Draco Malfoy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alphaophiuchi) wrote2016-09-21 11:28 am
alphaophiuchi) wrote2016-09-21 11:28 am
Entry tags:
ooc • ryslig application
OOC INFORMATION
Name: Momo
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
comatosebutterfly
Other Characters: None
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Draco Malfoy
Age: 18
Canon: Harry Potter
Canon Point: shortly after the Battle of Hogwarts; June 1998
Character Information: at Wikipedia, at the Harry Potter Wikia
Personality:
As the only son of two pureblooded parents, Draco has been taught to strive for the same greatness that his family has achieved in all aspects of their lives: the Malfoys are one of the better known wizarding families, known to have been pure for as long as anyone can remember (or at least, as long as is recorded publicly), and their name alone holds plenty of clout. Throughout his youth, he uses this to his advantage, dropping his father's name at every opportunity he possibly can in hopes that it will benefit him, and as he gets older, Draco wants nothing more than to keep this reputation up. He sees the more widely-beneficial qualities of having a positive reputation, and realises that it most certainly does open doors. Additionally, he knows perfectly well that he has the capabilities of excelling at anything he puts his mind to, and if doing it by skill isn't the most expedient method, then cheating or putting others down to get himself up to the top is a completely viable route, as far as he's concerned. He doesn't bat so much as an eyelash at the idea of buying his way onto a team, or using others as stepping stones to get what he wants.
Draco has been brought up from a very young age to believe that he is triply gifted, in that not only is he a pureblooded wizard, he is a Malfoy. It is exactly this mindset that drives him to be the person that he is throughout his life. He spends the vast majority of his time acting like an entitled, superior individual, and generally treating those he believes to be beneath him for whatever reason - impure blood, an unfortunate family tree, et cetera - like the rubbish that he has been raised to believe they are. It’s only partway through his sixth year that he finally seems to get a much-needed rude awakening: the circumstances surrounding being the youngest Death Eater to date leave something to be desired.
After all, surely no sixteen year old wants to be forced into murder, no matter how cool they thought the prospect was previously. After being fully immersed within the situation - being a Death Eater, having to do things he had only thought of in the theoretical, rather than the practical - opened his eyes to it all, allowing him to form his own opinions of what Voldemort stood for, rather than blindly following after whatever his parents told him to believe. However, even with this change in outlook and the fact that Draco finally comes into himself as an independent person, the core of whom Draco is as a person - an elitist albeit somewhat misguided bully - remains true.
Most of his bullying towards fellow students - and even some teachers - can be superficially traced back to his belief that he's better than everyone else. On a psychological level, however, it lends itself to suggesting that there's something more driving this: he knows that some people are better than him, but refuses to believe it on the grounds that he's a Malfoy, and he ought to be better than them. The idea that he might not be strikes him as disappointing, and despite being misled by his parents at least a little, the last thing he wants is to be considered a disappointment to them. Draco also tends to compartmentalise his emotions, thus separating himself easily from most things around him. As such, it's easy for him to separate himself from how any of those he puts down might feel, and it's easy to assume that his own emotions also need some kind of release, and that they find it through his bullying. This is a talent that tends to be tried during the duration of the war, when he's faced time and again with torture and murder, and when he comes out on the other side, Draco is a much softer individual. It’s not unreasonable to assume that he might be exhausted by all the fighting and hatred, but due to his family, does his best to keep up appearances.
Another thing to note is that his bullying is his way of refusing to acknowledge that he might be just as human as the rest of them, with just as many flaws. He prefers to believe that he and his life are perfect, rather than dotted with the many problems that it is; to put it bluntly, he's jealous of what others have - or at least what he perceives them to have - over him. Often, it will be obvious what exactly he's jealous of: it will be that that he focuses in on for the brunt of his verbal attack, as if lessening what someone else has will make it mean less in actuality.
