I know I’ve been being horribly – obnoxiously – pedantic about Draco in HBP but it’s because I don’t think it’s clear what JKR intends his fate to be by the end of the series. I hope it doesn’t make you grind your teeth if I say that up until HBP Draco has functioned pretty much as an anti-Harry – petty, selfish, amoral - the pampered prince that Dumbledore was anxious to ensure Harry would not be brought up to be. I’m not saying that Harry is perfect, just that he and Draco are coming from opposite directions. HBP puts Draco into a head-on confrontation with evil, and faces him with the possibility of changing his nature. The uncertainty regarding Draco’s feelings that I believe there is in HBP means that there are two opposite and equally valid storylines possible for Book 7: a Draco who rejects evil and takes responsibility for himself, and a Draco who fails to grasp the nettle and remains an anti-Harry. (I prefer the first, obviously!)
I guess that Draco’s “You don’t know what I’m capable of. You don’t know what I’ve done” did refer to Ron and Katie because that’s basically all that he’s done, unless he did also take the Dark Mark as Harry suspects. I’m still not sure that I see acknowledgement of the seriousness of what he did.
I think I may not have lent enough weight to the pressure the approach of the Death Eaters was putting Draco under, but oddly, when they arrive they praise him for cornering Dumbledore, and are more interested in Dumbledore than in Draco. The tension does intensify as the Death Eaters want to get it over with and run. They don’t actually threaten Draco – actually they offer to do it instead - but Fenrir is a compelling prescence, embodying the brutality Draco is likely to face if he doesn’t kill, and will be allying himself with if he does.
Not-killing can be seen as cowardly in the context of a person who declines to kill at first hand but demonstrated fewer qualms about killing at second hand! It wouldn’t so much be that the not-killing is cowardly than that the not-killer is something of a coward.
By ‘doesn’t know his arse from his elbow’ I mean that Draco doesn’t understand himself or what he’s doing. (That’s what the phrase usually means, isn’t it?) In carrying out Voldemort’s orders and however competently what Draco's actually doing, without realising it, is selling his soul to the devil.
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Re: Draco
Date: 2006-11-24 04:39 pm (UTC)I guess that Draco’s “You don’t know what I’m capable of. You don’t know what I’ve done” did refer to Ron and Katie because that’s basically all that he’s done, unless he did also take the Dark Mark as Harry suspects. I’m still not sure that I see acknowledgement of the seriousness of what he did.
I think I may not have lent enough weight to the pressure the approach of the Death Eaters was putting Draco under, but oddly, when they arrive they praise him for cornering Dumbledore, and are more interested in Dumbledore than in Draco. The tension does intensify as the Death Eaters want to get it over with and run. They don’t actually threaten Draco – actually they offer to do it instead - but Fenrir is a compelling prescence, embodying the brutality Draco is likely to face if he doesn’t kill, and will be allying himself with if he does.
Not-killing can be seen as cowardly in the context of a person who declines to kill at first hand but demonstrated fewer qualms about killing at second hand! It wouldn’t so much be that the not-killing is cowardly than that the not-killer is something of a coward.
By ‘doesn’t know his arse from his elbow’ I mean that Draco doesn’t understand himself or what he’s doing. (That’s what the phrase usually means, isn’t it?) In carrying out Voldemort’s orders and however competently what Draco's actually doing, without realising it, is selling his soul to the devil.