The Structure of HP and What It Means for Draco Malfoy

The Structure of HP and What It Means for Draco Malfoy
or: Why Draco Malfoy is Going to Die!!11!

This line of thought was started when Anise started a thread over at FAP's meta forums about whether or not the structure of HP demanded more Draco or less in future books. The thread fizzled out months ago. My line of thought didn't. Are you surprised?

The Harry Potter books all follow a very well defined internal structure. Harry's with the Dursleys, Harry leaves the Dursleys' (unusually). Something vital to the plot happens but sails right over our heads. The Trio waste time suspecting the wrong person. One or two particular spells are important but not vital. It turns out the DADA teacher is an utter twit/ev0l. One of Harry's friends is incapicitated, and there's a final showdown in some strange location where Harry discovers that it was actually X all along. Harry wins in some way that he had no idea about previously. Joy, celebration, house cup, and back to the Dursleys'. I've often suspected that PoA is so much loved because Professor Lupin and the Time Turner sequence stray from this structure a bit (or a lot).

But there is also an external structure, I think, which covers the whole series. The seven books may be split into three acts. In Act One (PS, CoS, PoA), Harry battles with Voldemort in various avatars (Quirrell, Tom Riddle, Peter Pettigrew), but does not actually have to face a fully potent Dark Lord. These books focus more on establishing the world Harry lives in. Act Two (GoF & OotP) are about the return of Voldemort. Not just to his body and his power (which happens at the end of GoF), but also as a threat to the wizarding world (which happens at the end of OotP). We of course don't know what happens in Act Three (HBP & Book 7), but we can make the fairly basic assumption that these will be about the war.

Yes, alright, I'm getting to the Draco now.

There's an old playwright's adage about the gun on the mantlepiece. (Plays have acts. Can you see where I'm going with that discussion on structure now?) If you show people the gun on the mantlepiece in Act One, then you have to have the safety catch come off in Act Two and fire it in Act Three.

Draco's the Harry Potter gun.

No comments about the mantlepiece, please.

No, not about handcuffs, either.

Just be hush, okay?

Draco is the first full wizard that Harry knowingly meets, back in Madam Malkin's in PS. He is set up as Harry's foil right from the very start — a nemesis, but not Harry's arch-nemesis (Voldemort. Chuh). Anise made the interesting point that J.K. has used Draco over and over again. Almost more than is necessary, and not just as a foil. That first jump into the deep end in Madam Malkins, when Harry realises that the Wizarding world is just as complicated as the Muggle world, and he's not a clue; stealing Neville's Rememberall, which leads to OMG I CAN FLY, which becomes important in GoF; setting up the midnight duel, which leads to the Trio discovering Fluffy; finding out about Norbert, which leads to the Trio sneaking Norbert out which leads to detention in the Forbidden Forest which leads to VOLDEMORT!!!1!; opening the encounter in Flourish & Blotts which results in Tom Riddle's diary inside Ginny's textbook; being the faux enemy for CoS... and so on in each book, as well as acting as Harry's foil (and stalker) and an expositionary device on Purebloods.

I think you get the picture. It's a lot of stuff for one character to be doing, and it's not an integral part of the plot that Draco do these things (as far as we know). Sure, they fit in with Draco's personality, because he's shown clearly that he'll do almost anything to piss Harry off and get in his way. But many of these things could just as easily be done by somebody else rather than making Draco do all of it. So why does he do all of these things? J.K.'s waving Draco in our faces. Not only is the gun on the mantlepiece, but tempers are rising and somebody's plotting murder.

No, really.

Well, okay, maybe not murder, but Draco is Not Happy at the end of OotP (and Act Two). I think you can all guess when Draco's safety catch comes off — it's when his father ends up in Azkaban. An interesting point about Draco: his actual nefariousness has steadily decreased in each book. In PS, he's snooping about on his own, getting the Trio into trouble by the bucketload. In CoS, he's facilitating his father's plot to TAKE OVER THE WORLD bring back Voldemort and kill all the Muggles. By GoF, he's being turned into a ferret, and by OotP he's actually stooped so low as to be taking orders from Umbridge^†. Of course, in PS to OotP, he had his safety catch — A.K.A. his father — on (in a completely metaphorical sense, kthnxbai).

Okay. So if Draco is the gun, how will he go off? Well, up until recently I would have pointed at what we know is going to be the title of Chapter Six of HBP, Draco's Detour, and the fact that J.K. has said Harry's stay at the Dursleys' is going to be short, and suggested that maybe Draco was going to turn up at the Dursleys' (or elsewhere) and abduct Harry to get his revenge. However, J.K.'s also recently said that Harry will be leaving the Dursleys' for 'a happy reason', and er, kidnapping is not much reason for happy.

Of course, the important thing about a gun is that it doesn't fire itself (although in the HP universe, who knows?). Somebody else has to pull the trigger. The obvious one to do so is Voldemort, but J.K. loves twists and surprises. It could just as easily be Lucius, or Narcissa, or even Dumbledore. Don't ask me why Dumbledore would want to be shooting at Harry. The man's kooky, okay?

(A little ETA: as deirdre_riordan points out, it could even be Harry who pulls the trigger. Harry's not the most emotionally stable of blokes. Even if he's not demonstrating some of his fine self-destructive tendencies, Harry is not good at gauging other people's emotions, and he's time and time again blown Malfoy off as unimportant. It'd be oh-so-very easy for Harry to push Draco just a leeettle too far.)

The other thing about a gun is that it's more or less useless once you've shot it, unless you want to use it as a blunt instrument. The best idea is to bury it or get rid of it some other way once you've used it. Actually, the best idea is to turn it and yourself in, or even better, not to use the gun at all, but that's not the point. What is the point? The point is that Draco's got one good round in him and then he's about as useful as a hunk of lead. So to answer the whole of Anise's question in one feel swoop: HP structure demands more Draco, and then less. As in, buh-bye Draco.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Draco Malfoy is Going To Die. Or, er, fade into obscurity. But die sounded so much better, don't you think?

† And take that, Draco redemptionists who insist that Draco would never take anything so crass as orders. If he'll take 'em from Umbitch, he'll take 'em from Voldemort. ( back )

The End.