Draco's Polyjuiced Friends
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deathtocapslockIn CoS, Harry and Ron, in the throes of transforming from Polyjuice back to their natural forms, fled from the Slytherin common room in the innocent belief that they’d succeeded in deceiving all the Slytherins.
A long time back, I wrote positing that they had not. That Draco had clued in somewhere along the way to the fact that his two supposed friends were really Polyjuiced imposters, and that Draco in this scene had been stringing them along, deliberately deceiving them, feeding them misinformation
But now I’ve decided I was still not giving Draco enough credit.
*
Really. Start by looking at the canon relationship between Draco and his two cronies as of when the three brats started Hogwarts. They were buddies, tight, with Draco as the brains and the “gorillas” as the brawn.
You know, like Hermione’s role in the Trio. Well, sort of.
When Hermione spots something in her reading that she thinks Harry and Ron should know, does she usually hand the boys her written source, without commentary, to have them read it too?
Or does she read it to them?
Or does she summarize?
The first time, first year, Hermione handed Harry and Ron her book. After that, she didn’t bother trying; she summarized.
Yet Ron and Harry are neither functionally illiterate nor stupid, just (terminally) intellectually lazy.
*
So.
How long did it take Ron and Harry to drug Crabbe and Goyle, lock them in that closet, pull out their hairs (excuse me, “bristles,” like a hog would have—we wouldn’t want the reader to be reminded too strongly that the assault victims here were twelve-year-old children), run to Myrtle’s loo, and finish the potion before they drank it?
In short, how long were Vince and Greg missing before the Polyjuice was even complete?
Plus the twenty minutes, timed, after Harry and Ron had taken the completed potion before, in their clueless wanderings through the dungeons, they finally heard a movement ahead of them.
Whereupon Ron said what?
“Ha! There’s one of them now!”
But it wasn’t; it was Percy. What did Ron say in acknowledgment? “What’re you doing down here?”
Not, who are you? And undoubtedly in tones of surprise rather than anger and suspicion.
And what did Ron say when his big brother asked if Ron-Polyjuiced were Crabbe?
“Wh—oh, yeah.”
Jesus. How thick can you get?
At which point Draco suddenly strolled up from behind the pair and drawled, “There you are. Have you two been pigging out in the Great Hall all this time? I’ve been looking for you: I want to show you something really funny.”
How long had Draco been trailing after the pair, watching and listening?
And, really, show them? A newspaper article? Not tell them about it? Because they’re such avid readers, right? Brandishing it before their admiring eyes as proof, maybe, but having them read it? Adult Vince couldn’t pronounce polysyllabic words like “Disillusion” and “diadem.” Do we really credit that as a twelve-year-old he could have easily read such big words as “artifacts” and “resignation,” or even know what they meant? Or that a good friend, who’d known him for years, would have expected him to?
Because what did Draco do with the pair, once he’d collected them? First, he miscalled Percy, Peter, and let himself be corrected by “Crabbe.” Next, he dragged them to the Slytherin common room, where he left them there —under guard by older students—while he went alone off to the dorm room to get the promised “something funny.”
To the dorm room he shared with Vince and Greg.
Stop a minute and translate this into more familiar terms. So, Harry wants to show Ron something—a private joke he thinks Ron will appreciate—that he’s left up in their dorm room. He insists that Ron wait down in the common room with a couple of older students (not, note, people he intends to share the joke with) while he finds it and brings it back, rather than having his best friend and dormmate just come up and chat with him while he rummages.
The sense, it makes?
Of course, the “something really funny” turns out to be an article about Ron’s dad being caught and punished for his egregious violation, not just of any old Wizarding regulations, but of the laws Arthur’s office was specifically created to enforce. And caught, though the newspaper does not stress this, because Arthur’s son Ron at Hogwarts misbehaved in a manner that directed the authorities’ attention to his dad’s transgressions.
And Draco made the pair read this. Prodded them to laugh at it. And proceeded with a host of additional provocative comments and insults, reminding his two guests repeatedly that they were supposed to be agreeing with and seeming to enjoy everything he was saying.
