All righty, so this post is prompted by a discussion I’ve just had with my girlfriend, and while it’s starting with a fairly benign rant about a couple character developments I’m severely unhappy with, but it’ll tie into something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

In the Harry Potter series, Rowling gave us two characters that we love to hate: Dudley and Draco Malfoy. Dudley is your stereotypical childhood bully, with an added twist of spoiled rich kid, but without the rich bit. His parents have given him everything he’s ever wanted, and refuse to acknowledge anything he’s done wrong, in addition to disadvantaging Harry at every available opportunity. To them, Dudley walks on water. He’s nothing but mean, rude, vicious, and cruel to Harry throughout almost the entirety of the books and films. He’s well and truly horrible. Until book seven, he shows no evidence of having a redeeming feature of any kind. His one moment that was less than absolute shite was when it was time for him and Harry to never see each other again. The night before they all left, he left a cup of tea outside of Harry’s door, something Harry initially thought was yet another act of cruelty, since he accidentally stepped on it and cut his foot, but later realized was actually a singular act of kindness. Then, when they were all loading up to head out, Harry and Vernon (Dudley’s unfortunate father) were arguing over Voldemort, Dudley says that he doesn’t hate Harry, which shocks everyone there. Despite the years of awful horrible everything, Dudley and Harry actually manage to leave off on a decent note, and THEY LEAVE THIS OUT OF THE FILM. I will never understand why, seeing as it would have taken all of 5 extra minutes of total running time, and it provides a depth to Dudley that doesn’t exist without it.

Now, my bit on Draco is more extensive. Draco Malfoy was born into one of the oldest pure-blood families in the wizarding world to Lucius and Narcissa. While Narcissa is never exactly portrayed as a particularly cruel or evil human, she doesn’t seem to have any sort of internal moral compass. The one feature of hers that they ever emphasize is her love for her son. The two major scenes that she appears in are when she begs Snape to protect Draco in his attempts to kill Dumbledore on Voldemort’s orders, and when she is asked to confirm Harry’s death when Voldemort kills him in the Forbidden Forest. Instead of telling the Dark Lord that Harry was still alive, she only asks Harry for confirmation that Draco is alive, and when he nods, she announces that he’s deceased. She knows that they only way she’ll get back to the castle for her son is as part of Voldemort’s victory parade with Harry’s dead body. She does what she needs to do to protect her family, even if that means being a Death Eater. Lucius, on the other hand, is perfectly horrible. In the beginning, he is cruel and inhuman, doing everything in his power all of the time to ruin the lives of those he deems lesser than himself – particularly Harry Potter. He slips Ginny Weasley Tom Riddle’s diary in order to reopen the chamber of secrets, knowing that it will likely cause her death, he terribly abuses Dobby, his family’s house-elf, and he never misses an opportunity to remind Harry that his survival was nothing but a fluke, one that would soon be corrected by Voldemort’s return to power. In the end, he is revealed as a spineless fool, who had convinced himself that he had any kind of real power, and he does nothing more than cower behind Voldemort in the hopes that this will keep him alive. Being raised by these two people didn’t give Draco much of a hope of turning out a decent human. By the time he hit 11 and went to Hogwarts, he’d already internalized the mindset that any wizard lacking pure blood was unworthy of being a wizard, muggles lacked worth of any kind, and any creature that wasn’t human was below a muggle. He worshipped Voldemort’s ideals of promoting pure blood and wiping out those who weren’t, and made no secret of it. He lorded his status of Snape’s favorite student throughout the school, using it to abuse others without the consequences. He and his minions wreaked havoc, only encouraged by their parents and the majority of Slytherin House. Up until their sixth year, Draco is shown solely as a bully, doing nothing but driving a wedge further between Gryffindor and Slytherin, and making those around him miserable.

When Draco turns 16, Voldemort decides to make him a Death Eater, and the mission he’s given is to kill Dumbledore. However, as he attempts to do so again and again, we see that his heart’s not in it. His efforts are half-assed, at best. A necklace delivered by another student, with no follow-through or means of ensuring that the deed actually gets done. A bottle of alcohol given to Slughorn to be given to Dumbledore as a gift, without vetting that Slughorn will actually give the bottle to Dumbledore instead of drinking it himself. When he eventually does corner Dumbledore himself, and disarms him, he stalls, wastes time, and talks too much. In his conversations with Snape, it’s revealed that he doesn’t want to do it, he’s simply doing it because Voldemort will kill him if he doesn’t. In the span of two books, Draco goes from nothing but a brat to an actual human being, just as complex as the next. In one part of his head is all of the bullshit that he’s grown up hearing about pure-bloods and Voldemort’s mission for the world. In another, his loyalty to his family, particularly his mother, who’s given her entire life for him. In another, basic human instinct. An unwillingness to commit homicide, especially on an individual who’s never been anything but kind to him. Reluctance to commit himself to a cause that involves millions of deaths, many of whom will be people Draco knows, has studied with, lived with. The year after all of this happens, Draco’s newfound morality makes an even bigger appearance. When he has the opportunity to reveal Harry’s identity to his family when he’s caught by snatchers, he makes vague comments, saying that it might or might not be Harry. He saves Harry’s life, along with Hermione and Ron. Then, in the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry saves Draco, not once, but twice. Then, when he and Harry become adults, he raises his son to believe in equality, compassion, and kindness; something unbelievable for someone who was raised the way Draco was. He overcomes ridiculous odds – parents who never gave him a chance, a dark wizard who tries to force him to destroy his own soul. He was absolutely one of the most underrated characters. AND THE MOVIE SHOWS NONE OF THIS. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. The only things that any of the films show for this is when Draco doesn’t kill Dumbledore, he hides during the Battle of Hogwarts instead of actively fighting for Voldemort, and he nods to Harry when they both see their children off on the Hogwarts Express. That’s it. They leave out the both were Draco becomes a whole ass person. It is, quite frankly, absolute bullshite. Rubbish. A waste of a character who rounded out the series, and a waste of a beautiful storyline that Rowling took time and energy to weave for an audience who followed her characters for half a decade.

Other than my general anger over the entirety of this situation, it also brings out a very real issue; book Draco does, at least. While we got a largely third person view of a lot of the things going on in Voldemort’s world through Snape, especially near the end when it dealt with Draco, Harry never does. He has no idea what Draco’s world is like. All he sees is a privileged little asshole, deadset on ruining the world with the help of Lord Voldemort. Funny thing is, when it actually comes down to it, Draco’s not one of the bad guys. He saves Harry, which plays a key part in Voldemort’s death.

None of us have any idea what another person’s life is actually like. We see a combination of what that person wants us to see, and what we want to see. 8.5% of women have some form of depression, in addition to 4.7% of men, as of March 21st, 2019. That’s 13.2% of the entire population. A little over 13 out of every 100 people. I don’t know about you, but I’ve met a lot of people, and seeing as the US has one of the highest population percentages of mental health issues, including depression, chances are around a third of the people in my life suffer from depression, but I only know for sure about a handful. It’s a part of those people that I may never know. I will never know what the people around me are actually going through. To an extent, we are all in this alone. My point is, we all run around assuming that we understand people – both ourselves and others. We overlook everything we don’t know about someone, we cast judgment, we wreak our own havoc. We hurt others with our ignorance, rarely taking the time to recognize that there is so much more to the world and the people in it than could ever fit in our heads. It’s a waste of every single beautiful storyline that we never get to know. Let’s all just do the world a favor, and take a second to actually appreciate what the universe is doing, what those around us are capable of, who they are, because if we don’t, we are wasting their stories, and maybe pieces of our own.