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This really has nothing to do with “woke.”
I’m not talking about making Draco trans, or genderbent porn, or rewriting the books around modern identity politics. I’m asking a pretty simple alternate-universe question: what if Rowling had written Draco as a girl from the beginning?
That changes the subtext of Harry and Malfoy’s existing rivalry in interesting ways. That’s the thought experiment.
If this were really a stereotypical “woke rewrite,” female Malfoy probably wouldn’t be allowed to remain what makes Draco interesting: prejudiced, cowardly, cruel, privileged, compromised, and genuinely culpable.
She’d either be flattened into an obvious villain, or rewritten so heavily that her flaws were mostly explained away.
My whole thought experiment (and I can only answer for me) depends on not doing that. She has to actually be a terrible person in important ways, and then earn whatever redemption she gets.
If the goal were merely representation, you’d just make Harry gay. That isn’t what I’m talking about at all.
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“I'd take you on any time on my own. Tonight, if you want.” - actual quote from Malfoy #Malfoid
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I'm not a Harry Potter fan, nor do I consider myself an expert in the series or the world; I have my wife for that.
I was just asking her about why the house elves were slaves: "some people online said there was a war???"
I'm just a guy who cares about story structure and narrative themes.
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There's something funny happening here. I started with a simple thought experiment: change Draco's sex and see what happens.
Now people are arguing about Lucius's dynastic strategy, Slytherin redemption, the Yule Ball, Sectumsempra, Harry's psychology, OotP plot structure, and whether the romance has enough tenderness.
Which kind of proves my original point.
Change one variable and suddenly there's an enormous amount of story hiding underneath it.
Female Draco/Malfoid is so genius that it’s possibly the biggest missed opportunity in the whole series. And what makes it crazy is that you barely have to change the story.
Most of the major scenes could happen almost exactly as written. You’d just add an entirely different layer underneath them. Harry and Malfoy still hate each other. They’re still rivals. She’s still an arrogant, spoiled pure-blood supremacist from a family that represents almost everything Harry despises. But somewhere underneath all of that, there’s an attraction neither one of them particularly wants.
Go all the way back to Madam Malkin’s. Their first meeting suddenly matters more. They meet before either knows who the other is, and there could be just the slightest flicker of interest before Harry realizes what kind of person she is. Then they get to Hogwarts, identities fall into place, and whatever possibility existed immediately turns into hostility.
From there, you almost don’t need to manufacture anything. The existing story keeps putting these two people in each other’s orbit.
The Quidditch rivalry becomes charged. The constant insults become a little too personal. Malfoy seems unusually interested in whatever Potter is doing. Harry insists he can’t stand her while nevertheless noticing her every time she walks into a room.
And then you get to Goblet of Fire, where some of the fanfiction versions of this idea have stumbled onto something that actually works remarkably well: Harry somehow gets stuck taking Malfoy to the Yule Ball.
The reason can be almost comically contrived. A magical obligation, a lost bet, McGonagall forcing some inter-house arrangement, whatever. That's hardly outside the operating logic of Harry Potter. The series routinely uses magical rules, school traditions and bizarre circumstances to force characters into situations they would never voluntarily choose.
The important part isn't how you get them there. It's what happens once they're there.
Because now Harry has to spend an entire evening with Malfoy when neither of them can retreat into their normal roles.
For the first time, Harry sees her dressed for a formal occasion instead of wearing Slytherin robes and a sneer. There's that horrible teenage moment of realizing, Oh no. Malfoy is actually beautiful.
And she gets the corresponding realization about him.
They're still antagonistic. They probably spend half the night insulting each other. But eventually they actually talk. Maybe they even have fun for ten minutes before remembering they're supposed to hate each other.
Then Malfoy goes home for Christmas.
And Lucius finds out that his daughter went to the Yule Ball with Harry Potter.
That's where this version could suddenly become much more serious.
Lucius beats her for it.
You wouldn't need to make it melodramatic or turn Draca into a helpless victim. In fact, it works better if Harry doesn't even know immediately. She comes back to Hogwarts acting exactly like Malfoy always acts; arrogant, hostile, determined that nobody see anything underneath.
But Harry notices something is wrong.
Eventually he discovers what happened.
And that would fundamentally alter the way he sees her.
Because Harry understands this.
Maybe better than almost anyone at Hogwarts.
Harry knows what it's like to be a child living in a house where an adult can hurt you and everyone outside that house has no idea. He knows what it's like to dread going home. He knows what it's like to cover up what's happening and then show up at school pretending everything is normal.
And suddenly Harry has to reconcile two apparently contradictory facts:
Malfoy is awful to him.
And Malfoy's father is awful to her.
One doesn't erase the other.
