DRACO'S GODFATHER (CHAPDISC: DH, EPILOGUE)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 185426

Kamion wrote:
<snip>
> A family that had enough status, that claiming kinship could polish
ones' own status is the Selwyn family. A Selwyn works at the Ministry
( and is also a Death Eater), so maybe famous but not rich enough to
live off his galleons like Malfoy. I can easliy imagine filty rich
Lucius Malfoy buying status with a heavy bag of gold for getting a
Selwyn accepting godfatherhood over Draco.
>
Carol responds:

I agree with most of what you wrote (the part I snipped), particularly
that if Snape were Draco's godfather, Narcissa would have used that
fact, along with Snape's being Lucius's friend and Draco's favorite
teacher, to persuade Snape to help Draco. (I do think, though, that
Snape and Draco have a close relationship, with Draco being respectful
toward Snape until he sees him as taking over his father's position as
Voldemort's right-hand man, and Snape favoring him slightly and
feeling some affection for him. Snape calls few people, even students,
by their first names, but he always calls Draco by his. Other than
that, I can think of only four people whom he addresses or refers to
by their first names--Lucius, Narcissa, Bellatrix, and, oddly, Igor
Karkaroff--indicating at least a close acquaintance with those people,
and, arguably, something like affection or friendship for the first two.)

However, I'm not sure where you got the idea that Lucius Malfoy,
himself a pureblood who married Narcissa Black, second daughter of a
proud and well-known pureblood family, would need to pay another
pureblood to be his child's godfather or why one of the Lestranges,
who had not yet tortured the Longbottoms when Draco was born, wouldn't
be suitable for the job. Rodolphus, Bellatrix's husband, was the
child's uncle by marriage, and Rabastan presumably a school friend and
close family connection. The Wizengamot and Barty Crouch Sr. were
concerned with their crime and their guilt, not with their family
connections. All four of the Longbottom torturers were Purebloods from
old families--a Black sister, the Lestrange brothers, and Crouch's own
son. It made no difference. The timing and nature of their crime
outraged the WW, and, in any case, Bellatrix proudly and openly
proclaimed their guilt. Of course, they were sent to Azkaban. Too bad
they didn't stay there.

As for the Selwyns, considering that we never hear of them until DH
and Selwyn himself seems like something of a thug compared with the
more sophisticated Travers in the attack on Mr. Lovegood (my
interpretation, but I can provide the quotes it's based on if
necessary), I don't think we can assume that they were a more or
influential or powerful family than the Malfoys (Narcissa made "a
respectable pureblood marriage" and remained on the Black family
tapestry, remember?). 

All we know is that a Selwyn is a Death Eater, apparently a Ministry
employee in the same department as Travers, and that Umbridge claims
to be related to that family. If her claim is fabricated based on her
wish to legitimize her claim to the necklace that she extorted from
Mundungus, she would, I think, have chosen the Selwyns as a family
connected with Slytherin (the S is shaped like a snake) whose name
starts with S. But her claim could well be true since it could quite
easily be disproved or denied by the Selwyns and because she ended up
with Mad-Eye Moody's magical eye, which indicates that she had DE
connections. (I think she was a half-blood Slytherin like Snape and is
now anxious, as head of the commission to round up and prosecute
Muggle-borns, to cover up her Muggle connections and emphasize the
Pure-blood side. If she weren't known to be at least a half-blood,
Yaxley wouldn't be sitting beside her. He'd have her sitting wandless
in the chained chair, facing interrogation.

BTW, we don't know whether Selwyn worked at the Ministry before the DE
takeover. If he did, rich Lucius, who doesn't have to work because of
his wealth, would probably look down on him as a snobbish English
gentleman in the eighteenth or nineteenth century might look down on a
"tradesman." (Lucius Malfoy's relationship with Severus Snape is
rather like that of a patron and a talented protegee. Severus is
younger, much poorer, and only a half-blood, but if he really knew
more hexes than half the seventh years when he came to Hogwarts,
Prefect Lucius would have quickly taken him under his wing--as Sirius
Black's snide "lapdog" reference suggests.)

Carol, who thinks that the Malfoys' blood was at least as "pure" as
that of the Blacks and the Lestranges (and the previously unknown
Selwyns) or haughty Narcissa would never have married Lucius