Draco: Worth the Price?

[regan_v]

Man what a week. Many people on my flist spent hours setting up shop on a second platform (or third and fourth), which has been a huge time hole. And those who maintain hp fannish infrastructure have been working their tails off; when I read those terse, organized, focused posts by scribbulus_ink (who is working long hours to try to back up all the Snupin

Comments

[pir8fancier]

I think part of the disconnect is that the book is written from a very tight third person POV. Harry's POV. This makes the book myopic. We end up loving Harry to a ridiculous amount, but it doesn't give us much opportunity to discover other characters unless it's via Harry's interaction with other characters. Like Dumbledore insisting that Snape is on the side of the Order. Most "fattening" of characters occurs in flashback scenes, like Snape's confrontation with James, which gives us a more comprehensive view of both James AND Snape. Or Snape's final pensieve scenes, which is really her only opportunity to redeem Snape. Harry's interaction with the world of adults allows us to see nuances in Snape's character. He is the ONLY Slytherin with ANY dimension of character. A flaw I have lamented about through six books

[pir8fancier]

yes, that's the entire point. What we needed was a lot of internal meta and Harry making the decision to go "back" HIS decision, not being handheld ONCE AGAIN by Dumbledore. And we're not even talking about the disconnect between twinkly Dumbledore and the Dumbledore willing to throw him to Voldemort withhout a look back! There has been a lot of talk about whether Harry grows during this series. Based on that ONE scene, I would say definitively not. That scene was like all the other scenes we've seen repeatedly throughout this series. It could have happened in book 1!

[angela_snape]

Wow, you've really made a great comparison here. And you're right - we never really have Draco's POV - so much of the book is from Harry's POV (and I can see why, when he is the central character) but it would have been good to get to know Draco a bit better, before the end.

[pir8fancier]

This is why I was so disppointed that there was never any sort of reconciliation between Harry and Draco. That all we ARE left with is this incomplete appraisal of Draco Malfoy's character. I anticipated that the last book would take them out of Hogwarts and hopefully into the wider world where we would see more. Alas. Not to be.

[angela_snape]

Yup, there was so much potential, for both Draco and Snape, and yet she wasted chapters & chapters wandering around in a tent & whinging. Not the best way to end the series, IMO.

[pir8fancier]

She squandered potential for MANY characters, but Draco and Snape suffered the most from characterus interruptus.

[pir8fancier]

Thanks, I see them as both victims of their pride.

[bethan_b_bad]

(A scene that will be, unfortunately, repeated in the last book where Harry casts a Cruciatus with little provocation--don't get me started.)

I would argue this. Harry has seen Neville, he's seen Seamus, both horribly tortured by this guy, he's seen the rest of the DA hiding out in one room for weeks, because of him and his sister. And Amycus was going to hand over the Ravenclaws for the same treatment, and worse, because of Harry's blunder, and then Amycus threatens McGonagall as well, who. The trigger came when he spat at her, but I don't think that was the only reason for Harry eventually cast the spell he did.

He had a hell of a lot of provocation. And he's not perfect, not by any strength of the imagination, and he lost his temper.

I don't agree with him doing it, because there were a lot of other spells he could have used, and Cruciatus is a horrible spell, but I can, to an extent, understand why Harry did it.

[pir8fancier]

I understand your point, really, I do. And if these particular curses didn't have such a history, then I wouldn't have blinked like I did. In fact, if he'd done another other spell I wouldn't have had a case for debate. I think the fact that Harry's mother was killed by an Unforgivable makes these spells the particular signature of the Voldemort (and by extension, the DE's). I do think there is a reason WHY they are called Unforgivables. They are signs of darkness, of evil, of everything that Harry has fought against for six books. It is simply, an abuse of magic on the most profound level. These are curses that are soul-destroying. I actually thought that this was a foreshadowing of some really tremendous conflict within Harry, but no. In that case, these instances where Harry DOES use them would have had a context. But like so many things in this last book, these scenes that challenge the spirit of canon go virtually unremarked, even by Harry.

[bethan_b_bad]

*nods* I can see your point, too. First of all, though, I think it's worth noting that in the first Voldemort war, the aurors were given permission to use Unforgiveables against Death Eaters. To a certain extent, spells are just spells: what makes them right or wrong is who uses them, and why. Rather as JKR attempts (but quite possibly fails) to make a point with regards to her characters: people are people, what makes them good or bad is what they do, and why. Though I still think that morally, Cruciatus was absolutely the wrong curse for Harry to use.

I agree that I would have liked to see some mention of a great post-Cruciatus use conflict in Harry, but he didn't really have the time. As soon as McGonagall sees him, really, they're launched into a huge battle, and sitting somewhere angsting over using a horrible spell would have been both useless and horribly unproductive for Harry. After the battle, the book closes when everything's still sinking in for him. All he can think of is that they've won, it's going to be all right, and

[princeofblood]

I just wanted to say that I agree with all the points you've made. It bothered me immensely that Harry was able to use Unforgivables with such ease. I mean, in Gringotts he uses Imperius without second thought, and of anyone in the book, I thought Harry's supposed to be a champion for free will and goodness- the fact that he can throw off the Imperius curse better than anyone in his class fourth year because he so strongly opposes the restriction against his own free will-- I was very disappointed, like you both, that Unforgivables were thrown around so easily. It was such a shock in the fifth book when he tried to use Cruciatus on Bellatrix, because he was mimicking a spell that we had only seen Death Eaters perform. I thought then that it was a good thing that Harry was unable to cast it, because it was something that set him apart from Voldemort and the Death Eaters, good against evil. That Harry was able to truely want anyone to hurt as badly to be able to cast Cruciatus, to be that sadistic, really shocked me, even if it was