deathtocapslock | Draco’s Deception: The Buckbeak Scam (Reply)

Summary: Draco succeeded in pulling the wool over people’s eyes regarding his injury from Buckbeak.

Harry, in PoA, figures out exactly what Draco is up to in pretending in public to have been badly injured by Buckbeak.

He really exercises his inner Slytherin here, and I think his analysis is (for Harry) brilliant.

If Draco were truly almost unhurt by Buckbeak, but persuaded everyone (except sceptical Harry and his friends) to the contrary, he accomplished an astonishing number of goals.

First, among his own housemates, he got to be a martyr, accepting sympathy, attention, perks, while bearing up nobly (very visibly so) under adversity.

Second, his teachers let him off from practical work, the lazy bum.

Third, his position as Seeker allowed his team to reschedule their next match for (they hope, at least) better weather.

And fourth and most importantly, his slimy father used the severity of Draco’s injury to mount an attack at the Ministry upon poor innocent Hagrid.

And, though Harry’s not actually politically astute enough quite to register this, really upon Hagrid’s less-innocent patron Albus.

Now, I regard this level of analysis as a tribute to Harry’s unexercised Slytherin talents. What a pity he didn’t let the Sorting Hat put him where he belonged, to develop those powers of political analysis rather than stunt them…..

However.

Let’s also turn and look at the matter from the other side.

Suppose Draco had been severely injured in that attack. Would he want his worst enemies to realize this? Or would he be desperate to hide the fact?

Mere physical injuries can be healed in the WW with a mere swish and flick or a single draught of potion. Poppy tells Harry in CoS, that had he not let Lockhart’s spells mess his broken bones up, he’d have been out of hospital in an hour. Instead, undoing Gilderoy’s incompetence took her—overnight.

Recovering from injuries inflicted by magical creatures? The other times we see this—well. In the first book, Snape was limping for at least a week, maybe more, after being bitten by Fluffy (with no signs that the wound had closed at all in that time), and Ron was hospitalized for at least four days after being bitten by Norberta. In the second book, the basilisk’s victims were petrified until a specific remedy could be brewed. In the fifth book, a magical snake’s venom kept Arthur Weasley’s wound open for at least a week before the best efforts of St. Mungo’s managed to close it.

And Draco had had his WAND ARM mangled by one of these powerful magical beasts.

*

Let’s consider this from the other side. Suppose Harry had badly injured his wand arm. Suppose he were told: “Maybe it’ll never heal completely. But rest it, keep it immobilized, and we can hope it will regenerate, in time. It may take weeks, or even months. Wounds from such a powerful being as a Hippogriff are unchancy. But you must not use it seriously until it starts to heal, or you may never recover your lost strength.”

Would Harry have wanted Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, and the rest of the Slytherins to know how vulnerable and weak he was? And that overuse of the arm to counter them now might permanently cripple him?

Or would he have done everything in his power to persuade them that, NO, he was perfectly fine?

A Gryff would have embarked on such a deception by trying to establish that no, the injury had never been serious. He’d never really been hurt at all.

What would a Slytherin—a clever Slytherin—have done, to try to persuade his enemies that he was really uninjured?

(You know, I’m starting actually to admire Draco here. He was just thirteen, in this book. The boy does have real ability, brilliance, and nerve, however little one might like the politics he’d sucked up at the teat. )

Now, let’s drop back to look at probabilities.

If Draco had really been mostly unhurt and had been feigning for political reasons to have been deeply, perhaps permanently, maimed by the attack, there were many people whom he had either to deceive, or to get to play along with, this game. His family, of course, and their political allies, would be playing along (so as to bring down Albus Dumbledore). He and his family would probably assume his head of house would play along, except actually Severus was secretly one of Dumbledore’s men. Snape would have eventually have exposed Draco’s deception [at the most advantageous-to-Albus time] with some perfectly justifiable reason. He did not, so Snape, in fact, would have had to have been among the legitimately deceived (or Albus to have had a reason to play along with this particular charade, and I really can’t see one).

And legitimately-deceived, too, must have been the competent Madam Pomfrey, and any people on the Ministry Inquiry Board who weren’t completely in Lucius Malfoy’s pocket. And all the other teachers at Hogwarts, letting Draco off his regular work on the basis that he was incapacitated, while watching him in the Great Hall pull his wand any time he wanted to summon goodies or hex an enemy….

Think about it: Madam Pomfrey kept Draco in hospital for days on end, and sent him back with his wand arm in a sling and a note to his teachers that he wasn’t allowed to use it in class.

You surely can’t think that she did this out of a desire to help the headmaster’s enemies to build a false case against Hagrid and Albus?

Either it’s rather well-established that being mangled by a Hippogriff might have pernicious long-term effects, or Lucius managed to Confund the Hogwarts matron, and a number of other people at Hogwarts, the Ministry, and St. Mungo’s, that such was the case.

And then spoiled and vain thirteen-year-old Draco managed to spend weeks or months supporting his father’s fairy tale by never once using his wand in any way that would call into question that he was truly incapacitated. Never once, among his housemates or among the staff or even alone where a portrait or elf could see him.

Not a single absentminded Accio. Not a single bad-tempered hex, while his housemate gathered about, taunting him for his current weakness.

What discipline that boy must have had, not visible anywhere else in canon. Really, I’m awed.

*

So.

EITHER Draco and his family conned Poppy Pomfrey, Severus Snape, the other staff at Hogwarts, maybe Albus Dumbledore (given Albus, we can’t be sure what he would have done with the truth) and a full Ministerial Inquiry Board, into believing that Draco was much more seriously injured than he ever was….

OR, Draco conned Harry and his friends into believing Draco to be basically unhurt when in fact he’d been badly (maybe, for all Draco knew at the time, permanently) injured.

Which is more likely?

(Of course, accepting Harry’s view of what was going on is, if you analyze it properly, one holy HELL of a compliment to Draco. So if you want to argue for that, I’m sure all Draco-fen will kiss your feet!)