Slytherins are known for their loyalty, but only to a select few - ‘fraternity’ is perhaps a better word - and Draco epitomises that: his family takes precedence over anyone else, with his mother as the absolute highest priority. It's easy to see that he has a lot of pride in where he comes from, both in terms of House and ancestry - he's been toting both as the be-all, end-all since he was small. Even when it becomes apparent that his father’s decisions for the family - in regards to the Death Eaters, specifically - may not have been for the best in the long run, Draco stands by him to some extent. There’s a clear strain in the relationship, as is only natural when the son suffers for the sins of the father, but there’s no doubt that Draco still loves his father. He just loves his mother a little bit more.
It's generally obvious, through the course of the sixth and seventh books, that the only drive he has behind anything he's done towards his mission against Dumbledore is to keep his family safe and proud of him. No matter what, he wants to live up to his father's expectations of him, rather than hazarding disappointment. Whether correct or not, he believes that there are certain conditions placed upon his parents’ affection for him, and failing the mission given to him by the Dark Lord is almost certainly a disappointment with catastrophic results.Through this, he’s reduced from the smug little boy who thought himself better than everyone else to nothing more than a pawn, expected to carry out his tasks with robotic precision. It takes its toll on his body and psyche alike, but he pushes through, because if he doesn't, it will be his family to suffer for it.
And on the flip side, Draco's family is one of the few things to make him truly courageous. He’s generally understood to be a complete coward for a wide variety of completely true reasons, but only his loyalty that makes him put aside the flight aspect he so cherishes. It's simultaneously fleeting, as he usually finds the upkeep on aforementioned courage more work than its worth. Being a good person takes a lot of effort, and in order to maintain that, Draco always needs some sort of incentive. It fits in nicely with the fact that making friends isn’t as easy for him as one might think: he needs incentive to even be nice in the first place: someone has to offer him some reason for why they’d be good for him. Additionally, it can be noted that most of the time his cowardice has little to no reason behind it save that he doesn't truly like conflict or putting himself in harm's way. Sometimes, though, it does manifest from time to time - once in a blue moon - in a display of enlightened self-interest: where he truly does know what he's doing, but knows his own limits at the same time. This has only come through trial and error, and years of idiocy rearing its ugly head and getting him in trouble, as in the incident with Buckbeak.
Nearly as a rule, Draco doesn’t tend to trust people. Perhaps when he was younger, he was more open about trusting, largely when it came to those in his House, but as he grew older, there is no doubt that he grew more withdrawn. He puts on facades most of the time, according to what he believes people to want to see in him, or what he wants people to think of him: he might be the most charming young man in the world at first glance, but the truth of the matter is that he is more likely to act this way if he believes a person to be able to do him a favour in the future. In simple terms, if he thinks you can do something for him, he's considerably nicer than if he knows you can't. In a way, he tends to see having proper friends as a bit of a weakness - a thought probably passed down from his father. He prefers to take allies, people with skills he recognises that he doesn't have, or henchmen who can do his dirty work for him. He fears being made expendable, and projects that fear onto those he interacts with; it severely colours the way he treats people, particularly in the case of Crabbe and Goyle, his well-known lackeys.
Even with all his ambition, Draco is still not much of a proper leader, mostly for fear of actually getting his hands dirty with the tasks that need to be done. Despite being able to boss around his lackeys, and command enough presence to be well-known and well-feared, he simply does not have the drive to be able to take point in any major situation. Instead, he does what's expected of him, stepping into positions of power not because he wants to, but because he has to; for example, when he steps into his role as Death Eater after his father's incarceration, and very quickly realises that it's best to keep his mouth shut, and just follow along. If he has lackeys, he can get them to do things, and while it creates an image of being too good to bother with them, it also hides the fact that he’s a little too afraid to do things for himself.
It's also obvious that he has an incredible inability to ask people for help, though whether that's a matter of distrust or simple pride getting in the way is a toss-up: it's likely both. Considering he spends most of his time using people for his own various purposes, it should come as no surprise that that's exactly what he believes others will do to him. He neither likes owing people nor coming off as weaker than he feels like he should be, which also leads to not let anyone see him as human: Draco would rather bottle his emotions inside and keep them all at arm's length, thusly creating an almost godlike persona. Completely by his own choice, Draco strives to be absolutely unapproachable, and generally surrounds himself with bulky henchmen types in order to better achieve that end.
