sistermagpie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sistermagpie) wrote2005-12-03 12:04 pm
sistermagpie) wrote2005-12-03 12:04 pm
A Better Slytherin
I was reading something on a list today about Slytherins being evil, perhaps specifically due to the fact that their house was based on Pure bloodlines (something that's changed to "ambition and cunning" by Harry's first year, though was possibly pretty unremarkable an idea thousands of years ago-Durmstrang doesn't even accept Muggleborns iirc). Anyway, there was the comment, "Unless of course one considers Draco to be a good Slytherin, which I most definitely don't." Somewhere else there was another essay on Slughorn being the "true" Slytherin--what they were before Voldemort, and so what they should be. I've written about the idea of Slughorn as "The Good Slytherin" before, and this is sort of the next step from that. Because I was thinking that while at this point I wouldn't say Draco was a Good Slytherin (meaning the Slytherin who is a good person), I did think he had potential in ways that Slughorn really did not.
If the sickness in Slytherin stems from the blood purity issue, it seems that the way to show it would be to show its destructiveness (which I think JKR tries to do with the Blacks, for instance). And in order to show a Slytherin without this idea...well, you could do the fanfic thing of just creating a Slytherin who doesn't have it but is still tight with the Slytherins, but as I've said in the past that seems like a cheat to me after the way it's been set up, because it sticks a non-Slyth decoy into the house so that Harry can collect a green and silver tie for his army without having to deal with the house as its been defined. There's nothing to stop the author from doing it that way, but it doesn't really show how Slytherin can change. It's more hoping for a purge of Slytherin rather than a new Slytherin--and that's uncomfortably close to, well, some ideas on the other side. It's also what Harry would want, so it's too easy.
So here's why I think Draco has more potential than even a better person like Slughorn. (And remember I said potential, so this isn't an argument that Draco's already redeemed in the fandom sense, nor a love letter to Tom Felton) I take Harry's note that Slughorn seemed "a little too surprised" about Lily's blood given her talent very seriously. I think Slughorn buys into the Pureblood ideals he was probably raised with. JKR doesn't really go into the history of this sort of thing, but she often, imo, falls back on hints that the WW's history mirrors our own. So its society in the 1950s possibly had more obvious distinctions based on blood. It was simply more acceptable to be openly discriminatory in conversation etc. I seem to recall that Slughorn's club in Tom Riddle's years were mostly boys, reflecting the same shift towards co-ed things that I think of in our world. It was just part of that whole stereotype for there to be boys there. I wouldn't be surprised if they were all from old Pureblood families as well.
Someone described Slughorn as trying to get away from that mindset, but I don't he's trying all that hard. It's more like he's just going with the flow, imo, softening and stretching his ideas over the years. Yes, he has non Purebloods in his group, but that doesn't mean he doesn't see a difference between them and the Purebloods. One can, for instance, be a completely racist owner of a team and still pay top dollar for non-white athletes. That's what keeps Slughorn from being that hopeful, to me. He's older and he's made his way. He fawns over Lily and seeks out Harry's Muggleborn friend Hermione, but I think that's more his changing with the times than any inner drive to be fair. He's made allowances and rationalizations. He's polite and welcoming, with these uglier possibilities just peeking out at odd moments. I think he'd be just as happy with all Purebloods. It's certainly better than nothing, but it suggests, to me at least, someone who clung to those beliefs enough to stretch them with the times rather than abandon them.
Obviously Draco hasn't abandoned these same ideas at all--far from it. Perhaps he never will and the idea that he would even consider it has never entered JKR's mind. But based on what's in canon now, she's laid the groundwork for a change here. I don't mean that he's been changing already or anything like that. What I mean is, look at his character, especially in contrast to some of the older people. Draco is not the polite bigot. By being more open and simple, Draco's bigotry is easier to see and address. He's not Lucius who uses the term "Muggleborn" to describe the person Draco should be ashamed of being bested by in an exam and speaks wistfully of changing times and laws while being a DE. Nor is he Slughorn trying to sound forward-thinking to Harry because his mother and best friend are Muggleborns while surely also smiling benignly at any Mudblood jokes Blaise Zabini might tell.
