babydraco

Harry and Draco were the Swan Queen of Potterdom. I don't know if I mean that in a bad way or not. Because I certainly adored the pairing and wrote it myself.

She was probably never going to go there. Not just because of how risky it have been, but also because she had such a different view of Draco than the fans did. She didn't understand how the fans could like him so much or why they assumed he was attractive (because, JKR, he was That Guy that's in every group of teenagers and That Guy is usually somewhat goodlooking, and people assumed that the point was "beautiful face hides ugly personality" also, should've cast an ugly dude for the movie). And some people liked him because they had empathy for his situation, especially since Harry, who was supposed to be capable of more empathy than Draco, never showed much towards him until the middle of Halfblood Prince, and Ron showed none at all towards him. Ever.

I enjoyed the ship but as you know, I had one I cared about a lot more. And mostly what I wanted was for Harry and Draco to end up as good *friends* who finally *understood each other* and could put their talents and complementary personalities together and do great things. Because they could have. Draco was a really talented wizard on his own, and such a strong personality that eve platonic, he and Harry would've been great to watch as friends. I wanted Draco to become not just "not evil" but actively good. But they didn't. And that made the series just a fraction less awesome than it could've been.

So even though it's still one of the best series I've ever read/one of the best film adaptations I've ever seen, my motivation to read the fic has dimmed just a bit. Is there anything new left to say? I'm sure there is, I guess. But it all feels less...something. I don't know.

I don't see Draco as entirely comparable with Regina,for a long list of reasons (starting with the fact that he did make a conscious choice to refuse to be evil and apparently stuck with that)but Harry/Draco sort of was the Swan Queen of that fandom. The uber pairing that was absolutely everywhere that you weren't allowed to not like, whose fanon rose to become nearly equal with canon, so much so that it was hard to believe it was never actually real.

And also sad proof that a significant majority of fans can see something as totally undeniably there and the author can still be completely clueless and baffled about where you're getting that. But also that this does not mean the author hates the sexual orientation of that ship, just that they may have been thinking of someone else entirely to fill that role.

Most oddly, this is so codified that it seems to have been forgotten that the Head Boy and Girl are actually supposed to be top students. Instead, fanfiction makes it look like the selection of Head Boy and Girl is completely random. No one ever even wonders any more "How did Draco Malfoy get to be Head Boy?

Why wouldn't Draco be Head Boy? Draco's parents are intelligent people and talented wizards who probably made every provision for his at home education before he entered high school. We've never seen any indication in the books or movies that he has more intellectual trouble than anyone else. In fact, there are a few moments when he shows himself to be pretty competent at magic. Harry has no respect for his intelligence but that's Harry, who often turns out to be wrong about people.

In preparation for such a dangerous mission, Draco trained and improved his own skills, and became capable of blocking jinxes non-verbally[10]. He also became accomplished at Occlumency through the training of his aunt Bellatrix Lestrange, and was able to perform the very difficult Protean Charm, though he could not yet produce a corporeal Patronus.[11] (from the Harry Potter wiki

A few sentences further on, the article mentions that it was considered worth noting that Draco began missing assignments and getting detention in his sixth year.

He's not stupid just because he doesn't ever manage to truly surpass Harry. Harry, after all, has extra powers because of his connection to Voldemort. Part of Draco's reason for hating Harry so much is that Draco came to Hogwarts confidently expecting to eventually become king of the school only to find his place usurped by this much bigger celebrity who doesn't want to be his friend. And the fact that Draco is not nice, that he bullies people, also doesn't mean that he's a bad student or that he constantly finds himself in detention. Some of the meanest, most effective bullies in a school can be kids who are great students, and high ranking members of important clubs. That's how they get away with it, the teachers are all too busy yelling at the kids who come across as the more obvious troublemakers because they're slow, ugly, poor, and socially awkward. Draco's not Judd Nelson's character from The Breakfast Club, he's the Cordelia Chase/Blair Waldorf of Hogwarts.

