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Survivor: Malfoy Edition

I originally f'locked this out of habit, but figured I might as well leave it open. We'll see how that goes...

I have read stuff since DH about how people liked the Malfoys in it because they were on their own side and not either side. It made me think about why I found this story disappointing.

It wasn't that I was disappointed that they weren't on the good side, I don't think. It was just that the story as told was imo too weak. It seemed like they skipped around from one emotional state to another as needed by the plot, for one thing. Their first scene is imo fantastic, but I think the set up of Lucius looking so wrecked and his family so terrorized kind of calls for them to either go down with Voldemort or do something decisive (and probably risky) to try to get out from under his thumb--not having them do six of one and half dozen of the other and muddling through. They start off in truly dire straights and I kept thinking they would just continue down that road, only to be faced with them looking a lot better later on. This is not the way JKR usually writes her characters throughout a book.

It's the muddling through that I realized was a problem for me. After the book I thought the Malfoys were characters who had the survival ability of cockroaches with absolutely zero survival instinct.

It's possible--very possible given Peter and other things--that JKR doesn't respect these kinds of survivors--rats and cockroaches, iow. I don't think it would be out of line to say that she seems to write Peter and the Malfoys as low-lifes, and she might associate them with the kind of animals that scavenge in garbage etc. and which are therefore less than noble (in the opinion of some--not me). I never get the feeling that she cheers on these kinds of people, so especially with the Malfoys she never makes them active. On the contrary, her version of a survivor (and here I'm not including survivors who are warriors who've lived through battles like Harry or Moody) is basically a coward, someone who's never confident enough to leave or defy anyone (unfortunately for plot purposes, they will sometimes actively make their own situation *worse*--just never better).

We first hear about Lucius in either book 1 or 2, and I think what we hear was probably the basis for the years of Cool!Lucius fics. Because we heard this is a guy who was one of LV's intimate circle, yet managed to get himself out of Azkaban by claming Imperius immediately after he disappeared. No wonder we thought he was possibly a badder dude than Voldemort--he was the kingmaker, the guy behind the throne who didn't go down with the ship, not bound by ideology. For some of us--me included--that's a cool thing to watch. The one time Draco really made me smile in DH was when he was fighting with the DE saying, "I'm Draco Malfoy! I'm on your side!" I cheered him on doing that--go get 'em, Draco! Naturally he gets punched for it. But that was the moment where I fleetingly thought I'd like to read about this character in a different universe.

I was watching a number of Film Noirs this weekend and in one Dana Andrews plays a detective who accidentally kills a guy he's interrogating. Even though it was a freak accident he knows he won't get away with it, so he tries to cover it up. He comes back to the apartment to find his partner searching the place, saying the guy must have gone out while Dana Andrews was "checking bars in the neighborhood." Now, another director might have let us know beforehand that the body was hidden in the closet all this time for suspense: Will the partner check the closet? Otto Preminger has Andrews check the closet himself so that we can see the body slumped inside. In the commentary, it's pointed out that this moment really puts us on Andrews' side *because he's so competent at covering himself*--he's taking this big risk, opening the closet while his partner is right there, and then he just says, "Nothing in there," shuts the door and gets away with it. It's great. It's different than making us identify with him because we fear he'll be discovered. We've crossed into admiring his skills in protecting himself and getting away with something.

With the Malfoys, we really never see that--and no, I don't consider Narcissa's one desperate lie about Harry being dead enough, though that's as close as we get. The Malfoys start the book on the chopping block--these slippery folks ought to be looking for an escape getting more and more desperate, imo. Instead, if we didn't know already, we see here more than ever that Slippery!Lucius never really existed. They can't act against Voldemort even to save themselves. They're not schemers or thinkers beyond "What will keep Voldemort happy in the short term?"

