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09:41 pm - Meta - Characterisations of Draco and Neville

Meta by A.J. Hall Draco's Characterisation – Darth Wimsey; Neville's Characterisation; and Draco and Neville Together



One has to admit that Draco's canon characterisation does give one difficulties in making him in any sense likeable. So I'll tackle that second, and deal with the slightly less difficult issue of his sexuality first.



One of the things that tends to get flung at slashers is that, based on an assumption that the default setting by any author for a character whose sexuality is not mentioned is heterosexual, and that therefore any given slash pairing is by definition "uncanonical".



I do not subscribe to this view myself. The comments appearing below are based on my reading of canon, and I can substantiate them with refs if so called upon. I think it's important, by the way, when considering whether a character's sexuality is canonical to take into account whether or not we have ever been allowed inside his head. Not only have we never shared Draco's thoughts, in all except the Polyjuice Potion and Borgin's shop scenes we have not only seen him from the viewpoint of his worst enemy, but at a time when he has reason to know or suspect he is being observed by said enemy. As I will elaborate below, my view of Draco is as a total and conscious performer, so the "observer effect" is particularly important when considering his characterisation. He is different when he doesn't know he's being observed (for example, he is more likely to demonstrate that rather than being a spoilt little prince who has both parents wrapped around his little finger and obeying his lightest whim, as he presents himself to Harry, that he is not particularly in his father's confidence and that his father keeps him rather firmly in his place).



So it is worth considering whether any reliance at all can be placed on how Draco presents himself to Harry. But interpreting Draco's school career as, in essence, a show which is intended to divert attention from the "real truth" about him (whatever that is) also supports a storyline in which "coming out" will be a feature. And I think that interpretation is one which is validly based in canon.



Actually, as I've mentioned before, Draco is presented in an exceptionally feminised, campy way. "Professor, Weasley's mutilating my roots, sir!" is a line that could have come out of any number of BBC sitcoms or Carry On films from about the period of Round the Horne right the way through Up Pompeii (well, substituting "Magister!" or "Domine" for Professor) via Are You Being Served to It Aint Half Hot, Mum. And it would have been the Frankie Howard, Kenneth Williams or John Inman character uttering it.



Bearing in mind that we are dealing here to a degree with stereotypes or, if one wishes to put it more politely, literary archetypes, Draco is consistently given characteristics which are fictional markers of an stereotyped effeminate gay man. He is waspish and bitchy, constantly performing, the first time we meet him he's having clothes tried on, so even though there isn't a lot of other evidence he's obsessed with his own personal grooming the scene is set, and he certainly notices what everyone else is wearing and comments loudly and unfavourably upon it. And he is certainly pernicketty about details; would most 14 year old boys actually care if their roots were chopped evenly or not? Furthermore, he avoids physical conflict like the plague (he doesn't even order his attack minions into conflict on his behalf) and is something of a coward. When he does get injured he makes it the occasion for the hugest possible fuss; in fact, one can confidently declare he reliably behaves like a complete drama queen on any possibe occasion.



As to whether he can be redeemed, that is more of an issue. However, again the idea that he is constantly performing does allow one to explore that there may be a lot more going on behind that facade than one ever gets to see. In fact, he is also canonically unstable, febrile and fractured; his responses to the Petrification of Mrs Norris and to the prospect that Umbridge will torture the captured DA in front of his eyes are so extreme as to suggest underlying mental instability. This is someone under pressure who has fault lines running through his personality, and if one of those fracture the resulting pieces may be utterly destroyed or may recombine in all sorts of new and interesting directions.



He is also canonically a coward, and, I suggest, "all mouth and no trousers" when it comes to talking about torture and the like. That is, the reaction in the two incidents described above is so clearly an over-reaction one starts to wonder whether it's an overcompensation, too. Like the hero of The Four Feathers one wonders whether he talks big because he is nerving himself for a future which his family (to whom he is fiercely and apparently genuinely loyal) and their traditions find unquestionable his, but which his nerves and stomach balk at. He has, we know, never seen death (Thestrals are invisible to him). He appears to have a comparatively low pain threshold (and he exaggerates like fun whenever hurt) and he does have considedrable imagination. It is likely, therefore, that he will be disadvantaged as a torturer by too much - not empathy, but imaginative understanding of the victims. Efficient mass murderers (and, on the other side, top class surgeons) seem to be characterised by a more business-like failure of imagination about the victim's sufferings.



So; Draco. A personality within a personality. A personality with visible fault lines likely to fracture under stress. A personality with a strong sense of allegiance to traditions which by their very nature will bring him into conflict with his deepest fears and horrors. A family whose own unquestioned loyalty to the same traditions does not leave them the imaginative room, still less the sympathy, to allow his to express or resolve his fears. A slightly built figure, physically apparently frail but capable of avoiding public obloquy for his cowardice and lack of beef by the use of wit and by sporting prowess.



