Hey everyone,
Welcome to another installment of Harry Potter Theory. Today,
we’re going to be discussing a segment from the Deathly Hallows involving Draco Malfoy
and Harry Potter. More specifically, we’ll be addressing the moment that Draco Malfoy FAILS
to identify Harry Potter in the presence of his father and fellow Death Eaters.
What I want to explore is..WHY? Did Draco simply FAIL to recognize Harry? Was it
an act of self-preservation? Or, was this Draco’s chance at some form of redemption?
Let’s dive in.
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Back to the video.
It all begins on chapter 23 of the Deathly
Hallows - Malfoy Manor - where there is some confusion around Harry’s identity:
"Now, let's see who we've got," said Greyback's gloating voice from overhead, and Harry was rolled
over onto his back. A beam of wand light fell onto his face and Greyback laughed.
"I'll be needing butterbeer to wash this one down. What happened to you,
ugly?" Harry did not answer immediately.
"I said," repeated Greyback, and Harry received a blow to
the diaphragm that made him double over in pain. "what happened to you?"
"Stung." Harry muttered. "Been Stung." "Yeah, looks like it."
said a second voice. "What’s your name?" snarled Greyback. "Dudley." said Harry.
"And your first name?"
"I -- Vernon. Vernon Dudley."
And why was Harry so unrecognizable? Well, just before being captured by the Snatchers,
Hermione, smart-as-always, was able to fire a Stinging Jinx directly into Harry's face.
The resulting swelling disfigured his face so much that he was no longer recognizable.
However, despite Hermione’s quick-thinking in her attempt to make Harry unrecognizable, there
were still things that allowed Harry to be easily identified, like his scar and signature glasses:
"What's that on your forehead, Vernon?" he asked softly,
his breath foul in Harry's nostrils as he pressed a filthy finger to the taught scar.
"Don't touch it! Harry yelled; he could not stop himself,
he thought he might be sick from the pain of it.
"I thought you wore glasses, Potter?" breathed Greyback.
"I found glasses!" yelped one of the Snatchers skulking in the background.
"There was glasses in the tent, Greyback, wait -"
And seconds later Harry's glasses had been rammed back onto his face.
The Snatchers were closing in now, peering at him.
"It Is!" rasped Greyback. "We've caught Potter!"
But while the Snatchers were entirely confident in identifying Harry, ultimately the decision
to identify Harry in advance of alerting the Dark Lord fell on Draco, as he knew him best:
“They say they’ve got Potter,” said Narcissa’s cold voice. “Draco, come here.”
"Well, Draco?" said Lucius Malfoy. He sounded avid. "Is it? Is it Harry Potter?"
"I can’t – I can’t be sure," said Draco. He was keeping his distance from Greyback,
and seemed as scared of looking at Harry as Harry was of looking at him.
“But look at him carefully, look! Come closer!” Harry had never heard Lucius Malfoy so excited.
“There’s something there,” he whispered. “it could be the scar,
stretched tight. . . .” Draco, come here, look properly! What do you think?”
Harry saw Draco’s face up close now, right beside his father’s. They were extraordinarily alike,
except that while his father looked beside himself with excitement,
Draco’s expression was full of reluctance, even fear.
"I don’t know," he said, and he walked away
towards the fireplace where his mother stood watching.
In this moment Draco could have changed the fate of the Wizarding World entirely. He could have
redeemed his family name, brought honour (at least in the eyes of Voldemort) back to his father,
become a star among the Death Eaters, AND secured Voldemort’s rise to power.
What led to his inaction?
I’ve got a few different answers for WHY this happened.
The first possibility that I want to explore is (in my view) the least likely-
that Draco’s inaction was solely the result of his own desire for self-preservation.
As UNLIKELY as it is, there’s always the possibility that Draco was simply not 100%
sure that this disfigured, swollen boy was Harry. In this instance, Draco’s inability
to identify Harry would have stemmed from his fear of misidentifying Harry. If Draco did
indeed confirm that this figure was Harry, and then Voldemort was called only to find out that
this was NOT Harry after all, then things would have only gotten worse for him and his family.
In the books even Harry admits that he wouldn’t have recognized himself:
“Harry was facing a mirror over the fireplace,
a great gilded thing in an intricately scrolled frame. Through the slits of
his eyes he saw his own reflection for the first time since leaving Grimmauld Place.