Draco is also a very intelligent young man, referred to as the top of his class, excepting Hermione Granger, which suggests that he's at least academically brilliant, though it’s obvious he has very little grasp on the real world. He’s very sheltered, and actually seems to like it that way for most of his life. Up until the point at which his world is shaken to its core, at least. He likes being treated well - almost babied - and until the war strikes, Draco’s truly happy to live in his little corner of the world, never changing his opinions from what his parents think they should be.
Also a key part of his intelligence is his tendency to be curious about things: if he feels like he's missing out on something he perceives as good, he will thrust himself into the middle of it, regardless of what other people around him think. He very much gets off on being in the spotlight, and he's very good at drawing everyone's eyes to him; he knows exactly how to work people so that they feel for him, and sympathise. His intelligence plays heavily into his manipulative streak, simply enabling him further. He's also remarkably clever, which he never fails to show off; in Draco's world, his intelligence and cleverness are both things that he ought to flaunt just as much as his pureblooded status. It is, after all, his cleverness that leads him to generally know exactly what buttons to push with people, and how to annoy them most without actually getting himself killed.
After the war - and specifically the effects of the Battle of Hogwarts on his family’s good name - he does change a bit. Where his family had once been the pinnacle of high society among wizardkind, now they’re known only as blood traitors - it’s this kind of fall from grace that takes its toll on the entire family, but most specifically Draco, who can’t help but blame his father for it. Very little of his involvement was his decision, hinging entirely on the decisions his father had made in the past; there’s more than a little resentment built up in him after the war ends, and it most often comes out in the form of anger or apathy. But it should also be noted that Draco is also much more self-aware after the war, and realises that he had never been that good a person either. He isn’t sure what to do with that knowledge, but perhaps rectifying it is a good start.
5-10 Key Character Traits: proud, afraid, conflicted, snarky, clever, manipulative, aloof, distrusting, misguided
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? EITHER
Opt-Outs: Arachne, Gargoyle, Manticore, Minotaur, Troll
Roleplay Sample: on the TDM
Name: Momo
Contact:
Other Characters: None
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Draco Malfoy
Age: 18
Canon: Harry Potter
Canon Point: shortly after the Battle of Hogwarts; June 1998
Character Information: at Wikipedia, at the Harry Potter Wikia
Personality:
As the only son of two pureblooded parents, Draco has been taught to strive for the same greatness that his family has achieved in all aspects of their lives: the Malfoys are one of the better known wizarding families, known to have been pure for as long as anyone can remember (or at least, as long as is recorded publicly), and their name alone holds plenty of clout. Throughout his youth, he uses this to his advantage, dropping his father's name at every opportunity he possibly can in hopes that it will benefit him, and as he gets older, Draco wants nothing more than to keep this reputation up. He sees the more widely-beneficial qualities of having a positive reputation, and realises that it most certainly does open doors. Additionally, he knows perfectly well that he has the capabilities of excelling at anything he puts his mind to, and if doing it by skill isn't the most expedient method, then cheating or putting others down to get himself up to the top is a completely viable route, as far as he's concerned. He doesn't bat so much as an eyelash at the idea of buying his way onto a team, or using others as stepping stones to get what he wants.
Draco has been brought up from a very young age to believe that he is triply gifted, in that not only is he a pureblooded wizard, he is a Malfoy. It is exactly this mindset that drives him to be the person that he is throughout his life. He spends the vast majority of his time acting like an entitled, superior individual, and generally treating those he believes to be beneath him for whatever reason - impure blood, an unfortunate family tree, et cetera - like the rubbish that he has been raised to believe they are. It’s only partway through his sixth year that he finally seems to get a much-needed rude awakening: the circumstances surrounding being the youngest Death Eater to date leave something to be desired.
