Canon Draco

I will use encouraging this community as an excuse to prattle on...

Reading some discussions today I was thinking how I do so much thinking about Draco as a character, and yet a lot of the time I feel like I'm not digging deeper into the character so much as just pointing out what's in the text. I feel like a lot of the time I'm stripping away fanon just to get to what we actually have.



That is, it just strikes me that Draco seems to be a character where almost always what we see in a scene isn't what we're told we're seeing in a scene, either by Harry or by much the fandom. I think that might be what fascinates me so much about the character. From Harry's pov this makes sense. He's not attempting to understand this character, so if he comes up with a number of negative impressions, some of which contradict each other, he doesn't care. And people can certainly have contradictions in their personalities. It's just so often I feel like Harry's impression of Malfoy is what people mistake for canon, and if you point out what *you* see in the scene, since you are "there" too and are able to draw your own conclusions, you're assumed to be creating a fanon version of the character, or whitewashing him.

These are some of the basic assumptions I'd like to challenge--and by challenge I don't mean prove that the opposite is true, but question whether this is the accurate way to describe what's going on. Particularly since in a lot of these instances, we see one thing and Harry and fandom assert something else. For instance:

Draco is used to getting what he wants.
This one puzzles me because in canon Draco is almost consistently defined as not getting what he wants. The generally held view seems to be that yes, we never see Draco get what he wants, but this is good because what we see is counteracting all the other times in Draco's life when he does get what he wants. Iow, we should assume that what we see of Draco in the books is a-typical of his life.

But why should we do that? For instance, in the B&B scene Draco is muttering and whining about Harry's getting special privileges. Often one fan will say well, he's right that the Trio does get special privileges. Someone else will then explain how they don't--err, that is they'll explain how they deserve their privileges. But in the scene, remember, Draco is specifically angry about Harry getting a broom his first year and playing Quidditch which indeed is a special privilege. There's no arguing that. In Draco's first scene he already knows about this rule and hopes to circumvent it. It appears from canon that if Draco's parents bought him a broom that first year (which I don't think they did judging by scenes the following year and his reaction to Harry's broom) he didn't get to take it to school. Draco is an ordinary student who is subject to the rules. This thread runs throughout the first two books for him. In his first scene he says the rule sucks, then Harry is given a pass for just that rule, then the next year getting his own broom isn't enough compared to that.

That's one example, but it's a consistent one. The only teacher who seems obviously willing to use his influence on Draco's behalf is Snape, but while he can favor him in class he's rarely shown able to pull strings for him. Usually Draco is subject to regular discipline from Moody, McGonnogal and Hagrid, to name three. Umbridge obviously gives him and his friends special powers, but this is out of the ordinary and something Draco clearly schemed to get--he knows he's upsetting the natural order of things. He certainly doesn't get special treatment on the Quidditch team if he's yelled at for missing the Snitch.

So if we see Draco doesn't get special privileges at school, it's then assumed he gets them at home. But again...why? I mean, yes, obviously he's given the best of everything, but in the two scenes where we see him with his parents he's firmly under their control. He doesn't get to touch anything in the store, he doesn't get a present, he doesn't get to see the Hand of Glory. He's held responsible for his own grades. He doesn't speak in the stands. If he wanted to hang with the DEs at the Cup he's not allowed. In CoS he's not allowed to help out the Heir. In those two scenes he's shown to have far fewer freedoms than any of the Weasleys.

To me he seems...well, a bit like Snape. It's not that he's used to getting what he wants and can't deal when he doesn't, it's that he feels the world is always unfairly weighted against him. Maybe he *should* get what he wants being a Pureblood, but in fact the world is out to make that not happen. In fact, he seems to be subject to rules other people aren't, both at home and at school.

Draco is used to being told he's great at everything.
Again, really? Snape makes him an example in class, but presumably no other teacher has ever done so (maybe Umbridge) unless he earned it. More importantly, his father doesn't seem to think he's all that. Clearly Dad has some expectations for grades that it is Draco's obligation to fulfill and isn't. I would say Draco is told he *should* be great at everything, which is a different thing.