That's much more interesting than simply revealing that she was secretly nice all along. She can still be prejudiced. She can still call Hermione a Mudblood. She can still bully people. Harry can still genuinely dislike enormous parts of who she is.
But now he can't flatten her into Malfoy = bad anymore.
And crucially, she knows that he knows.
Imagine how humiliating that would be for her. Of all people, Potter knows.
So maybe she becomes even nastier toward him afterward.
And Harry can't understand why.
Hermione probably can.
That gives you an emotional thread that can sit quietly underneath the next several books without taking over the story.
Then Half-Blood Prince is where the idea becomes almost absurdly perfect, because the story Rowling already wrote starts behaving like a dark romance without actually being one.
Harry becomes obsessed with Malfoy.
Where is she? What is she doing? Why is she disappearing? What is she hiding?
Everyone else thinks Harry is being ridiculous. Ron could basically spend half the movie going, “Mate, you realize you talk about Malfoy constantly?”
And Harry's answer is completely sincere:
“Because she's a Death Eater!”
Which, of course, she actually is.
That's what makes it work. You don't have to turn her into a misunderstood sweetheart. In fact, doing that would ruin it. She's genuinely involved with something horrifying. Harry's attraction doesn't make his suspicions wrong; it makes the situation worse.
And now the earlier Lucius storyline pays off.
Harry knows what her father is capable of.
So when he realizes Voldemort has given Malfoy an impossible assignment, Harry can understand something the others might miss: this isn't necessarily an honor. It may be another form of punishment directed at the Malfoy family.
Then you get the bathroom scene.
Instead of simply being a brutal confrontation between two enemies, Harry finds the girl he's spent years fighting (and whom he now suspects of being a Death Eater) crying alone in a bathroom.
For once, there's nobody else around.
No Crabbe and Goyle. No Ron and Hermione. No audience.
Just Harry and Malfoy.
And everything explodes.
Harry nearly kills her.
Now imagine him standing there afterward, looking down at her bleeding on the floor.
Because he's seen Malfoy hurt before.
Her father did it.
And now Harry has too.
That realization would absolutely devastate him.
Then the Astronomy Tower takes it further. Harry watches her stand over Dumbledore and realizes she can't do it.
Not because she's secretly been good all along.
Because she's sixteen, terrified, trapped by her family and Voldemort, and discovering that becoming the person she was raised to be is much easier in theory than in reality.
And then you arrive at Malfoy Manor.
That scene barely needs to change at all.
She's asked whether the disfigured prisoner is Harry Potter.
She knows.
Harry knows she knows.
And she says she isn't sure.
That's the moment.
No kiss. No confession. No sudden declaration that she's joining the good guys.
Years earlier, Harry learned what happened to her when Lucius discovered she'd gone to a school dance with Harry Potter.
Now she's standing in Lucius Malfoy's house, surrounded by Death Eaters, with Voldemort potentially one summons away.
All she has to do is say:
“That's Harry Potter.”
And she can't do it.
Harry realizes that Malfoy may have just saved his life.
That also gives Harry saving her during the Battle of Hogwarts much more weight. Neither of them has formally switched sides for the other. They just keep reaching moments where the other person's life is actually in their hands and they can't let them die.
The crucial thing is that I wouldn't actually have them become a couple during the main story. That would make it too neat. Let the war finish first. Let Malfoy remain complicated: proud, damaged, occasionally awful, deeply attached to her family, and forced to reckon with what that family taught her.
Then, after Voldemort is gone, you finally allow all those years of hatred, fascination, attraction, guilt and reluctant respect to become something else.
And suddenly Harry's romantic story isn't something that appears relatively late in the series. It's been quietly developing since the first book.
It even reinforces one of the central ideas of Harry Potter: the family you're born into doesn't have to determine the person you become.
Harry isn't defined by the Dursleys. Sirius isn't defined by the Blacks. And Malfoy doesn't necessarily have to become what Lucius intended his daughter to become.
That's why I think the idea is so compelling. It's not just “Draco would be hotter as a girl” or an enemies-to-lovers gimmick. Changing one variable creates a seven-book romantic arc almost entirely out of material that's already there.
And then, after everything Harry Potter has been through, you get the most ridiculous possible final punchline:
Harry Potter marries a Malfoy.
Which means Lucius Malfoy has to spend the rest of his natural life knowing that the daughter he once beat for going to a school dance with Harry Potter eventually married Harry Potter.
And Harry Potter is now the father of his grandchildren.
Christmas at Malfoy Manor would be spectacular.
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I think “Malfoid” works as the internet’s name for the gender-swapped Draco, but if this character had actually existed in the books, I don’t think Rowling would have just feminized “Draco” into “Draca.”
