The Argument for Dramione Part I: Grey Characters
When I told my friends that I ship Dramione, I was nearly disowned. To them, Draco was the “bad” guy. But Draco isn’t a “bad” guy. Here’s why.
Growing up, many of us are told fairytales, or stories that include a good and a bad guy. And it makes sense why we would be told these stories. For people, especially for younger ones, the idea of every character either being distinctly good or bad is easier to understand, comprehend and accept. The analogy I like to use is “white” for good characters and “black” for bad characters (this has nothing to do with race). If you ever hear the saying “in black and white” when referring to someone’s view of something, this is kind of like that. But I digress.
This form of categorizing into good and bad is basically a form of stereotyping. It’s easy to pass over the surface of a character or person, not thinking about the deeper parts of one’s personality, soul and mind. It’s easy to judge someone by their apparent morals. It just is. That’s why so many people do it, and that’s why so many people do it with our boy Draco.
But in my opinion, Draco, and many, many others in literature are neither white or black. They are grey characters. Before we get to Draco, let’s look at Draco’s mother dearest.
Narcissa Malfoy is a wonderful character to dissect for this. Her husband was one of Voldemort's closest and she can appear to be cold, hard and of having the same views as her husband. But when faced with a decision that puts Harry’s life in the balance, she picks the unexpected one. She lied to the very people she had pledged her loyalty to, changing the course of one of the greatest wars in Wizarding History. Why?
Narcissa, like so, so, so many morally questionable characters, was driven by fear. It was fear that ultimately made her become a death eater. She was fearful for her family that if she didn’t pledge her loyalty that they would be killed. She loved her family so much she put them above everything else. She made an unbreakable vow with Snape to help keep her son alive. She was so driven by the fear of losing her family, more specifically her son, that she went through all the lengths just to protect him as much as she could.
This idea of fear is what usually makes a character grey. As soon as us, as readers, learns more about a black character, it's like looking at a building from a different angle. If you go from looking at a building from above to looking at a building from the side, you can see the lights of all the rooms inside for the first time. All of the rooms have a purpose and an affect on the building’s use and purpose. It’s after we learn about all these rooms that we realize that this character isn’t a bad guy. This character is fighting their own battles and challenges. Now, this is sometimes no excuse, but it becomes easier to understand why the character is the way they are. And sometimes, why the character changes.
Now, let’s apply this to Draco. Draco was the only child of a very proud, prestigious, righteous line. He grew up always being told the right from the wrong. There was always this immense amount of pressure, even when he was eleven. In his childhood years, Draco wasn’t exposed to much diversity. So when he came to Hogwarts, he followed what he knew he had to do to make his father proud. He had such high expectations that he didn’t see any other way. He only saw what his father would approve of and what was wrong. He was driven by the fear of disappointing his father, his family, and being a failure.
Sirius Black explained this all perfectly. He told Harry that “...the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters. We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part of we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”
Sonder. I recently learned of this beautiful word. The definition of sonder is along the lines of the realization you get when you realize each passerby has a life of their own. This is similar to what happens when you learn more about certain characters. So, before you call a character evil or brutal or nefarious, ask yourself what you would do in their situation. How different is it from their actions?
So next time you’re reading a book or watching a movie, think about why the apparent bad guys may be the way they are. It is likely that there you will find many answers to the questions you didn’t know you had.
The answer to the question “Is Draco a bad guy?” will be different for everyone. Everyone views shades of black and white differently. And that’s part of the beauty behind literature and grey characters. And the truth is, we’re all a little grey.
(There is no argument to make for Umbridge: The real villain of the Harry Potter series.)
In Part II: The Thing About Ships and “The End”s