And then, when the two spies were too stupid to leave before they visibly started to turn back, Draco and the older Slytherins let them go unmolested, imagining that their deception had gone utterly undetected.
To instruct Arthur Weasley to disgrace himself further by insisting on another raid on Malfoy Manor, to tear up the basements beneath the drawing room. Which raid accomplished, of course, exactly nothing. Except to make Arthur look even more the (rabidly Malfoy-hating) fool.
Good work, Ron and Draco. Nice instance of inter-House teamwork, even if the Gryff didn’t realize it.
And, when the reader looks closely, Draco had even figured out to give the clipping to “Crabbe” first, as the one who’d hate it more.
*
But, see, I don’t think Jo ever meant this.
This is what drive me CRAZY about JKR. The disconnect between the surface reading, what she seems to be saying and WHICH SHE SEEMS TO WANT TO MEAN, and what she actually writes.
Because, really? If you asked me to take my best guess as to authorial intent in this chapter, I’d say: Jo thinks she’s giving Harry and Ron an insider tour of Draco’s vile, bigoted, racist and classist little musings on what’s been happening this year. I think she wrote this expecting the reader to credit that Draco fully means every last rotten thing he says.
But what she actually WROTE, the words on the page, are 100% consistent with the reading that Draco had spotted “Crabbe” and “Goyle,” as being really the Polyjuiced Potter and Weasley. And that therefore everything he said after spotting them was a deliberate provocation, an attempt to get their goats, not Draco’s real uncensored thoughts.
Only I don’t think JKR really ever meant anyone to think that.
This is just like the “poisoning Trevor” scene in PoA. I do think that Jo really meant there to show Snape to be an evil, nasty, sadistic bastard delighted at the thought of slaughtering a little boy’s pet before the owner’s horrified eyes. (Even though Jo had also planned eventually to reveal Snape as devoted to the Light, if for questionable motives.)
But what she actually wrote, once you look at it closely enough, is more consistent with someone required to prove himself, utterly convincingly, to be an Evil Nasty Sadist Who’d Love to Kill Kids’ Pets Before Their Eyes (the spy preparing to return to Voldemort with badass credentials), but who was desperate to establish that reputation without actually doing anything remotely violent.
If I thought she was doing all that consciously, I’d hail her as an utter genius. Only I don’t think she did. I think that, throughout, she intended her surface meanings.
So how did she so consistently write things that can be read as the opposite of what she seemed to want?
It would have taken one tiny tweak to the poisoning Trevor scene to prevent its being turned on its head—have Hermione reassure Neville privately that she knew how to correct his error. Rather than what Jo did write: Hermione saying so to Snape, who responded by announcing he’d test Neville’s potion on Trevor at the end of the class, and who then left Hermione to help Neville while he stayed assiduously on the far side of the classroom.
In the Polyjuice scene, three tweaks would have done it: put a little time between Ron’s betraying conversation with Percy and Draco’s appearance, make Harry and Ron a little better actors while listening to Draco, and, most importantly, have them scram before Ron’s hair turned red again.
Or at least exit, pursued by bears.
I mean, seriously. Your two best friends have been acting off for half an hour, and then they start changing shape before your eyes, and you just let them plead indigestion and run away? If Draco had been too stupid to remember Polyjuice, he should have been worried something was wrong.
But I don’t think Jo meant this reading. Whereas I do think she deliberately inserted all the animalistic touches in her descriptions of the Slytherins in this chapter: Goyle’s bristles instead of hair, Crabbe’s grunts and gorilla-like arms…. Consider even the Polyjuice—if Hermione’s portion had been noticeably a different color than the other two, she might have looked stupid (or at least rash) for drinking it anyway. But no—we see five completed Polyjuice potions in canon. In DH, the one made with Mafalda Hopkirk’s hair (the bureaucrat who’d signed Harry’s expulsion notice in book 5) turned a “pleasant heliotrope.” That made with Harry’s hair, of course, was gorgeous: “clear, bright gold.”
