IC Information
In Character Information
character name: Draco Malfoy
Fandom: Harry Potter
Timeline: Approximately the middle of The Deathly Hallows (Book Seven). After he denies knowing Harry's identity (Chapter Twenty-three “Malfoy Manor”) while Harry and Ron are locked in the dungeon, but before Harry and company leave with his wand.
character's age: 17
powers, skills, pets and equipment: His ability to use magic is his main ability. He's moderately well-versed in both the magic he's learned in school as well as the dark magic that he'd have learned from his father/Voldemort in order to be considered competent as a Death Eater. He specializes in Occlumency and in potions and he's managed to learn some (though most likely very little, considering his age) wandless magic.
Draco would most certainly have his wand with him as it is something that he never parts with.
canon history: Here
Growing up in the lap of luxury and belonging to a pure-blooded family, Draco Malfoy's early life was full of privilege and it comes across as though the first time that he's every truly heard the word 'no' was when he met Harry Potter the second time on the Hogwart's Express and offered his hand to him out of friendship, only to have it denied. This marks the first important piece of character development in Draco's history as it is a marker for the way he lives the next seven years of his life.
It's not long after this that Draco is sorted (predictably) into the Slytherin house and this marks an important point in his life in that he's followed in the footsteps of his father that he was always meant to follow. He's able to find himself to be surrounded by the kind of people that are the most similar to who he is. People who fit easily within the clique that he's learned to grow up with. Unfortunately, there was one more thing that pushed him to be as cruel to Harry Potter and his friends and that was when Potter was admitted (against the school's rules) to join the Gryffindor Quidditch team in his first year.
Here he is able (and willing) to spend much of the time he has in his first two years of school making Harry Potter's life as difficult, all because of the one moment where he felt humiliated and shunned from the hand of friendship that he'd requested from the 'Boy-Who-Lived'. Most of this trouble making that he found himself involved in, was relatively minor. It wasn't anything that usually put anyone's life in danger. It generally included finding some way to get Potter and his posse in as much trouble as possible without actually getting himself in any. He's lucky in that Professor Snape (the potions professor as well as Draco's head of house) seems to be a friend of the family and highly favours Draco over most, if not all, of the other students which feeds to Draco's belief that he's better than they are.
The only notable thing that really happens to him within the first two years is that he is sent to detention with Potter in his first year (when he tries to turn Potter in for sending Hagrid's baby dragon away and gets caught as well and in trouble because of being out past bedtime), where they're sent off into the Forbidden Forest as a pair and catch sight of a hooded figure drinking the blood of a dead unicorn. Draco doesn't hesitate to completely abandon Potter and runs off, screaming to find an adult to take care of him.
In his second year, Draco's father buys his way onto the Slytherin Quidditch team and though he is now able to play against Potter on the Quidditch pitch, Draco and his team always fall to second place next to the Gryffindor's, mostly because of Draco's inability to catch the snitch before Potter can or getting too distracted with insulting Potter to actually properly play the game. The second year is also the first time that Draco spouts the term 'Mudblood' and when he is one of the first people to witness Potter speaking parseltongue during their duel in the short lived duelling club.
It isn't until his third year that Draco really makes a move to put any lives in danger, both the lives of the Hippogriff Buckbeak and of Harry Potter. Potter's near death experience is largely because of the reaction that he has to Draco and his friends masquerading as Dementors after having learned of Potter's fear of them and taking advantage of it to make him look like a fool.
As for Buckbeak, it was a partially because of his own anger at Hagrid the groundskeeper having become Care of Magical Creatures professor but mostly because of the fact that when he stepped forward and closer to the Hippogriff, he insulted him and was “mauled” by it which led to him insisting that he was wounded in a way that was life-threatening and inevitably led to his father, Lucius, filing a complaint with the Ministry of Magic and resulted in having the Hippogriff listed as an animal that needed to be put to death.
Mocking and laughing about having accomplished such a thing (while still using his “injury” to get attention from many of his schoolmates) was what led Draco to be smacked in the face by Hermione Granger.
Fourth year was the year that Draco went with his family to the Quidditch World Cup, and it was there that he saw Potter and his group watching the game where both he and his father were able to insult the whole group of them. That night Death Eaters attacked the campsite and while it was happening, Draco took the time to come forward and tell Hermione Granger that she was going to be treated the same way as that because of her status as a muggle born.
