What Happened to Draco Malfoy after the Deathly Hallows? Did He Change? – Harry Potter Explained

Hey everyone,

Welcome to another installment of Harry Potter Theory. In this video, we’re going to be discussing Harry Potter’s arch-nemesis and the son of Lucius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy.

Draco Malfoy was a british pure-blood wizard born in the year 1980, the son of Narcissa Malfoy and death eater Lucius Malfoy. Draco started at Hogwarts in the same year as Harry, Ron, Hermione, and many of the other characters that we’re all so familiar with. Right from the beginning, Draco exhibits..questionable behaviour. He is the archetypal bully, and when he first meets Harry in the film, he extends his hand out to him, but not before taking an easy shot at Ronald Weasley, who Harry had also just met:

“Think my name’s funny, do you? No need to ask you yours. Red hair… and a hand-me-down robe… you must be a Weasley.”

Harry, having already befriended Ron, is not a fan of Draco’s attitude, and when he rejects his handshake it sparks the catalyst that would result in years of animosity between the two.

JK Rowling describes Draco’s character as follows:
“Everybody recognises Draco because everybody has known somebody like him. Such people’s belief in their own superiority can be infuriating, laughable or intimidating, depending on the circumstances in which one meets them. Draco succeeds in provoking all of these feelings in Harry, Ron and Hermione at one time or another.”

Right off the bat, we sort of get a sense of the type of character that Draco Malfoy is going to be. The only reason that he’s interested in befriending Harry is because of his fame, and Draco, having been raised in a pure-blood family that places an exceptional amount of value on status, leaps at the opportunity to associate himself with Harry. After the sorting ceremony, Draco is placed in to Slytherin house, and Harry is placed in to Gryffindor house. This is basically the beginning of the rivalry between Draco and Harry Potter. Throughout the books and films, Draco is a constant nuisance towards the trio, and as he grows older his behaviour turns from annoying, but still child-like and playful, to rather sinister.

Draco, a pure-blood supremacist and die-hard slytherin, jumped at any opportunity to embarrass or insult students in any of the other houses. Here’s another one of Draco’s charming lines addressed towards Gryffindor students:

“You know how I think they choose people for the Gryffindor team. It’s people they feel sorry for. See, there’s Potter, who’s got no parents, then there’s the Weasleys, who’ve got no money — you should be on the team, Longbottom, you’ve got no brains.”

While Draco was always troublesome, condescending, and just rough to be around in general, I think that it would be fair to say that his behaviour is largely a product of his upbringing. I don’t think that Draco is necessarily an inherently bad person, he was just raised by a couple of pure-blood supremacists, one of them is even a death eater. How would you expect him to turn out? The very atmosphere that Draco was raised in was poisonous, his father, having followed Lord Voldemort in the first wizarding war, only avoided imprisonment by claiming that he was under the imperius curse for the duration of the war. This, however was not the case, and Lucius lived in constant regret, having been unsuccessful, along with the other Deatheaters, in bringing Lord Voldemort to power. Their image was important, and having to claim that you were placed under the imperius curse, even if to avoid imprisonment, makes you look weak. This weakness ended up being personified in the form of even more hatred towards muggle-borns, half-bloods, half-breeds, and blood traitors. Draco, who was highly influenced by his father, adopted this same attitude, and this formed the person that we saw at Hogwarts, an attitude that was the product of his father’s failure and extreme prejudice.

As Draco grew older we witness first-hand his evolution from petulant, but innocent little boy to sinister and dark young man. What really set him off, was the imprisonment of his father after the battle of the department of mysteries- a battle that effectively served as the catalyst and first major conflict of the second wizarding war.

So what happened to Draco?

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