Well, he may be called Draco Malfoy. But in many respects I like to think of him as Darth Wimsey.



Neville





The first point about Neville, but the one which is most often overlooked (that almost being part of the point) is that his role is to do the unexpected. He is the forgotten piece on the chess-board, the one who has been overlooked and so allowed to get into a crucial position which turns the balance of the struggle.



This is foreshadowed by his role in the first book; it is his ten points that finally makes the difference between Slytherin and Gryffindor. It is reinforced by his role in the fifth book, when as the last of the six left standing next to Harry he uses a useless wand as an offensive (muggle-style) weapon by jabbing it in Macnair's eye, and when incapacitated by the Tantallegera jinx he manages to be part of the mix-up which destroys the prophecy, thus making the whole of the Death Eater raid worse than useless (and, indirectly, getting dear Bella into deep doo-doo with the Dark Lord, which is a nice sort of left-handed revenge).



One of the nice things about all three of these interventions is that they build upon his canonically described characteristics; he is not noted for his pure magical skill, but he is noted for his dogged persistence. He is also notorious for his clumsiness. Both of these are turned to account in the final battle. It is also dogged persistence which leads him, as soon as he is being taught Defence against the Dart Arts* by someone half-way competent, to work at hexes and jinxes until he gets them right.



I'd like Neville to be prophecy boy (partly because it would be such sucks for Dumbledore) but I don't find it particularly likely. However, I could see him doing something because he's been discounted, and so allowed to get closer to the Death Eater inner circle than Harry would be that could allow Harry in to get off his shot. (I have a nice theory that because the prophecy says that "one must die by the hand of the other" and, because I read the Silmarillion at an impressionable age, that Pettigrew will repay his blood debt by doing what he does best - impromptu amputation for strategic reasons - and will chop off Harry's hand, spray it silver, and just at the crucial moment when he is standing next to Voldemort to watch Potter being finally tortured to death will go, "Aha! You have overlooked one minor detail - marther!" and pull out a dagger, but this is irrelevant for the purposes of present discussion).



One of the reasons things about Neville get overlooked is the Harry pov thing. I actually think Harry shrinks from Neville because Neville strikes too many chords with how Harry was treated at primary school . If you recall, Harry didn't do well at his Muggle school because the other kids laughed at his clothes, and were deterred from friendship by Dudley's threats, and the teachers regarded him as an odd problem; presumably not academically distinguished and definitely a behavioural conundrum. Neville, at Hogwarts, is in a not-dissimilar position to Harry at Muggle primary school; slightly out of step with what is seen as "the norm", without advantages such as wit or sporting prowess to escape the stigma of being an outsider. Harry has sympathy with him, but I think is made uneasy by Neville's role in the school; it strikes a little too close to something he's trying to escape from.



Another point that Harry doesn't get about Neville (and so the reader doesn't get it either) is Neville's social status within the pureblood world. Actually, this may be more because Harry's a Southerner than because he's a half-blood. Southerners do have a distressing tendency to assume that "woad begins at Watford". And since Neville doesn't go round mouthing off about it, and Harry tends to have to be hit by fairly large bricks to see anything, it's only because Neville points out in OoTP that Draco is probably lying about his family connection with Griselda Marchbanks (who, one presumes, must be a name worth dropping if Draco's dropping it) that we realise that in the pureblood world he is, at least, better connected than the Malfoys.



So you have a character who consistently underestimates himself, and is both reserved and self deprecating, seen through the eyes of someone who doesn't know enough about the milieu (and is terminally lacking in curiosity) to pick up on hints which might lead him to understand a bit more about what's going on behind that confused and muddled exterior.



No wonder Neville is hard to interpret.



However, one curious thing I've noticed about the misdirection around Neville (and in many readers' minds he does seem to be covered by a permanent Obfuscatus hex) is that quite a lot of people ask "When is he going to do something brave enough to show he's right to be in Gryffindor?" I think they may be confusing absence of fear with courage. I imagine given what Neville's life is like it takes rather a lot of courage for him to get up in the morning. He is shown in the first book as getting his ten points expressly for courage and not only for courage, but for a specific sort of courage, namely "the courage to stand up to your friends." Remus Lupin has even yet to develop that sort of courage. Everyone remembers that Sirius got into the Gryffindor boys' dorm because Neville wrote down the passwords and lost (actually, had stolen from him) the paper, but Sirius couldn't have got past the perimeter fence if Remus had had the basic courage to tell Dumbledore that Sirius was an Animagus. What's more, Neville owned up to his culpability in the matter of the passwords, whereas again Remus even at a point when his lack of courage was threatening children in his care did not come clean.