I do think that's Rowling's point, probably--many of Voldemort's followers are essentially people in an abusive relationship who can't leave--though she's not really getting into that psychology either. When the Trio shows up at the Manor Lucius and Narcissa are eager to turn them over to "please" Voldemort. But for me it's still a letdown that their imprisonment just kind of ends. Narcissa lies to Voldemort yeah, but frankly, imo, who cares? This is a story about kids so what the hell is up with somebody's mother making things better? It's fine for Harry's mum to save him when he's a baby but Draco spends a whole book in HBP sticking out a bad situation only to become more of a baby than ever in DH, and Narcissa's calculated moment of defiance isn't about survival so much as the short-sighted act of a desperate mother. (Short-sighted only because she just wants to get in to get to Draco; it's not a gambit for some wider agenda.) That seems to be all she stands for: Mother-love. There's nothing particularly Malfoy about it, imo.

It's hard, because obviously the writer can do whatever she wants, and presumably she *wanted* to have the Malfoys reduced to this, wanted them to survive without picking a side except each other, thought this was somehow enough of a "collusion" with Harry to let them wander off as confused about their position as anyone else. I know the obvious answer to anybody who thinks they should have been acting more in their own defense is that they were confused by fanfic and wanted them to be cooler than they ever really were. (And I'm sure there are many who will claim it was absolutely brilliant of JKR to do it this way and anything else would be painfully "unrealistic.")

But I assume these people (like all JKR's characters) are doing what they do, are being who they are. They started the series having slithered out of destruction, they end it the same way. Ever "slippery," they switched sides at the last moment. Only given the way it happens, it leaves me thinking: How do these people continue to survive? It's apparently not because they have any particular skill or cleverness for survival (on the contrary, they're kinda bad at this stuff), it's more just that they seem to have some sort of magical protection from the god of their universe--even if that god is never going to let them learn from their near-misses ever.

Somehow I keep thinking of that scene b/w Dumbledore and Snape about Draco's killing him, and Snape says "Why don't you just let him do it, then?" and Dumbledore twinkles and says something like, "Oh, I don't think his soul is quite so damaged yet" or something like that. I wind up thinking that's the answer to their whole storyline, that the author!god just twinkled and said, "Oh, I don't think their soul is so damaged--it amuses me to let them live." It's like we wind up with a story that to me seems like it could have been an actually compelling subplot and instead it's purposefully not.

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All this spun a thought... I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how the Crouches were handled vs. the Malfoys.

I just started to think about that with Narcissa, actually. Because of course, there too you've got the mother just making a mother-sacrifice. But in a way, I think the Crouchs were handled better because their story, tragic as it was, still seemed far more powerful and dramatically logical, you know? It had more meaning even if it ended with the death of all concerned. And also I think I enjoy having some idea of the family dynamics. With the Malfoys DH was really the book where we seemed to be hit over the head with the fact that they really love each other, but I found myself still wondering what they said to each other when they were alone.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting that HBP is the book where the Malfoys are really on their own, but all of them seemed much more engaged with people in general than they do in DH.

Lucius less so, obviously, although we get more of a sense he and Snape might be friends (with Narcissa's reference about this) than in DH where Lily ate Snape's personality.

But Narcissa in her two scenes is interacting with Bellatrix and Snape and the Trio and her son, and mentioning her husband; as opposed to DH where the Mother Love and family unity is played up but with very little actual action (Lucius and Narcissa plead for their son's life apart, for example, and it seems more of a generic 'People love their children ~~and childless people evilly cannot understand this, which is their downfall~~' - neither are shown speaking with Draco or each other much.)
And Draco's all over the place in HBP - talking to people he's never been shown to before (Myrtle, Blaise, Dumbledore, the Deatheaters), having friends as opposed to 'bodyguards' (who then change to 'colleagues' from ff.net in DH, and back again in time for Draco to save Goyle's life and deposit him in the plot cupboard to live forevermore), pwning Harry, learning to stand alone.
It seems sort of pointless to reverse that and have him being his mother's baby again (and being much more isolated ironically than HBP - like a lot of characters.
I mean, what I liked best was always the little hints of people maybe having inner lifes, but there's less sign of that than ever. I think the only two I can think of are Seamus being happy to see his BFF Dean and Gabrielle following Fleur around.
Even Narcissa's sister dying is sort of secondary to this baby fixation.) but it does seem like a lot of plots got forced into the 'parental love/role' issue rather than growing organically (I'm glad we didn't get a Ginny sub-plot, but that's another example of JKR laying the tracks for something and then dropping it, while going back from her...outgoing HBP personality to Molly's favourite who's too young to play with the big kids.) and that generally that's something JKR did on purpose - like so many people had hopes for the ending to be something to do with resolving problems in the WW (the houses split, the elves and magical creatures being second-class, the corruption in the society itself, the division between Muggles and wizards) whereas she seemed to see a happy ending more as 'the next generation might fix it' (which could arguably be more realistic, if it wasn't for the sugary tone and the godawful interviews where she rushes to explain the dream simplistic ending where the Trio make everything okay - I sure can't wait to see awesome people like Harry and Hermione in charge of catching bad guys! Heh, in a weird way, it's like she made them live out the previous generations failings - in this case, they get to become Arthur and punish everyone who does the same things as them.) and a more personal 'Harry's happy, why would anyone else need to be?'

