Poor Draco?

[rj_anderson]

So in preparation for OotP coming out, I'm re-reading the HP books from the beginning -- something I haven't done in quite a long while -- and noticing all kinds of things I hadn't seen before.

About ten minutes ago I came across this, from the first meeting between Harry and Draco in Madam Malkin's robe shop:

"My father's next door buying my books and mother's up the street looking at wands," said the boy. He had a bored, drawling voice. "Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don't see why first years can't have their own. I think I'll bully father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow."

Harry was strongly reminded of Dudley.

This struck me as extremely interesting. In fanon, Lucius is frequently portrayed as a cold and strongly domineering father with cripplingly high expectations of his son, while Draco is often revealed to be secretly struggling with resentment of Lucius and the feeling that no matter how hard he tries he can never measure up. He idolizes his powerful father, and he fears him, and he works hard to please him, but he's always in Lucius's shadow, and it's implied that the real Draco might have been a different and probably nicer person if it weren't for his father constantly pushing him to be a perfect little Death Eater-in-training.

In this quote from canon, however, the situation looks quite different. "My father's next door buying my books"? Draco makes him sound like Lucius is his servant, running errands for him because he's too busy getting his robes fitted. "I'm going to drag them off..." He evidently has no doubt that he can get both his parents to do whatever he wants. "I think I'll bully my father..."

How utterly different from the usual fanonical picture. Would fanon Draco even dream of trying to "bully" fanon Lucius into anything? Would most fanfic authors and readers even dare to imagine that Draco could do so?

And then Harry draws his own conclusion: Draco reminds him of Dudley. A spoiled, manipulative, demanding brat, who knows both his parents dote on him and has no doubt that they will indulge his every whim. And I can't see any reason to believe that appraisal of Draco isn't valid.

Oh, you might say, but Draco is playing tough, trying to look good. And Harry dislikes him, so he's assuming the worst about him, thinking he's just like Dudley. But there's no reason for Harry to be prejudiced against Draco at this point, because he knows nothing about the wizarding world in general or Slytherins in particular. Neither is there any reason for Draco to want to impress Harry by pretending he can bully Lucius around, because Harry hasn't any idea who Draco's father is.

Before I re-read this bit of PS/SS I was almost prepared to buy into the idea that Draco's deepest desire is to please his father and make Lucius proud of him, and that all his detailed reports and attempts to assist his father in Dark activities were efforts toward that end. Now, however, I really begin to doubt that has anything to do with it.

I don't think Draco is afraid of Lucius at all, much less desperate to measure up to him. I think that he wants to be part of Lucius's Dark activities for the same reasons Dudley and his gang liked to beat up on Harry at school -- because terrorizing the weak and helpless is such a lark really, and why should Daddy have all the fun?

Comments

[kalinalea.livejournal.com]

I agree completely and have tended to feel that almost every fanon portrayal of Draco I've ever seen has been a bit off. Of course, I loathe Draco and avoid reading about him whenever possible, so fics with a high Draco content get a pass from me. Thus, I haven't exactly wallowed in Draco-theory. But I agree that in canon he seems more like a spoiled brat who has long since learned to manipulate his parents and knows it than he does a cringing child afraid of his father. The latter approach helps to make him a sympathetic character, I suppose, but it doesn't seem directly supportable by canon.

I think the movie portrayals of both Draco and Lucius might be in part responsible for this slight skewing of the fanon interpretations. I thought Jason Isaacs was marvelous, but he seemed much colder toward Draco in the CoS movie than he came across in the book. I'm thinking of the Quidditch scene in particular, but there were other instances as well - would have to re-watch and re-read to name and compare specific scenes, and I don't have time to do that right now. I tend to see the movies as "fanon" too, actually, in that we're getting JKR's world filtered through another writer, but there's no question that the movies and the actors' individual interpretations of their characters have impacted a lot of fan fiction writers and their characterizations.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I think the movie portrayals of both Draco and Lucius might be in part responsible for this slight skewing of the fanon interpretations.
I have to disagree. I wrote a fanfic with this type of interpritation starting back in the fall of 2000 (Surfeit of Curses, over on Schnoogle) and while it was one of the earlier fics with such a theme, it certainly predated the book by a good two years, enough so that when CoS actually was released, I got a flurry of reviews saying (jokingly) that Jason Issacs must've read my story.

I don't actually *think* he did - but my interpritation is certainly consistent with his.

Re:

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Well, she did say "might be" and "in part", so I think that leaves room for SoC to be an exception to the rule. The more recent Lucius and Draco fics are much more likely to have been influenced by the movie, though.