But the other watchword about Neville is reserved. Not only does he have a canonical role to surprise, he also keeps a lot to himself. As I have remarked before, his sweetness and generosity are astounding given that there must be enough going on below the surface to fuel a staggering amount of anger. When in OotP Draco makes a reference to St Mungo's Neville flies at him when Crabbe and Goyle are standing at either hand, and it is highly likely he'd have fetched up in hospital (reminiscent, actually, of the times when Draco has flared into physical violence, actually: on each time provoked by an insult to his parents).



The final point about Neville is his staggeringly low self-esteem. This is reinforced by his family, particularly his grandmother, and by Snape. It is clear that when teachers set out to get around this problem he is capable of performing well.



So it is not difficult to imagine a competent Neville, provided that one produces a plausible way to circumvent his self esteem problems, ensure that the areas of competence are ones which are consistent with his known strengths and weaknesses (he is, for example, legendarily gullible so I can't see him as a Legilimens any time soon, and he seems to have physical co-ordination problems which suggest that his re-emerging as a star Quidditch player would be too much to take).



But canonically, he is the character most full of surprises. And the person he most often surprises is himself. So there is a neat answer to anyone who claims that it is OOC to write Neville competent.



What is OOC is to write Neville expecting to be competent. His actual abilities I suspect are going to be gradually revealed, but if they are anything like the samples we've seen to date, they should be quite something.



*ETA hedda62 points out that "Defence Against The Dart Arts" is a somewhat felicitous typo.



Together



In the LoPiverse Draco and Neville function as lock and key; they add to each other in a way which makes them as a couple infinitely more formidable than the sum of their respective parts.



As I indicated Draco is a performer. A lot of my idea of his character comes from the notion that he'd rather be loathed than ignored. He quite plainly says things for effect; in fact, I'd go further and state that there's very little he says that isn't for effect. And if the effect is quite often shock and disgust; well, thems the breaks.



But that suggests to me someone who is terrified on some level of being overlooked, of being rendered insignificant. Which is quite often the mindset of someone whose own concept of themselves is , indeed, that they are worthless; that if they don't keep shouting to let the world know that they're still here then everyone will simply overlook them.



That was why, for LoPiverse purposes, I had Lucius fall in precisely with Draco's own estimation of his own worth. By not killing Hermione I think Draco was motivated at least as much by his own squeamishness as by anything more heroic; I liked the idea of someone redeeming themselves by being a squeamish coward who loses his bottle at the last moment. But by returning to warn his father what he's done he is, according to his lights, acting genuinely heroically; he knows enough about the Voldemort menage to realise that his parents will be in serious danger as soon as the news gets back to them, and he's maximising their chances of dealing with the fallout. And I think the scenario he'd rehearsed in his head was one in which Lucius, with tears in his eyes, acknowledged his courage in doing that even as he cast Avada Kedavra with a trembling wand.



What happened, of course, was that Lucius underscored his own notions of his worthlessness by treating the whole matter as "family embarrassment"; the sheer horror of what he did reflects the degree of contempt he was displaying for Draco in doing it.



At that point you have someone at the lowest possible point they could be; their own opinion of their worthlessness having been reinforced by one of the two people whose opinion he most treasures.



The four people who contribute to bringing him back from that nadir are, in order, Narcissa, Hermione, Allen and Neville.



The contributions of the first three allow Draco to react to Neville in a way that doesn't completely drive him away. Someone picked up on the idea of Neville being the anti-performer, which I think is true. He doesn't project at all. So as the anti-performer he has a value for actions rather than words. And, again, he has great loyalty to his own friends, and a particular closeness, it seems, for Hermione, who has on a number of occasions (for example, potions class and the Trevor incident) stepped in to help him out when others have either turned away or stood by and mocked. So given that Neville has an inherently generous nature, and is likely where the actions speak for themselves to also give more credit than perhaps was due for the motives behind them, by risking a hideous death in order to save Hermione's life Draco could hardly have done any more to redeem himself in Neville's eyes.



But he also does know a great deal about having flattened self-esteem. And I think when he actually got to see Draco close to, he realised very quickly what it was he was dealing with.



And Neville is bright and not wedded to his own preconceptions so he can re-evaluate Draco, in a way which perhaps Ron would find it impossible to do in a similar scenario.



And that is where the crucial connection comes in. Because in the course of working together, Draco isn't in a position to keep up his facade and too dispirited to try (after all, everyone knows that all the planks he's built it on - his wealth, his powerful father and his powerful friends - have been shown to be rotten).



And for the first time something like a miracle happens. Someone knows what Draco is really like underneath, the one thing he's feared all his life - and somehow doesn't mind. Actually seems to like him, in fact.



And it's the response to that by Draco which sets up a sort of feedback loop between them, in which they make each other stronger.