The cat hair turned the potion “a sick sort of yellow,” while Greg’s turned it “the khaki color of a booger” and Vincent’s “a dark, murky brown.”
See? One-quarter of the Wizarding population really is literally subhuman!
I think Jo meant that portrayal, and didn’t mean to write scenes that could be turned exactly on their heads.
So how the heck did she keep doing so?
A long time back, I wrote positing that they had not. That Draco had clued in somewhere along the way to the fact that his two supposed friends were really Polyjuiced imposters, and that Draco in this scene had been stringing them along, deliberately deceiving them, feeding them misinformation
But now I’ve decided I was still not giving Draco enough credit.
*
Really. Start by looking at the canon relationship between Draco and his two cronies as of when the three brats started Hogwarts. They were buddies, tight, with Draco as the brains and the “gorillas” as the brawn.
You know, like Hermione’s role in the Trio. Well, sort of.
When Hermione spots something in her reading that she thinks Harry and Ron should know, does she usually hand the boys her written source, without commentary, to have them read it too?
Or does she read it to them?
Or does she summarize?
The first time, first year, Hermione handed Harry and Ron her book. After that, she didn’t bother trying; she summarized.
Yet Ron and Harry are neither functionally illiterate nor stupid, just (terminally) intellectually lazy.
*
So.
How long did it take Ron and Harry to drug Crabbe and Goyle, lock them in that closet, pull out their hairs (excuse me, “bristles,” like a hog would have—we wouldn’t want the reader to be reminded too strongly that the assault victims here were twelve-year-old children), run to Myrtle’s loo, and finish the potion before they drank it?
In short, how long were Vince and Greg missing before the Polyjuice was even complete?
Plus the twenty minutes, timed, after Harry and Ron had taken the completed potion before, in their clueless wanderings through the dungeons, they finally heard a movement ahead of them.
Whereupon Ron said what?
“Ha! There’s one of them now!”
But it wasn’t; it was Percy. What did Ron say in acknowledgment? “What’re you doing down here?”
Not, who are you? And undoubtedly in tones of surprise rather than anger and suspicion.
And what did Ron say when his big brother asked if Ron-Polyjuiced were Crabbe?
“Wh—oh, yeah.”
Jesus. How thick can you get?
At which point Draco suddenly strolled up from behind the pair and drawled, “There you are. Have you two been pigging out in the Great Hall all this time? I’ve been looking for you: I want to show you something really funny.”
How long had Draco been trailing after the pair, watching and listening?
And, really, show them? A newspaper article? Not tell them about it? Because they’re such avid readers, right? Brandishing it before their admiring eyes as proof, maybe, but having them read it? Adult Vince couldn’t pronounce polysyllabic words like “Disillusion” and “diadem.” Do we really credit that as a twelve-year-old he could have easily read such big words as “artifacts” and “resignation,” or even know what they meant? Or that a good friend, who’d known him for years, would have expected him to?
Because what did Draco do with the pair, once he’d collected them? First, he miscalled Percy, Peter, and let himself be corrected by “Crabbe.” Next, he dragged them to the Slytherin common room, where he left them there —under guard by older students—while he went alone off to the dorm room to get the promised “something funny.”
To the dorm room he shared with Vince and Greg.
Stop a minute and translate this into more familiar terms. So, Harry wants to show Ron something—a private joke he thinks Ron will appreciate—that he’s left up in their dorm room. He insists that Ron wait down in the common room with a couple of older students (not, note, people he intends to share the joke with) while he finds it and brings it back, rather than having his best friend and dormmate just come up and chat with him while he rummages.
The sense, it makes?
Of course, the “something really funny” turns out to be an article about Ron’s dad being caught and punished for his egregious violation, not just of any old Wizarding regulations, but of the laws Arthur’s office was specifically created to enforce. And caught, though the newspaper does not stress this, because Arthur’s son Ron at Hogwarts misbehaved in a manner that directed the authorities’ attention to his dad’s transgressions.
