sistermagpie | Survivor: Malfoy Edition

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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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Interesting points as always. I think JKR really didn't like her bad boys and was determined to the bitter end that we shouldn't either. I read somewhere that when asked what happened to the Malfoys after DH she said they squirmed their way out of things yet again (my words not her's).

For some reason when I got to the end of the book I was left with the idea that Draco was supposed to be one of those she was going to kill off originally and she somehow decided to let him live in the end leaving us with the Malfoy family sitting with the victors in the Great Hall. But they weren't WITH the victors but on their own and almost as the only living Slytherins. How I wanted Harry to acknowledge them.

And when she decided to let him live, she gave him a receding hair line and let Ron even 19 years later still make sarcastic comments about it. I'm really surprised she didn't have Ron say "Look, isn't that the Ferret overthere?"

The worst thing that the author!god could show her readers was that people don't/can't change or realise that there are other options. It was something I had hoped would come out of Draco after what happened on top of the Astronomy Tower.

In the end it seemed the only reason for Draco's presence in the story was the wand issue.

And don't get me started on the whole Slytherin thing.

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

What I found disappointing is that she didn't push that survivor thing to its natural conclusion. There IS something elastic about the Malfoys. Because they are out for the Malfoys. Lucius Malfoy didn't give a toss about Voldemort's return to power. That was evident in the pathetic back-pedaling he did at the cemetary after V killed Cedric. The only TRUE follower was Bellatrix. As the story droned on, I kept wondering when the Malfoys were going to turn. Because they weren't benefitting from the game anymore. In fact, they were no longer players. I can see Lucius trying to undermine V. Turning to the other side. Reaching out to Dumbledore. Lucius was loyal to no one but himself. The peacock patronus is evidence of that. But it's very obvious that anything that scratched the surface beyond the most rudimentary of characterizations was not to be written or explored.

You know what gets me? That she wasn't even curious? When I write, I like to explore all facets of a character. Bring them down to the bones. She wasn't even interested in having them take off their cloaks!

I have problems with the Malfoys and their characterizations in this book as well. Especially with Draco--she seemed to be setting him up for something, especially when he doesn't identify the Trio when he has the chance. Then, at the very end, when she has a chance to show some real growth or change on Draco's part, she instead puts him into a Keystone Kops plot and slapsticks it up, which had me scratching my head.

It's very nearly the same with Lucius and Narcissa, though at least Narcissa had the presence of mind to lie herself into Hogwarts with Harry's death charade. Still, I thought that she was going somewhere with the Malfoys.

In fact, there were a lot of things she included that I thought were going somewhere, and went nowhere. I don't think she had enough paper to write the book that needed to be written, lol.

Have you ever seen the movie "Europa Europa?" It's the true story of a Jewish boy during Nazi occupation who pretends to be German pureblood, then Polish, then German again, all to save his own skin. I loved watching it because it was so amazing that this child denounced and embraced whatever kept him alive, and all the while had to keep from anyone seeing his circumsized penis. You would most likely love this film, as it really explores a lot of the intrigue behind staying alive and choosing allegiance during war times. It was mentioned somewhere in the series how many in the wizarding world were so afraid of LV and collaborated so they weren't killed themselves. There is also a real world history of individuals profitting in status, money or other spoils of war by their allegiance, which may or may not be sincere. The Malfoy family and their duality certainlly wasn't explored as much as it could be. I have felt at some times certain that the pressure that must have mounted as the series progressed must have been enormous, and possibly the option of exploring such tangents ( I perosnally wondered a lot about the Longbottom family, and that was not fully fleshed either, I believe) had to be squelched.

I like the abusive relationship idea! Though it seems like it'd apply to Bella or maybe Regulus moreso than the Malfoys. I don't really know what's going on in either Narcissa or Lucius' head-- without fandom analyzing it, I can honestly tell you that canon would have given me no clue either way, so it's hard to be surprised or disappointed. As for Lucius being an idiot rather than a schemer... see, I can totally see him as an idiot before, too (especially when you remember the sheer ridiculousness of movie!Lucius), though it's hard to imagine why he has power/influence except that it's literally all about breeding and they just happen to be Purebloods. In some way I suppose there's some sort of point there, 'cause the Blacks are messed up & doomed too (another powerful Pureblood family), and the Weasleys are marginalized and poor. It seems like the reason they keep going isn't any real skill or cunning but just going with the flow and clinging to their assets and attaching themselves to power. I suppose none of this implies the ability to scheme that well, anyway.