After all, surely no sixteen year old wants to be forced into murder, no matter how cool they thought the prospect was previously. After being fully immersed within the situation - being a Death Eater, having to do things he had only thought of in the theoretical, rather than the practical - opened his eyes to it all, allowing him to form his own opinions of what Voldemort stood for, rather than blindly following after whatever his parents told him to believe. However, even with this change in outlook and the fact that Draco finally comes into himself as an independent person, the core of whom Draco is as a person - an elitist albeit somewhat misguided bully - remains true.
Most of his bullying towards fellow students - and even some teachers - can be superficially traced back to his belief that he's better than everyone else. On a psychological level, however, it lends itself to suggesting that there's something more driving this: he knows that some people are better than him, but refuses to believe it on the grounds that he's a Malfoy, and he ought to be better than them. The idea that he might not be strikes him as disappointing, and despite being misled by his parents at least a little, the last thing he wants is to be considered a disappointment to them. Draco also tends to compartmentalise his emotions, thus separating himself easily from most things around him. As such, it's easy for him to separate himself from how any of those he puts down might feel, and it's easy to assume that his own emotions also need some kind of release, and that they find it through his bullying. This is a talent that tends to be tried during the duration of the war, when he's faced time and again with torture and murder, and when he comes out on the other side, Draco is a much softer individual. It’s not unreasonable to assume that he might be exhausted by all the fighting and hatred, but due to his family, does his best to keep up appearances.
Another thing to note is that his bullying is his way of refusing to acknowledge that he might be just as human as the rest of them, with just as many flaws. He prefers to believe that he and his life are perfect, rather than dotted with the many problems that it is; to put it bluntly, he's jealous of what others have - or at least what he perceives them to have - over him. Often, it will be obvious what exactly he's jealous of: it will be that that he focuses in on for the brunt of his verbal attack, as if lessening what someone else has will make it mean less in actuality.
Slytherins are known for their loyalty, but only to a select few - ‘fraternity’ is perhaps a better word - and Draco epitomises that: his family takes precedence over anyone else, with his mother as the absolute highest priority. It's easy to see that he has a lot of pride in where he comes from, both in terms of House and ancestry - he's been toting both as the be-all, end-all since he was small. Even when it becomes apparent that his father’s decisions for the family - in regards to the Death Eaters, specifically - may not have been for the best in the long run, Draco stands by him to some extent. There’s a clear strain in the relationship, as is only natural when the son suffers for the sins of the father, but there’s no doubt that Draco still loves his father. He just loves his mother a little bit more.
It's generally obvious, through the course of the sixth and seventh books, that the only drive he has behind anything he's done towards his mission against Dumbledore is to keep his family safe and proud of him. No matter what, he wants to live up to his father's expectations of him, rather than hazarding disappointment. Whether correct or not, he believes that there are certain conditions placed upon his parents’ affection for him, and failing the mission given to him by the Dark Lord is almost certainly a disappointment with catastrophic results.Through this, he’s reduced from the smug little boy who thought himself better than everyone else to nothing more than a pawn, expected to carry out his tasks with robotic precision. It takes its toll on his body and psyche alike, but he pushes through, because if he doesn't, it will be his family to suffer for it.
And on the flip side, Draco's family is one of the few things to make him truly courageous. He’s generally understood to be a complete coward for a wide variety of completely true reasons, but only his loyalty that makes him put aside the flight aspect he so cherishes. It's simultaneously fleeting, as he usually finds the upkeep on aforementioned courage more work than its worth. Being a good person takes a lot of effort, and in order to maintain that, Draco always needs some sort of incentive. It fits in nicely with the fact that making friends isn’t as easy for him as one might think: he needs incentive to even be nice in the first place: someone has to offer him some reason for why they’d be good for him. Additionally, it can be noted that most of the time his cowardice has little to no reason behind it save that he doesn't truly like conflict or putting himself in harm's way. Sometimes, though, it does manifest from time to time - once in a blue moon - in a display of enlightened self-interest: where he truly does know what he's doing, but knows his own limits at the same time. This has only come through trial and error, and years of idiocy rearing its ugly head and getting him in trouble, as in the incident with Buckbeak.
