Crying in the Bathroom

[sistermagpie]

I was on HP4GU today and realized there was an actual Draco-related issue in HBP that I hadn't written thousands of words about--and it relates to Snape too! Anyway, we were talking about Harry feeling remorse about Sectumsempra even though it was self-defense yadda yadda, and I realized there was something I was kind of dancing around in talking about the scene that seemed really obvious but I actually don't think I've ever read much about it from this angle.

Ironically, the main references I have seen to Draco’s tears in discussions of Harry’s remorse were strictly defenses of Harry, saying that was moved by Draco's crying and maybe would have helped him if Malfoy hadn't gone postal, so Harry’s all the more innocent. (Regarding Draco the main question I've seen discussed is whether he's just afraid of failing or feeling anything more.)

To me the crying is more important than that. I think it was an intentional and important decision of JKR's to put the crying together with Sectumsempra. She was, as usual, pulling lots of threads together into one dramatic scene. On the mundane plot level, of course, she's just using this scene to get a number of things out of the way--she reveals that the boy Myrtle was meeting was Malfoy, reveals Malfoy's fear and the fact he's being threatened, and also reveals Sectumsempra and shows Snape that Harry's got his book etc. One poster (Carol) I think was also correct in saying Harry is learning the same important distinction Snape feels for him--he hates Draco, but he does not want him dead (more importantly, he doesn't want to kill him).

But I think there's another thing going on as well. I had in the past said I didn't think we could take it as a given that Harry would have been so sympathetic to Malfoy just because he saw him crying--after all, he's upset over the very thing that Harry wants to get him for. However Harry might have felt if Malfoy hadn't attacked him, he actually isn't sympathetic in the scene. His feelings are described as:

"And Harry realised, with a shock so huge it seemed to root him to the spot, that Malfoy was crying -- actually crying -- tears streaming down his pale face into the grimy basin. Malfoy gasped and gulped and then, with a great shudder, looked up into the cracked mirror and saw Harry staring at him over his shoulder. Malfoy wheeled round, drawing his wand. Instinctively Harry pulled out his own."

At the point Malfoy wheels around all Harry has felt is shock, a shock so huge that it "roots him to the spot" and keeps him from doing what he probably would have done had he found Malfoy just talking to Myrtle, which is hide and listen. Not stand there like a sitting duck in full view for a pretty long moment.

And the question is--why is he so shocked for so long? He's not just surprised here (like Malfoy when he found Harry and Snape doing their Occlumency lessons), he's so shocked he's having trouble taking it in. That shock is drawn out for two sentences, first Harry being physically rooted to where he's standing, then having to go over what he's seeing ("Malfoy was crying --actually crying --"). He's transfixed watching the physical crying--the tears falling into the basin, the gulping sobs. But what's so shocking here? I mean, so shocking that Harry has so much trouble processing it?

It's not shocking to a lot of readers, presumably. Myrtle's already told us some boy was crying in the bathroom and the law of character conservation made Malfoy the obvious candidate. Harry himself has been watching Malfoy's physical deterioration all year and been pleased by it because he knows it means the Voldemort plot isn't going well. Usually Malfoy in any kind of distress makes Harry pleased.

So what's so different here that it's so shocking? I think the idea is that Harry is shocked at suddenly seeing Malfoy, cliché as it sounds, as a real person. In the past the only feelings Harry's ever saw in Malfoy were negative ones: he's menacing, he hates Harry, he's a coward. He's also seen fake ones: he sucks up to people, he boasts, he struts, he plays up injuries. Did Harry really not see the vulnerability in him that many readers saw? Well, no, he probably didn't. As early as the Sorting scene Harry has actually imbued Malfoy with a sense of well-being and confidence so big he sees any evidence against it as a welcome, temporary aberration. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that up until that moment Harry really never has seen Malfoy as a boy like himself who might actually feel the same things Harry feels at times and have similar motivations. (It's really interesting the way it's both like and unlike the Pensieve scene with Snape, perhaps because Snape and Malfoy represent different shadows to Harry.)