No, Draco's pretty black and white about this: filthy Mudbloods, purge the world of them, mind the smell, don't slime up my hand. It's a lot uglier, but it's also kind of betting it all there, like there's a lot riding on this. And while Draco has certainly never shown any sign of doubting or letting up, I have really started to see more of an arc between him and Hermione than I did before. It used to be everyone always just concentrated on his "warning" Hermione at the QWC, which I didn't think he was doing--and still don't. But I am beginning to see something potentially set up in his dealings with Hermione, and it's pretty simple. He wants to hate her, but he keeps having to face this disconnect between what she's supposed to be and what she is.
CoS is the first book where they have something to do with each other personally, starting before school. Lucius makes a crack about Draco's grades being at the "thief and plunderer" level. (I'm confident after HBP that we are meant to see Draco as basically a good student--not a genius, but up there in the class.) Draco brings up "that Hermione Granger" as a teacher's favorite, using her as a defense for himself. Lucius coolly says he'd have thought Draco would be "ashamed" that a "Muggleborn girl beat him in every exam." This makes Draco abashed and angry. So there's the gauntlet laid down, ironically by Lucius himself. In trying to shame Draco into living up to his blood, he's laid out the basic fallacy of his belief system. If Purebloods are so much better at Magic and superior, why is Hermione top of the class? Will Draco see that the Pureblood Supremacy idea has been falsified and reject it? Or will he try to force the world to conform to those ideas?
He'll try to force the world to conform. When Hermione humiliates him in front of the team, he calls her a Mudblood, trying to insist she is nothing and can never be, no matter how she does in school, because of her blood. This, unsurprisingly, is the book that introduces the whole "cleansing of the race" idea, and Draco wants Hermione to be the first to go. That would certainly show who was superior. If he can't beat her on exams, this shows that it doesn't matter. Draco's totally on board with the program, wishing he could help the heir--be Robin to Voldemort's Batman. Hermione, meanwhile, is cooking Polyjuice to get into the Slytherin Common Room, having also identified Draco as the face of Voldemort's beliefs at her school (though she, the Muggleborn, doesn't gain access to Slytherin herself, interestingly). Draco also brings up Myrtle, though at that point no one knows that's who he's talking about, when he says the last time the Chamber was opened, a Mudblood died.
For the next few books Draco is still supporting Voldemort, though we don't get too many scenes of Draco specifically angry at Hermione. (There is the slap, which never gets connected to blood issues.) We do get the Death Eater scene at the QWC where he draws the connection between Hermione and the Muggles--he sees her connected to them in ways Harry and Ron don't. GoF also has my favorite new wrinkle to their relationship. On re-reading I have become rather convinced that the Potter Stinks badges, which flash "Potter Really Stinks" when they're tampered with, were made by Draco with the assumption that Hermione would try to turn them against him, and booby-trapped with that in mind. It's not something I can prove in canon at all-Draco doesn't say he made them or had them made--I don't think it's a big stretch either. What I like about it is that it does suggest that same competitiveness on Draco's part. Like he'll say he's better than Hermione loud and clear, but he would like to actually prove it, perhaps to himself more than anyone else.
Draco's mostly waiting in the wings in OotP, being set up for his own number in HBP. In that book Hermione makes it into the Slug Club--but Draco seems to have been inducted into his own Inner Circle as well. Obviously there you've got Draco actually doing what he wanted to in CoS, helping the Heir kill someone, and there he is linked with Myrtle, another Muggleborn. Draco may not know about her bloodline, but he probably didn't ask either. The main thing in HBP is that in Draco's final dialogue with Dumbledore, a scene I assume should be important given that it's the thing JKR wastes much of Dumbledore's last breath on, Draco reveals he's been getting ideas from Hermione --the coins and the Potions both. He refers to her as "that Mudblood Granger" and Dumbledore tells him not to use that word. Draco chides him for caring about language when he's about to die and Dumbledore (who is about to die, but knows it won't be by Draco's hand) says that yes, that still matters.
Now, do I see this as some big turnaround for Draco? No, HBP just gets Draco to the moment where he's potentially going to make some choices, stop following a script. But there is enough of a foundation laid (not much needed, really) for him to have to choose one way or the other--Pureblood ideology or not--in a way that slippery Slughorn or even Lucius maybe never had to choose. At this point that kind of choice seems like what Slytherin as a house would have to symbolically go through. It's not just somebody showing up without those bad qualities to be a Harry supporter, and it's not getting rid of it only through death, jail or exile (the last two suggesting they will return ASAP).