She probably would’ve given Lucius and Narcissa’s daughter a completely different name that still felt appropriate: old, aristocratic, a little theatrical, probably with some Latin, mythological, or literary baggage.
The best one I’ve come up with is Aurelia Malfoy.
Aurelia is an old Roman name connected to “golden,” which feels almost too perfect for the Malfoys: pale blond hair, wealth, status, lineage, and Lucius treating his only daughter like the golden child of the family.
It also sounds right next to Lucius and Narcissa without being too on-the-nose.
Aurelia Malfoy.
And I like the idea that most of the series Harry still just calls her “Malfoy.”
So if the relationship ever develops to the point where he finally calls her Aurelia, that actually means something.
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Female Draco/Malfoid is so genius that it’s possibly the biggest missed opportunity in the whole series. And what makes it crazy is that you barely have to change the story.
Most of the major scenes could happen almost exactly as written. You’d just add an entirely different layer underneath them. Harry and Malfoy still hate each other. They’re still rivals. She’s still an arrogant, spoiled pure-blood supremacist from a family that represents almost everything Harry despises. But somewhere underneath all of that, there’s an attraction neither one of them particularly wants.
Go all the way back to Madam Malkin’s. Their first meeting suddenly matters more. They meet before either knows who the other is, and there could be just the slightest flicker of interest before Harry realizes what kind of person she is. Then they get to Hogwarts, identities fall into place, and whatever possibility existed immediately turns into hostility.
From there, you almost don’t need to manufacture anything. The existing story keeps putting these two people in each other’s orbit.
The Quidditch rivalry becomes charged. The constant insults become a little too personal. Malfoy seems unusually interested in whatever Potter is doing. Harry insists he can’t stand her while nevertheless noticing her every time she walks into a room.
And then you get to Goblet of Fire, where some of the fanfiction versions of this idea have stumbled onto something that actually works remarkably well: Harry somehow gets stuck taking Malfoy to the Yule Ball.
The reason can be almost comically contrived. A magical obligation, a lost bet, McGonagall forcing some inter-house arrangement, whatever. That's hardly outside the operating logic of Harry Potter. The series routinely uses magical rules, school traditions and bizarre circumstances to force characters into situations they would never voluntarily choose.
The important part isn't how you get them there. It's what happens once they're there.
Because now Harry has to spend an entire evening with Malfoy when neither of them can retreat into their normal roles.
For the first time, Harry sees her dressed for a formal occasion instead of wearing Slytherin robes and a sneer. There's that horrible teenage moment of realizing, Oh no. Malfoy is actually beautiful.
And she gets the corresponding realization about him.
They're still antagonistic. They probably spend half the night insulting each other. But eventually they actually talk. Maybe they even have fun for ten minutes before remembering they're supposed to hate each other.
Then Malfoy goes home for Christmas.
And Lucius finds out that his daughter went to the Yule Ball with Harry Potter.
That's where this version could suddenly become much more serious.
Lucius beats her for it.
You wouldn't need to make it melodramatic or turn Draca into a helpless victim. In fact, it works better if Harry doesn't even know immediately. She comes back to Hogwarts acting exactly like Malfoy always acts; arrogant, hostile, determined that nobody see anything underneath.
But Harry notices something is wrong.
Eventually he discovers what happened.
And that would fundamentally alter the way he sees her.
Because Harry understands this.
Maybe better than almost anyone at Hogwarts.
Harry knows what it's like to be a child living in a house where an adult can hurt you and everyone outside that house has no idea. He knows what it's like to dread going home. He knows what it's like to cover up what's happening and then show up at school pretending everything is normal.
And suddenly Harry has to reconcile two apparently contradictory facts:
Malfoy is awful to him.
And Malfoy's father is awful to her.
One doesn't erase the other.
That's much more interesting than simply revealing that she was secretly nice all along. She can still be prejudiced. She can still call Hermione a Mudblood. She can still bully people. Harry can still genuinely dislike enormous parts of who she is.
But now he can't flatten her into Malfoy = bad anymore.
And crucially, she knows that he knows.
Imagine how humiliating that would be for her. Of all people, Potter knows.
So maybe she becomes even nastier toward him afterward.
And Harry can't understand why.
Hermione probably can.
That gives you an emotional thread that can sit quietly underneath the next several books without taking over the story.
Then Half-Blood Prince is where the idea becomes almost absurdly perfect, because the story Rowling already wrote starts behaving like a dark romance without actually being one.
Harry becomes obsessed with Malfoy.
Where is she? What is she doing? Why is she disappearing? What is she hiding?
Everyone else thinks Harry is being ridiculous. Ron could basically spend half the movie going, “Mate, you realize you talk about Malfoy constantly?”