I realize this sounds really cliché--but JKR isn't afraid of clichés when she's set them up well, and she has here. There's a reason this moment had already occurred in a hundred H/D fics before she wrote it. It's not about Harry suddenly feeling sorry for Malfoy--he doesn't in the scene. It's somehow exploding something that until that moment he'd taken for granted about Malfoy, something I doubt he'd ever really been aware of. Apparently Malfoy crying -- actually crying -- really is a shock for Harry who has more than once in the past wanted to cause him as much pain as possible. I’m not even sure just what it’s exploded—but maybe Harry doesn’t either. It’s not something he can immediately articulate like he can with James and Snape in the Pensieve (James is being an asshole and he’s supposed to be cool; I felt sorry for Snape and that’s all kinds of wrong because he’s usually the bully).

There's something about that moment that makes Malfoy different, and then it's immediately choked off--just as Harry's fleeting confusion about Snape after the Pensieve is choked off by Snape attacking him. Malfoy attacks him (he knows it's a naked moment, certainly), Harry instinctively defends himself. And this is the fight that leads to Harry hurting Malfoy more than he ever has, more than he imagined or really intended. I feel like you can't separate the two things completely. Even acknowledging that Harry was acting in self defense, this isn't just another scene where Harry strikes back at the Malfoy he knew before who was asking for it. Throughout the whole fight Harry is actually more strangely empathetic than Malfoy than he ever has been, I suspect.

Perhaps that's another reason Harry doesn't think about Malfoy at all after that. It's not just guilt at his (fixed) actions, perhaps, but the discomfort of his new intimacy with Malfoy. I'm not even sure if Harry told his friends about the crying--you'd think they'd have said something about it. He may still be having trouble processing it. The fight can distract him from it, but I think it's also connected to why he feels badly. I don't mean anything so literal as just Harry feels bad because he not only hurt Malfoy but Malfoy was sad right before he did it. I think it's more subtle.

Subtle, btw, in a way I again think parallels Snape. Harry also saw him in the exact kind of vulnerable moment he didn't associate with him, Snape also responded by attacking Harry, Harry defended himself again, focusing more on the unfair accusations. It's also kind of funny that this is Snape and Malfoy, both of whom are connected to Occlumency by Rowling. Occlumency, which she relates to cutting oneself off from feelings, which both Snape and Draco consider potential weaknesses even though they seem at heart more emotional than Harry (or in different ways). Harry has seen exactly what these two characters are always trying to hide, and up until the moments they hit him in the face, they were successful at hiding them from Harry.

Btw, how much do I love Stephen Colbert for putting Gwyneth Paltrow's head on his shelf? It's still the best moment in her career, imo.

Comments

Re: (Corrected version of comment)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I have enough cases to make this stick, or whether I'm overgeneralizing from a few incidents.

Looking forward to it! But luckily I don't think it contradicts my idea. Basically, the point of the thing is about the racism of the DEs and the way that it sort of offers a substitute connection to people that is really the opposite (Voldemort=personal immortality/no love, Harry=mortality/love). And here's Draco who's both the bully and the kid who's attracted to it. And I think it's interesting that JKR's chosen to make him this very social creature who's so connected to fitting in, but is also connected to problems with exactly that (as opposed to the Angry Young Man that was Snape or another Dudley). I wanted to look especially at PS and CoS, which I think set him up for the part he's really meant to play in HBP.

In PS he plays the role of school antagonist more than any other book--but instead of setting him up as a Dudley bully Rowling specifically has him try and fail to be Harry's friend. Then he swings back and forth between trying to get rid of Harry, the face of his failure, and sticking himself in Harry's face. There's even two kind of primal images of him in that book--the hand stuck out and refused, and the face pressed up to the window of the cabin where the other kids are gathered (Ginny ironically describes something similar later). Then in CoS Draco doesn't have as much of a plot but we see a pattern of problems in the relationships he does have: Lucius, the Quidditch team, Crabbe and Goyle.

