Draco Malfoy
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| Harry Potter character | |
| Image:Y film promo draco02.jpg Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | |
| Draco Malfoy | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Unknown}}} |
| Hair colour | Unknown}}} |
| Eye colour | Unknown}}} |
| House | Unknown}}} |
| Parentage | Unknown}}} |
| Allegiance | {{{allegiance|Unknown}}}}}} |
| Film portrayer | None}}} |
| First appearance | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone |
Draco Malfoy (born 5 June 1980Template:Ref) is an antagonist in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books and Harry Potter's principal rival at school. The rivalry between the two is such that Harry has at times perceived Draco to be his archnemesis. Draco is described as a pale-faced boy with white-blond hair, pointed features, and cold grey eyes. Harry describes him as a spoiled, arrogant, and selfish person.
Malfoy's intense rivalry with Harry started mainly as a product of envy, given the latter's fame and phenomenal successes at Hogwarts. Once Malfoy complained bitterly to his father about Harry's popularity and his talent as a Quidditch player, and having a superb broom. As the boys grow older, however, their mutual hostility develops far beyond petty jealousies, and expands into a much bigger wizard war.
Additionally, Malfoy taunts Ron Weasley's family for their poor financial situation and treats Hermione Granger with utter disdain for being Muggle-born, calling her by the derogatory term Mudblood.
Draco Malfoy is played by Tom Felton in the first four Harry Potter films.
Contents |
Malfoy in the books
Image:Dracocrabbegoylepansy.jpg
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Draco is 11 years old. He makes his first appearance in Madam Malkin's robe shop. Draco initially behaves in a friendly manner towards Harry and tries to engage him in conversation, but unfortunately only succeeds in alienating him. Draco claims that he is planning to get his parents to buy him a new racing broom. This strongly reminds Harry of Dudley Dursley, Harry's spoiled cousin. Draco then inadvertently disparages Hagrid, whom Harry has great affection for. The two boys' mutual dislike for each other is sealed when Draco offers Harry his friendship outright and Harry refuses. They have been bitter enemies ever since.
Draco is a bully of the sort who uses psychological manipulation and verbal taunts. He is constantly accompanied by two obtuse Slytherins, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, who act as his bodyguards and follow his every order.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Image:Draco.JPG Draco is 12 years old. He gains the position of Seeker in the Slytherin Quidditch team. Hermione speculates that this is mainly because of his father's generous donation of seven high-quality Nimbus 2001 brooms — enough to equip the entire team. However, he is also apparently proficient enough in this role that Slytherin's team is typically competing with Gryffindor for top ranking in the Hogwarts league. He is highly favoured by Severus Snape, the Potions Master and Head of Slytherin House. Because of this, Draco often gets away with behaviour (at least in Potions class) that would land Harry, or any other non-Slytherin student, in detention.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Malfoy is attacked by a hippogriff in Care of Magical Creatures class and subsequently tries his best to get the teacher, Rubeus Hagrid, fired. Pansy Parkinson, a Slytherin girl in his year, begins expressing considerable romantic interest in Draco and will eventually accompany him to the Yule Ball in their fourth year.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Malfoy appears to be instrumental in the creation of "Support Cedric Diggory" badges for the Triwizard Tournament, as he is the first one to show them to Harry out of spite. These badges switch phrases when touched to say "Potter Stinks". He also gave malicious misinformation to Rita Skeeter about Harry Potter and Rubeus Hagrid.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Malfoy joins the Inquisitorial Squad and plays an important part in the exposure of the secret Dumbledore's Army, which Harry leads. He is devastated at the end of the book by the imprisonment of his father.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Draco plays a crucial role in Half-Blood Prince, when Lord Voldemort orders him to murder the Headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore. Like Regulus Black, Draco is infatuated by the Dark Arts and eagerly takes on the task as a chance for glory, of which he seems to get very little. In an effort to prove himself, Draco works alone without the help of his cronies, Crabbe and Goyle, or his favourite professor, Severus Snape. Under his aunt Bellatrix Lestrange's instruction, Draco has become quite proficient in Occlumency, a skill that Harry has never mastered.