And Draco made the pair read this. Prodded them to laugh at it. And proceeded with a host of additional provocative comments and insults, reminding his two guests repeatedly that they were supposed to be agreeing with and seeming to enjoy everything he was saying.
And then, when the two spies were too stupid to leave before they visibly started to turn back, Draco and the older Slytherins let them go unmolested, imagining that their deception had gone utterly undetected.
To instruct Arthur Weasley to disgrace himself further by insisting on another raid on Malfoy Manor, to tear up the basements beneath the drawing room. Which raid accomplished, of course, exactly nothing. Except to make Arthur look even more the (rabidly Malfoy-hating) fool.
Good work, Ron and Draco. Nice instance of inter-House teamwork, even if the Gryff didn’t realize it.
And, when the reader looks closely, Draco had even figured out to give the clipping to “Crabbe” first, as the one who’d hate it more.
*
But, see, I don’t think Jo ever meant this.
This is what drive me CRAZY about JKR. The disconnect between the surface reading, what she seems to be saying and WHICH SHE SEEMS TO WANT TO MEAN, and what she actually writes.
Because, really? If you asked me to take my best guess as to authorial intent in this chapter, I’d say: Jo thinks she’s giving Harry and Ron an insider tour of Draco’s vile, bigoted, racist and classist little musings on what’s been happening this year. I think she wrote this expecting the reader to credit that Draco fully means every last rotten thing he says.
But what she actually WROTE, the words on the page, are 100% consistent with the reading that Draco had spotted “Crabbe” and “Goyle,” as being really the Polyjuiced Potter and Weasley. And that therefore everything he said after spotting them was a deliberate provocation, an attempt to get their goats, not Draco’s real uncensored thoughts.
Only I don’t think JKR really ever meant anyone to think that.
This is just like the “poisoning Trevor” scene in PoA. I do think that Jo really meant there to show Snape to be an evil, nasty, sadistic bastard delighted at the thought of slaughtering a little boy’s pet before the owner’s horrified eyes. (Even though Jo had also planned eventually to reveal Snape as devoted to the Light, if for questionable motives.)
But what she actually wrote, once you look at it closely enough, is more consistent with someone required to prove himself, utterly convincingly, to be an Evil Nasty Sadist Who’d Love to Kill Kids’ Pets Before Their Eyes (the spy preparing to return to Voldemort with badass credentials), but who was desperate to establish that reputation without actually doing anything remotely violent.
If I thought she was doing all that consciously, I’d hail her as an utter genius. Only I don’t think she did. I think that, throughout, she intended her surface meanings.
So how did she so consistently write things that can be read as the opposite of what she seemed to want?
It would have taken one tiny tweak to the poisoning Trevor scene to prevent its being turned on its head—have Hermione reassure Neville privately that she knew how to correct his error. Rather than what Jo did write: Hermione saying so to Snape, who responded by announcing he’d test Neville’s potion on Trevor at the end of the class, and who then left Hermione to help Neville while he stayed assiduously on the far side of the classroom.
In the Polyjuice scene, three tweaks would have done it: put a little time between Ron’s betraying conversation with Percy and Draco’s appearance, make Harry and Ron a little better actors while listening to Draco, and, most importantly, have them scram before Ron’s hair turned red again.
Or at least exit, pursued by bears.
I mean, seriously. Your two best friends have been acting off for half an hour, and then they start changing shape before your eyes, and you just let them plead indigestion and run away? If Draco had been too stupid to remember Polyjuice, he should have been worried something was wrong.
But I don’t think Jo meant this reading. Whereas I do think she deliberately inserted all the animalistic touches in her descriptions of the Slytherins in this chapter: Goyle’s bristles instead of hair, Crabbe’s grunts and gorilla-like arms…. Consider even the Polyjuice—if Hermione’s portion had been noticeably a different color than the other two, she might have looked stupid (or at least rash) for drinking it anyway. But no—we see five completed Polyjuice potions in canon. In DH, the one made with Mafalda Hopkirk’s hair (the bureaucrat who’d signed Harry’s expulsion notice in book 5) turned a “pleasant heliotrope.” That made with Harry’s hair, of course, was gorgeous: “clear, bright gold.”
