Draco in Leather Pants/Literature/Harry Potter: Difference between revisions

* Salazar Slytherin had a dream... a dream that one day, an adequately racist and motivated student would find the secret underground chamber he built to house a deadly basilisk and use it to mass-murder his Muggle-born classmates. And some fans would have you believe that's just dandy. (This one has actually been done well in some cases -- Slytherin lived at least a thousand years before the series takes place and conceivably could have been the victim of an in-universe [[Historical Villain Upgrade]].)

** It helps that the series implies that he wasn't ''always'' a "twisted old loony". In fact, according to the Sorting Hat, he and Godric Gryffindor had once been the best of friends.

*** The thing is that the books make it clear that Muggle "persecution" was never anything actual wizards couldn't deal with -- the only people who were hurt in witch hunts were other Muggles. And in the present day of the books, it's unequivocally the wizards who hold all the cards and can get away with abusing Muggles if so inclined and, within wizarding culture, the purebloods who are privileged and the Muggleborns who are discriminated against. Fanon likes to reverse this state of affairs, whether because it goes against the expected [[Cool Loser]]/[[All of the Other Reindeer]] characterization of the misunderstood hero's secret underground community, because they think that if wizards are a literal minority then they must a political minority too, or just because of this trope. Whatever the motive, it takes a lot of finagling to pull off reframing the whole history of magic in a way that doesn't blatantly contradict the books, and [[Sturgeon's Law|not a lot of people bother with that]].

** A good example of making him sympathetic without contradicting canon can be found [http://www.witchfics.org/anna/romanholiday/index.html here]. Adult wizards had all kinds of magic they could cast to survive being hunted and burned, but families were prone to losing younger members. Girls could be burned as witches at nine and boys at ten, well before they were able to defend themselves. Children of Wizarding families had some protection in their parents and older siblings, but Muggleborns were SOL and often turned over by their own families. A thousand years have twisted his reputation into that of a bigot and a psychopath instead of the intelligent and cautious man he was (and is, as a ghost).