And Harry's answer is completely sincere:
“Because she's a Death Eater!”
Which, of course, she actually is.
That's what makes it work. You don't have to turn her into a misunderstood sweetheart. In fact, doing that would ruin it. She's genuinely involved with something horrifying. Harry's attraction doesn't make his suspicions wrong; it makes the situation worse.
And now the earlier Lucius storyline pays off.
Harry knows what her father is capable of.
So when he realizes Voldemort has given Malfoy an impossible assignment, Harry can understand something the others might miss: this isn't necessarily an honor. It may be another form of punishment directed at the Malfoy family.
Then you get the bathroom scene.
Instead of simply being a brutal confrontation between two enemies, Harry finds the girl he's spent years fighting (and whom he now suspects of being a Death Eater) crying alone in a bathroom.
For once, there's nobody else around.
No Crabbe and Goyle. No Ron and Hermione. No audience.
Just Harry and Malfoy.
And everything explodes.
Harry nearly kills her.
Now imagine him standing there afterward, looking down at her bleeding on the floor.
Because he's seen Malfoy hurt before.
Her father did it.
And now Harry has too.
That realization would absolutely devastate him.
Then the Astronomy Tower takes it further. Harry watches her stand over Dumbledore and realizes she can't do it.
Not because she's secretly been good all along.
Because she's sixteen, terrified, trapped by her family and Voldemort, and discovering that becoming the person she was raised to be is much easier in theory than in reality.
And then you arrive at Malfoy Manor.
That scene barely needs to change at all.
She's asked whether the disfigured prisoner is Harry Potter.
She knows.
Harry knows she knows.
And she says she isn't sure.
That's the moment.
No kiss. No confession. No sudden declaration that she's joining the good guys.
Years earlier, Harry learned what happened to her when Lucius discovered she'd gone to a school dance with Harry Potter.
Now she's standing in Lucius Malfoy's house, surrounded by Death Eaters, with Voldemort potentially one summons away.
All she has to do is say:
“That's Harry Potter.”
And she can't do it.
Harry realizes that Malfoy may have just saved his life.
That also gives Harry saving her during the Battle of Hogwarts much more weight. Neither of them has formally switched sides for the other. They just keep reaching moments where the other person's life is actually in their hands and they can't let them die.
The crucial thing is that I wouldn't actually have them become a couple during the main story. That would make it too neat. Let the war finish first. Let Malfoy remain complicated: proud, damaged, occasionally awful, deeply attached to her family, and forced to reckon with what that family taught her.
Then, after Voldemort is gone, you finally allow all those years of hatred, fascination, attraction, guilt and reluctant respect to become something else.
And suddenly Harry's romantic story isn't something that appears relatively late in the series. It's been quietly developing since the first book.
It even reinforces one of the central ideas of Harry Potter: the family you're born into doesn't have to determine the person you become.
Harry isn't defined by the Dursleys. Sirius isn't defined by the Blacks. And Malfoy doesn't necessarily have to become what Lucius intended his daughter to become.
That's why I think the idea is so compelling. It's not just “Draco would be hotter as a girl” or an enemies-to-lovers gimmick. Changing one variable creates a seven-book romantic arc almost entirely out of material that's already there.
And then, after everything Harry Potter has been through, you get the most ridiculous possible final punchline:
Harry Potter marries a Malfoy.
Which means Lucius Malfoy has to spend the rest of his natural life knowing that the daughter he once beat for going to a school dance with Harry Potter eventually married Harry Potter.
And Harry Potter is now the father of his grandchildren.
Christmas at Malfoy Manor would be spectacular.
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The more I think about the female Malfoy idea, the less I think Harry and Malfoy should actually be “dating” during Hogwarts.
I think whatever is between them should mostly happen in glimpses, and mostly in private.
Publicly, they’re still Potter and Malfoy. They argue, insult each other, sit on opposite sides of the room, and Draca keeps falling back into the role she’s been raised to play.
But every once in a while Harry catches her alone and gets a completely different version of her.
She admits she’s scared. She isn’t sure what she believes anymore. Her family expects one thing, Dumbledore represents another, and Hogwarts has become more of a home to her than she wants to admit.
And eventually Harry realizes that when she says she feels torn between her family and Hogwarts, part of what she really means is that she’s torn between her family and him.
Harry being Harry, I think his first instinct would be to try to save her. He’d keep thinking that if he can just get through to her, she’ll finally choose the right side.
But she keeps disappointing him.
When things get dangerous, she chooses whatever keeps her and her family alive for another day. She retreats back to the Malfoys. She follows Voldemort when she’s terrified not to. She might tell Harry one thing in private and then act like she hates him again the next morning.
