Hey everyone,
Welcome to another installment of Harry Potter Theory. In this video, we’re going to be
discussing Harry Potter’s arch-nemesis and the son of Lucius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy.
Draco Malfoy was a british pure-blood wizard born in the year 1980, the son of Narcissa
Malfoy and death eater Lucius Malfoy. Draco started at Hogwarts in the same year as Harry,
Ron, Hermione, and many of the other characters that we’re all so familiar with. Right from
the beginning, Draco exhibits..questionable behaviour. He is the archetypal bully, and
when he first meets Harry in the film, he extends his hand out to him, but not before
taking an easy shot at Ronald Weasley, who Harry had also just met:
“Think my name's funny, do you? No need to ask you yours. Red hair... and a hand-me-down
robe... you must be a Weasley.”
Harry, having already befriended Ron, is not a fan of Draco’s attitude, and when he rejects
his handshake it sparks the catalyst that would result in years of animosity between
the two.
JK Rowling describes Draco’s character as follows:
“Everybody recognises Draco because everybody has known somebody like him. Such people’s
belief in their own superiority can be infuriating, laughable or intimidating, depending on the
circumstances in which one meets them. Draco succeeds in provoking all of these feelings
in Harry, Ron and Hermione at one time or another.”
Right off the bat, we sort of get a sense of the type of character that Draco Malfoy
is going to be. The only reason that he’s interested in befriending Harry is because
of his fame, and Draco, having been raised in a pure-blood family that places an exceptional
amount of value on status, leaps at the opportunity to associate himself with Harry. After the
sorting ceremony, Draco is placed in to Slytherin house, and Harry is placed in to Gryffindor
house. This is basically the beginning of the rivalry between Draco and Harry Potter.
Throughout the books and films, Draco is a constant nuisance towards the trio, and as
he grows older his behaviour turns from annoying, but still child-like and playful, to rather
sinister.
Draco, a pure-blood supremacist and die-hard slytherin, jumped at any opportunity to embarrass
or insult students in any of the other houses. Here’s another one of Draco’s charming
lines addressed towards Gryffindor students:
"You know how I think they choose people for the Gryffindor team. It's people they feel
sorry for. See, there's Potter, who's got no parents, then there's the Weasleys, who've
got no money — you should be on the team, Longbottom, you've got no brains."
While Draco was always troublesome, condescending, and just rough to be around in general, I
think that it would be fair to say that his behaviour is largely a product of his upbringing.
I don’t think that Draco is necessarily an inherently bad person, he was just raised
by a couple of pure-blood supremacists, one of them is even a death eater. How would you
expect him to turn out? The very atmosphere that Draco was raised in was poisonous, his
father, having followed Lord Voldemort in the first wizarding war, only avoided imprisonment
by claiming that he was under the imperius curse for the duration of the war. This, however
was not the case, and Lucius lived in constant regret, having been unsuccessful, along with
the other Deatheaters, in bringing Lord Voldemort to power. Their image was important, and having
to claim that you were placed under the imperius curse, even if to avoid imprisonment, makes
you look weak. This weakness ended up being personified in the form of even more hatred
towards muggle-borns, half-bloods, half-breeds, and blood traitors. Draco, who was highly
influenced by his father, adopted this same attitude, and this formed the person that
we saw at Hogwarts, an attitude that was the product of his father’s failure and extreme
prejudice.
As Draco grew older we witness first-hand his evolution from petulant, but innocent
little boy to sinister and dark young man. What really set him off, was the imprisonment
of his father after the battle of the department of mysteries- a battle that effectively served
as the catalyst and first major conflict of the second wizarding war. After Voldemort
lures Harry to the department of mysteries in an attempt to steal the fabled ‘prophecy’,
Harry comes face to face with Lucius, who, up until that point, had been able to somewhat
save face within the wizarding community.
Lucius Malfoy: "Oh, you don’t know Potter as I do, Bellatrix. He has a great weakness
for heroics; the Dark Lord understands this about him. Now give me the prophecy, Potter."
Harry Potter: "I know Sirius is here. I know you’ve got him!"
Lucius Malfoy: "It’s time you learned the difference between life and dreams, Potter.
Now give me the prophecy, or we start using wands."
Because Draco's father was seen participating in the battle as a Death Eater, he was sent
to Azkaban for his crimes. Draco was very upset by this, and knowing that Harry was
involved, swore that he would get retribution. Where the pair would previously get back at
each other in the form of harmless pranks or jinxes- this was the beginning of a new,
deeper, darker relationship between the two boys. Harry, having been attacked by Draco’s
father, resented the Malfoys, and Draco, who felt that Harry was responsible for his father’s
imprisonment, resented Harry. This led to the following exchange between the two boys
in Madam Malkin’s:
Harry Potter: "Wow... look at that... he’s not here now! So why not have a go? They might
be able to find you a double cell in Azkaban with your loser of a husband!"
Draco: "Don’t you dare talk to my mother like that, Potter!"
