Why is Draco so bad? J.K. Rowling explains for Xmas
It's not over, not yet.
The Harry Potter stories continue to pour from the pen (or keyboard) of tireless J.K. Rowling, who's currently thrilling fans with new wizardly tales on her website, including the back story of how Draco Malfoy got to be so nasty.
Pottermore, the confounding site for Potter fanatics, is about to complete 12 new stories — one a day since Dec. 12, up until Wednesday, Dec.23 — that Rowling has produced about characters and topics she didn't get to among the millions of words in her seven novels.
The books sold in the zillions, not to mention gazillions of tickets for the movies.
According to The Guardian and other British media who managed to negotiate Pottermore's riddle-like organization, Rowling wove new stories about such things as the only character she felt guilty about killing off, to a plotline about a ghost that didn't make it into the books, to the history of the Leaky Cauldron pub.
On Tuesday, her longest new piece landed, offering a back story about what makes Harry's arch enemy, Draco Malfoy, such a nasty boy — a "person of dubious morality," as she puts it.
Upbringing, family life, inner turmoil — you know, the usual stuff — had something to do with it. Not that it matters to Draco fans.
Rowling, however, is nonplussed about how popular the character has been with some young (and not so young) female readers.
It might be due to the actor Tom Felton, "who plays Draco brilliantly in the films and, ironically, is about the nicest person you could meet," she muses.
But all you Draco lovers (on Facebook, you know who you are) posting fan-fiction treacle about Harry and Draco eventually becoming friendly? Give it up, she says.
"Draco has all the dark glamour of the anti-hero; girls are very apt to romanticise such people," she writes.
"All of this left me in the unenviable position of pouring cold common sense on ardent readers' daydreams, as I told them, rather severely, that Draco was not concealing a heart of gold under all that sneering and prejudice and that no, he and Harry were not destined to end up best friends."