So Harry keeps feeling betrayed, while Malfoy knows that what she told him privately was real and hates herself for not being brave enough to act on it.
Eventually Harry has to learn something too: he can’t save her by wanting it badly enough.
He can give her a way out. He can care about her. He can understand why she’s afraid.
But she has to choose.
That’s why I like the version where she finally stands beside Harry against Voldemort during the last battle.
For years she can only admit what she really feels when nobody is watching.
Then, when everyone is watching, she finally makes the choice that might get her killed.
She doesn’t choose Harry instead of doing the right thing.
For the first time, they’re the same choice.
I think that’s the real quiet confession of love.
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The more I think about the female Malfoy idea, the less I think Harry and Malfoy should actually be “dating” during Hogwarts.
I think whatever is between them should mostly happen in glimpses, and mostly in private.
Publicly, they’re still Potter and Malfoy. They argue, insult each other, sit on opposite sides of the room, and Draca keeps falling back into the role she’s been raised to play.
But every once in a while Harry catches her alone and gets a completely different version of her.
She admits she’s scared. She isn’t sure what she believes anymore. Her family expects one thing, Dumbledore represents another, and Hogwarts has become more of a home to her than she wants to admit.
And eventually Harry realizes that when she says she feels torn between her family and Hogwarts, part of what she really means is that she’s torn between her family and him.
Harry being Harry, I think his first instinct would be to try to save her. He’d keep thinking that if he can just get through to her, she’ll finally choose the right side.
But she keeps disappointing him.
When things get dangerous, she chooses whatever keeps her and her family alive for another day. She retreats back to the Malfoys. She follows Voldemort when she’s terrified not to. She might tell Harry one thing in private and then act like she hates him again the next morning.
So Harry keeps feeling betrayed, while Malfoy knows that what she told him privately was real and hates herself for not being brave enough to act on it.
Eventually Harry has to learn something too: he can’t save her by wanting it badly enough.
He can give her a way out. He can care about her. He can understand why she’s afraid.
But she has to choose.
That’s why I like the version where she finally stands beside Harry against Voldemort during the last battle.
For years she can only admit what she really feels when nobody is watching.
Then, when everyone is watching, she finally makes the choice that might get her killed.
She doesn’t choose Harry instead of doing the right thing.
For the first time, they’re the same choice.
I think that’s the real quiet confession of love.
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Exactly!
Absolute utter nonsense, and were it so... it would deflate the popularity and attraction instantly.
Malfoy is a whole character, with deep inner impulses, a world she exists in and forces working on and against her the entire time. The idea that her position in the story as a potential love interest "WUBBIFIES" her is predicated on an "EITHER-OR" mindset that classifies Chivalry in conflict with Feminist examinations of personal action and autonomy.
Take nothing else but make Draco female and you get one of the more compelling examinations of a young woman of privilege and status in conflict with a man raised in essential poverty that somehow receives accolades due to the legacy of his parents.
If you were to do nothing else, you would absolutely keep Draco's persona as a female and you'd have a more interesting examination overall of the forces shaping her throughout her life.
Adding the romance itself would also not take much alteration, and would not "Diminish" the character.
Claiming so is to misunderstand what "Wubbifying" even is. The rich character narrative, conflicted personality, bullying and roughness are the OPPOSITE of wubbifying the character.
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The more I think about the female Malfoy idea, the less I think Harry and Malfoy should actually be “dating” during Hogwarts.
I think whatever is between them should mostly happen in glimpses, and mostly in private.
Publicly, they’re still Potter and Malfoy. They argue, insult each other, sit on opposite sides of the room, and Draca keeps falling back into the role she’s been raised to play.
But every once in a while Harry catches her alone and gets a completely different version of her.
She admits she’s scared. She isn’t sure what she believes anymore. Her family expects one thing, Dumbledore represents another, and Hogwarts has become more of a home to her than she wants to admit.
And eventually Harry realizes that when she says she feels torn between her family and Hogwarts, part of what she really means is that she’s torn between her family and him.
Harry being Harry, I think his first instinct would be to try to save her. He’d keep thinking that if he can just get through to her, she’ll finally choose the right side.
But she keeps disappointing him.
When things get dangerous, she chooses whatever keeps her and her family alive for another day. She retreats back to the Malfoys. She follows Voldemort when she’s terrified not to. She might tell Harry one thing in private and then act like she hates him again the next morning.
So Harry keeps feeling betrayed, while Malfoy knows that what she told him privately was real and hates herself for not being brave enough to act on it.
Eventually Harry has to learn something too: he can’t save her by wanting it badly enough.
He can give her a way out. He can care about her. He can understand why she’s afraid.