Draco's plan is to mend the broken Vanishing Cabinet in the Room of Requirement in Hogwarts, to allow Voldemort's Death Eaters to invade and assist with Dumbledore's murder. As the school year progresses, Draco slowly comes to believe that he is unable to fix the cabinet, and in desperation he attempts to curse, then poison, the headmaster.
Harry is increasingly suspicious of Draco, and may be the only person who believes that Draco could do major harm: Narcissa, Snape, and perhaps even Voldemort believe he will fail.
Though Harry always thinks of Draco as an arrogant, selfish person, he encounters another side of him, actually crying in a lavatory with none other than Moaning Myrtle. For Draco, the stakes are impossibly high: he must either carry out Voldemort's orders or risk the murder of his family in retribution.
Against all odds, Draco succeeds in mending the cabinet and allowing the Death Eaters into Hogwarts. Unfortunately for him, Harry instructs his friends to watch Draco and Snape, and they are able to alert the Order of the Phoenix to the Death Eaters' presence. Despite this, Draco manages to reach the North Tower to confront Dumbledore, with Harry as a helpless and invisible witness. Though Draco is initially exhilarated at his apparent achievements, he ultimately proves unable to complete his task; instead, Snape steps in and kills Dumbledore for him. Draco's ultimate inability to commit murder is evidence that he still retains some innocence, leading some fans to believe that he may be redeemed in the future.
Background
Draco is the only child of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy (née Black).
The Malfoy familyTemplate:Ref symbolises prejudice; Rowling once compared them to the Nazis. The family is old, aristocratic, formal, clannish, very affluent, and extremely proud of their pure bloodlines. Most, if not all, of them were in the Slytherin House. They harbor a very intense distaste against Muggle-born witches and wizards and Muggles in general.
The family manor is in Wiltshire in southwest England and was once staffed by the family house-elf Dobby, whom Harry Potter frees from enslavement in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It can be assumed that the Malfoys have lived in the manor for generations, as they seem to have secret chambers (not unlike Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts) in the house where they hide Dark objects and heirlooms that could damage the family name.
By making the Malfoy family rather small, Rowling re-enforces the idea that prejudice dies out. The Malfoys have a very limited selection of people to marry, since they refuse to marry anyone who is not a pure-blood.
Though he is very proud of his family, as he was taught to be, Draco's relationship with his father, Lucius Malfoy, is somewhat unclear; while Draco is very loyal and boasts about his father's power, he is often stung by Lucius's strict rebukes and critical remarks.
Lucius Malfoy's capture at the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a turning point for the family. Draco replaces his father as a Death Eater, and Narcissa convinces Severus Snape to make the Unbreakable Vow to protect her only son.
His name
"Draco Malfoy" is an invented name by J. K. Rowling.
Draco can be derived from the Latin word meaning "dragon" (or serpent/snake). In parallel, the Hogwarts motto is "Draco dormiens numquam titillandus", which is roughly translated to "Never tickle a sleeping dragon". Draco is also the name of a snakelike constellation, keeping with the traditions of the Black family that name their descendants after stars/constellations. Notably, "Draco" is the first lawgiver of Athens, who enforced a harsh legal code. The English adjective, draconian, meaning 'cruel', is inherited from that lawgiver. Variations on the name "Draco" are also translated to "devil" in some biblical and other ancient texts. Since Rowling's knowledge of Latin is basically self-taught Template:Ref, some of her translations may not come out precisely as intended.
Malfoy is derived from Old French Mal Foi or Mal Foy, which means "Bad Faith".
While many adult wizards and witches in the series have invented names (Dumbledore, Nymphadora, Voldemort etc.), Draco Malfoy is one of two Hogwarts students who has such a name (the other is Luna Lovegood); even his followers have conventional names such as Vincent, Gregory, and Pansy. Both of the students' names are from Latin. Rowling enjoys the feeling that wizards would continue to use this dead language in their everyday life.
In a very early draft of Philosopher's Stone (around 1994), Draco's last name was "Spungen".
J.K. Rowling on Draco
Below are the author's quotes about her character from the Connection Interview (October 1999, transcribed by Catwoman at SQ) and the Leaky Cauldron/Mugglenet Interview 2005.
"He is the bully of the most refined type in that unlike Dudley, Harry's cousin who is a physical bully, but really not bright enough to access all of your weak points. Draco is, um, he's a snob. He's a bigot and he's a bully, and as I say, in the most refined sense, he knows exactly what will hurt people."
