The fan attraction to Draco isn’t “white boys always get forgiven”. It’s the slightly gut-chilling recognition that “there, but for the grace of God, walk I”; the knowledge that, with the wrong parents, in the wrong time, in the wrong place, many of us could BE that person. It’s the recognition that our start in life shapes and defines us in so, so many ways, and that the dream we all have, the semi-lie we’re all told, that we can transcend our birth and be anything we want to be… that this might be true, but it leaves out half the truth: that that transcendence hurts. That it’s hard. That it’s a struggle to carve a new identity for yourself when the one your parents made for you is so, so very wrong (hi, misgendered folks!).
It’s the acknowledgement that even though Draco does crappy, unforgivable things, he’s still a kid. And fundamentally, he’s motivated by what all kids are motivated by: not a hatred for other people, but the burning, intense desire to win your parents’ approval.
Look hard at your own parents, and tell me you never, ever did anything you were uncomfortable with because you wanted to please them. Tell me that, even as a child, you had a strongly-defined, unique, independent moral compass that was in no way swayed by their actions.
The miracle is not that we all are prepared to forgive Draco on even the slightest hint that he turned out kind-of okay; it’s that he managed to turn out even kind-of okay in the first place.
We love Draco because he represents, in all its ugly, horrific reality, the real lie of contemporary puritanical capitalism: that if only we work hard enough, overcoming the circumstances of our birth is simple, straightforward–maybe even easy.
Draco exposes this for the lie it is. We can never escape who we were. It’s a struggle to forge an identity separate from your parents’ morality. It hurts to divorce yourself from your birthright, even in small, apparently insignificant ways. We see him, and our heart bleeds, because in him, we recognise contemporary millennial truth: that many of us will work hard, and still never escape from our circumstances.
I know, I know, morality/ethics is different to socioeconomic class. But the two overlap more often than is comfortable.
And when it feels like we’re never getting anywhere, like getting ahead, getting on, getting out is a dream spun from the cobwebs of lies, Draco’s story is the most realistic of all: maybe we can’t have all that, but no matter where we start–even if it’s trying to please racist, Nazi-esque, arrogant, classist prigs of parents–there is hope.
So maybe he doesn’t demonstrate as much change canonically as you’d like. True. I’ll give you that. The threads the fandom has clung to and elaborated on are, perhaps, silk-thin. But that too is the beauty of human nature: that we will cling to even the slightest skein of hope; that even in the face of the bleakest situation, the slimmest thread of hope is enough.
Hope that we can better our circumstance. Hope that we can better the world. And–most importantly–that no matter how bad our opinion of our own character… we can always better ourselves.
Secretly, some of us might just be terrified that we’re terrible human beings too. That we’re not worth the space we occupy. But if Draco–Draco!–can demonstrate an ounce of redeeming qualities, then maybe… just maybe… we’re not so bad ourselves after all.
If Draco can be redeemed… maybe it means that any of us can. And maybe that’s what we need to believe in.
The Boy Who Lived represents love.
The Boy Who Had No Choice represents hope. And that’s why the fanbase loves him still.