His face was huge, shiny, and pink, every feature distorted by Hermione’s jinx. His
black hair reached his shoulders and there was a dark shadow around his jaw. Had he not
known that it was he who stood there, he would have wondered who was wearing
his glasses. He resolved not to speak, for his voice was sure to give him away;
yet he still avoided eye contact with Draco as the latter approached.”
But do I think this was what led to Draco’s inaction? PROBABLY not.
The next possibility I want to discuss is that Draco, despite being a subscriber to the
ideologies of the Death Eaters, simply didn’t want to put his childhood acquaintances in harms way.
Draco knew that if he turned over Harry it would have meant the end for Harry, Ron AND Hermione.
Though Draco loathed these three (or at least, his previous actions would lead us to BELIEVE he did),
he didn’t want to be the cause of their deaths. Did he want glory for his family? Yes. Did he want
Death Eater rule? Maybe. But he didn’t want any of this at the cost of his old classmates lives.
The NEXT (and most likely) possibility that I want to discuss is that Draco no longer
subscribed to the ideologies of the Death Eaters at all.
He may have always talked-the-talk, but wasn’t willing to walk-the-walk.
The events of the Half-Blood prince had taken their toll on Draco, and the perpetually-sneering
boy that had always exuded some sort of false confidence had started to become a nervous
wreck after being tasked with killing his school headmaster. While we BEGAN to witness his downfall
after being given his dubious task near the beginning, it wasn’t until the end of the book,
and Dumbledore’s death, that we saw Draco reduced to someone so unlike his former self.
Seeing death- Dumbledore being struck down atop the Astronomy Tower, and Charity Burbage
being tortured and killed in his own home, had forced Draco to recognize his own ignorance.
We also have to remember that it was DRACO who set those wheels in motion by allowing Death Eaters to
infiltrate Hogwarts via the Vanishing Cabinet. It’s likely that Draco took responsibility for
Dumbledore’s death, hated the feeling, and wanted to avoid having any more blood on his hands.
Draco, who uttered horrible slurs for basically his entire childhood,
was simply echoing the voice of his father. Draco didn’t really hate muggle-borns or blood traitors,
he was just ignorant, and too young and unwise to recognize otherwise.
After witnessing death for the first time,
Draco recognized that there was a distinct difference between sneering
insults and condemning his old classmates to a long, painful and publicized death.
Expanding on this, it’s possible that Draco simply
began to imagine what a future under Voldemort’s rule might look like.
Just a few years prior Draco didn’t have a care in the world.
But now he was torturing Death Eaters for Voldemort, watching his professors get murdered,
and watching his father (who he so looked up to) get belittled and marginalized by
the man who was meant to be the new RULER of the wizarding world.
It wasn’t a game anymore, and the dark mark on his arm reminded him
of every moment he spent awake in the nightmare that his life had become.
Identifying Harry would have eliminated the one chance he had of life returning to normal.
Another thing worth looking at is that Draco said “I don’t know” not “no”.
What does this mean?
In my opinion, Draco failing to outright DENY that this unidentified figure was Harry was
never representative of him wishing harm upon his old schoolmate. His indecision was simply
the product of his mind weighing the path that he had taken with the path that he now NEEDED to
take. Despite recognizing what course of action he would now need to take, he couldn’t quite
vocalize his commitment to it, and that’s why he ended up settling for a passive “I don’t know”.
The last question that needs to be answered on this topic is WHY on earth Draco’s father,
Lucius, wasn’t able to recognize Harry.
Lucius had met Harry on multiple occasions,
and he knew who Harry hung out with. In the Chamber of Secrets he mentions
to Hermione that “Draco told him all about her” and even points out Ron’s red hair.
Also, it’s not like Harry’s iconic scar was some big secret,
Lucius comments on Harry’s scar earlier in the series:
“Forgive me, your scar is legend”
What’s the deal here?
Here’s the thing: he probably did, but without absolute certainty,
calling Voldemort would have been a very poor decision,
especially if it turned out NOT to be Harry. Lucius was already in Voldemort’s bad books,
and wasting his time further would have been very very bad for him and his family.
They needed confirmation that it was Harry without ANY shred of doubt,
and Draco would have been the only one to provide that.
However, as we know, that’s not quite how things panned out.
And that’s it for this video! Did you ever ponder Draco’s indecision in this moment?
Did I hit the nail on the head here, or is there something I’ve missed? Leave a comment down below.
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Until next time
Remember
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live