This would possibly finally ask the unasked question of the whole thing: how does one come to see this line of thinking is wrong? Did Snape go through the same thing? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Regulus didn't either. It could sort of be the thing that's failed in the past, that side-switching concentrated on the symptom instead of the problem. Sirius says lots of people agreed with Voldemort's ideas but changed their mind when they saw what he was willing to do to achieve power--iow, they liked the Pureblood superiority idea, but didn't like Voldemort. Turning from Voldemort is the temporary, superficial solution. A far more hopeful future would depend, imo, on the idea that someone who actually believed in these ideals could come to no longer believe in them.
This isn't a prediction for anything in canon--no idea which way it will go. But whether or not JKR chooses to use it, I think she has created one character to play this out on. It would be a good reason for creating Draco the way he is, as opposed to making him a slicker, cooler Slytherin villain. That Draco could put on a face of thinking Muggleborns were equal while still believing them inferior underneath the surface and so keeping a little bit of Voldemort alive.
If the sickness in Slytherin stems from the blood purity issue, it seems that the way to show it would be to show its destructiveness (which I think JKR tries to do with the Blacks, for instance). And in order to show a Slytherin without this idea...well, you could do the fanfic thing of just creating a Slytherin who doesn't have it but is still tight with the Slytherins, but as I've said in the past that seems like a cheat to me after the way it's been set up, because it sticks a non-Slyth decoy into the house so that Harry can collect a green and silver tie for his army without having to deal with the house as its been defined. There's nothing to stop the author from doing it that way, but it doesn't really show how Slytherin can change. It's more hoping for a purge of Slytherin rather than a new Slytherin--and that's uncomfortably close to, well, some ideas on the other side. It's also what Harry would want, so it's too easy.
So here's why I think Draco has more potential than even a better person like Slughorn. (And remember I said potential, so this isn't an argument that Draco's already redeemed in the fandom sense, nor a love letter to Tom Felton) I take Harry's note that Slughorn seemed "a little too surprised" about Lily's blood given her talent very seriously. I think Slughorn buys into the Pureblood ideals he was probably raised with. JKR doesn't really go into the history of this sort of thing, but she often, imo, falls back on hints that the WW's history mirrors our own. So its society in the 1950s possibly had more obvious distinctions based on blood. It was simply more acceptable to be openly discriminatory in conversation etc. I seem to recall that Slughorn's club in Tom Riddle's years were mostly boys, reflecting the same shift towards co-ed things that I think of in our world. It was just part of that whole stereotype for there to be boys there. I wouldn't be surprised if they were all from old Pureblood families as well.
Someone described Slughorn as trying to get away from that mindset, but I don't he's trying all that hard. It's more like he's just going with the flow, imo, softening and stretching his ideas over the years. Yes, he has non Purebloods in his group, but that doesn't mean he doesn't see a difference between them and the Purebloods. One can, for instance, be a completely racist owner of a team and still pay top dollar for non-white athletes. That's what keeps Slughorn from being that hopeful, to me. He's older and he's made his way. He fawns over Lily and seeks out Harry's Muggleborn friend Hermione, but I think that's more his changing with the times than any inner drive to be fair. He's made allowances and rationalizations. He's polite and welcoming, with these uglier possibilities just peeking out at odd moments. I think he'd be just as happy with all Purebloods. It's certainly better than nothing, but it suggests, to me at least, someone who clung to those beliefs enough to stretch them with the times rather than abandon them.
Obviously Draco hasn't abandoned these same ideas at all--far from it. Perhaps he never will and the idea that he would even consider it has never entered JKR's mind. But based on what's in canon now, she's laid the groundwork for a change here. I don't mean that he's been changing already or anything like that. What I mean is, look at his character, especially in contrast to some of the older people. Draco is not the polite bigot. By being more open and simple, Draco's bigotry is easier to see and address. He's not Lucius who uses the term "Muggleborn" to describe the person Draco should be ashamed of being bested by in an exam and speaks wistfully of changing times and laws while being a DE. Nor is he Slughorn trying to sound forward-thinking to Harry because his mother and best friend are Muggleborns while surely also smiling benignly at any Mudblood jokes Blaise Zabini might tell.
