Draco and the RoR was Ginny

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 192106


> Bart:
>      Of course, that also brings up the question: why didn't Draco just 
> ask the room to create a passage that the DE's could use to invade Hogwarts?

Pippin:
I don't think the Room of Hidden Things can work the same way as other iterations of the room. I think it's only good for hiding things. There are far too many plot holes otherwise: why didn't Harry ask for a way to put the fire out, or something to show him where the Diadem was, or another broomstick for Draco.   Draco could have wished for another wand after his was lost. 

 Neville seems to be the only person to discover that the room could provide alternate exits in any case. 

I recalled the canon about that after I made my previous post. But Draco could still have told  the Carrows that the  Room was a known  hideout any time before Neville took refuge in it, and they would have sealed it off, just like all the other secret passages they didn't want students to use.  Draco also knew about the enchanted coins which the DA used to communicate, and  the Carrows don't know about that either.  

You could say, of course, that Draco is only being uncooperative because  he figured the Carrows would benefit, not him.  But that is just a another way to say that they weren't very enlightened rulers, and isn't that the same reason that everyone else opposes them too?

None of this  changes the fact that Draco's steps towards the bad seem so confident and his steps towards the good, if that's what they are, are  so halting and secretive. What we wanted the good Slytherin to do is what bildungsroman characters are supposed to do, if they are successful: achieve their independence in some positive way. Regulus does that, but doesn't survive the experience. Draco, even on the platform, still behaves more like a failed Dark Wizard than a successful something else. 

It's not, I think, that hating Muggles is somehow worse than other kinds of prejudice we see in canon.  But the rationale that the purebloods have invented to support their hatred is crippling, IMO.  The more they choose to believe that birth determines everything, the less room there is to believe that their choices have any  power. And if choices have so little power, then why  struggle with the ones that are difficult? 

So, paradoxically, what keeps Draco from making better choices is not inborn wickedness, but  the power of the choosing not to believe in choice. 

Pippin