I always thought it was ridiculous, the idea that Draco would die; I can't imagine JKR killing a student (and she didn't), though I did think Lucius would just 'cause he's disposable. But I guess him surviving or not wasn't that important? He never put himself in danger, it seems like, and he never seemed in the thick of battle-- so Voldemort would've had to personally dispatch him, and it seems like Lucius tried to be or actually was of some use to him till the end. I don't think I've seen him scheme or be intelligent throughout the books (unless you consider slipping the diary to be an intelligent survival-oriented scheme... isn't it just ridiculous? what did he really think would happen? and in the end Voldy lost a part of his soul). I think it's sorta like how the Dursleys never really got a real resolution in book 7, or Sirius-- or rather, it was kinda always like this. I feel like people die or live depending on what the plot requires, rather than to serve any character arc directly. So I suppose it's just that 'alive' was the default result, rather than the author specifically being benevolent, I feel like. She just didn't go out of her way to kill them because they didn't need to die-- and also perhaps because everything they ever did was for each other, so each other is what they got.

I dunno what my point is :> I feel like Lucius surviving post war-1 was more the messed-upness of that whole situation rather than Lucius' survivor instincts. I mean, Wormtail was free, Voldy wasn't really dead, Harry was being abused by the Dursleys, and Sirius was unjustly imprisoned. No one knew, it seemed, what really happened, and there was a lot of desire in the Wizarding World to believe whatever seemed easiest and most likely to mean Voldy wasn't an issue anymore. It was probably easy for Lucius to say Voldy was controlling him but he's fine now 'cause everyone wanted to be 'fine now' in the Wizarding world even though they weren't.

Of course this is just my guess. I am more willing to believe the 'they're complete pathetic failures & always have been' party line than is totally realistic, though, I know that :>

I don't know if this is going to make any sense, but I've been thinking about love in HP, and perhaps with the Malfoys it's that love paralyses them. Ambition drew them to Voldemort, but when Voldemort turned on them in HBP they were confronted with the truth that what actually mattered to them was each other. Or, more accurately, that what mattered to Narcissa and Lucius was their child, and what mattered to Draco was his parents. With Narcissa, it's pretty clear-cut: to save Draco she throws herself on Snape's mercy in HBP and betrays Voldemort in DH. With Lucius there's an element of self-preservation, and he grasps at the hope of ambition when the Trio are brought to Malfoy Manor. Draco struggles with his conscience, his love for his parents and his ambition for himself. His conscience prevents him from killing Dumbledore in the Astronomy Tower, and identifying Harry in Malfoy Manor, and causes his revulsion at being forced to carry out torture by Voldemort. But I wonder if it isn't his love for his parents, and the weight of the love he knows they have for him, that holds him back from truly acting on his conscience. The Malfoys love for each other frees them from their slavery to ambition and Voldemort, but because it is so entangled with fear, confines them in their own tiny world.

I don't disagree with your point here, but I do think that Lucius' behavior in DH doesn't accurately reflect the sort of man he was when he slipped out of Voldemort's grasp the first time. Something that is very apparent in DH is that Lucius does in fact love his family, he's not the distant and cold father that was often portrayed in fanfiction. When Lucius is away, Voldemort is able to put Draco and Narcissa both into a position where he has a greater influence over their ultimate fates, and that ties Lucius' hands, I think. The situation of saving one's own skin, versus trying to save those you care about, lend themselves to different states of mind, and you're more likely to be shortsighted and panicked when there's that kind of leverage against you.

I think the Malfoys' behavior is pretty justified, but I do agree that from a narrative standpoint, I would have expected a much darker outcome for them because of that.

I originally f'locked this out of habit, but figured I might as well leave it open. We'll see how that goes...
Why are you afraid? I never f'lock, but may be less people read my lj, so I haven't been flamed yet. I don't think you will regret not f'locking it, not only your friends will be able to comment, which is good, and in the worst case, you can always do it afterwards. I thought writing something and posting a link on hp_essays. Err... will it make me Rita Sceeter version of popular (the way people become after she writes about them)? I still think there are many sane people in our fandom.

