Could you expand on why Draco wasn’t the boy who had no choice? Or if you have post a link? Thank you š
I donāt think I have a post specifically for that, so here goes:
Giving him the title of āthe boy who had no choiceāĀ š¢ *sad violin music* stripes him off any agency and responsibility he had from books 1 through 7.
He grew up in an environment that āgroomed himā to think of certain people as inferiors and hold certain values as more important than others, true. He was mostly a teenager during these years, true. Voldemort had ātargettedā him and his family because of Luciusā mistakes, so if Draco had refused to cooperate he would have been killed, true. These are all factors that conditioned his way of thinking and acting. But he did have a choice, every time. He had the choice to not be an asshole to people. He had the choice to not gleefully wish outloud that some people died. He had the choice to not activelly try to get some people kicked out of school or incarcerated.
Even if some of his actions before HBP were petty school rivalry, some of them were also incredibly gross and had the potential to hurt people (remember when he dressed up as Harryās greatest fear while Harry flew many feet above ground hoping that Harry would get so scared heād fall off his broom again? remember all the times he tried to get Hagrid kicked out, even before he was a teacher? remember when he joined an organization to get his schoolmates questioned and expelled?).
And then, yes, of course saying no to Voldemort would have put him and his family in great danger. But at first Draco was proud to be a Death Eater. He nearly got two people killed while trying to get to Dumbledore, and he kept going, and then he let a group of batshit crazy Death Eaters and a werewolf into the school. He had a choice there: he had the choice to be a decent human being and flee, at the very least. Would it have been easy to escape/oppose Voldemort? Of course not. There are many other characters in the books who are in similar positions as Draco and make different choices, though: the Weasleys, Sirius and Regulus, Slughorn, Krum, even Harry, they all have common points with Draco, yet they make different choices and thatās why they are āthe good guysā. Draco doesnāt come around even after seeing one of his friends die and being saved by Harry, Ron and Hermione.
Dracoās story and choices serve a purpose, and it is realistic because not everyone always makes the right choice, especially in his circumstances. I donāt fault people for relating to him (to an extent). But that doesnāt mean that he didnāt have other choices, and claiming so romanticizes him and paints him as a helpless victim who never meant any harmāwhich is bullshit.