The cat hair turned the potion “a sick sort of yellow,” while Greg’s turned it “the khaki color of a booger” and Vincent’s “a dark, murky brown.”
See? One-quarter of the Wizarding population really is literally subhuman!
I think Jo meant that portrayal, and didn’t mean to write scenes that could be turned exactly on their heads.
So how the heck did she keep doing so?
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Date: 2014-02-04 07:47 pm (UTC)Wrt Snape and Trevor: As we all know, Snape is a special case because JKR is deliberately showing him through the Harry filter as worse than he is, whereas Harry barely notices unprofessional or cruel behavior from other teachers. But, while it's difficult to tell how much of a jerk he's supposed to be in reality, I don't think the final verdict has to be that Snape threatened Trevor for the evululz. Something has to be done about Neville. He's been driving Snape crazy with his potentially lethal mistakes for two years. The Trevor scene looks like a last-ditch attempt to frighten him into shaping up, since nothing else has worked. It's certainly a jerk's solution to the problem (cruel and ineffective) but he's not doing it in order to be a sadist.
Nice catch on the Polyjuice. The (extremely) little we know about Hopkirk isn't positive, but her Polyjuice is okay. That's how terrible Slytherins are by comparison, that already at twelve their Polyjuice tastes like sewage.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-05 04:36 am (UTC)My short term answer to the memory: JKR had a GREAT editor and the editor cleaned up a lot before JKR's popularity and power meant the editor would get overruled or maybe even dumped off the project altogether.
As for Draco, he always struck me as smart and I can totally see your interpretation of this scene. I prefer it. It certainly puts the Slytherins in a fairer light.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-08 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-08 08:52 pm (UTC)Also, Draco doesn't have to deceive Harry and Ron about everything, just because he's having them on about most things. The truth (that he doesn't know about the Heir of Slytherin) works perfectly well to get them off his case on that subject. But the idea that Draco can lie about one subject and be truthful about another is too complicated for JKR, I suppose.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 05:00 pm (UTC)Stupid readings.... the thing is, JRK is, among other things, a mystery writer. Some of the time she's deliberately inviting a stupid reading in order to turn it on its head. Harry's first Quiddich match, where Hermione saves Harry's from Snape's hexing by setting Snape on fire, and incidentally knocks over poor Professor Quirrell in her haste.
So some of the time it's deliberate. Is it just such a habit of mystery writers to construct scenes that can be read multiple ways according to what background theory--of-the-crime the reader is mentally juggling, that Jo does it unintentionally as well?
For another example, I think in PoA Jo expects us to think Harry's right in his judgment of Draco's injury. It's all Draco's fault for not listening to Hagrid in the first place, and he's just faking the severity of his injuries: to malinger, for attention, and to get Hagrid (& Dumbledore for hiring him) in trouble.
Only the scene Jo wrote was, Hagrid warned all the kids that hippogryffs respond violently to disrespect, but the specific examples he gave of how to behave were all nonverbal. He didn't mention explicitly that they can understand human language. So Draco approaches the beast exactly the way the teahcer says, but then SAYS something insulting.
But see, I think Jo intended the reading to be: Draco was being a rich snob who thought he was too good to listen to that jumped-up gamekeeper, and got his comeuppance for that attitude. And you can read it that way. Or, you can read it that Hagrid was an incompetent (or more gently, an inexperienced first-time teacher) who got a student injured by leaving out crucial information from his warnings.
And how severely was Draco injured? Well, if Harry had been so badly injured in his wand arm that he couldn't use it fully for MONTHS, the last thing he'd want to do was betray such a weakness to his enemeis the Slytherins. So he'd try to fool them into thinking he was really all right. In Harry's case, by putting on a big brave I'm Not Hurt At All act. Which would fall apart the first time Harry couldn't manage to do something with that arm, and one of them saw..... Think about it.