Nearly as a rule, Draco doesn’t tend to trust people. Perhaps when he was younger, he was more open about trusting, largely when it came to those in his House, but as he grew older, there is no doubt that he grew more withdrawn. He puts on facades most of the time, according to what he believes people to want to see in him, or what he wants people to think of him: he might be the most charming young man in the world at first glance, but the truth of the matter is that he is more likely to act this way if he believes a person to be able to do him a favour in the future. In simple terms, if he thinks you can do something for him, he's considerably nicer than if he knows you can't. In a way, he tends to see having proper friends as a bit of a weakness - a thought probably passed down from his father. He prefers to take allies, people with skills he recognises that he doesn't have, or henchmen who can do his dirty work for him. He fears being made expendable, and projects that fear onto those he interacts with; it severely colours the way he treats people, particularly in the case of Crabbe and Goyle, his well-known lackeys.
Even with all his ambition, Draco is still not much of a proper leader, mostly for fear of actually getting his hands dirty with the tasks that need to be done. Despite being able to boss around his lackeys, and command enough presence to be well-known and well-feared, he simply does not have the drive to be able to take point in any major situation. Instead, he does what's expected of him, stepping into positions of power not because he wants to, but because he has to; for example, when he steps into his role as Death Eater after his father's incarceration, and very quickly realises that it's best to keep his mouth shut, and just follow along. If he has lackeys, he can get them to do things, and while it creates an image of being too good to bother with them, it also hides the fact that he’s a little too afraid to do things for himself.
It's also obvious that he has an incredible inability to ask people for help, though whether that's a matter of distrust or simple pride getting in the way is a toss-up: it's likely both. Considering he spends most of his time using people for his own various purposes, it should come as no surprise that that's exactly what he believes others will do to him. He neither likes owing people nor coming off as weaker than he feels like he should be, which also leads to not let anyone see him as human: Draco would rather bottle his emotions inside and keep them all at arm's length, thusly creating an almost godlike persona. Completely by his own choice, Draco strives to be absolutely unapproachable, and generally surrounds himself with bulky henchmen types in order to better achieve that end.
Draco is also a very intelligent young man, referred to as the top of his class, excepting Hermione Granger, which suggests that he's at least academically brilliant, though it’s obvious he has very little grasp on the real world. He’s very sheltered, and actually seems to like it that way for most of his life. Up until the point at which his world is shaken to its core, at least. He likes being treated well - almost babied - and until the war strikes, Draco’s truly happy to live in his little corner of the world, never changing his opinions from what his parents think they should be.
Also a key part of his intelligence is his tendency to be curious about things: if he feels like he's missing out on something he perceives as good, he will thrust himself into the middle of it, regardless of what other people around him think. He very much gets off on being in the spotlight, and he's very good at drawing everyone's eyes to him; he knows exactly how to work people so that they feel for him, and sympathise. His intelligence plays heavily into his manipulative streak, simply enabling him further. He's also remarkably clever, which he never fails to show off; in Draco's world, his intelligence and cleverness are both things that he ought to flaunt just as much as his pureblooded status. It is, after all, his cleverness that leads him to generally know exactly what buttons to push with people, and how to annoy them most without actually getting himself killed.
After the war - and specifically the effects of the Battle of Hogwarts on his family’s good name - he does change a bit. Where his family had once been the pinnacle of high society among wizardkind, now they’re known only as blood traitors - it’s this kind of fall from grace that takes its toll on the entire family, but most specifically Draco, who can’t help but blame his father for it. Very little of his involvement was his decision, hinging entirely on the decisions his father had made in the past; there’s more than a little resentment built up in him after the war ends, and it most often comes out in the form of anger or apathy. But it should also be noted that Draco is also much more self-aware after the war, and realises that he had never been that good a person either. He isn’t sure what to do with that knowledge, but perhaps rectifying it is a good start.
5-10 Key Character Traits: proud, afraid, conflicted, snarky, clever, manipulative, aloof, distrusting, misguided
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? EITHER
Opt-Outs: Arachne, Gargoyle, Manticore, Minotaur, Troll
Roleplay Sample: on the TDM