No, Draco's pretty black and white about this: filthy Mudbloods, purge the world of them, mind the smell, don't slime up my hand. It's a lot uglier, but it's also kind of betting it all there, like there's a lot riding on this. And while Draco has certainly never shown any sign of doubting or letting up, I have really started to see more of an arc between him and Hermione than I did before. It used to be everyone always just concentrated on his "warning" Hermione at the QWC, which I didn't think he was doing--and still don't. But I am beginning to see something potentially set up in his dealings with Hermione, and it's pretty simple. He wants to hate her, but he keeps having to face this disconnect between what she's supposed to be and what she is.
CoS is the first book where they have something to do with each other personally, starting before school. Lucius makes a crack about Draco's grades being at the "thief and plunderer" level. (I'm confident after HBP that we are meant to see Draco as basically a good student--not a genius, but up there in the class.) Draco brings up "that Hermione Granger" as a teacher's favorite, using her as a defense for himself. Lucius coolly says he'd have thought Draco would be "ashamed" that a "Muggleborn girl beat him in every exam." This makes Draco abashed and angry. So there's the gauntlet laid down, ironically by Lucius himself. In trying to shame Draco into living up to his blood, he's laid out the basic fallacy of his belief system. If Purebloods are so much better at Magic and superior, why is Hermione top of the class? Will Draco see that the Pureblood Supremacy idea has been falsified and reject it? Or will he try to force the world to conform to those ideas?
He'll try to force the world to conform. When Hermione humiliates him in front of the team, he calls her a Mudblood, trying to insist she is nothing and can never be, no matter how she does in school, because of her blood. This, unsurprisingly, is the book that introduces the whole "cleansing of the race" idea, and Draco wants Hermione to be the first to go. That would certainly show who was superior. If he can't beat her on exams, this shows that it doesn't matter. Draco's totally on board with the program, wishing he could help the heir--be Robin to Voldemort's Batman. Hermione, meanwhile, is cooking Polyjuice to get into the Slytherin Common Room, having also identified Draco as the face of Voldemort's beliefs at her school (though she, the Muggleborn, doesn't gain access to Slytherin herself, interestingly). Draco also brings up Myrtle, though at that point no one knows that's who he's talking about, when he says the last time the Chamber was opened, a Mudblood died.
For the next few books Draco is still supporting Voldemort, though we don't get too many scenes of Draco specifically angry at Hermione. (There is the slap, which never gets connected to blood issues.) We do get the Death Eater scene at the QWC where he draws the connection between Hermione and the Muggles--he sees her connected to them in ways Harry and Ron don't. GoF also has my favorite new wrinkle to their relationship. On re-reading I have become rather convinced that the Potter Stinks badges, which flash "Potter Really Stinks" when they're tampered with, were made by Draco with the assumption that Hermione would try to turn them against him, and booby-trapped with that in mind. It's not something I can prove in canon at all-Draco doesn't say he made them or had them made--I don't think it's a big stretch either. What I like about it is that it does suggest that same competitiveness on Draco's part. Like he'll say he's better than Hermione loud and clear, but he would like to actually prove it, perhaps to himself more than anyone else.
Draco's mostly waiting in the wings in OotP, being set up for his own number in HBP. In that book Hermione makes it into the Slug Club--but Draco seems to have been inducted into his own Inner Circle as well. Obviously there you've got Draco actually doing what he wanted to in CoS, helping the Heir kill someone, and there he is linked with Myrtle, another Muggleborn. Draco may not know about her bloodline, but he probably didn't ask either. The main thing in HBP is that in Draco's final dialogue with Dumbledore, a scene I assume should be important given that it's the thing JKR wastes much of Dumbledore's last breath on, Draco reveals he's been getting ideas from Hermione --the coins and the Potions both. He refers to her as "that Mudblood Granger" and Dumbledore tells him not to use that word. Draco chides him for caring about language when he's about to die and Dumbledore (who is about to die, but knows it won't be by Draco's hand) says that yes, that still matters.