But she has to choose.
That’s why I like the version where she finally stands beside Harry against Voldemort during the last battle.
For years she can only admit what she really feels when nobody is watching.
Then, when everyone is watching, she finally makes the choice that might get her killed.
She doesn’t choose Harry instead of doing the right thing.
For the first time, they’re the same choice.
I think that’s the real quiet confession of love.
like the whole “Malfoid turns sides at the last second and her and Harry do a team blast somehow to beat Voldy” is such a goddamn upgrade in every single way, James and Lily’s live saved Harry, and Harry’s love should have killed Voldemort. We missed the back half of the parallel
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I can absolutely see the tragic version working, but I think I prefer the version where she survives and eventually marries Harry.
Especially if Malfoy actually joins Harry against Voldemort at the end. Not because “she chose her boyfriend,” but because she finally publicly rejects the worldview she was raised in.
Then Voldemort doesn’t just lose to Harry. He loses one of the children his ideology was supposed to own.
And years later, Harry and Malfoy marrying and having children who are both Potter and Malfoy becomes the final insult to everything Voldemort believed.
The tragic version says love couldn’t survive the war.
I think the more powerful version is that love survives it, and then outlives the hatred entirely.
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I think it’s because the relationship is already so intense. Gender-swap Malfoy and suddenly years of rivalry, fixation, jealousy, danger and mutual life-saving acquire a completely different subtext.
It doesn’t have to become romantic. But it becomes almost impossible not to consider it.
All of the discussion that I've seen regarding a female Malfoy seems to assume that means that Malfoy and Potter become romantically linked. Interesting.
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Tyler Small retweeted
Now that I've dabbled in this trend a bit, and played around with what's possible, I'm going to put on my *other* Serious Professional Author Hat, and explain why you like her so much.
Draecena, or Draconia, or Drakenia, Malfoy — the "Mal-foid" — is NOT a gender-swapped version of Draco Malfoy. That's why her eyes are green and not grey.
She's a completely different character.
She fits into the socket that Draco fills in the story, but for an author, characters are defined by their wants. Because their wants determine their choices, and their actions, and these determine the ultimate outcome of the story.
Draecina is a different person from Draco, because she wants different things.
Draco, as written, is a simple creature, created for a simple utilitarian role in the story. He wants power and attention. He wants to advance his family's political agenda. He wants to defeat Potter. Rowling may have put a little spin on the ball in the later books, but he never strays too far from this.
Draecina is completely different. She not only wants more things, she wants conflicting things, and she is torn between them.
She is split between duty, love, and pride.
She wants to advance her family's cause and political agenda, to help them, to earn their love and make them proud. And for this, like Draco, she must defeat Harry Potter and everything he represents.
But she is also a teenage girl. And she wants to kiss the most popular boy in the school. The hero, the sports star, the celebrity.
No, she takes that back, she doesn't just want to kiss him. She wants him to kiss her. And more fundamentally, she wants him to yearn for her, as she yearns for him. Look at me, Harry Potter, her soul cries. See me. Do you think I'm beautiful? Please think I'm beautiful. Please want me.
But she cannot say a word of this. Because she also has pride. She cannot, she will not face the humiliation of anyone else knowing how she worships her mortal enemy. No one must ever see the stolen scarf she presses to her face, in the darkness of her bedroom.
But if she is to say nothing, how will he ever know? How will he ever look at her?
This is the rack she is stretched upon, torturing herself inside her head late at night, tossing and turning when she should sleep.
Conflicting wants make the best, deepest, most living characters, and drive the best stories.
Through the alternate set of books (that exist now only as a shared idea in scattered heads) these drive her actions towards Potter himself... not simply opposition and aggression, but a dance of approach and avoidance, of fights and arguments and timid, plausibly deniable bids for something more.
Until, as in the originals, the two are driven to crisis point, a violent confrontation, each desperate not to hurt the other, but also driven to violence by the fear that this other holds no goal but lethal hate.
And Harry, seeking only to defend himself, strikes her down with a magic that does not merely disable but *cuts* with lethal force, tearing into her body, almost killing her, and leaving her with a terrible scar across the smooth, soft, perfect white skin that his eyes used to devour the merest glimpse of.
This is the worst point, the pit, the long dark night of the soul that every author must eventually walk a character into.
Draecina curses herself for a fool. None of it meant anything. He never cared for her. He hates her with every fiber of his being, and why would he feel otherwise? But try as she might, she cannot actually blame him. He overheard her plotting his death. They fought. Is it any wonder that he struck at her with whatever weapon he had to hand? She cannot stop loving him, even though she knows now that it is utterly hopeless.