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.
Since the last thing JKR wanted was to make us identify too much with, let alone admire, Malfoys, if would have been very surprised, had she written anything like that.

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.
It was very foolish, if you think about it for a moment. Iirc, she lied only since she wanted to find out quicker whether Draco was alive & in case he was to protect him. She didn't think Harry would win, right? Or did she, after seeing his miraculous ability to survive again and again? Imagine V understanding she lied to him about this crucial fact & winning in the end. It would have been like the proverbial last straw, imo. In short, RIP Malfoys. Why not tell him the truth, so that Harry would quickly be killed again, and then go to the castle? IITS rules!

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.
The problem is I can't imagine alternative storyline for Malfoys. Switching to D's side? Running away from both V and the Order? Out of their own house? None of it seems believable. They seem completely trapped to me.
As for "Oh, I don't think their soul is so damaged", I understand that about Draco and even Narcissa, who let's not forget supported V and didn't care too much about killings until her own family was in danger, while being an adult and in her own mind. But Lucius?! The major villain (except V) in CoS? DE? Torturer of Muggles at the QWC in GoF? I would understand, if JKR killed him somehow Lupin or Snape style (I mean by V) to solve this problem. I remember fandom being certain about his death in DH. His being alive just seemed very strange to me.

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.

Yes. They weren't even very strongly on their own side, it seems to me. Their whole story was just very milquetoast.

Interesting, though I was actually pretty satisfied with their arc.

I do think some of the dissatisfaction from certain circles comes from those unhappy with the roles their favorite characters played. Which is certainly understandable, but JKR did end up with a huge cast of characters. I wouldn't go so far as to say she lost control of her story, unlike some other prominent fantasy authors (notably George RR Martin and Robert Jordan). But starting from GOF onward things expanded quite a bit to the point where I think she could have used tighter editing to cut the books down some. Unfortunately, the more popular an author gets the less willing the publishers seem to be to thoroughly edit (see Steven King!).

So with a huge cast it's almost inevitable that people are going to feel their pet characters weren't served as well as they should be. Outside of the Trio and Dumbledore in DH everyone got fairly sidelined. Well, I don't actually think Snape did, I thought that was really well done, but the Snape side of fandom didn't seem particularly pleased.

I always thought the Malfoys were more resourceful than they turned out to be in the last book, but then, I thought that of Snape, who JKR seemed to view as Dumbledore's guilt-ridden tool, and even Lupin, who had no backbone at all. All these characters were sacrificed for a plodding plot involving the Trio. Dumbledore and Voldemort, too, were victims of their own pathologies. Was there any character that came out of DH with more complexity than they had going into the book? Everyone seemed tired and beaten into two-dimensionality.

Draco was another lost opportunity. I liked that he was in it towards the end, still somewhat ambiguous, but active. The train station scene with his son Scorpius and his almost-deferential nod to Harry ruined that for me.

Narcissa's lie didn't impress me much, either. It was not defiance, but a clinging to the immediate goal, survival, as you say.

I think the Malfoys continued to survive because they kept their heads down and allowed themselves to be abused by Voldemort. Eventually, they ceased to be important. But sometimes survival is all that people can aim for. It's the choice thousands of refugees make throughout the world. It's not less noble than sacrifice, especially sacrifice of the Potter variety. It's a bid to keep life going.

And at the ends of wars, people are forgiven in the name of picking up a normal life, although that often means problems the existed pre-war continue to exist post-war. That's the way I see the epilogue of DH. Everyone just wanted a normal life, but nothing had really changed.

It's hard for me to take anything positive out of DH. None of the characters in it are really admirable, now that I reflect on it... maybe Dobby. Few of the characters are actually likable in the end. I suppose you saw

nemesister's poll on this? It seems many people are reading against the intentions of the author.

Anyway, I hope you don't mind if I friend you. I didn't know you friends-lock posts! I enjoy reading your thoughts.

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.

I totally agree with your post, and I just wanted to say that, IMO, there seemed to be many things throughout the entire book that felt like what you said above. Like so many missed opportunities. The Malfoy/Draco story was just one, but I think it would have been one of the most interesting had it been properly fleshed out.

