Snape is redeemed by turning out to have been on Dumbledore's side all along despite many, many appearances to the contrary. We are left thinking Snape might actually be evil until almost the end of the story. His harsh personality is never rehabilitated, it simply turns out to have had good reasons behind it.
Also:
Voldemort makes no bones he is out to get Harry.
Umbridge's schtick is insisting she is on your side while raising the gates from the inside
Valuable lesson here.
THIS SHIT APP IS ACTIVELY DELETING MY LIKES AND REPOSTS FOR MALFOID!!!!!!!!
ELON YOU LITTLE SHITE YOU BETTER FIX THIS INDIAN HELLSITE OR I'M GONNA BEAT THE EVERLIVING HELL OUT OF DOBBY!!!!!!
What is my interpretation of #Malfoid?
This is a continuation of a post I've linked below.
The common consensus is that Malfoid is a tsundere character. However, this doesn't satisfy me at all. For me, there needs to be something more. Hence why I refer to her as a "villainess."
Don't get me wrong, I really do enjoy all the different interpretations people have of Malfoid. This is just my take.
As a villainess, she still has that tsundere aspect to her, but it's informed by the fact that she is very much the aristocrat's daughter looking down on the commonfolk. A princess in an ivory tower who is far more cultured, comes from superior stock, and is simply better than those beneath her because she is able to appreciate the finer things.
However, unlike Draco Malfoy, who seems to be just a regular child who happens to come from a rich household and lauds it over others for the sake of his ego, I interpret Dracaena Malfoy as actually being able to walk the walk rather than just trying to talk the talk.
She is competent in a way that Draco never was, but in turn, she is nowhere near as sociable as he is, therefore is not able to make friends. And yes, perhaps Draco's friendships were all shallow, but you could at least see that he knew how to have a good time with others.
Dracaena cannot. She is so committed to being in her ivory tower that she doesn't have the ability to form friendships, even shallow ones... nor is she interested in such things when everyone is beneath her. She is isolated, above others, unapproachable by all the other students. Yes, she does have Crabbe and Goyle (who are still male, Malfoid is the only change), but they're subordinates, not friends.
So when the famous Harry Potter refuses her, it creates a crack in an otherwise perfect exterior she has crafted to keep the rabble beneath her.
He is the only person who has ever refused her, and it wasn't just any refusal. It was the refusal to be her friend. Her friendship was not something she just gave away, it was the HIGHEST of honours she could possibly give to anyone.
The result of that refusal created an obsession within Dracaena and that obsession would lead her to do some very childish things early in the story. It's that old saying that if a boy pushes a girl on the playground, that means he likes her... just that it's Dracaena who is the one doing the pushing.
As many have pointed out, the actions Draco Malfoy takes during those first years in the story make a lot more sense when it's done by a girl rather than a boy. The way he bullies Harry is more how a girl bullies someone rather than the kind of bullying a boy would subject to another boy.
My interpretation of the character would have her steal Ginny's (Tom Riddle's) diary because she feels jealous of her. This Weasley girl is closer to Harry Potter than her? He dares refuse her friendship and get close to some common Weasley girl?!
So in turn, Dracaena is the one to play out the events of Chamber of Secrets rather than Ginny. This would put her into the position of having to be saved by Harry which in turn complicates her feelings for him even more.
What started as a petty obsession for revenge for damaging her and her family's honour turns into something else that she really doesn't understand. She's having new feelings she's never felt before and it begins to make her act erratic as she doubles and triples down on her childish bullying. The tsundere is in full swing during that third year.
By the fourth year, she is able to grow up enough to embody the true villainess that's always been inside her. Her jabs at Harry and his friends are pointed, razor sharp, she's reasserted her confidence in herself as she's becoming more beautiful... and she knows it. She can see the heads of those boys turning as she walks by and she also notices that Harry's head... does not.
Something inside makes her want him to see her, and this is where the pursuit truly begins. I agree with everyone else, the Yule Ball is an extremely important moment for their relationship. However, I don't think they'll become a traditional storybook couple as a result of the Yule Ball.
What I can imagine is that while a lot of boys did actually work up the courage to ask her to be their date for the Yule Ball (hormones overriding their fear of her), she refused them all. After all they were all beneath her... though there is one person she wouldn't refuse, but as you've seen from many interpretations, it's complicated.
As for Harry, this is where I think things get really interesting. After the last three years worth of events along with his name coming out of the goblet of fire, he's become famous... more accurately, infamous at Hogwarts. He isn't able to secure a date precisely because of his infamy.
In a way, he's become just as unreachable as Dracaena Malfoy has and so while there are some girls who admire him, he seems out of reach for them with everything that's happened and is still happening with him being part of the tournament.
Harry and Dracaena end up dancing at the ball together and it's at that point they come to an understanding. These two are the most unreachable people in the school... they're not normal like everyone else... which is precisely the thing that brings them together in this moment.
What I think happens to them after the Yule Ball isn't that they become a storybook couple, rather they "go out" in a 90s teenager sense. Friends who hold hands sometimes. Dracaena begins to realise her obsession has evolved into something more and Harry begins to realise that his rival's prickly exterior hides an extremely vulnerable interior and the two begin to slowly bond.
In those few short months, I can see things going well in that Dracaena finally made a friend, and that his friends are slowly coming around as well after she learns to be less confrontational with them.
That, of course, changes when Voldemort returns. Not right away, but it adds a strain on their relationship once her father reveals to her the nature of their family's history with the dark lord.
That is how I imagine all of that to play out. I agree with people who say the love story should be a slow burn and that they shouldn't officially become a couple until the very end, after Voldemort is defeated.
However, I do think that it's important to build up to a point where the two recognise that there's something special between them that draws them together. There needs to be an attraction neither of them understands because they're still children, but both know is there.
Furthermore, Dracaena having no friends and then finally making friends during the events of the fourth year makes the story gut wrenching. You then have to watch her purposefully tear those friendships apart because of her family being tied to Voldemort.
She's finally gained so much. She's finally broken through and reached Harry. Now she MUST rip everything to shreds and push him away for the sake of her family.
If she doesn't do this, she and her father and mother are all dead. She thinks that she will be the one responsible for the end of the Malfoy dynasty.
While I love the high school lovey-dovey romance a lot of people go with, I like the more grounded approach a lot more. The anime tropes are there with the villainess and tsundere aspects, sure. But it's still the story of Harry Potter with a few changes here and there based on the idea that it's Dracaena and not Draco in the story.
She must earn those friendships, and then she must find the strength to tear them apart without tearing herself apart completely.
It's heartbreaking.
“Sectumsempra!”
Potter froze at the sight of the crumpled Malfoid soaked in a crimson pool. Shaking breaths, desperately clinging to life.
“I...I didn’t know…” Harry whispered, horrified by the spell.
Malfoy weakly reached for him, as if he were the only thing left to save her