Trio in front of them he went 
along? Who knows? The main point is there's only so much Draco can 
change from his essential repulsiveness. (And I think he's like all 
Slytherins in this. We can squint and hope for more in them, but 
it's not played out for us dramatically.)

This is important, imo, because Draco is *the* student of Harry's 
generation that we know. He starts out with completely wrong-headed 
views, gets punished for them over and over, yet even when the 
punishment reaches the point where he couldn't possibly not get that 
supporting Voldemort is wrong (because he's living in the very 
nightmare he's dreamed about), he can't actually change. He's not 
Edmund of Narnia who becomes a more thoughtful man than Peter for 
having been the traitor (granted he also doesn't have anybody 
lending a hand to help him, but he probably doesn't deserve it and 
it wouldn't help anyway). He pretty much remains a bad guy, just not 
bad enough to require death. (The best we can say about him seems to 
be that he really doesn't like cruelty and violence, though even 
that might not be too good of a thing, I don't know.) He's actually 
capable of real perseverance and even some courage at times, but 
sometimes it seems like that's only because it's needed for the 
plot, and that the author didn't even intend it to be seen as such.

-m