How I Write - Inside the Worst of Them (Draco Malfoy)

The important thing about making a character you write feel real is by loving them for who they are, not who you want them to be. Even if it is just for the moments that you write in their point of view - you need to care about their ugly bits, or you're including a note of bias.

I'll use Draco as an example. The reason that so much Draco feels fanon instead of canon is because so many people concentrate solely on his good points (yes, he does have them), while ignoring his many bad points. This presents a very lop-sided view of the character, especially as many of those bad points are things that Draco, himself, probably doesn't consider to be faults.

Draco's failures are probably what stick in his memory - the fact that he's never good enough to beat Potter or Granger. The fact that he's the one who gets hexed, when he probably feels just as injured as Harry does - because Draco can, above all things, hold a grudge. He's still holding one against Harry for choosing one of the nasty, cruel, horrid Weasel boys over him. Boys who laugh at your name and who hiss at eleven year-olds whose only crime is to be put into Slytherin. He can never see any of the Wesleys' good points (of which they have many), just as they would never see one of his.

And he does have some, including being creative, which is something that always tilts my heart. He makes up stories. He does very good impressions. He gives performances to his friends. He's a total drama queen. Which probably gives his father no end of annoyance. He probably wanted a son who had his head firmly in useful things, but Draco's too easily distracted from the things that can make a difference to his future (the wineglass incident can be read this way - focusing on Harry to the detriment of his future).

And he tries to be, and is, a good student - why else would his father only mention that Hermione is above him in scores? If there were too many other people (and any other people Lucius considered 'lesser'), they would have been mentioned as well.

He flies well - Harry mentions that in the first book - but Draco wasn't the youngest Seeker in a century and he didn't completely turn around a Quidditch team.

He's talented and he's smart - but to his immense shame, he isn't as talented and smart as Potter and Granger.

Here he is, with what he would consider a natural advantage - his pure blood and his family - and yet he's not quite good enough.

So he rages and he blames Harry and Hermione for being too perfect and he blames Ron for being a Wesley (just as Ron hates him for being a Malfoy - the Wesleys are just as biased as the Malfoys when it comes to the 'wrong' side) and for taking his chance to be friends with the Boy Who Lived away. And that hate grows over the years as he finds ways to blame them more. It's ugly and it's horrid, but it's a terribly real way of reacting to things.

It's a bit like the beginning of the film version of The Count of Monte Cristo - "I shouldn't want your life."

So, in this way, I find the heart of Draco's humanity and that's where the love comes from. And he does have so many good qualities - he loves his parents, he's creative and funny, he's smart. But he was raised to believe himself to be superior and that is his downfall. He wasn't expecting to go to a Hogwarts that had someone more important than himself attending and he's been breaking himself on that from the beginning.

It's always disturbing to find oneself a bit of a hypocrite, even in fictional situations.

In other words, my interest in lotrips has shifted to being Elijah/Sean - my kink for their kind of relationship overruling my adultery squick.

Of course, before this, I just had a shallow interest in the pairing of Elijah and Orlando as the two hottest, so at least I've shifted to a relationship I like because of emotional instead of purely physical reasons.