Narcissa Malfoy: "It’s all right, Draco. I expect Potter will be reunited with dear
Sirius before I am reunited with Lucius."
In year six, Draco had officially joined the death eaters, replacing his father, for the
time being, in their ranks. It was during this year that we see Draco in his most sinister,
skulking form, having been given a special mission by Voldemort: kill dumbledore. Draco
kept a relatively low profile after joining the ranks of the death eaters, but couldn’t
help but brag about being given mission to his fellow Slytherin students. On the train
to Hogwarts, Harry overheard parts of the conversation, and Draco, who became aware
of Harry’s presence after the train stopped, used a Full Body-Bind Curse to paralyse Harry.
“Didn’t mummy ever tell you it was rude to Eavesdrope Potter? - PATRIFICUS TOTALUS”
Just before brutally stomping on Harry’s face and crushing his nose as revenge for
his father’s imprisonment, he says the following to Harry:
“Oh yeah, she was dead before you could wipe the drool off your chin”
This really symbolized the path had Draco had chosen at this point, intent on fulfilling
the dark lord’s bidding and avenging his father. What were once harmless quips had
become horrible remarks about Harry’s dead mother. Over the course of this same school
year, Draco appears to be more distraught than ever, completely terrified of failing
the dark lord’s mission and embarrassing his father. What’s interesting about Draco’s
mission, however, is that it has been implied that Voldemort always expected Draco to fail.
Assinging this mission to Draco was Voldemort’s way of punishing Lucius for his failure at
the department of mysteries. Draco was barely present for classes during this school year,
stopped attending quidditch practice, and did not fulfill any of his duties as a prefect,
the same duties that he would previously enjoy. It was obvious that the pressure was affecting
him.
As the story progresses, we see Draco become more and more involved with the Deatheaters,
but despite talking the talk, it appeared that Draco was almost always hesitant in performing
the duties of the Deatheaters when push came to shove. When the trio were caught by Snatchers,
and Draco was called upon to identify them, he was very hesitant in doing so. This is
just one of the indicators that Draco didn’t actually want to be a death eater, he just
wanted to make his parents proud. He didn’t want the people that he went to school with
for years to die, he just wanted to live up to the family name, even if it wasn’t truly
him.
By the end of the books and films, while it is not explicitly shown or stated, it’s
rather clear that Draco is remorseful for his actions, and that he was really just the
pawn of his father. He was a misguided young boy that just never knew any different, and
I think that Harry, among others, were able to recognize this towards the end. It’s
really quite sad, actually, as without his father’s looming presence he could have
perhaps had a more normal childhood.
But, what happened to Draco after the Battle of Hogwarts? As he grew even older, what sort
of person did he become? JK Rowling, after the films ended, expressed that Draco had
been ‘sobered’ by his experiences as a death eater. And in a 2014 entry on Pottermore,
says the following with regards to Draco’s character:
“The biggest revelation was that he became less of a pure-blood fanatic:
The events of Draco’s late teens forever changed his life. He had had the beliefs with
which he had grown up challenged in the most frightening way: he had experienced terror
and despair, seen his parents suffer for their allegiance, and had witnessed the crumbling
of all that his family had believed in. People whom Draco had been raised, or else had learned,
to hate, such as Dumbledore, had offered him help and kindness, and Harry Potter had given
him his life. After the events of the second wizarding war, Lucius found his son as affectionate
as ever, but refusing to follow the same old pure-blood line.
Draco married the younger sister of a fellow Slytherin. Astoria Greengrass, who had gone
through a similar (though less violent and frightening) conversion from pure-blood ideals
to a more tolerant life view, was felt by Narcissa and Lucius to be something of a disappointment
as a daughter-in-law. They had had high hopes of a girl whose family featured on the ‘Sacred
Twenty-Eight’, but as Astoria refused to raise their grandson Scorpius in the belief
that Muggles were scum, family gatherings were often fraught with tension.
Also, he seemingly mellowed out a bit, leading a life of leisure instead of working to overturn
the forces of light or establish dominion over Muggles, like Lucius did:
I imagine that Draco grew up to lead a modified version of his father’s existence; independently
wealthy, without any need to work, Draco inhabits Malfoy Manor with his wife and son. I see
in his hobbies further confirmation of his dual nature. The collection of Dark artefacts
harks back to family history, even though he keeps them in glass cases and does not
use them. However, his strange interest in alchemical manuscripts, from which he never
attempts to make a Philosopher’s Stone, hints at a wish for something other than wealth,
perhaps even the wish to be a better man. I have high hopes that he will raise Scorpius
to be a much kinder and more tolerant Malfoy than he was in his own youth.
While Draco’s character is ultimately one of dubious morality, I like to imagine that
over the years, he truly did became a good, sound man. In Rowling’s own words, ‘There
is, after all, some unextinguished good at the heart of Draco.”
And that’s it for this video! I hope you enjoyed it, if you have any questions please
let me know down in the comment section below. Until next time, remember - it does not do
to dwell on dreams and forget to live