#drarry meta

I love that Drarry shipper or not, you can't deny that Harry is next to Lucius in case of importance to Draco.

Literally the most important and influencing people in Draco's life are Lucius–his father, the man he's been idolizing and looking up to his whole life–and Harry–his rival and enemy, his biggest preoccupation, the boy that according to Draco himself "he doesn't like" but whose attention he is obsessed with for as long as he can remember, who rejected to be his company instead of those "riffraffs"(I WARNED YOU TO CHOOSE YOUR COMPANY MORE CAREFULLY!!!!😠😠); the two Draco wants to prove himself in front of, the two that define his paths and plans and purpose, also the two that he is in trouble for.

He loves Narcissa & he feels that she loves him no matter what as all mothers do, he sees Snape as favourite teacher, he spends most of his time with Crabbe and Goyle and imo has some attachment to them..

and I might be wrong but none holds the same influence. i think no other is that affective and essential to his life to be fit to be up there with Lucius and THAT'S INSANE!!!

I mean, now i understand better why Draco's wand is so friendly and flexible to Harry...Voldemort didn't go too far with saying that he ran off to befriend Harry.

There are a lot of fics that put Draco in the same boat as Ginny during their school years and reveal, often after the fact in their adulthood, that Draco has loved, or at least wanted, Harry from the start and his nasty behavior was at least partially because he was upset that he could not have Harry.

Idk how convinced I am of that - it can be argued that it makes more sense for Draco to just be totally oblivious of his real feelings until much later, maybe around book 6 or 7, but not the whole time; he seems immature enough in the early books to not be fully aware of his own feelings.

But, if you do choose to look at it through the lens of “Draco and Ginny were both actively pining for Harry all those years at the same time,” then how they each deal with it is fascinating.

Obviously on the surface Ginny handles it better; she avoids Harry and then befriends him, and is always nice to him, while Draco of course is a petty and mean rival constantly getting on Harry’s nerves. So Ginny wins, right?

Well, on the other hand - it’s actually Ginny who changes herself as a result of her crush on Harry. There is ZERO mention of her interest in Quidditch until book 5, which just gives off the vibe that she got into it just to impress Harry because he likes Quidditch - no matter how frantically JKR tried to retcon her into “being into it the whole time.” Then book 6 just does the frankly horrifying reveal that even when she let him think she’d moved on and WAS DATING TWO OTHER GUYS, she was actually following a plan she made with Hermione and just using those other guys to try to make Harry jealous and get him to notice her. She becomes this Mary Sue in book 6, which she absolutely was not in the earlier books, just because she wants Harry.

But Draco? He doesn’t even try to change himself or let Harry think he’s someone he’s not. He’s his authentic, flawed self the whole time. Anything he does to get Harry’s attention is not made with any effort to deceive Harry about him - he doesn’t even bother to hide his family’s loyalties in book 4, when he reminds Harry of how he’d once told him not to associate with the “wrong sort.” None of which would ever make Harry like him more; he does this stuff to rile up Harry and upset him, not to make him suddenly reciprocate a hypothetical years-long crush. If he does like Harry at this point, and is aware of it, well, he isn’t behaving this way with any hope of convincing Harry to give him another chance. Whereas Ginny double checks everything she says and does with “he’ll like me back if I do this/say this.”

And what’s the result of this? Harry still has false illusions about Ginny to the end. He thinks she never cries and is always tough. But actually, as Ron reveals, she DOES cry - only when Harry is not around to see it. There is still deception, and thus there is still a disconnect and misunderstanding. Whereas Harry has no illusions about Draco whatsoever, at any point. He knows exactly who Draco is and what he is capable of, be it the skill to actually be a Death Eater, or the compassion to want to spare Dumbledore. At first that understanding backfires on him in book 2 when Draco turns out to not be the heir of Slytherin, but it totally pays off in book 6.

Wands are reflections/representations of the wizards and witches they have chosen, and Draco says that the wand which represents his mother doesn’t “understand” him. Which is very personifying language for a wand; he could’ve said it doesn’t “work properly” for me or it doesn’t “truly obey” me. But he deliberately picks the word “understand.” Then he follows up that statement with a “do you know what I mean?” while looking directly into Harry’s eyes. All of this gives me the sense that he’s trying to subtly say something else to Harry - something that he can’t dare spell out in front of Goyle and Zabini. The way Tom Felton delivers the line, it gives off a vibe of “can you tell what I’m really trying to say to you here?”

I’m not the first person to suggest/interpret this moment as one where Draco actually wanted to help Harry and had no intention of turning him over to Voldemort, but didn’t expect Goyle and Crabbe (or, in the movie, Zabini) to follow him and thus didn’t want them to know about his shift in loyalty. But this movie dialogue heavily implies this to be the case, especially the statement that his mother’s wand doesn’t understand him. It seems like he’s really trying to say “my mother / my family doesn’t understand me.” Which has undertones of “I don’t want to be like them and they don’t get it” and “I don’t want to hurt you but they do and I’m stuck in the middle.” Then by asking “you know what I mean?” it’s like he’s imploring Harry to understand his hidden message. Something along the lines of “I think that, somehow, you do understand me, don’t you? You get me, you see me.”

This is further supported by Harry’s reply. Instead of talking more about wands, he gets another amazing piece of dialogue that fits the character and their relationship so well that I’m shocked it’s not in the book (this moment is done so much better on film, it’s not even funny.) He brings up the elephant in the room that the book oh-so-conveniently forgets about: his response to Draco saying something of his mother’s doesn’t understand him and asking if he knows what he means is to point out he knows Draco knew it was him at the Manor and ask why he didn’t tell. Draco implores Harry to know what he means, and Harry implores Draco right back, revealing he is totally aware that Draco lied for him and saved him, and inviting him to admit it out loud. Daniel Radcliffe delivers these lines with such conviction, really selling the importance of his words. And the timing of his words implies that Harry does know what Draco really means, and is telling him “I do see you, I do understand you, so why don’t you just admit it, then? Forget what your family and friends think they know about you. You should speak your truth.”

An invitation that lost its payoff when the filmmakers deleted the scene where Draco does take a stand in front of everybody and publicly reveal his true loyalty by running back to Harry’s side of the battle and tossing Harry his wand.

Sirius was one of the first people to really treat Harry as his own person, without the kid gloves. And who never treaded on eggshells around him, which even his own friends do sometimes. Draco is another person who never treads on eggshells around Harry. Never treats him as though he's delicate or breakable.