Now, do I see this as some big turnaround for Draco? No, HBP just gets Draco to the moment where he's potentially going to make some choices, stop following a script. But there is enough of a foundation laid (not much needed, really) for him to have to choose one way or the other--Pureblood ideology or not--in a way that slippery Slughorn or even Lucius maybe never had to choose. At this point that kind of choice seems like what Slytherin as a house would have to symbolically go through. It's not just somebody showing up without those bad qualities to be a Harry supporter, and it's not getting rid of it only through death, jail or exile (the last two suggesting they will return ASAP).
This would possibly finally ask the unasked question of the whole thing: how does one come to see this line of thinking is wrong? Did Snape go through the same thing? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Regulus didn't either. It could sort of be the thing that's failed in the past, that side-switching concentrated on the symptom instead of the problem. Sirius says lots of people agreed with Voldemort's ideas but changed their mind when they saw what he was willing to do to achieve power--iow, they liked the Pureblood superiority idea, but didn't like Voldemort. Turning from Voldemort is the temporary, superficial solution. A far more hopeful future would depend, imo, on the idea that someone who actually believed in these ideals could come to no longer believe in them.
This isn't a prediction for anything in canon--no idea which way it will go. But whether or not JKR chooses to use it, I think she has created one character to play this out on. It would be a good reason for creating Draco the way he is, as opposed to making him a slicker, cooler Slytherin villain. That Draco could put on a face of thinking Muggleborns were equal while still believing them inferior underneath the surface and so keeping a little bit of Voldemort alive.
no subject
The one time we hear Lucius actually speaking with Draco, he tells Draco to pretend to be nice to Harry Potter for the sake of maintaining an image. And Draco just goes around and does the exact opposite every year following. It got to the point where Lucius probably realized that it would be stupid for his son to suddenly go from hating Potter the most to being his friend, so he probably just gave up.
To me that sort of points out a difference betweent them--which granted could have something to do with age. I love that Draco sort of says what Lucius doesn't say, but really means. He doesn't see any reason to hide his feelings about right and wrong because they are right and wrong. Hating Harry is important to him, so he can't really lie about it. That's why I have a hard time picturing Draco growing up to be Lucius, somebody who can just purely act on what makes things better for him.
I mean, not that he doesn't keep his feelings in control in HBP, but that's more because he's more directed there. Everything he's doing is in service of the things he knows are good. He doesn't waste time picking on Harry, but he doesn't have to pretend to like him, that we know for sure. Even if he's Tonks he's not saying that *he* likes Harry, he's just having to pretend for Tonks' sake.
But of course, like I said, this isn't a prediction. It could go any number of ways. I just love watching Draco have to actually deal with and think through the way he feels about this stuff, dredge up any feelings he's repressing and all that. Mwahahaha!
no subject
I dunno ... it's like, I don't even think that he ever really hated mudbloods for being mudbloods. The only ones we see him picking on are ones who actually did do something to him (Hermione said her bought his way onto the team, Creevey called him jealous of Harry) and until then we never really see him making fun of any other mudblood.
First off, I don't really think that he has to go through this huge turnaround. He gets what the word mudblood means, he gets the denotation of it, but the connotation is just lost on him, sort of.
Which is why I think he's just going to learn to keep his mouth shut and not go screaming the word mudblood everywhere he goes. Because really, that's sort of just the extent that he takes it to, that and docking points from Hermione because she's one (although he was just using the mudblood bit as an excuse to take off the points. It wasn't even the reason he did it.)
I don't think he'll ever actually pretend to like people, you're right about that and how he's different from his father in that way. If he hates a mudblood he'll say it outright. But he's never really hated a mudblood for being a mudblood, and the ones we see him lashing out at are Creevey and Hermione, both of whom we never hear him say a word against until they piped up at him. Like, actually using the word mudblood always seemed to me to be something he just fell back on because there was no other word he could think of that was worse, and to use it as an excuse - Hermione's a bitch because she's a mudblood, Creevey doesn't know jack shit and only called him jealous because he's a mudblood.
I don't really get what I'm saying at this point (I lost like a million brain cells over the month, who knows how) but I guess it's that his prejusism was all verbal. He'd just scream out the word mudblood in the middle of class no matter who's listening, and that's that. But in his head I don't think he was prejudist at all, because like I said he's just using the word as an excuse. Which is why I think he'll just pretty much learn to shut the hell up.