He was already a prefect, so the idea isn't completely impossible.

Snape is a pretty influential teacher and he has a vested interest in making sure Draco succeeds. Plus, now that we've all read the seventh book, we know that Harry, Ron and Hermoine don't return for their seventh year (Hermione goes back later but the other two don't) and during that time, Death Eaters make Snape their puppet headmaster so they can run the school. So while the “Hermione is Head Girl” part never happened, I can't imagine Draco wouldn't get to picked for Head Boy in a school run by Death Eaters. Even if he wasn't able to earn the position on his own, they'd make him Head Boy just for the Lulz. To both torture the students by just giving Draco all the power and to torture Draco by forcing him to continuously prove his loyalty by jumping through a never ending series of horrible hoops.

On the other hand, the book is unclear on whether Draco was even able to/allowed to return for a complete seventh year. It's possible he didn't and would be too embarrassed to return later. So it's not so much a matter of "why Draco?" but "this plot likely couldn't happen at all because neither Draco nor Hermione had a traditional seventh year".

(note: I hadn't realized Draco can't make a Patronus, but then, the whole "Snape is the only DE who can produce a Patronus" thing is one of those post canon facts JKR came out with randomly. That's okay, it's just that since Draco apparently does bear the mark, a lot of people who incorporated Draco's Patronus into the plots of their fics are in a pickle. Like me.

I'm going through old stuff, trying to see what to keep and transfer to Ao3 and what to pretend never happened. “Hands Clean” is a bit of a problem. It appears that this is one of my most popular stories, with 133 reviews, which was a “career high” for me and almost all are positive. However, the story has a few flaws in structure and use of language that I'm not happy with, which could easily be fixed but it also got Jossed in a way that makes it just not work for me anymore.

In the story, I played with traditional expectations by making Narcissa an abusive monster and Lucius the loving parent who is helpless to stop the things he's pretty sure are going on. He has so much learned helplessness he doesn't lift a finger when Voldemort demands his son.

It also has a place in memory as a story that is very superficially similar to one of my favorite HP fics of all time, "The Sacrifice of Hiding in the Light", which was written and posted at the same time as mine in a truly bizarre coincidence (we didn't hang out and therefore never compared notes). A lot of our plots diverged in important places but it's still an interesting phenomenon.

The Narcissa thing was a great idea except I can't picture either parent being deliberately abusive now. One of the big points about the canon relationship between Draco and his parents was the whole idea that just because three people are not nice to others, does not mean they lack love and loyalty to each other. When I wrote the story, we knew very little about Draco's mother. Now we know a lot about her- that she's Tonk's aunt, that she has a sister who is far worse than her, that she was willing to lie to Voldemort to save her own son, etc. Movie!Lucius is overbearing and hard on Draco but I actually doubt now that he'd ever be worse than that in the sense of getting violent. I mean, the "Lucius is totally molesting Draco" plot is a frigging classic now but it doesn't come off right in the way that so many fic writers portrayed such a situation. Because fic writers always take things too far over the top. Like I kinda did. It's much more convincing portrayed the way Felicity and Admiral Worthington were in AGATB.

I could replace Narcissa with Bellatrix, cut out a lot of the pointless extra stuff and make it severely AU...I'm torn between just letting things be the way they are, and making an effort to leave a non embarrassing internet fanfic library legacy.

The only part that still works, I think, is the part where Draco's parents pretty much sell him to Voldemort because they're afraid to defy their cult leader. Because that kind of is what happened. Lucius becomes emasculated after his prison term and during that time, Narcissa is left to find any desperate way she can to protect her family. The Death Eaters take over their home and use Draco's desire to win back respect for himself and his family to force him to kill Dumbledore and betray his own classmates. His parents don't want this but they're powerless to do a thing about it.

Accurately predicted by many fan fic writers. In a way.