The kind of relationship you describe with his friends is more what his real advantage is in HBP. These are people who don't see him as heroic, have seen him at his most humiliated, but perhaps see something in him anyway. But he seems almost enamored by fantasy relationships that are perfect and he's just adored and feels great all the time. Maybe, if we go back to Lucius, because Lucius seems to lay that out as the problem: He's not good enough, so he's not loved enough.

Harper of Slytherin has certainly seen something [the Snitch] that Potter hasn't."

Man, that line always gets me, because Zach wins the game for Harry there. He was distracted and might not have even looked for the Snitch if he hadn't heard what he took as an insult. And what does Zach get for that but knocked unconscious? Now that I think of it it really does make for a nice parallel. Zach worked for Harry the year before as well, but the next year, when he wasn't needed any more, the inner circle couldn't get rid of him fast enough. I hope they need him in the future (Heir of Hufflepuff?)

You know, the more I think about the Weasleys, the creepier I think they are.

Seriously--which is why I find the theories where they represent some family Harry longs for awful. Even weirder is where people assume that the great thing about the Weasleys is how they never care about Harry as TBWL when we've got, as you say, Ginny the worshipper, Ron who resents, Molly's grand claims, etc. When Harry's Sorted into Gryffindor the Twins break out chanting, "We got Potter! We got Potter!" None of them seem to show quite that much pride in having Hermione adopted.

Re: (Corrected version of comment)

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

luckily I don't think it contradicts my idea.

Even better! And your bigger thesis about false/substitute connections sounds fascinating. I like your point about Draco's fantasy relationships. I saw it as a kind of neediness and grandiosity that's only stoked, never satisfied, by ordinary connections. So we may be on similar tracks in interesting ways. I wish I had more time to write it today but I'm definitely looking forward to doing that and to hearing more about your presentation.

Man, that line always gets me

Isn't it great? It works in so many ways -- as a sexual taunt (which might put an interesting spin on Ginny's reaction), as a parody of Harry's claims to secret or privileged knowledge about Voldemort, and as all the more overt things too. I like Zach as a character; Hermione should have taken him to Slughorn's party! And now I'm nostalgic for the days of OOTP meta and H/Z! :)

Re: (Corrected version of comment)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hope I'm not burying you with replies but you keep saying interesting things.

I saw it as a kind of neediness and grandiosity that's only stoked, never satisfied, by ordinary connections.

I see what you mean...and yet it's fascinating trying to figure out just what it is, given the way his story has gone. Like, the thing with Draco that I think a lot of us who like the character see is that he's never quite enough of what he wants to be. He wants to be evil, and it's not that he's a nice guy, but he's just not really good at evil. Lucius is a screw up, but he's got no trouble with the evil part.

With socializing it's like you say--Draco obviously wants social success and attention and validation. Yet he does things like brag about his father--wtf? It's suicide. Yet he's not clueless socially either. He's not David Brent who wants to be liked but has no self-perception about his real talents or sense of humor. He does have some success. Even Harry notices some actual skills--he does fly well, his impressions can be accurate. Some of his insults to Harry are socially aware--like when he accuses him of liking the Weasleys because they have that family vibe and he's sniffing around like a puppy looking for a mother. That's kind of advanced stuff.

So why the other failures? Why does it so often seem like Maya's Draco is so accurate with friends that are protective of him or sometimes just cut him loose to take his lumps on his own because they're not signing up for that? Or at least they seem to have normal relationships with him--some people describe Blaise as seeming to not like Draco in HBP but to me they seemed like perfectly natural friends. Blaise wasn't sucking up to him, but his put downs about how no, he didn't believe Draco became Voldemort's bff over the summer didn't seem cruel. They seemed like something you'd say to a kid like this--obviously it's okay to call Draco on his shit.

So because of that it seems like he actually has made relationships that are real. I was reading a book recently where the main character didn't like this one boy because he was a know-it-all etc., but later did come to like him, noting that even though he was still a pain he also sometimes made sacrifices for the other kids. And he also noticed that the kid had all these issues with his mother that he was probably covering up. So you wonder if maybe there is something in Draco that keeps him from being the Luna of Slytherin, so that all the times when people are laughing at his jokes in CoMC they're not just setting him up.