In her hospital bed, left unable by her injuries even to toss and turn, she stares at the ceiling and weeps in despair.
Harry feels... sick. He fought for the right cause, he knows that. But this doesn't feel like goodness, and it doesn't feel like winning. It feels wrong, like he has destroyed something beautiful. He has left her with terrible scars, and terrible memories, that she will carry for the rest of her life.
More than anything he wants to go to her, to kneel beside her hospital bed and beg her forgiveness. But that is foolish. She hates him. He is the last person she would ever want to see, and she would never, ever forgive him. It's hopeless.
This is the greatest task of the author, to create this terrible moment, and then, somehow, perform some magic to walk these characters to the ending the story demands, where the day, the hero, and the world are all saved by the very thing that started the story to begin with... the love of a woman who would give her life to save his.
Except this time, that love is not an inheritance, for Harry is no longer a child. He is a man now, facing a dark and terrible enemy, and that love is not simply given, nor can it even be earned.
It must be inspired.
And the two lovers must defeat their enemy together... not through a cheap magic trick, nor through a vague and sappy appeal to ill-explained abstraction like "the power of love", but for the very real and concrete reason that heroes have friends and allies, families and lovers, while tyrants have only reluctant and fearful slaves.
And from that first inflection point, the pit of despair, it is difficult to see the second, the moment of triumph.
In all the best stories, the ones that really matter, there is a moment so dark that sometimes we don't want to go on, because how could the ending ever be happy?
But we must go on, because that is the third moment the story demands, the moment we must reach. And it is not Harry, but Draecina, who must give it to us, that happy ending.
Look at me, Harry Potter, she must say. Look at my scars. I will not hide them from you, not anymore, though they make you flinch with guilt and turn away. Look at me. I forgive you, my love, not merely because I love you, but I because I understand in my very soul the impossible trap you were caught in, the conflicting forces that tore you apart inside.
But you must look at me, all of me, and see me as I am, flawed and scarred and imperfect, for I must know if I am still beautiful in your eyes, if you can accept my love and forgiveness as I have accepted yours.
We must bury the anger and bitterness that passed between, and pass on only good to the next generation. Because I have just learned that the next generation is coming very soon now, and I hope we are ready.
It takes a wise character to say this, so she must grow throughout the story from a scared and lonely little girl to a woman who can face the future, even though she is afraid.
This is why you love this character. Because she makes a beloved story into something that is even more about the things that matter, the universal experience of what it feels like to be a human.
And it's why I'm not ashamed, nor embarrassed, to "fix" a billion-dollar success story. Because humans are a pack animal. We hunt together, and build on each other's work. Everything we have achieved as a species, from great stories to great civilizations to rockets to the stars, was built on foundations laid down by others, and will be the foundation for others to build on.
Frodo carries the ring across Middle-Earth, through Mordor, and halfway up the mountain.
And then it's your turn to carry him the rest of the way.
"And you never wondered why Fred made that bet with you in the first place, did you, Potter?"
She rolled her eyes at him, just a bit. They were smug and green and somehow catlike.
"He had to know you'd be brave enough to do it. Have you ever known Fred to make a bad bet? To voluntarily lose money?"
She had a point there.
She also had her hands on the wall on both sides of his head, like she wanted to pin him there, probably so she could get out all the choice insults she saved over summer break.
Except she probably hadn't thought through the part about teenagers and growth spurts, because, well, he towered over her now, and she was forced to reach almost directly upward.
"Unleeeesssss, of course, someone bet him TWO galleons that he couldn't trick the famous Harry Potter into setting himself up for a humiliating rejection."
"Uhhh... wait. You're trying to tell me you planned that whole, uh, disaster?"
"Did I say anything of the sort? I don't think I did. I just said 'someone'.
"The point is, I'm taking pity on you, Potter. Heaven knows you need it. These people aren't your friends, not really. They're low-class, and they'll sell you out the moment they can earn a galleon doing it. You should try to associate with a better class of people."
Harry took hold of one slender, elegant white wrist, and gently but firmly pried her hand off the wall, stepping to one side.
Her cheeks flushed, probably from anger that he had dared to touch her aristocratic skin, but he wasn't going to let her push him around. Not anymore.
He quickly dropped his hand before she could express her disgust by wrenching hers away.
"Oh, so if 'someone' had a plan to humiliate me, why'd you say 'yes', then, Malfoid? Did you have a different idea?"
He should just walk away, but he had to admit he was... curious. Ever since they'd been forced to fight the Bandersnatch together, and especially since that incident in the Gryffindor dormitory with the Truthstone, she'd been acting... strangely.
"Well, I wouldn't have wanted your humiliation to end too quickly, would I? It would have just been one single moment, with no one there to witness it, and you wouldn't have learned a thing," she said with a haughty sniff.
