Dark Book - Blood and Cruelty/ Draco

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 177243


> Betsy Hp:
> Draco, say what you like about him, is a doer.  What I object to (and 
> was objecting to) was this idea that Draco was attacking from a power 
> position; that he's a bully.  Draco does not behave like a bully.He 
> continually goes after a boy his age, his build and with bigger goons 
> and more staff support.  

Pippin:
 In fact, much  of the Draco/Harry interaction takes place
in potions class, where Draco has the staff support and bigger goons.
When Harry retaliates it is generally after months or weeks of having
to take it. Not that it makes Harry's violence okay in a real world
sense, but this isn't the real world, it's a place where everyone goes
armed from the age of eleven upwards. Whether you look at that
as wish fulfillment or a thought experiment depends.  At any rate,  
Draco is a person who doesn't seem to be aware of Heinlein's aphorism: 
An armed society is a polite society. 

Draco before Hogwarts would have been surrounded by
people who  deferred to the Malfoys and their
sneering treatment the way Borgin does. Draco doesn't
expect to be called to account for his words. 

Draco is always getting himself into situations where he'll lose
face if he doesn't up the ante, and since, like all the prominent 
Slytherins, he really is not a coward, he'd rather get thumped than 
back down.

He panics only when he's faced by something unprecedented: the
bloodsucking entity in the forest, Hermione's attack in PoA (up to that 
point she's always been the one trying to stop the fighting) or
Harry's seemingly disembodied head. 

Pippin