Again, in this year, Potter was allowed to have something that he wasn't old enough to have (the right to participate in the Triwizard Tournament) and in an effort to fight that, Draco made sure that as much of the school as possible supported Cedric Diggory (the other person participating as a Hogwarts Champion) by passing out badges that celebrated Diggory as the “true” Hogwarts champion. He also took the chance to inform Rita Skeeter of everything that he could to slander Potter and his friend's characters to the public as best as he could.
Unfortunately it was largely because of his behaviour in his fourth year that the false professor Moody transfigured him into a ferret and bounced him around in front of his friends and was teased by many students throughout the year because of it.
Fifth year was probably the best for Draco. Their new DADA teacher was Professor Umbridge and she seemed to him to be the first professor who wasn't biased towards Potter. He also became a Prefect and, much to his excitement, Potter was not and so he used it to his benefit to tease Potter as much as possible over it. To top it off, he was also graced with the title as a member of the Inquisitorial Squad which gave him power over all of the other students the way that the professors did. Of course he did abuse this power.
When Ron Weasley became a member of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, Draco made up a mocking song to tease him about his inability to be a very good player on the team. It was actually because of this song and his mocking of the Weasley family as well as Potter's dead parents that left the Gryffindor's from being banned from the game according to Professor Umbridge.
Draco also got to be a part of the group that caught Potter and his friends trying to get ahold of Sirius Black, which was a part of everything that resulted in the death of Sirius Black who was actually related to Draco. Immediately following that, Lucius Malfoy was imprisoned after being caught in the fight at the Department of Mysteries. This is something that leaves Draco very, very angry and wishing revenge on Potter more than anything else.
The sixth year marks the most important one of Draco's life so far and immediately beginning the year it is assumed that he was a member of the Death Eaters. This is actually something that is entirely true. He'd actually been initiated into the group over the summer.
He begins the year as he leaves the train by catching Potter who was hidden under his invisibility cloak and paralyzes him, stomping on his face to break his nose and bloody him up before tossing the cloak back on top of him and leaving him there to rot.
Having been bragging to his fellow Slytherins about the fact that he was given a task by the Dark Lord it is a little bit strange that Draco seems considerably more withdrawn from them as the year progresses. In fact, he even stops finding extra time to mock and be cruel to Potter and his friends, instead spending more and more time off and on his own doing something that people can't even figure out what it is, which just makes Potter desperate to figure it out.
As the year moved on, Draco became more and more afraid that he would be unable to complete his task for Voldemort. He spent his time trying to find ways to kill Professor Dumbledore, first attempting to use an enchanted necklace to kill him and then poisoned liquour that he'd known Professor Slughorn had intended to give to Dumbledore. Neither of these manage to succeed in killing anyone, though they both injure two different people, something that almost seems to weigh on Draco's conscience. Though not nearly enough to prevent him from trying another thing.
While he's trying to deal with the fact that he'd very nearly killed a girl and still hadn't managed to fulfill the one thing that the Dark Lord had asked of him in exchange for his family's safety, Draco is caught upset in one of the toilets in Hogwarts by Harry Potter. What results is a battle of sorts where Draco throws one of the three unforgivable curses at Potter and in return Potter throws a curse at him that splits his chest open and is nearly fatal, and would have been completely so if Professor Snape hadn't shown up to heal him as quickly as he had. Even after that, he spent more than a day in the infirmary healing from the encounter.
His coup de grâce is the two vanishing cabinets that he'd spent the majority of the year fixing up and being sure would work well enough that he could actually use them to get Death Eaters into Hogwarts to be sure that they would be able to make sure that Dumbledore was killed. He succeeds in getting them into the castle, but cannot seem to bring himself to kill Dumbledore who is pleading with him not to do it, even after having been shown Draco's Dark Mark. In fact, Draco was lowering his wand when the other Death Eaters made it up to the tower where he and Dumbledore were standing. In the end, he watches Snape kill Dumbledore and is pulled away from the scene and the castle by him.
In the beginning of his seventh year, Draco is witnessed performing the Dark Lord's bidding (albeit somewhat reluctantly). And Draco was even present for more than one murder, though it is insinuated that he has never actually committed a murder. It becomes clearer through the comments of both Voldemort and even one of Draco's own 'friends' that the Malfoy family has lost nearly all of their standing even among the Death Eaters, and their house has even been turned into something of a hideout for the group of them.
During his Easter break, Draco returns home and is called upon at one point by his aunt, mother and father to identify Harry Potter and his friends before the Dark Lord is called upon. For a reason that is never specified, even though Draco does what his aunt tells him and takes their wands away, he doesn't tell her that he knows conclusively that it is Potter. So whether it's because he honestly wasn't sure or whether he was just afraid or... any number of reasons, is completely up for speculation.
