I donât think I have a post specifically for that, so here goes:
Giving him the title of âthe boy who had no choiceâ đ˘ *sad violin music* stripes him off any agency and responsibility he had from books 1 through 7.
He grew up in an environment that âgroomed himâ 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 âtargettedâ him and his family because of Luciusâ 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 Harryâs greatest fear while Harry flew many feet above ground hoping that Harry would get so scared heâd 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 thatâs why they are âthe good guysâ. Draco doesnât come around even after seeing one of his friends die and being saved by Harry, Ron and Hermione.
Dracoâs story and choices serve a purpose, and it is realistic because not everyone always makes the right choice, especially in his circumstances. I donât fault people for relating to him (to an extent). But that doesnât mean that he didnât have other choices, and claiming so romanticizes him and paints him as a helpless victim who never meant any harmâwhich is bullshit.
Iâm so sick of people saying that malfoy is âthe boy who has no choiceâ bc 1) thatâs a lie freaking did 2) donât you freaking dare tell me that he was not angleing to be a death eater bc he freaking was like re read the end of ottp and donât tell that malfoy didnât willing jump on the idea of being a dear eater bc he freaking would 3) like such a key aspect of the hp series is the fact that you choices matter and that is what tells you who you are so like saying malfoy had no choice is like freaking taking that away bc he freaking had a choice
Sure, he may not have chosen to be raised in a racist family, but he chose to use racial slurs and he chose to stamp on people’s faces and he chose to hurt innocents, and (most importantly) he enjoyed most of that, until his own skin and family were threatened.
yeah, pretty much. likeâ the best comparison to make here is how i feel about malfoy vs. how i feel about bellatrix lestrange, i.e., i love bellatrix lestrange. love seeing her in the text, love her dialogue, sheâs just a joy to read about. and the way sheâs presented in the text isâ if youâll excuse the slurâ sheâs a bitch; the text knows it, the text revels in it. she tortures one of my favorite characters and the one i most identify with (hermione), she uses horrifying language and does horrifying things, sheâs a domestic terrorist who wholeheartedly follows an ideology explicitly based on naziism.
and draco malfoy is also a domestic terrorist who follows an ideology based on naziism. the kid is hitler youth, thereâs not really any way of getting around this. like, okay, he has a really difficult sixth year because his family has put him in a situation where he has to do a terrible murder that he doesnât actually want to do. that sucks, you know. having to be hitler youth sucks. but that doesnât, like⌠make it okay to be hitler youth.
but fans react more or less as if the opposite is true, as if the fact that malfoy feels unhappy makes it okay that he does evil things. as if, even though bellatrix and malfoy both call hermione a mudblood and curse her/her friends because theyâre muggleborns and do their damnedest to get voldemort into power, malfoy feels sad about itâ as if that puts him on a completely different moral plane than bellatrix. and, yâknow, i disagree with that.
and bellatrix dies, and i cheer when bellatrix dies! every time! itâs one of the best moments in the series, itâs a crowning moment of awesome for molly weasley, bellatrix is so unbelievably horrible and deserves it so much, itâs absolutely beautiful.
but i keep feeling like thereâs something i donât get? people who say that malfoy is better, morally, than severus snape? people who think the canon cuts him a raw deal? and iâve never seen anything in draco malfoy other than being a rich middle school bully who becomes hitler youth. (probably because, like. thereâs so much pain and trauma in this series. me, i like that moment when hermione spins to harry and ron and says no, call me a mudblood, i am a mudblood, thatâs what i amâ i mean christ, sheâs carrying so much, sheâs so heartbroken and tired and sheâs got the whole world on her shoulders, and i love hermione so much because of that moment of pain.Â
i love harry so much for smashing dumbledoreâs office after the only person who ever promised to remove him from an abusive household dies. i love neville for that moment when he doesnât want to tell harry & co. that his parents were tortured to death and he has to stand there and listen to his gran tell the whole story, and i love dean and george and cho changâ and i think their pain is more sympathetic and more worthy of attention than malfoyâs, because the kidâs pain generates from having to be hitler youth, andâ forgive meâ iâm a jew. i donât find that pain sympathetic at all.
and i donât find bellatrix sympathetic because of her pain. i donât find bellatrix sympathetic at all, really. i donât think you have to sympathize with a character to like them.
but people do sympathize with draco malfoyâ thatâs that reaction, itâs sympathy. and i think itâs kind of telling that fandom looks at, say, cho chang crying because her boyfriend is dead at the hand of magic nazis, and says âew, gross, whiny,â and looks at draco malfoy crying because heâs magic hitler youth and says âwow, sad, beautiful.â like. i think thereâs a couple things going on there and i think itâs pretty easy to see what they are.)
Thereâs just so much to unpick, I think, when it comes to Draco And Fandom. There was a discussion on my blog not too long ago about Draco Malfoy vs Kylo Ren, and it basically came down to:
Draco is a Kylo whom everyone treats like a Finn, which is bizarre
Well, okay, Draco is at least not a mass murderer
Heâs still a racist though, and he chose to be, and he chose to spend seven-ish books hurling bile and violence at people
Alright maybe you could see him as like an (eventual) defector from a bigoted cult, like, someone who left the Westboro Baptist Church?
Except that when that happened in real life, the defectors apologised for their actions and spent ages trying to make up for it
And Draco never did that, never even apologised. He never did ANY real work, but everyone acts as if he did!
It just baffles me no end. Also it still weirds me out spectacularly how people will condemn other problematic ships (Reylo, Snape/Lily) with one breath and ship Draco/Indian or Black Harry or Hermione in the next. How are you doing that? Thatâs genuine curiosity: how? Heâs a racist! Heâs an actual anti-black racist: he laughs along with Pansy when she makes that crack about Angelicaâs braids âlooking like wormsâ. Whyâs everyone got such a blind spot with him? Is it just because Tom Feltonâs a nice bloke? Whatâs going on?!
(And donât get me started on how horribly Cho Chang was treated by pretty much everyone. Yuck. Iâm still surprised Katie Leung actually bothers to give Harry Potter fandom the time of day.)
About the Hitler Youth thing – yeah, thatâs what gets me. Like, not too long ago, when my family was together and discussing their various histories, I mention my mumâs ancestorâs flight from Russia during my mum casually drops in âAh yes, people hate us Jews!â. Like, I donât even know if I really âgetâ to be considered Jewish – I would assume some belief in God is required at some point and I donât really have that – but my mother was, she went to a Jewish school and learned Hebrew and everything – and I keep wondering, does she say things like that as a joke or because she actually did grow up thinking people hated her for being Jewish? Iâve never dared ask. But if she did, was it because of people like Draco Malfoy?
