Defending Draco was Re: CHAPTER DISCUSSION: COS 14, Cornelius Fudge

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 189201



--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" <dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:
>
 Draco happily and voluntarily went into such service with open eyes and boasted to. His friends about being chosen. Sure you do not have to tell me that he did not realize the extent he was signing up for. Oh wait, he knew he signed up for murder and he attempted to commit murder several times. 

Pippin:
What do we know about Draco's state of mind when he signed up? 

Let's look at the end of OOP. His family had just suffered a huge disgrace. His father had been sent to prison. The  teacher to whom Draco once graciously offered  his father's patronage had been promoted over Lucius's head to sit at Voldemort's right hand. Lastly, Draco had been beaten up, twice in the space of a week or so, by his fellow students: those same helpless little lambs you are so concerned to protect from him. Canon says that after the last attack, he resembled a giant slug stuffed into a Hogwarts uniform -- so, senseless and unrecognizable. 

I don't know how Draco felt, but if I'd been through all that, I think my decision making skills might have suffered a bit. And I have a mature brain, stable hormone levels and several decades of adult experience to draw on. 

Draco didn't have any of that. All he had was a little tidbit of information which he hoped Lord Voldemort might value. Certainly he didn't offer his services as a killer. That would be absurd. He hadn't ever even seen a natural death, much less done murder, while Voldemort already had in his service more killers than he'd ever need. 

But Voldemort rewarded Draco beyond his wildest dreams. As you know, it's all a sham; Voldemort is just using Draco to get back at Lucius and doesn't actually expect him to kill anyone. It's all  manipulation to get Draco to march willingly to his own death. And Draco has no idea at all.

Draco has been hearing, all his life, that Dumbledore's reign is ruinous. I'l bet he's even heard people say things like,  someone should have  "the  guts to act decisively and throw Dumbledore out of school for good." :) And now, Draco will get the chance to prove his worth and restore his family's fortunes. 

Naturally he'd be proud and happy to comply. Not with the noblest motives, to be sure, but no worse than Ron's or Harry's. The Weasley twins exposed their fellow students to accidental poisoning just to get some gold. 

But it really doesn't matter what the reward was supposed to be. Draco couldn't have said no unless he was ready to die on the spot and take the rest of his family with him.  And why would he think that Albus Dumbledore is worth dying for? Even Albus doesn't think Draco ought to die instead of him.

Now I admit that Draco is not a nice person. He's a bully, a bigot and a snob. But those aren't the things that drove him to attempt a murder. He did that because his family was threatened. Canon shows that you don't have to be a particularly evil person to kill under those circumstances--if Mollywobbles can kill to defend her family, then most anyone can. But Draco found it hard to kill, even so. 

He came close. But just as a failed suicide can be the desperate action of a person who does not want to die, Draco's failed murders are  the desperate actions of a person who does not want to kill. I do not think the WW is so full of people who would have a hard time killing even to save themselves that such a life is worthless. 

While Dumbledore knew that Draco had become more dangerous than he had been before, on the absolute scale of how dangerous a Hogwarts student can be and not get thrown out, I don't think Draco was even close to the Weasley twins, much less Sirius and James. Yes, Draco was very dangerous, but not because he'd signed up with  Voldemort. He was dangerous for exactly the same reasons that the other kids were dangerous: they're teenagers, poorly supervised with easy access to lethal materials of all kinds. 

Pippin