Lucius less so, obviously, although we get more of a sense he and Snape might be friends (with Narcissa's reference about this) than in DH where Lily ate Snape's personality.

LOL! I so want a picture of that. That and Draco depositing Goyle back in the plot cupboard.

But yeah...it's funny to think that everybody thought she had so many plot things to tie up in DH she couldn't possibly finish, and in fact DH just stands alone in most ways. There are so few things that turned out to actually be strings to tie up that they can putter around talking about all these new things that have never been seen before and new people that weren't central before. This is just making me think how the mother love thing seems such a bizarre ending--and of course it's all over the place in DH with not just Narcissa but Molly pwning Bellatrix. Not that I wouldn't expect Molly to get that kind of moment, but it's like I expected that of course a story that starts with Mom blessing the baby with protection, if the baby then grows 7 years into a man, that the theme's going to move on to the children earning that protection for more people than just Harry (who's again putting himself into the position of getting zapped while his parents cheer him on).

DH where Lily ate Snape's personality.

Hah! I want to put that on a t-shirt :D

Sorry, butting in here, but I had to give my 2 cents on Crouches vs Malfoys. :D

The Crouches came off as more badass than the Malfoys in every respect. The situations are comparable, especially in HBP: the influential, ambitious father, the mother desperate to save her son from his godawful fate, the misguided son who is being used as a pawn. But the fact is, every member of the Crouch family was a fighter. Barty Sr was cold-blooded enough to send his son to Azkaban; Lucius OTOH, despite all the Suave, Evil!Lucius fics didn't do anything cruel, just bickered with Bellatrix in DH. Narcissa begged Snape for help, true; but Mrs Crouch begged her unwilling husband for help, helped her son escape Azkaban, and died in his stead there. I mean, I love Narcissa and all, but even I can't help wondering what she was doing the whole year in HBP while her husband was in jail, and her son was on a suicide mission. Attending tea parties?

And well, although Draco is much, much saner than Barty Jr, the fact is when Draco was trying to get Crabbe to stop attacking, he dithered and wondered whether to point at Crabbe or Goyle. When Barty Jr. wanted to stop the DE's at the QWC he shot the Dark Mark up. IOW, he was effective.

I'd say the Crouches come off as insane, dangerous and desperate. The Malfoys come off as helpless and humiliated. And although we're supposed to believe that the Malfoys are desperate, it doesn't seem real somehow, because desperate people do really desperate things, and you never see the Malfoy's do anything drastic or crazy... (albeit Narcissa's lie to LV) And I wonder why not, because it's not as if they had anything more to lose. The Crouches had a lot more to lose (and they did lose, eventually), but they took the crazy risks anyway.

Yes! I'm fine with starting them off helpless and humiliated in DH...although to be honest, it seems like Draco should be on a different path because he already started a whole different type of development in HBP. At the end of that book he learns a truth about himself, so it still makes little sense to me that he's so lost in DH. I guess that was the idea. As I said somewhere else, it's like Draco had no way to understand that his desire to protect people from murder is okay, could be an actual strength, so he's going to spend the rest of his life with the joke on him, thinking he just had this unfortunate weakness, like an allergy or something.