(I miss my brain cells.)
no subject
no subject
In HBP I don't so much see him as changing his beliefs as seeing the truth. All the ugly alleyways in the golden city of his world, with homeless people begging for money and scary looking people trying to sell him secret wares. The core of his beliefs and values, to me, is family first, family always first before anything and everything. That's a belief that he has and I think has always had. But the Voldemort thing, it was more just an idealistic fantasy, a fairy-tale he'd fall asleep to and dream about. You can love the idea of knights in shining armour and flying unicorns, but it's not really a belief, and I think that with Draco is was along the same lines.
I don't even think he was raised to believe that. The war was over, and from what I see, Lucius didn't want his son to have anything at all to do with Voldemort. So I think that Draco just sort of picked up the romantic view of it all on his own. Lucius didn't want his son to know the truth about how ugly it all was, but he couldn't actually lie and say he had nothing to do with it, so he sugared it up, and the price of that was that Draco saw it as a grand story. But I don't think that he encouraged his son to believe in it, that he preached it to him, or anything like that. Draco just sort of adopted that romantic story of good and evil and right and wrong.
And mudbloods just sort of figured into that fantasy world with Voldemort at the center of it all. He's like that guy and lady who are singing the spiderman song for money in the movies. He goes off screaming mudblood to show his support of Voldemort and the Death Eaters and his love of the whole situation, but he's never actually seen Voldemort or anything, and saying mudblood is like giving off the Hitler's salute, or singing a national anthem, or quoting the family motto. It's just a tribute he's paying to Voldemort and what Voldemort stood for. But it never really had any meaning to him, any significance, I don't think. It was all just sort of an afterthought for him. He's not learning to see mudbloods as great people or even just regular humans as oppose to filthy slime - he's had no connection with any at all in HBP (he has quite a few ties with half-bloods, of course, but not mudbloods).
I've said before that for all of Draco's vocal prejudism, no teacher has ever thought about actually forbidding him to say the word, or docking points when he does so, or basically just telling him not to do it. So he just kept right on doing it. Dumbledore saying not to use the word mudblood around him, I don't see that as something that's going to change his views on how he sees mudbloods. All I see it doing is teaching him to show them a little more courtesy. I think that, take away all the times Draco has vocally said the word mudblood, nobody would ever have guessed he's be prejudiced but for the first time we see him at Madam Malkin's. Because all he ever does to show his prejudism is to say mudblood.
no subject
I agree, but it seems impossible to separate these things. Draco has been raised with a different version of how Harry defeated Voldemort, and has been pro-purging of Mudbloods openly since book 2. Lucius has taught him that, and that is what Voldemort stands for. I agree that the point of HBP is Draco seeing the truth of these things, but the truth of Voldemort is all about this idea.
Now, I do agree if what you mean is that it's hard to imagine Draco having a big personality overhaul--I doubt that would happen. But to me it's just hard to have a story where he's having to look at things truthfully and yet this doesn't apply to the core of everything Voldemort stands for. The word Mudblood hasn't had much significance for him in that past, I agree--but wouldn't it have more significance after being a Death Eater, just as killing does? Wouldn't he see that it's got a lot of significance to the DEs?
I mean, Dumbledore isn't telling Draco not to use that word around him, he's telling him that word shouldn't be used at all. Draco could certainly hear it as just not using the word about Dumbledore, but I think that's the view he started out with anyway--he knows Dumbledore doesn't like that language. He's only using it around him now because it's an extraordinary situation. This isn't the first time Draco's been told not to use the world around people, but it's the first time someone has ever said it in the way Dumbledore does. Usually when someone tells Draco not to use that word they're angry and Draco is gleeful at getting the reaction he'd intended by using it. Here he's trying to mockingly point out to Dumbledore that it hardly matters what word he uses when Dumbledore's life is at stake and Dumbledore is seriously answering that it does.
no subject
He wants to hate her, but he keeps having to face this disconnect between what she's supposed to be and what she is.
