Of course he did follow the instructions he did hear, because he was scared of the animal just like anyone else. I'm sure he'd have preferred not to have anything to do with it at all. One of the funniest things about PoA the movie is the way Hagrid himself seems to have been given Draco's action there, yet there it's taken for just what it is--a completely inocuous thing animal lovers do all the time. Actually, if that kind of thing was so stupid shouldn't Hagrid have been killed many times over? He's the one constantly playing with dangerous animals.

There's a big difference between a classroom situation like this one, particularly involving a young person, and an adult aggressively deciding to do something stupid. Though frankly, even when an adult does it sometimes it's okay to have sympathy. I recently read a story about this guy who made one stupid mistake after another in going out kayacking. He almost drown. He was far stupider than Draco and had far less excuse for being so, yet why feel satisfaction if he had actually drowned? I can understand feeling that way *affectionately* or because you are upset that he put himself in that kind of danger, but not coldly. Draco's real crime in PoA is exposing Hagrid's major flaws as a teacher and for that there is no forgiveness. Saving Buckbeak appears to be the same as validating that Hagrid did a great job, which would never fly in the real world.