Part 3. My brainstorming sessions on how to drop in a female replacement for Draco Malfoy seem to turning into a sort of character workshop.
But I'm having fun.
We've talked about "Malfoid"'s basic character, why she falls for Harry Potter, and reimagined her father and his relationship with her.
But we haven't touched on an important part of making this whole story work: why does Harry fall for her?
It's not enough to appeal to Japanese "tsun-dere" tropes. That's just the name of a story convention. It might say something about why people like the story, but it doesn't make the story make sense, according to its own internal logic.
For that, we need to do some actual thinking.
Well, where does he come from? He's the unwanted foster child of a family that sees him as an unchosen responsibility and nothing more.
So, for the first few years of his life, he is resented, ignored, and utterly unloved by anyone.
So what does this do to a boy?
Rowling has a little bit of trouble with this one, because she has some pretty advanced women-writing-men problems. Understandable, given her history.
But an ordinary little boy, who is written as an actual boy, gets angry. Resentful. That's what Rowling couldn't write, because to her, a good man is a non-threatening man.
Now, this would impact Harry's character and story in a lot of ways, but since we are looking specifically at why he falls in love with the Malfoid, we must look first at their initial encounter on the train.
What she says to him isn't an attack. From her worldview (discussed in the quoted article), she's trying to help him. He's an important person, but he's not familiar with her world, so he has fallen in with the wrong sort.
Come sit with us, instead.
Come sit with the cool kids and the pretty girl.
Now, on one level, this is exactly what an unloved boy raised in a closet wants. Acceptance. To be treated as important.
But on another level, this is his first Hero's Trial. The boy who was treated like dirt can have status and be somebody. All he has to do is inflict the same rejection and contempt he experienced on his new friends.
Of course, he passes this trial.
And Draecena, or Lyra, or whatever name we wanna call her, doesn't take it well. She's vain, and not used to hearing the word "no".
In reality, it's her fault. She could have sat down beside him. Or simply said, "come with me for a while, I'll introduce you around".
But she doesn't see it that way, and so she does say something nasty. At this point, they become rivals. They have hurt each other's pride.
For her, it is the pride of a haughty heiress, who not only things she is better than everyone else, but that she must be, because that's her responsibility in life.
For him, it is the pride of a boy with nothing, loved by no one, who will therefore not tolerate the slightest insult.
But the import thing to realize is that he doesn't hate her and want nothing to do with her. Oh, no. Not a bit of it.
She's the popular girl. The wealthy girl. The pretty girl. And everything about her, everything she has, everything that has been given to her in life, tells him that she is loved in ways that Harry was not.
All the time she is envying him because he doesn't have to fit in, he envies her because she has somewhere she belongs.
He doesn't want nothing to do with her. He wants what she has.
He desires her, abstractly at first, then more concretely when puberty hits, but boys without mothers who love them will not chase girls. Their wounded pride simply will not sustain it. They want girls to chase them.
He doesn't want to hurt her. He wants to humble her. To make her accept him on his terms, not hers. He doesn't want to orbit her universe and petition for acceptance. He wants her to come to him, to admit with her words and actions that he is not, in any way, beneath her.
What do we covet? That which we see every day and cannot have.
He wants her to yearn for him, the way he does for her.
And as circumstances, and her hidden desires, repeatedly throw them together, small hints come to light that her feelings for him might not be just contempt.
Harry misses all of them.
Why? Not because he's stupid. Not just so the plot can happen. Not because they're too subtle to see. For the reader, they're pretty obvious.
No, he misses them because of who he is and where he comes from.
He grew up without love. And some part of him will always fear that he is unlovable. Of course Draecina Malfoy hates him. The Dursleys hated him, didn't they?
And she keeps saying she doesn't like him at all.
It never occurs to him that she says it with increasingly shrill desperation. It never occurs to him that she says she wants to avoid him, but she always seems to be around.
And he has absolutely no idea why his scarves keep disappearing.
He won't take the hint. He won't pick up the dropped handkerchief. He won't chase her the way pretty girls expect to be chased. Because a boy who has never experienced a mother's love can never bear to risk rejection.
He nicknames her "Malfoid", and it sticks. And she would rather die than give the slightest hint of how hard she cries into her pillow that night.
The next day, she hides a Strong Toad in his locker.
All he would have to do is face down her pretended scorn. Offer her one kind word. One gesture. And she would melt into his arms.
But he can't.
He may be the big hero in public, but in his heart he's just as broken as she is.
To have the love of the girl he desires, he must grow up and become a man. He must stop looking to the world, or to her, to heal the injuries that are uniquely his.
He cannot, must not, must not try to break Draecina's spirit so she will love him unconditionally. Unconditional love is for children alone, and it is not her fault that he will never experience it.
It is not her job to make it up to him.
It is Tom Riddle, not Draecina Malfoy, who deprived him of a mother's love.
And as long as he doesn't see that, he will keep fighting her. But she isn't a vicious dog, biting at him for no reason. She's a scared kitten, hissing and clawing because she is afraid... her heart is bound to a man who offers her no patience and no mercy.
He will have to rise beyond his own pain, accept that it will never heal, accept that he still has responsibilities beyond it.
Accept that is it only her job to love and support him, not to give him back what cannot be given, because time only flows one way.
Just as she will have to take a leap of faith to be worthy of him, to offer her heart without certainty or deniability, he will have to catch her before she falls. To bear her claws until her fear subsides and she can love him without lashing out in a desperate need to protect her heart from the man who holds it.
She's not a monster. She's just a girl.