But he does hate her. He hates her for who she is alone. He's not being raised to believe that, as a mudblood she's a horrible person, but in reality he sees that she isn't. He still hates her. She's a knowitall, she rubs it in when she beats him (or to him it seems like she does), and she does beat him constantly at academics. He hated HER. There isn't much of a disconnect. The only real disconnect there is that as a mudblood she's supposed to be dirt, but instead she's somehow beating him (and now in HBP Draco finds out that he totally wiped the floor with her, and he would've gotten a damn good kick out of Borgin telling him of Hermione's visit). He's not seeing her from bad to good. He's seeing her as bad ON HER OWN, without the tag of mudblood on her. She's not bad because she's a mudblood, she's bad because she's Hermione Granger.
And I think that's going to be the serious overhaul for him. Learning to seperate pureblood ideology with Voldemort. We hear from Black that there were quite a few heavy pureblood supporters who opposed Voldemort and his way of going about things, but Draco, ever since the getgo, he sees them as one in the same. You can't have pureblood ideology without following Voldemort. Voldemort was the representative of everything purebloods stood for. Anybody who opposed Voldemort could not possibly follow the pureblood ideology. But I think that now, after witnessing first hand the lengths that Voldemort is willing to go for the "pureblood idealogy" (because we all know that for him it has nothing to do with the pureblood ideology, just an excuse he uses to gain the purebloods on his side) and he't starting to seperate the two of them. He's starting to see that you can still have the pureblood ideology and still completely oppose Voldemort and the lengths he's willing to go, which is to murder and maim. Regulus was a pureblood supporter, yet he still opposed Voldemort, after all.
I think that Draco's going to learn to seperate the pureblood ideology with how Voldemort's handled it so far. I think he'll always be prejudiced. It's hard for him not to, when every mudblood he's met turned out to be a total bitch that actually made him like shit about himself, what with Hermione always besting him and Creevey saying infront of like half the school that he was jealous of Harry, and we don't see him having any connections with mudbloods at all, or looking like he ever will. Yeah, Voldemort's willing to murder the lot of them, but Draco also knows firsthand that Voldemort's ready to kill a few purebloods, too. So even there, he's not being skeptic of Voldemort's views because of MUDBLOODS (he's not asked to kill a mudblood, he's asked to kill Dumbledore; and his two victims, Ron and Katie, were purebloods). So it's not like he's seeing that mudbloods die but don't deserve it. He just has too little connection at all with mudbloods for him to really change his views, I think. He'll probably just be prejudiced on a quiter, more personal way, not a Voldemort let'skillalltheMudbloods-way, the way he was in 1st year when he said that they didn't know wizard ways, which is a perfectly good reason if you ask me, and very true.
To me it's not so much a matter of shedding the pureblood ideology, but shedding the Voldemort ideology and learning it to seperate it with the pureblood one. (In the first book, he gives a perfectly good reason for being prejudiced when he says that they don't know the wizard ways, which is completely true, and doesn't have anything at all to do with Voldemort, although that seems to change once the Chamber's opened). I don't know where he's going to go with that, or where his prejudism will take him from there, when the war's all done (or heck, even in the 7th book.) I just think he'll always be prejudiced on a quieter level, and not on a Voldemort let's-kill-all-the-mudbloods-level (besides, the biggest reason Harry hates him is because of his prejudism, if Draco lost that, then there wouldn't be much keeping them from being friends, and JK said that would NEVER happen ;) )
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My bad. He does hate her, definitely. I didn't mean to imply that he really didn't. But he also sees her not being what she's supposed to be, if Muggleborns are supposed to be inferior, and that is the only disconnect I was referring to--which seems like a big one. He hates the Weasleys too, but they're Purebloods.
because we all know that for him it has nothing to do with the pureblood ideology, just an excuse he uses to gain the purebloods on his side
Does he? But in his diary he says he wants to continue Slytherin's noble work. Obviously he does really want immortality from himself, but is the goal here really to get Pureblood bigots to realize they can have their bigotry without Voldemort, or is the idea that Voldemort is the natural result of that kind of bigotry? Regulus was a Pureblood supporter and he ultimately rejected Voldemort. We don't know if he also questioned what he'd be taught--perhaps he wound up thinking Sirius was right. But then he died, so whatever his views ultimately were he didn't get to live with them.
To me it's not so much a matter of shedding the pureblood ideology, but shedding the Voldemort ideology and learning it to seperate it with the pureblood one.