"I think Draco would be very gifted in Occlumency, unlike Harry. I thought of Draco as someone who is very capable of compartmentalizing his life and his emotions, and always has done. So he's shut down his pity, enabling him to bully effectively. He's shut down compassion — how else would you become a Death Eater? So he suppresses virtually all of the good side of himself.
But then he's playing with the big boys, as the phrase has it, and suddenly, having talked the talk he's asked to walk it for the first time and it is absolutely terrifying. And I think that that is an accurate depiction of how some people fall into that kind of way of life and they realize what they're in for. I felt sorry for Draco. Well, I’ve always known this was coming for Draco, obviously, however nasty he was.
Harry is correct in believing that Draco would not have killed Dumbledore, which I think is clear when he starts to lower his wand, when the matter is taken out of his hands."
Literary analysis
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Draco Malfoy exhibits stereotypical pointed features as the main villainous student. Rowling uses Malfoy as the personification of one of her major plotlines, prejudice, by introducing him as Harry's first classmate upon entering the Wizarding World. He and his cronies, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, represent the antithesis to the trio of Ron, Hermione, and Harry.
However, in the sixth book, Draco Malfoy's character undergoes a major shift. While still attempting to maintain his characteristic arrogance, the difficult task set to him by Lord Voldemort and the capture of his father, Lucius Malfoy, turns him into a more sympathetic character, and in the end, after orchestrating the entire plan perfectly, he finds himself incapable of completing his mission of murdering Albus Dumbledore, thus forcing Severus Snape to do it for him.
Harry Potter fandom
Draco Malfoy has developed a large following among many Harry Potter fans as a popular figure in fan fiction, where he is often portrayed as the anti-hero in a romantic relationship with HermioneTemplate:Ref, Ginny, Harry, or even Luna.
Actor Thomas Felton escalated the character's claim to fame among fans by giving them a visual portrayal of Harry's nemesis. Felton received more fanmail than the other actors (including the protagonist's actor) yet ironically had never read any Harry Potter books until after the filming of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Author J. K. Rowling also has attributed Draco's popularity to the "bad boy" persona he has on film. To Rowling's despair, many female Harry Potter fans became obsessed with Draco. They deeply admired Malfoy's cunning, ambition, and arrogant streak. "The trouble is, of course, that girls fancy Tom Felton, but Draco is NOT Tom Felton!" Rowling said in an interviewTemplate:Ref.
Others agree with Rowling and feel that those fans were merely projecting appealing traits onto him that were hitherto nonexistant. This cynical view inspired the mocking, derisive term "Leather-Pants DracoTemplate:Ref". On the other hand, Malfoy gained even greater fandom sympathy than before due to the events in Half-Blood Prince that showed that he was not completely evil.
However, there are many fans who took a liking to Draco Malfoy even before the films' creation and Felton's cast. Many of these fans tend to be older and prolific in fanfiction writing and character analysis essays. Some of them rather resent the misconception that all fans of Draco Malfoy are thought as all fans of Tom Felton. These fans realize Malfoy's potential as a dynamic character (since he was developed so little until the sixth book), and they would like to believe that he is not a cardboard black-and-white character. Some preferred Malfoy due to their dislike for the principle protagnists.
References
- Template:Note "JKRowling.com Archives: Birthdays" from MuggleNet
- Template:Note October 16, 2000 Scholastic Interview with J.K. Rowling
- Template:Note Lexicon Black Family Tree
- Template:Note Opposites Attract Why ... do so many passionate shippers still write and read about a possible romance between Harry's best friend and worst enemy?
- Template:Note World Day Chat (March 2004 Interview)
- Template:Note "Leather-Pants Draco" is a derisive term immortalized by the popular "Draco Sinister" fanfiction by Cassandra Claire
External links
- Lexicon: Draco's Profile
- Unredeemed.net: Devoted to Draco
- Mugglenet: Role in the Books
- MadamScoop's Index on the Malfoys
- Dracofans.com - A comprehensive Draco Malfoy website
- The Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet interview Joanne Kathleen Rowling: Part II
- JKR's Quotes: The Younger Generationcs:Draco Malfoy
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