Either Draco conned Poppy and the rest of the Hogwarts staff, or he persuaded them to go along with a deception that was damaging to Dumbledore's reputation. Or he conned Harry.
..
But again, in the someone-hexing-Harry's-broom scene in PS Jo was deliberatly writing something that could be taken one way by the kids with their preconceptions, and another way by someone with differnet ideas. But in these other contexts she seems to be doing the aame thing inadvertently....
no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 05:03 pm (UTC)Of course, I am perhaps not the right person to cite authorial intent as a reason to choose one interpretation over another....
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Date: 2014-02-09 06:08 pm (UTC)BUT--we know it really is true that Lucius doesn't WANT Draco to go about saying wildly politically incorrect things. Remember the interchange in B&B, which we don't have any reason to suppose they thought Harry to be eavesdropping on. Disdaining Muggles and their fans, fine; going to Knowktrun, fine; being enemies with "the hero who made the Dark Lord disappear", or seeming to know to much about the earlier opening of the Chamber--not prudent, Draco.
In fact, given that Lucius is himself behind the opening of the chamber, he almost certain has told Draco to BE ignorant and to PLAY ignorant.
And there are other Slytherins in the room listening in on his conversation, any of whom might get word back to Father if Draco went too far in pulling Potter's leg....
no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-10 09:34 pm (UTC)Good point about JKR's use of the mystery structure. I was thinking that it'd be awesome to have had a reveal that Draco was indeed stringing Harry and Ron along all the time. That's what's so annoying. There's no payoff like the one we get with Quirrell or Fake!Moody. Absent such a reveal we can never be sure about those ambiguous scenes.
As to Draco and Buckbeak, while I very much fear that you're right about what JKR intended, I'd love to believe that both readings are valid. After all, 'Draco is a little snob who should have paid attention in class' is perfectly congruent with 'Hagrid made poorly prepared schoolchildren interact with dangerous wild animals, which led to a student getting injured'. It just seems so obvious. One of those tragedies that follow inevitably from the characters of the people involved. Hagrid wrongly assumed his students would enjoy vicious clawed beasts as much as he does. His class is going badly and he's losing his nerve, so fails to tell the kids everything they need to hear. His friend Harry helps him out by facing Buckbeak, which is nice of him but puts the spotlight on Famous Harry Potter yet again. He even gets a ride on the beast. Of course Draco's annoyed on top of being scared. Of course he vents by insulting the scary creature once he thinks he's safe (after it bowed to him). Should he have paid more attention to his teacher? Yes, but as you said, it wouldn't have helped since Hagrid forgot to explain that hippogriffs understand English.
Draco would naturally make the most of his injury, but it shouldn't matter whether he was as badly hurt as he says he was. The damning fact is that he was injured at all. In Hagrid's setup, it'd have been a miracle if all the students escaped unscathed. If JKR wants me to think Draco was 100% to blame she and I will have to agree to disagree.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-12 03:41 am (UTC)I just wanted to say I really like your interpretation since it's, well, makes more sense than Rowling's intended version (that Draco is a total moron). But then again, many, many of HP's plot points depend on the characters acting like utter morons.
But see, I don't think Draco is an idiot. He tends to act like an idiot sometimes, but I don't think he is intellectually stupid. I also think he's more of a people person; putting on a show, trying to make people laugh (and succesfully making them laugh), getting under the "heroes" skin. He wouldn't be able to do that if he didn't observe others and know what makes them tick. Which actually makes this scene (one of many) nonsensical if you go with Rowling's intended reading.
Draco has spent a year and a half with Grabbe and Goyle, slept in the same dorm with them and generally been pretty tight with them. So even if you wanted to make the argument that they aren't very close (or aren't friends), he should still notice when they act totally out of character for them.
This makes your version of the scene much better, and I shall go with it from now on :D
(I hope this comment made sense. It's six am here and I've been up all night and english isn't my first language.)
