Nineteen years later

[sigurd at eclipse.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 191544

Dear Steve

Actually I hope that you are not dissappointed in that now that we have cleared out what you mean by mythology, I can agree in large part on your hypothesis. That is, that it is a plausable MIGHT BE.

I don't need to go through most of your points because I can largely accept most of them as said, or with trifling caveats. I do wish to go to your last.

Steve:
In all honesty, I think once Draco became a Death Eater and was tasked with killing Dumbledore, Draco became a broken man, all the cords that held him to his mythology snapped, and from that point on we was simply at the mercy of the tides of fate.

Otto:
I find this point rather dramatic and shocking, but in a strange way compelling. The concept of "Draco as a Broken Man" at this point is intriguing and I will readily admit entirely plausible. Indeed, one MUST see Draco as always human, which his family are as well, and therefore in no way insulated to the mental and philosophical disorientations any human has. I also found the picture Rowling gives us of the Malfoys sitting alone huddled to each other in the "hall of their captors" as compelling and sympathetic as well. Certainly I would agree all scales (no pun intended) should have fallen from all their eyes when Voldemort threatens reprisals against their family (Death to any of them for failure).

It is sad that Rowling clips off the story so soon after the Victory at Hogwards. But then there would not be tantalizing speculation.

OK, I buy your point on Draco and to an extent all of Slytherin, simply because we have so many examples from real life of these sorts of transformative moments.

Hmmm... Draco as a figure of pathos?! Odd, surprising, but it can work.

There is one final caveat. No one can live without myth. Here we are speaking more of my "basic assumpitions" as opposed to your "myth." If a person has his "myth" or "basic assumptions" crushed. He will devise a new one. What this is and will be is anyone's guess and it can be anything. We all know people who have given up the life of a corporate raider to join a monastary or become a hermit etc.

I do however think that one big transformative event in a persons life is having children and it would be interesting to see Draco after that.

Of course-- you realize you have hypothesized into Draco that most un Voldemortian thing-- a conscience.

Otto