Hermione should have taken him to Slughorn's party! And now I'm nostalgic for the days of OOTP meta and H/Z!

Zach wouldn't have been attacking her under the mistletoe! Perhaps she asked him and he turned her down, having figured out that she was just using him to make a Weasley jealous.

Re: (Corrected version of comment)

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Sorry I left this hanging -- this week was a bear workwise, and I probably should have done more to prepare last weekend, but it was much too much fun to talk about HP! Anyway . . .

Why does it so often seem like Maya's Draco is so accurate with friends that are protective of him or sometimes just cut him loose to take his lumps on his own because they're not signing up for that? Or at least they seem to have normal relationships with him

So I'm thinking more about this, and skimming the books for my alleged future post about Draco's brittle relationships, and I came upon the scene in PS/SS when Neville gets his Remembrall from his Gran. This isn't the flying scene, it's the earlier one in the Great Hall when the Remembrall actually arrives by owl. Draco is passing by the Gryffindor table, notices, and snatches the Remembrall out of Neville's hand to look at it. And everyone sort of gets agitated until McGonagall comes along and breaks things up, at which point Draco tosses the ball back and says he was "just looking" at it.

The thing that strikes me here is that Draco's behavior seems both aggressive but also contained, and he comes off as a little less than natural, a little bit contrived. I may be overreading this very short scene, but it sort of feels like he's maybe trying out a kind of dominance behavior that he's heard about but isn't quite smooth at yet. You can imagine Lucius taking him aside and telling him: "Here are some tricks for setting yourself up as over-dog. When you have the opportunity, crowd people's space a little bit. Finger their lapels. Rifle through their things -- not in a threatening way, but like you belong there. If they let you do it, you've got 'em." I mean, poor Draco isn't trying to start an incident here -- he's in the middle of the Great Hall, with scads of teachers all around, it wouldn't make any sense. When he horns in on the scene and helps himself to a close look at Neville's toy, he may actually think he's being suave. And, um, masterful. :P

I thought about whether this was typical of Draco's behavior in a general way, but I think it's more exceptional. Often enough Draco really is pretty suave, in his own way -- he's spontaneous, funny, verbally fluent, clever and effective about scoring his points. Every now and then, though, you seem to catch a glimpse of a kid who is divided from himself, who's trying to be something he isn't comfortable with and doing it badly. The normally competent Draco comes off as someone who might have the Deatheater equivalent of Dale Carnegie stuffed under his mattress, and who studiously takes notes at night when no one can see him.

So his behavior toward Neville in the Great Hall scene maybe doesn't seem like undifferentiated boorishness and overreaching, but more specifically like the behavior of someone who thinks there are particular gimmicks, particular techniques, for "winning friends" (or at least influencing people) that he needs to learn and practice. The offered handshake in PS/SS similarly seems a bit precious for an eleven-year-old -- and doomed by its awkwardness because what self-respecting kid wouldn't turn it down? The almost avuncular tone Draco takes when cautioning the Trio in the QWC forest scene is a bit pompous, and maybe it's hard for a reader to figure this scene out because Draco hasn't figured it out, he's just striking a pose, playing with a role. He's unusually awkward at this stuff because he's not naturally dominant, he's more a natural back-bencher, a clown, a Black rather than a Malfoy. He's more comfortable -- and more effective -- snarking and being funny and coming up with clever pranks to amuse his friends. But something (his father?) drives him to be more, makes him feel discontented with only being part of the crowd.

[continued . . . ]

Re: (Corrected version of comment)

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

[. . . continued]

Those moments where Draco tries to be more assertive would come off as hokey except that the Harry-filter (and, well, maybe the Deatheater part, too) makes it seem kind of sinister. And then of course there's a related kind of breakdown he experiences when things really are implicitly sinister. If you compare the ways he insults Ron and Hermione, he's much more imaginative and verbally playful when he's getting to Ron, and much cruder and grosser with Hermione: "Is your mother really that porky or is it just the photograph?" vs. "If you're wondering what that smell is . . . " So is the Mudblood issue a focus of some anxiety for him? As Elkins points out, in "Draco the Nutter," when anything having to do with Voldemort and Pureblood rule comes up Draco actually starts getting flushed and shrill, a little bit shaky, and that signals the very opposite of the confidence he's trying to convey.

