Nineteen years later

[sigurd at eclipse.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 191517

Dear List

Now-- one of the interesting possibilities for a "What If" would be  to consider the personality of Draco Malfoy Nineteen years later. We do not get that, and one cannot really write much on it without couching it in speculation. However such speculation must reserve itself totally to the unwritten and the future. You cannot go back and undo the past. Even God can't do that.

We have a character here, Draco,  who has gone through several "transformative events." Many of which we have enumerated and the greatest of which is of course the collapse of Voldemort and his circle. Even his father, a dyed in the wool adherent may be changed by this, but leave him out for now. We can therefore understand that such a person living through these events may make significant modifications to his outlook. We can be pretty sure that Draco is Human and will therefore possibly affected as other humans do.

We have also copious examples of humans in real life who have gone through tremendous transformative events of the type and magnitude that the defeat of Voldemort entailed, and perhaps the most known to all is the collapse of the Third Reich, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Both of these political entities represented two of the greatest moral evils that ever infested the human race, and there are many examples of people who were intimately involved in it, and active and ardent supporters of it who were completely changed by it. This in no way excuses the events or their participation in it, but the revelation of what they once chose to think of as a God, to be a false God, entailed within their personalities significant changes.  Albert Speer is one for the Third Reich, but there are many others. One for the Soviet Union would be Dimitri Volkoganov.

Dimitri Volkogonav was a KGB General who became head of the Soviet Unions Historical section and the official historian of the regime.  He was at at start a thoroughgoing hard liner and propagandist for the Revolution, but over the years, once he gained access to the archives, slowly began to change his opinion, and in the end became a vigorous anti Stalinist, debunker of even Lenin and a vigorous critic of the system. To go therefore from "true believer" to vehement critic is without doubt a "transformative event."

One could argue that it is POSSIBLE that Draco could have such an epiphany of transformation. That the events of Harry saving his life to the mental anguish of the danger of threats to his parents, himself, and everything he knows- the revelation of the TRUE nature of Voldemortism beyond all this snake and silver fashion statement stuff (so attractive to the juvenile mind) might work in his psyche a transformation. So far I have argued that the leopard does not change his spots, but we are not animals. We can change. Therefore the speculation might be  as to what this would entail in Draco's Mind.

Perhaps the best way to frame this question would be-- "If you were to take the sorting Hat and pop it onto Draco's head  lo these nineteen years later, where would it place him?

My own disposition, which of course is merely my own opinion again informed by my prejudices is that Draco would have changed and might be a borderline Slytherin. That is still himself but gravely aware of how close to the precipice he came. One can hope one learns from ones mistakes. That's Otto the Hufflepuff talking in some ways, not Otto the Zampolit.

However--

It could be argued that such a transformative event might indeed harden the individual  into his former beliefs beyond all rationality. While the horrors of the Third Reich forced some former adherents, once the full truth was known, to reject, repudiate and be repelled by it, to turn into virulent anti-Nazi's it compelled some into the lunacy of Holocaust Denial and a perverse pride and lionization of the horrors. Transformative events do not always involve repentance, but sometimes a hardening of the position beyond all reason.

It is a debatable point, and one we cannot ever answer and might never have answered for us (Unless at some future time Rowling chooses to). For my part, I'll be a little foolish and forgiving and credit Draco with the epiphany.

My reason is entirely keeping with Rowling intent in the book. As we saw with Lucius and Narcissa, absolute intellectual purity is a luxury of the young. We forget often that on that platform at the moment when Rowling masterfully pulls back the curtains of the fog and steam between Harry and Draco in a moment of  high drama, that there are others in that little tableau. There is Ginny and there is Pansy, and there are the Potter and the Malfoy children.

Children are a transformative event of themselves and it is the rare, and cruel parent who is not transformed by them. Once you have a child, once you have another soul as part of you, things are not what they seem and we tend to pull our ideological punches with them around. It grants (in many cases but not all) a perspective the singleton does not have. There is now a loyalty that is more powerful than an ideology, more powerful than a cause, and it is an other of our own self. I think that Draco thus is the subject of TWO transformative events (just as Harry was) and that means that there is every reason to expect that not only is Draco now a shadow of his former self, but something else entirely-- now-- nineteen years later.

There is a moment in the Shakespeare Play Henry VI Part 3 when the Yorkist princes, Edward, Clarence, and Richard stab to death on Tewksbury field  Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. Margaret in horror watching the death of her only child says "Monsters!  You have no sons...." in reproach and proceeds to lament of her murdered child. Yet Margaret Herself in Part II before her child was born, taunts the Father of Edward, Clarence and Richard, with the bloody napkin which Lord Clifford wiped the blood off his sword after he slaughtered Richard Duke of York's youngest son Edmund, Earl of Rutland. In the play there is a moment when she, taunting the captive York says with a malevolent smile and completely cold hideous glee "Where are your sons York, Where's the Lusty Edward, George, and that crookback prodigy Dickie your boy... "Then drawing the bloodied napkin from out of her bodice she says with the malevolence of a she-wolf "Where's your darling Rutland...." and then to dry his tears he throws the bloodied rag in York's face to dry his tears with.

I'm not exactly sure of the exact quotes but that's the gist.

So I am prepared to accept a reformed Draco as a possibility.

But it is not certain.


Otto