Draco must be the boss of everyone.
His two friends are bodyguards, thus being friends with Draco means receiving orders. Except in canon Draco actually prefers people more powerful than himself. Not because he likes following orders, necessarily. To me it seems like he just needs praise and validation from more powerful people. So he clowns around for older kids, accepts being yelled at by Flint, obsesses about his father and flatters Snape. He loves these guys, I might even suggest *moreso* because they keep him in line while giving him a chance to try again. Again, in B&B (the only Lucius/Draco scene we really have), even if we use the fact that Draco is whining about Harry to suggest that this is the first time Draco had something like this to complain about, the fact that Lucius is so firmly unsupportive of his whining suggests to me he has little patience for humoring his kid. Draco's obsessive repetitiveness (which is pretty common in children, though the heroes are magically free of this--I mean, come on, you think Hermione wouldn't prattle on ad nauseum until her parents wanted to drug her? That Ron wouldn't tell jokes long after they stopped being funny?) only goes on at home as long as it can be ignored (5 seconds?), then Lucius tells him to can it.

Draco's used to Mum and Dad taking care of things for him.
When, exactly? I mean, yes, they have certainly shown concern for him and shown an interest in what he's doing at school, but what major thing in his life have they taken care of for him? His being bought onto the Quidditch team just doesn't fit with canon as I see it at all--a reward seems to make far more sense to me. But even if he was bought on the team what has gone right for Draco in school since year 1? The few things I can think of have really nothing to do with his parents (unless we count Umbridge, but I can't imagine anything going down differently if Umbridge hadn't met Lucius) and were short-lived. In first year his parents can't even get him out of a Forbidden Forest detention or get back the house cup. If Draco was ever used to his parents coming in and fixing everything for him (and perhaps in his childhood they often did that) he's been on his own since 11. By the end of OotP he's trying and failing to fix things for them.

None of Draco's relationships are "real."
This, of course, mostly comes down to Snape. Just recently I was reading a discussion where someone was mentioning Snape's favoring Draco in Potions and they had to put in (or pretending to), I think because it's so widely accepted in fandom that we can't take Snape's favoring him at face value even though whenever Harry sees them they seem to like each other. It just kind of floors me that it seems to have become impolite to flat-out say Draco is favored by Snape, that this is the one instance in canon where everyone suddenly get strict about what we know *for sure.* So you can feel confident claiming to know what Draco's childhood was like in detail despite not having been there, but if Snape says Draco's the bees knees it shouldn't be taken as a marker of Snape's opinion because he could have some complicated reason for doing so and really hate him. The funny thing is, it's not like it even matters in many contexts--even if Snape is only pretending to like favoring Draco, he's still favoring him.


Now, I don't think looking at this that I have made Draco into a different character who is any "cooler" than the one in canon. Somebody claiming everything's unfair to him is no less annoying than someone who expects everything to favor him. Draco's plots don't suddenly become heroic if he has low-esteem. To me, this isn't creating a fanon character, it's appreciating the character that's there who makes much more sense. Not that I'm saying my way of putting these little facts together is the only way--I haven't even worked out how I really think it all works. I'm not saying here that Draco is X way. Just saying in very specific instances it seems like X is happening in canon, based on what the text says.

I just wonder why it is this character works this way in fandom. Why does this character get so consistently interpreted in a way that seems slightly different from other characters? It just seems like a big blind spot, and sometimes even a convenient way of fobbing off troubling aspects of good characters on this one, you know? Sometimes he honestly does seem to be being set up as a scapegoat--literally. Maybe because of that, or because he's attached to the characters who are connected to "racists" there's almost this unspoken reaction expected of you and if you don't stick to it you might be racist too. I'm not claiming a conspiracy or anything, I just feel sometimes that there some issues people don't want to talk about rationally, because if you can it means you don't see how serious they are, so characters associated with those kinds of issues get it too. So suggesting, for instance, that Hermione was out of line on the Quidditch pitch=you think Voldemort is right.