But the attitude Draco's espoused since Book II is Voldemort's, where Muggleborns are "filth" and inferior--not that they just don't know Wizarding ways, which is something that Hermione again proves wrong.
besides, the biggest reason Harry hates him is because of his prejudism, if Draco lost that, then there wouldn't be much keeping them from being friends, and JK said that would NEVER happen
I can see plenty of reasons Harry wouldn't be friends with Draco even if he wasn't that prejudiced, actually. Harry doesn't hate him on principle, he hates him personally. He's hated Snape for years too, without it having anything to do with bigotry. He doesn't even comment on Snape using the term Mudblood until a book later, iirc.
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or is the idea that Voldemort is the natural result of that kind of bigotry?
You're right, and I agree that Voldemort's idea was a result of the pureblood idea. But he took it to a whole new level and made it a whole new class of his own. The pureblood idea I think is a lot quiert, but Voldemort doesn't just believe that mudbloods don't belong in wizaring society, he thinks they should be massacred; he doesn't just think that mudbloods are lesser than purebloods, he thinks that they're filth. I see the difference between the two as being the extent of the prejudism.
But the attitude Draco's espoused since Book II is Voldemort's, where Muggleborns are "filth" and inferior
Which is why I think it's all about the extent. Draco was prejudist in the first book, but on a totally different level. He instead mudbloods 'the other sort' and didn't seem to hold any sort of hatred or animosity or even disgust towards them. There isn't even any superiority, but an understanding that they don't really fit in. He just doesn't like them and would prefer it if they stayed in muggle society where they were born. Pretty reasonable, if you ask me. And I think he'll revert back to that.
Later, like you said, he came to Voldemort's level, to his extent, which is that mudbloods are filthy, they are lesser, and they deserve to be purged. And I think you're right in that he will lose that, but I think he'll lose it, not in favour of not being at all prejudiced, but in favour of the extent that he was at in first year. I think the prejudism will always be there. But the extent will be lessened considerably and will fall back to first year, where it was compromising and rational. I just don't think that he'll ever be friends with a mudblood, or ever try to be, or ever even want to be.
not that they just don't know Wizarding ways, which is something that Hermione again proves wrong.
I don't think that Hermione really knows anything about wizarding culture. She's read all the books, and she knows the history like she knows the back of her hand. But when you think about it, it's always Ron, who does poorly in class and has never read any history book, that provides the information on wizarding culture. She might know about the Basilisk, and she might know about the schools, but Ron's the one who really gets it, who really understands it, because there are somethings about culture that you can't explain in any book. You need to witness it, experience it, get a feel of it. Which is what Draco says. He doesn't say that they don't know anything, he says that they don't have the proper feel, which I think is the absolute truth. She doesn't have the feel of it. She has the knowledge, she has the facts, but she doesn't have the feeling. I always thought that was what was so distressing for her, because she knew that no matter how many books she read, and she could every book in the world, she will never have that intuitive feel of wizarding society that Ron, and Draco, has. They were born into this, raised and reared into it. They're the ones with the real magic, the magic that comes from belonging, that comes from memories and experiences and upbringing. Hermione is a witch because she has a wand and she can use it. But Ron and Draco are wizards because they were born into a society of wizards, they were raised in the heart of wizarding culture, they were reared since infancy in a world of magic and wonder, where anything can happen. They grew up in the skies flying broomsticks, chatted with portraits of dead ancestors, fudged potions and played pranks, nicked their parents wand and fired jinxes. Their wands are only accessories. Hermione is living, breathing evidence that you can read every book in the world, but unless you're born into a culture, you will never truly fit in. She is evidence that you don't just walk into the wizarding world and belong; you need to have the feel of it. And feel is such an intimate word, but it's so appropriate. It's not about knowing, it's about feeling.
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Their wands are only accessories. Hermione is living, breathing evidence that you can read every book in the world, but unless you're born into a culture, you will never truly fit in. She is evidence that you don't just walk into the wizarding world and belong; you need to have the feel of it. And feel is such an intimate word, but it's so appropriate. It's not about knowing, it's about feeling.
That's definitely true--actually, I even almost went back and added that after I wrote it because I realized wait, Hermione is very different because of her upbringing. It's just that she's not different in any way that matters when it comes to many of the ways she and Draco compete. I mean, she's not doing any worse at Hogwarts or anything like that.