Hi, I've seen your reply to jalesidor's post on how fandom becomes ever more important the more one realises how disappointing jkr is. In it, you spoke about how both Harry and Draco are queer-coded in canon. Would you mind to expand on that? Or if you already have, would you mind linking that post or the tag under which I can find it? Absolutely no pressure to do so, just if you like! Thank you!
Hi anon! Sorry for the delay in answering; I wanted to do the question justice. I could have thrown some stuff at you off the top of my head, but that didnāt feel rightāat my core, I am a Ravenclaw, and I could not bring myself to half-ass this. (For those who havenāt seen the referenced post, you can find it here)
Before I get into my personal analysis, I want to note that there has been a lot of discourse on this topic over the years, so many of my ideas didnāt actually originate with me, they just got incorporated into my mental cache of HP analysis. If you search the tags ācanon drarryā or ādrarry in canonā or any variation thereon, youāll get a bunch of posts where people pull excerpts and explain how extremely not heterosexual the things happening in them are. @iamnmbr3 in particular has written a ton of these (which I didnāt realize were all by the same person until I started trying to track them down!), a few favorites being Arthur Weasley clearly thinking Harryās got a crush, this hilarious list of canonical interactions, Narcissaās very accurate understanding of how aware Harry and Draco are of each other, and that time Harry got beaned in the head by luggage because he was watching Draco change. Others classics include when @big-draco-energy got an ask about how Harry assumed that Draco must be a Death Eater if he was preoccupied enough to not care about their rivalry (and was right) and when @northward had a great observation about their obsessions with each other.
Seriously, this scene, yāall!
Possibly the most quoted line in Drarry fandom
And now, on to my own thoughts!
So first off, I want to say that some of the things that Iām going to flag as unintentional queer coding are rooted in stereotypes, and that that doesnāt mean that I believe in or condone said stereotypes. However, media often uses stereotyping as a lazy shorthand, and I think that that should be taken into account in this context, because it means thereās a reasonable assumption that people would interpret some character traits and scenes through that lens.
Secondly, so much credit to my amazing friend @mxmaneater, who actually HAS A FOLDER of photos of super gay moments from the books, which saved me a lot of time trying to dig up quotes that I knew existed but wouldnāt have been able to easily track down.
And finally, these are my personal interpretations. Iām not any sort of academic, and weāre all aware that JKR does not believe that she wrote Harry or Draco as queer. Iām hoping folks can be chill and take this in the spirit that itās intended: as one possible reading. Your beliefs about the series and the characters are your own, and Iām not here to tell you youāre wrong just because they arenāt mine, so please extend me the same courtesy!
Now, without further ado, here we go:
Letās start with Harry, because thatās the easier lift here. The Harry Potter books are written from a third person limited perspective, which means we only see things from Harryās point of view and are privy to his thoughts. I canāt find a link, but I know that itās widely quoted that JKR at some point used the fact that the books are from Harryās perspective as justification for the ways in which some people or events were portrayed. The answers on this Quora post about pro-Gryffindor bias in the books do a good job of explaining the idea of Harryās point of view skewing the point of view of the series.
So if we accept that the books reflect Harryās thoughts and feelings about things, weāre left with the unmistakable fact that he frequently observes how handsome various boys and men are. We have physical descriptions of Cedric Diggory, Bill Weasley, Sirius Black, and even Tom Riddle that clearly illustrate admiration. Additionally, although itās largely unflattering, itās often noted amongst fans that we get full physical descriptions of Draco extremely regularlyāwe know his hair and eye color pretty much from the get go and hear about them often, as well as his outfits, his swagger, his smirking and āleeringā (yes, she really uses that word), etc.
Some very heterosexual observations on men from the perspective of one Harry James Potter
Sure, Harry never explicitly says heās into men, but letās keep in mind the time period the books were placed in and the type of family that Harry was raised by: there is a very real chance that Harry wouldnāt have been aware of the idea of bisexuality and therefore would never have questioned his own orientation. Because he knew he liked girls, so of course he wasnāt gay! To many folks who later realized they were some form of not-straight, particularly bisexual and/or pansexual folks, this is a pretty common experience: not really registering that checking out people of multiple genders is not actually something that everyone does. *Stares vaguely into the distance while pondering all of the girls I didnāt realize I was crushing on until many years later*
Plus, as Iāve mentioned before, thereās the symbolism of the whole āliterally being raised in a closet, abused for being a āfreakā, and forced to keep his truth a secret because the people he lived with were ashamed of himā thing. To queer people raised by homophobes (or anyone who knew people in that situation), this isnāt even the slightest bit subtle, and the fact that JKR either didnāt notice or is in denial about it is truly bizarre to me.
Draco is a little harder to pin down without delving into stereotyping, so Iām just gonna go for it: Draco is a textbook Drama Gayā¢. Heās performative in his speech, using a lot of flamboyant gestures; he constantly performs over the top reenactments for his friends; he makes buttons and sews costumes and does drawings and generally just goes through a lot of effort to pick on his ārivalā. The only scenes where we see him in something that could be read as a heterosexual romantic relationship are with Pansy Parkinson, whom he doesnāt seem remotely interested in; she reads more like a prop that he puts up with to project a particular image. Also, at one point we see him flopped across her lap to have his hair pet, which is definitely a thing that I remember happening during rehearsals back when I was involved in high school theater (and almost never by people with compatible orientations).
And then thereās this scene:
Someone once made a post about just how gay this whole thing is: pointedly grabbing the biggest bowtruckle, whispering in Harryās ear, smirking over his shoulder while walking away, etc. (If anyone can find it, please send me the link and Iāll add it to the list of other peopleās thoughts that contributed to all of this.)
So, thatās what Iāve got for you! Someone could probably write a whole research paper on this (and hell, maybe they have), but hopefully this at least somewhat explains my assertions of queer coding. As a reward for reading all of this, please enjoy a bonus scene of Harry NOT being attracted to a man:
Poor Ron. Maybe next time, buddy.
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