So just like in the discussion about Snape where we both flagged some abrupt departures from Draco's normal behavior as signs of a daddy-button being pressed, I wonder if we can also see some of his more socially gross moments as flagging anxiety-buttons that would normally be hidden. There may be a pattern to this, to those moments where he makes an ass of himself in one of these ways, where he comes off as a too-obvious poseur, so that they represent an authorial marker indicating areas where Draco a bit divided within himself. Issues of status, dominance, feelings of superiority or inferiority, and their reflections in WW high politics seem to be the areas of obsessive interest, areas where he's least comfortable in his own skin.

I don't know. Again, I could be massively overreading. And hypothesis-testing is ever so much more time-consuming than hypothesis-generating. :) But another application of this idea, he says, quickly changing the subject, is to the question of Draco's friendships. I said in the other thread that some of his behavior ought to get his head flushed in the toilet; you said somewhat more humanely that his friends may just be on to his B.S. and love him anyway. If his more obnoxious and awkward behavior is bounded in this way, linked to specific situations and hot buttons, then you're probably on to something -- his friends can just see it as "oh well, Draco's off on one of his hobbyhorses again" and roll their eyes and find plenty of other things to like about him.

Hmmmm. I'm not sure that's as strong a case as I hoped it would be. But what the hell, it's a warmup. :) Nice to be back in the thread with you, and I hope you haven't got thoroughly sick of it in the interim. :)

Re: (Corrected version of comment)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Sorry I left this hanging -- this week was a bear workwise
Today was like an early Xmas--so many BD comments! Weeee!

I love that you brought up that Rememberall scene because it always stands out in my mind and I'm never sure why. Part of it is while Harry responds to it immediately as bullying, and I can see why, it never quite feels that way to me. What you're describing here is along the same lines--you're saying that Draco is trying out a type of behavior that's not supposed to be exactly negative. When I read it that's kind of what it sounded like too. He's not starting a fight--as you say, he's in front of teachers and besides, he's not angry. We've seen him when he's actually trying to make Harry or someone angry.

When I read it it almost felt like just trying to aggressively insert himself into a conversation. Almost like in GoF when he appears in the Gryffindor's train car--not to fight but to talk about the Tournament. He arrives with an insult, but a different boy could pull off that kind of casual dominance (and he's smoother in GoF). But it felt like that's what he was trying to do.

Draco can't pull it off and because Harry won't allow him to try. He immediately goes straight to actual dominance. Had Harry reacted a little more cautiously and seen where he was going it might not have been as bad as he imagined. When Draco actually takes the Rememberall later Harry also immediately makes it into a fight for dominance--when Harry says, "Give it here!" when Draco's picked up the forgotten Rememberall for his own type of show, Draco can't give it to him or he'd be showing total submission. His actions in that altercation are kind of trying to just get out of it with as little trouble as possible.

Often enough Draco really is pretty suave, in his own way -- he's spontaneous, funny, verbally fluent, clever and effective about scoring his points

Yes--getting into my PR thing (which I will link to when it's posted because I would love to get your thoughts if I can go over what I'm thinking) there's some comparison of him and Dudley and looking at just how much Draco is connected to a certain kind of social success/fighting. Through Harry's eyes he never looks too good, but even then we sometimes get some these odd things like how Malfoy was "holding court" at the Slytherin table. So maybe, as you say, Draco actually is a fun guy to be friends with in other ways that Harry would never see. I have always noticed that certainly he works for his friends. Where Harry kind of draws people no matter what he does for them (in OotP friendship with Harry is particularly one-sided-Ron's all on his own with his Quidditch woes). Draco's usually working hard to entertain with his friends--he tells stories, tells jokes, does impressions.