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Date: 2014-02-23 07:36 pm (UTC)The scene on the train where we first meet Crabbe and Goyle, they are acting as Draco's flunkys already. That implies they knew each other even before they started at Hogwarts.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-28 05:52 am (UTC)I like that you find my version of the scene in-character. And I agree with you--someone who, in canon, is good at observing and exploitng other people's reactions, is not the one to write ignoring his closest associates' reactions.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-01 01:56 am (UTC)Does it sound weird if I say thank you?
I like that you find my version of the scene in-character. And I agree with you--someone who, in canon, is good at observing and exploitng other people's reactions, is not the one to write ignoring his closest associates' reactions.
It is. It's also much better because I'm actually rather fond of Draco and I don't really see him as Rowling intended, and I don't care much for the Trio at all. And I like alternative character interpretations when they are backed up by the source material.
But it was pretty clear (in my opinion) that Rowling for some reason or another hated Draco's character, and thus her main characters hated Draco's character, and thus all of her readers were supposed to hate Draco's character as well. It's very strange to me, especially when she didn't actually write Draco's character doing anything that awful.
There was the "mudblood" comment from him, that should have been an equivalent of a racial slur in our world, but really lacks the historical context and the emotional impact in Rowling's world. I always thought he used it because it was Hermione and Hermione was Harry's friend. Otherwise, I don't think he would have even bothered.
Btw, I think "mudblood" would fit better if ascribed to half-bloods, because that's what the word seems to imply to me. *shrugs*
Ha ha, sorry for the lengthy reply!
no subject
Date: 2014-03-02 10:09 pm (UTC)More than that, I think. Draco has to be honestly unguarded here so that we, the readers, don't think Harry and Ron are making a terrible mistake to stop suspecting him and waste our time looking for clues they overlooked. And so that we don't feel someone cheated at the end of the book--"Hey, wait, they never really proved Draco didn't know about this plan all along and wasn't laughing at Ginny all year because of it!" We'd have a lot more reason to suspect Draco of nefarious dealings in subsequent books as well if we thought he'd gotten away with aiding and abetting the Diary plot, or at least keeping quiet about what he knew. Which would have made him actually being involved in a plot in HBP much less effective as a major turning point for his character, because we'd have been suspecting him of such things all along.
Come to think of it, though, if Harry had realized Draco knew who "Crabbe and Goyle" really were by HBP, he might have had a better reason to be obsessed with Draco's plan that year (above and beyond being peeved that Draco finally got the better of him on the train for once). Ron and Hermione might not have believed him ("Like he'd have kept quite all these years if he knew, Harry. Come on, it's Malfoy we're talking about"). Though it would have been awkward to somehow drop into HBP the fact that no, Draco didn't know about the Diary plot (just the Polyjuice), and HBP was still his first real experience of actively trying to further Voldemort's violent agenda and he found he didn't like it.
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Date: 2014-03-03 02:48 am (UTC)But who here accuses Jo of being a great plotter? In real life, I can perfect well suspect someone out of my own bigotry, absolve them based on incorrect knowledge, and be equally wrong both times.
It makes the Trio look like fools, of course. But then, they were.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-03 02:51 am (UTC)Of course, it's also noticeable that the first time Draco uses the term is after Hermione grossly insults HIM.....
no subject
Date: 2014-03-04 03:30 am (UTC)It probably could have worked with skilled handling--little Harry starts off thinking he just needs to solve the mystery and unmask and defeat the Bad Guy, and as he grows up he realizes it's more complicated and he has to do some character-building stuff and learn more about the world etc. In this scenario, CoS!Harry absolves Draco based on mistaken reasoning, by HBP he realizes Draco was messing with him and decides Draco must have been guilty all along based on mystery-novel-logic, and then finally learns that no, Draco wasn't because the world doesn't operate on mystery-novel-logic (well, not entirely--it still gives you reason to suspect someone but isn't the same as proof that they're guilty) and he has to learn higher-order skills.
That didn't happen, unfortunately.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-07 04:25 pm (UTC)Higher-order skills.... sigh.
Thanks for reminding me of Dan Hemmon's term! Nildungsroman it was!