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Get to Know More of Draco Malfoy in 12 Days of Pottermore

Author J.K. Rowling gets into the heart of Draco Malfoy.

Ever since it was released there would be more new information about some of the characters in the Harry Potter universe, people have been frantic about possible short stories of the characters, particularly one involving a certain young and talented blond-haired student by the name of Draco Malfoy.

12 Days of Pottermore - Draco Malfoy riddle

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Draco’s involvement with the Death Eaters becomes a major plotline in the story as he was directly responsible for bringing in Death Eaters inside Hogwarts, which thus resulted in the death of Albus Dumbledore.

This becomes a major factor in Draco Malfoy’s character as he finds the true nature of being a Death Eater is not as glorious as he had been raised to believe.

“The events of Draco’s late teens forever changed his life.  He had had the beliefs with which he had grown up challenged in the most frightening way: he had experienced terror and despair, seen his parents suffer for their allegiance, and had witnessed the crumbling of all that his family had believed in.  People whom Draco had been raised, or else had learned, to hate, such as Dumbledore, had offered him help and kindess, and Harry Potter had given him his life.  After the events of the second wizarding war, Lucius found his son as affectionate as ever, but refusing to follow the same old pure-blood line.”

No, no short stories to be had for Draco Malfoy.  At least, none that have been confirmed to be by Rowling.  However, Rowling does express a good amount of thoughts on Draco Malfoy.

“Everybody recognises Draco because everybody has known somebody like him,” Rowling wrote.

She explains further about Draco’s gifted talent in Occlumency and how it probably saved his life during the short time he was owner of the Elder Wand.

She also expressed pity for Malfoy in regards to his upbringing:

“I pity Draco, just as I feel sorry for Dudley.  Being raised by either Malfoys or the Dursleys would be a very damaging experience, and Draco undergoes dreadful trials as a direct result of his family’s misguided principles.”

Regardless, she found Draco, and even his parents, had some saving grace, in that they all loved each other.

“Draco is motivated quite as much by fear of something happening to his parents as to himself, while Narcissa risks everything when she lies to Voldemort at the end of the Deathly Hallows and tells him that Harry is dead, merely so that she can get to her son.”

12 Days of Pottermore - Draco Malfoy

But J.K. did find one thing disturbing about the idea of Draco Malfoy, and that is of the unintentional and possible unhealthy romanticism (*gasp*) by many fans of the young Malfoy boy.

“…and I have often had cause to remark on how unnerved I have been by the number of girls who fell for this particular fictional character (although I do not discount the appeal of Tom Felton, who plays Draco brilliantly in the films, an ironically, is about the nicest person you could meet).  Draco has all the dark glamour of the anit-hero; girls are very apt to romanticise such people.”

Being a reader and writer of fan fiction, I admit that I find no lack of unhealthy romanticism in many of her characters – to each their own, I suppose, although it certainly didn’t help matters to have Tom Felton playing the character in the films.  I imagine I’m not the only one that imagines his likeness when reading Draco-related fan fiction.

Despite her reluctance to accept fans alternate interpretation on Draco’s character, she does note that he’s not his father’s son.

“However, his strange interest in alchemical manuscripts, from which he never attempts to make a Philosopher’s Stone, hints at a wish for something other than wealth, perhaps even the wich to be a better man.  I have high hopes that he will raise Scorpius to be a much kinder and more tolerant Malfoy than he was in his own youth.”

Rowling reveals some other surnames she tossed around before settling on ‘Malfoy’.

And the name ‘Draco’ had its own meaning as well, which she explains as symbolic, especially in regards to the his wand’s core being that of unicorn.

“This was symbolic.  There is, after all – and at the risk of re-kindling unhealthy fantasies – some unextinguished good at the heart of Draco.”

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