That's not what he's ever doing with Harry--though there's still a couple of places with Ron where his insults, as you say, are more sophisticated. With Hermione he's crude, with Harry he's sometimes stupid but sometimes more clever. I genuinely liked, for instance, his comeback to Ron's bragging about Harry's Nimbus in PS by putting down Malfoy's Comet (something like: Weasley, do you even have a broom? I suppose you and your brothers have to save up twig by twig?). It's withering, but it's also funny and not too much given Ron's own attempt to put him down.

If his friends more often see him being funny they could have more of a sense of his weak spots--particularly since they're not always around when Draco's at his worst in front of Harry. You don't want to make it all a Daddy issue, but damn it makes sense given the Lucius we've seen. Ironically, Draco might do okay just trying to be Lucius' public face, schmoozing and donating money. But he's totally missing some of the other core Lucius qualities. And Lucius can't teach him because he kind of sucks that way.

Re: (Corrected version of comment)

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

I really did sort of spam you, didn't I? *facepalms* I had one of those weeks that was a cross between Hurry-Up-And-Wait and Huge-Effort-For-Nothing (the verdict is still out) and I just sort of threw myself into LJ with a vengeance when it ended. Better than turning to drink! But maybe with an unusually low signal-to-noise ratio in my comments. :)

Anyway, I think we definitely see the Remembrall scene in the same way. And it was interesting that your latest DTCL post sort of put the broom incident in the same perspective -- Draco's just being grabby because that's how he shows his interest, it's not like he's going to snap the broom in the middle of the Entrance Hall. Lucius may have forgot to tell him what to do when this thing doesn't work. But all the sinister spin, here and in the flying lesson, is Harry's projection, and he immediately puts Draco in an impossible position.

Of course it gets worse, and eventually becomes genuinely nasty, as the series goes on. It's kind of fascinating to watch Harry escalate minor awkwardnesses into permanent bad feelings, with Draco, with Zach, maybe even in a sense with Snape. But you get the feeling that most of Harry's adversaries get to a point where they're thinking "WTF? You're taking this way too seriously!"

You don't want to make it all a Daddy issue, but damn it makes sense given the Lucius we've seen . . . he's totally missing some of the other core Lucius qualities. And Lucius can't teach him because he kind of sucks that way.

Yeah, and this might make even the parenting issue less sinister and more ordinarily tragic. Lucius isn't necessarily a bad parent because he's a bad person. He's a bad parent because he doesn't make allowance for the fact that Draco's personality is very different from his own. He thinks he can mold him, instead of adapting his approach to who Draco is. It's the old tabula rasa fallacy, just ordinary interpersonal stupidity.

Re: (Corrected version of comment)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Don't apologize! Don't! I love it! But I hope work gets better soon. I feel guilty reaping the benefits of your bad week.

It's kind of fascinating to watch Harry escalate minor awkwardnesses into permanent bad feelings, with Draco, with Zach, maybe even in a sense with Snape.

And yet so far one of the problems is, of course, that few people step out of Harry's pov enough to recognize that he's escalating. In the last "Blame Game" I was in some ways most shocked by the number of people who thought Zach was at fault in the scene where Ginny ran into him on her broom because "he's an asshat." Not only is Zach just not that bad, but it's not like fanon ever seemed to see him as such itself. But in HBP we've got Harry and Ginny talking about him as an idiot and a jerk, he makes them angry, and so suddenly yeah, he was really a jerk.

With Draco, too, sometimes the people most open to his story in HBP seem people who either like the character and so looked at him closely or through rose-colored glasses, and people who never cared much about him and were neutral. It's harder to let go, imo, of the view that took Harry's hatred and created a character to match.

He's a bad parent because he doesn't make allowance for the fact that Draco's personality is very different from his own.

Yup. He seems genuinely clueless that a child is not automatically something you've got under control, you know? He tells Draco to play nice with Harry but doesn't seem to really be putting an effort into making him do that. He thinks he can spin tales of LV and the Heir and then keep Draco out of it just by saying to keep his head down.