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.

I just thought they survived because Voldemort wasn't very bright. *g*

But seriously, yes. It really bothers me, the not-ever-learning-from-your-mistakes thing, and how at the end everything seemed to be back to the way it was. Scary. :P

I can honestly say that I was truly surprised and disappointed with how Lucius was portrayed. Perhaps the fic made us think he could be so much more than JKR ever planned for him, but he was just a sad little man in the end who didn't even evoke any Slytherin qualities at all.

The Crouches v. Malfoys comparison up there really does capture how much better it could have been done.

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.

I called Narcissa's version of protecting Draco (http://babydraco.insanejournal.com/6450.html#cutid1) the "lie back and think of England" style. And Draco seems to take his cues from her, so when he finally stands up to Voldemort his method of doing so is what someone like Harry would call "cowardly" but for someone llike Draco, it probably took a lot of courage.

Naturally, JKR doesn't respect that either.

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.

It's like there was a whole other book just about the Malfoys that explains all this behind the scenes stuff, and we should be able to go and consult it but we can't, cause it doesn't *exist*. It's like they wandered in from some other story, and people in Harry's story keep telling them "get lost, this isn't your book"

ITA. Also, it strikes me that people living at that level of stress and misery for that length of time would have snapped at some point. Because it's not like we saw their stress and misery grow. They were pretty much at a nearly mad level right in the first chapter. And then, apparently, they were stuck like that for an entire year.

For me it was just one more false note among many. I went beyond disliking what was happening to the characters to just not buying that these characters were even real. For me, the Malfoy story stops on the Tower in HBP. (Heh. I think the series pretty much stops there, period. There's not a story line in DH that struck me as either logical or true.)

"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."

Or as someone else said, they're not quite evil enough to kill. It has to go back to the Slytherin issue. JKR was bound & determined to make sure we know Slytherins are inferior in every way. They're "cunning", yet apparently not even very good at escaping a bad situation. I kept expecting the Malfoys & Death Eaters to revolt & take down Voldemort themselves. After all, he attacks his followers almost as much as his enemies. Why are they still there? It was border-line unrealistic. The Malfoys & Snape seemed like the ultimate survivors, yet in DH they all seemed to lapse into this confused passivity. It's like JKR realized that people admired their survivor skills & decided to take that away too - just to make sure there's nothing to really admire about a Slytherin ever. The Slytherin-bashing at the end was just petty IMO - Ron's still making fun of them 20 years later, and look, Draco's got a receding hairline! Take that, fangirls. It's all about building up Harry by pointing out how superior he is to his rivals/enemies.

Personally, I like survivors. It takes toughness, skill, bravery & resourcefulness to survive, and especially to live after a huge war like the one in DH. The Malfoys were struggling to live & save each other, in contrast to Harry, who just obediently trotted off to death. But the thing is, JKR seems to value martyrdom & glorious death more than just, you know, living. And that's reflected in the portrayal of the Malfoys. So why didn't the Malfoys develop? I think it's a combination of 1. Slytherins are in essence bad, can't show too much change, 2. Heroic death and self-sacrifice is more noble & admirable than being a survivor & 3. Girls, don't go for the bad boys!

That particular subplot feels to me as if she was trying so hard to make them 'uncool' that she made them unrealistic instead. And while for a number of reasons an authors own characters can't be technically OOC, the Malfoys are, here. Things just don't add up. I've read a number of fics where they ended up as a third side, their own side, against V but not with the Order, and well. I can perfectly see that. It's believable. It makes sense. It fits in with who we've seen them to be. Lucius? Taking pointless abuse for no aparent reason or profit for months and not doing anything? I bet he barely took his tea a fraction of a degree colder than he prefers it; he is just NOT a taker, a brainless object of abuse. I read the book and kept waiting for the turing, and when it never came, I was all 'Huh?' The Malfoys are not Gryffindors, they won't make a very vocal and glass-transparent decision and rush in with wands at the ready by Harry's side. But they won't just lie about like that, either.

I read people being very indignant about how Draco told the DE he's on his side. What did you expect, I ask? That's maybe the sole Malfoy moment in the entire book. I applauded him. It made me finish the story with some of my belief returned to me.

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