But the Malfoys are so low in that opening chapter you do expect them to move on from that, but instead they just because without direction, vaguely getting ideas when something's right in front of them but not even following through on them well. That's why Draco's scene in the RoR is so ridiculous to me--I have to fanwank how he even got himself there given how passive he was. Not to mention, why is he even at Malfoy Manor at Easter? Not only has Easter Break never been a thing in the series, why invite your son home if your house has basically become a prison? Did Voldemort insist he be home for all holidays? It just seemed like the Malfoys became even stupider than ever in response to their situation, and that's not interesting.

The Crouch's story, by contrast, is clear, active and logical based on who they are. There's no point where I'm going, "Wait, he's doing what? Because... Weren't they...?"

so he's going to spend the rest of his life with the joke on him, thinking he just had this unfortunate weakness, like an allergy or something

The book really does give that impression doesn't it? When the whole time Draco was just trying to do what was right instead of what was easy.

What puzzles me is that the Malfoy family already had their low point the year before, y'know? The reason everyone expected Draco to take a stand in DH is because Voldemort put him through hell in HBP. Lucius was in a Dementor filled prison, Narcissa was terrified for the safety of her son, and Draco was threatened with the death of his parents. So the question is why the hell isn't the Malfoy family rebelling against Voldemort? It's not as if their humiliation in DH is anything new - they've been helpless for over a year. So you have to ask yourself why their self-preservation, first-loyalty-to-family fighting spirit hasn't kicked in. That's why when people say this:

And I'm sure there are many who will claim it was absolutely brilliant of JKR to do it this way and anything else would be painfully "unrealistic."

I have to say NO! Desperate Malfoys (heh, like the TV show!) doing desperate things would've been believable because they have nothing to lose. Sitting there indecisively for a year when Voldemort has already screwed you over to your lowest point, that's unrealistic.

As for Easter holidays, the hilarious thing is that I don't recall anybody going home for them. Draco, alongwith the Trio, has always been at the school for all of them. I know that the school is supposed to unsafe now, but bringing him home to Voldie? Snape would've looked after him better. ~~A lot better~~

Oh, the whole 'school taken over' sub-plot seemed like a complete afterthought, imho.
Like, presumably the whole point of the DEs being there (which never seemed to be explained in itself - I presume it had to do with magical protections or Voldie being so close to the place personally, but that's sort of a vague reason for a big Master Plan...) was that the kids have to attend - why on earth would people be sending them there otherwise?
(Except the Slytherin parents of course, who probably twirled their moustaches and added a tip to their yearly cheque.
Heh, it does remind me of one of the 'carpet book' comm reactions, where someone was all 'It's so sweet of Neville's grandma to send him to Hogwarts! Just because SOME DEs tortured your son and daughter-in-law doesn't mean others won't make fine instructors for your grandson!')

But Ginny drops out iirc to no reactions (can't believe the DEs didn't pine to death!) and Draco's inexplicably home for Easter (and if he was at school most of the year, what was he doing while Crabbe and Goyle were torturing people for the DEs? No-one noticed for the whole year that he's not on the DE train?)
It's just so pathetically obvious that JKR went 'Ho hum, better say what the other people are doing. Oh, and the movie will look great with a battle in Hogwarts!'

It's so sweet of Neville's grandma to send him to Hogwarts! Just because SOME DEs tortured your son and daughter-in-law doesn't mean others won't make fine instructors for your grandson!

HAHAHA Well, as we know her, if he said "I want to go to school and fight" she would have probably answered "Yay! I always knew you were not a waste of space deep down - Now I'm finally reasonably sure!"

And I wonder why not, because it's not as if they had anything more to lose. The Crouches had a lot more to lose

How do you figure? They were insulted a lot and afraid, but they still had everything to lose. All their lives most importantly, but they also had their health and sanity, their manor and peacocks and everything. The Crouches didn't have anything left to lose after Jr went to Azkaban for being an insane torturing Death Eater, except for Sr, he still had his career to worry about and he worried about it. Mostly he went along with the fucked up circumstances and tried to pretend everything was normal. He didn't set any desperate action - killing his son for example. Jr was acting like a lunatic and his mother was acting like someone who had nothing more to lose. I don't see the Malfoy's in similar circumstances at all.