In the end, that didn't matter much for him because when Dobby assisted Potter and the others in their escape, his face was cut by a falling chandelier and his wand was actually stolen.
[I wasn't sure if y'all wanted me to also include the rest of his history after the canon point that I am taking him from, but... if so, feel free to throw a revision at me~]
personality: In the Harry Potter book series, Draco Malfoy embodies many of the character traits of a classic antagonist. He is arrogant, rude and a bully at his very best. He is considered to be from one of the most prominent pure blood families in the Wizarding world and that has left him feeling as though he is above very nearly every other person in the rest of the Wizarding world, most particularly over those who are less than pure blooded. In fact he often comes off as being disgusted by them and by those who are friendly with half-bloods or muggles. He even goes so far as to be disrespectful to the memories of the people who have been killed who were either not purebloods or who did what he figures is tarnishing the name of purebloods and sided with the other's. Examples of this are Lily and James Potter as well as Cedric Diggory and Sirius Black.
Often taking pleasure in humiliating others, Draco tends to search for whatever it is that is most embarrassing to the other students in the school and he goes out of his way to find some kind of way to make that humiliating event happen. He does not only search to humiliate them, but also to hurt them as best as he can. This is shown in his attempt to have Buckbeak killed. He takes something of a pleasure in being able to put himself up above everyone else, proving to himself that he is better than them.
Though emotionally he comes off as cold and calculated, when faced with a physical threat, he turns to a coward. This is shown when Hermione punches him in the face as well as when Buckbeak bites him. Physical pain is not something that he does well with, and when he is afraid, though he tries to hide it to the best of his ability, his cowardice is quite plainly visible.
Desperate to please his father and the Dark Lord, Draco follows any order that they give him and he goes back to the school that he finds in bad taste for him, just to do what they've asked of him. He gives up a lot of things during the sixth year in order to achieve this goal, including Quidditch (something that had held a high level of interest for him before), much of his school work (which he had previously been quite diligent in doing before) and much of his hold over his 'friends', distancing himself from them instead, intent on fulfilling his assignment from the Dark Lord himself, desperate to win back the Malfoy family's name as well as guarantee safety for himself as well as his Mother and Father.. He also stopped trusting anyone, believing that everyone was against him and that only he could manage the task that Voldemort had given him. He also spent far less time ridiculing Harry, Hermione and Ron, instead completely focusing on the task he'd been given. Despite what he knows his father has done, and despite any of the countless consequences he knows are possible, Draco remains painfully desperate to prove himself to his father and everyone else. It is one of the many things that are attributed to the 'Malfoy Pride'.
However by the middle of the sixth year, Draco seems to go through something of a transformation. Though he is capable of hiding any semblance of emotion from the people around him, including his fellow Slytherins and even someone like Harry Potter who spends much time watching him, he seems to sneak off to be alone, and is seen by Moaning Myrtle to be crying in the restroom. This gives him a more human looking personality, as it seems as though he is feeling something of compassion. Something that is further proven near the end of the sixth book with his inability to kill Dumbledore, and even with the clumsy halfhearted attempts to kill him within the school walls. Instead when he was faced with Dumbledore, all he'd managed to do was disarm him before lowering his wand.
By the time the end of the sixth book and the seventh book roll around, Draco comes across more as someone who is reluctant to be doing the things he is being forced by the Dark Lord to do. He comes off as being miserable and disillusioned after having idolized the Death Eaters and his own father and then being forced into murder and torture which he seems to think are something a lot less interesting and glamourous as they may have once seemed to be. This is something that is most prominent when Harry, Hermione and Ron are brought to the Malfoy Manor during Easter break and he is commanded by Bellatrix to identify, and he instead avoids looking at them, and claims that he is not sure if they are who she is looking for.
However he doesn't go out of his way to help them out, self preservation is still the absolute top of his priority list. He's more like the guy who isn't sure what he's doing or why he's doing it half of the time, and though he's been quite organized and cruel in the past, all he is interested in now is protecting himself and his family. Though it is yet to be determined whether he cares more for the well being of his parents or for himself. All that is known for certain is that the safety and perseverance of his family comes before everything else in the world, including the wizarding world itself, something that can only be questioned momentarily when he refuses to identify Harry.
why do you feel this character would be appropriate to the setting? Draco Malfoy would be appropriate for this setting because he's from a series that is well acquainted with magic and the nuances of it. He's seventeen and is used to being in the midst of a war already.