Well, the Crouches weren't in any immediate danger. They were a respectable family in the community with a job, hopes and ambitions. The Malfoys had their lives directly threatened for over two years. So, the way I see it, when you're fighting for your basic survival, when you know it's either this or death, you're going to do crazy, desperate things because you don't have anything else left. The Malfoys had their lives at stake, they seemed to helpless for any hopes, ambitions or any thought of the future. It was the present they were fighting for.

The Crouches, OTOH, would have to worry about being discovered (w.r.t to Barty's escape), losing their reputation, going to Azkaban themselves when found out, etc. They had to think of the future consequences before they did anything rash. I just think it's harder to take risks when you're comfortable with a stable livelihood and have hopes and ambitions and dreams. The Malfoys don't have this problem because they see no hope for the future anyway.

So, when I say "less to lose" I mean the Malfoys were much worse off, so desperate actions on their part are easy to visualise.Because they've lost control of their lives: their house is unsafe and invaded, their money is going to procure Voldemort's supplies, they're helpless with no power over their own home, they're being humiliated, losing hope and sanity. All this after Voldemort sent your son on a suicide mission and threatened to kill his parents for over a year. So I wonder why they didn't reach breaking point to take desperate, risky decisions while the Crouches who had none of this could.

But Mrs Crouch already went to Azkaban to save her only son and everything that mattered to her. IIRC even doing that she was already dying, knowing for sure that she did not have a future and it could only get better for her son, there was no way down. She had literally Nothing to lose. The only one who had anything to lose was Crouch Sr. and he wasn't the one thinking up crazy schemes at all. He was disappointed, hardened and obsessed with his career, but still human enough to grant his wife's dying wish and not to murder his only son. He was also soft enough to let Winky talk him into a teeny bit risky plan, none of that came from him.

But the fact is, every member of the Crouch family was a fighter.

Yes, but weren't the Malfoy's supposed to be too? Or at least, that's the impression I got. Lucius was shown to be a particularly canny fighter in the beginning of the series where we learn he managed to flip so successfully to the "proper" side, when so many others where in full panic. And he took on Dumbledore. Semi-successfully too, in that he got Dumbledore out of the school for a while there in CoS. (It was more than Voldemort ever accomplished, IIRC.) And wasn't he supposed to be behind Umbridge's being hired on in OotP?

Then we had Narcissa's desperate, dramatic, and very active undermining of Voldemort in HBP on behalf of her son. (What the hell happened to the Snape/Malfoy alliance, btw? I don't think there's a hint of it in DH.)

And of course there's the determination of Draco in HBP as well. The boy practically sweated blood while trying to keep his family protected.

All of that fell away in DH. And this when they should have been pulling together as they never had before. It was so badly handled I can't even fanwank it. I just have to sort of... handwave it away. (Those weren't really the Malfoy's. Those were polyjuiced house elves, bought special for the occasion.)

I mean, I love Narcissa and all, but even I can't help wondering what she was doing the whole year in HBP while her husband was in jail, and her son was on a suicide mission. Attending tea parties?

I expected she was keeping Voldemort and Bellatrix from snapping with impatience and killing Draco for not killing Dumbledore by Christmas. Which, heh, may have involved tea parties. ;)

Yes, but weren't the Malfoy's supposed to be too?

Yes, they were! They were supposed to be fighters, slippery fighters. I do think the earlier books gave us that impression. They were supposed to be Evil, Amoral, Competent and Suave, at least the way ~~fanon~~ fandom told it.

All of that fell away in DH. And this when they should have been pulling together as they never had before

Yes, exactly. It turns out that their survival ability was not due to any Slytherin qualities, or any of their innate qualities at all. They didn't survive because of their actions but because of chance - they just got lucky. And that's what's really disappointing. Fandom had imagined that after the harrowing emotional stuff they went through in HBP, they'd reach breaking point and fight. But they never did.

*shrugs* I blame JKR, I think she just couldn't be arsed to write DH and just wanted to get it over with.

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Survivor: Malfoy Edition

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