"I may not think much of you, or your entire ridiculous House, but Hoggwarts is a quality school, and no one else seems to be willing to step up and teach you not to embarrass us all."
She hadn't tried to trap him against the wall again, but she was still standing far too close. Ever since they'd returned from summer break, she always seemed to be hovering somewhere near him, always ready with a sneering word.
"Well, Miss Malfoy, you needn't worry about suffering my obnoxious presence again this year, I won't ask you again."
"Oh! Well, you.... you... Ahh... good! Good! It's not like I wanted to! And you wouldn't have the guts to ask me again, anyway! I bet you wouldn't!"
"Oh! Well if you're so dead certain, why don't you just go make another bet with Fred and get your money back?"
She recoiled as if he had slapped her.
"Yeah, well, maybe I will!"
"Good! Go then!"
But she was already storming off down the corridor, looking a lot less smug than she had a few minutes ago.
That felt... satisfying. But somehow, also not. Perhaps he wasn't as used to her verbal barbs and constant hostility, from being on vacation these three months.
He didn't know what else to think. For some reason, his fingers still tingled where he'd held her wrist.
Hmmmm... come to think of it, he should try to find out if she actually made that bet again. Because if she did, he could actually ask her again, and make her lose.
Which would be no more than she deserved. Even if she was rich enough for it not to matter, it was some small measure of revenge for everything she'd put him through.
Yeah, that was it. Revenge, he thought, rubbing at his hand a bit.
Besides, it wasn't like she would say yes or anything.
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“Ginny is home” is probably the best argument for Harry/Ginny, but Harry doesn't need to marry Ginny to become part of the Weasley family. They're already his family.
Malfoy would accomplish something different. She isn't home; she's reconciliation.
That's partly why female Malfoy fascinates me. The Weasleys are the family Harry finds. Malfoy and the family they eventually build would be the family Harry chooses and creates.
There may actually be more raw material already on the page for developing Harry/Malfoy than there was for Harry/Ginny.
Not more *romantic* material; important distinction.
Malfoid is lust
Ginny is marrying into your best friends family, the one who took you in and fought to the death for you, after you lost your own.
Ginny is home
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Female Draco/Malfoid is so genius that it’s possibly the biggest missed opportunity in the whole series. And what makes it crazy is that you barely have to change the story.
Most of the major scenes could happen almost exactly as written. You’d just add an entirely different layer underneath them. Harry and Malfoy still hate each other. They’re still rivals. She’s still an arrogant, spoiled pure-blood supremacist from a family that represents almost everything Harry despises. But somewhere underneath all of that, there’s an attraction neither one of them particularly wants.
Go all the way back to Madam Malkin’s. Their first meeting suddenly matters more. They meet before either knows who the other is, and there could be just the slightest flicker of interest before Harry realizes what kind of person she is. Then they get to Hogwarts, identities fall into place, and whatever possibility existed immediately turns into hostility.
From there, you almost don’t need to manufacture anything. The existing story keeps putting these two people in each other’s orbit.
The Quidditch rivalry becomes charged. The constant insults become a little too personal. Malfoy seems unusually interested in whatever Potter is doing. Harry insists he can’t stand her while nevertheless noticing her every time she walks into a room.
And then you get to Goblet of Fire, where some of the fanfiction versions of this idea have stumbled onto something that actually works remarkably well: Harry somehow gets stuck taking Malfoy to the Yule Ball.
The reason can be almost comically contrived. A magical obligation, a lost bet, McGonagall forcing some inter-house arrangement, whatever. That's hardly outside the operating logic of Harry Potter. The series routinely uses magical rules, school traditions and bizarre circumstances to force characters into situations they would never voluntarily choose.
The important part isn't how you get them there. It's what happens once they're there.
Because now Harry has to spend an entire evening with Malfoy when neither of them can retreat into their normal roles.
For the first time, Harry sees her dressed for a formal occasion instead of wearing Slytherin robes and a sneer. There's that horrible teenage moment of realizing, Oh no. Malfoy is actually beautiful.
And she gets the corresponding realization about him.
They're still antagonistic. They probably spend half the night insulting each other. But eventually they actually talk. Maybe they even have fun for ten minutes before remembering they're supposed to hate each other.
Then Malfoy goes home for Christmas.
And Lucius finds out that his daughter went to the Yule Ball with Harry Potter.
That's where this version could suddenly become much more serious.
Lucius beats her for it.
You wouldn't need to make it melodramatic or turn Draca into a helpless victim. In fact, it works better if Harry doesn't even know immediately. She comes back to Hogwarts acting exactly like Malfoy always acts; arrogant, hostile, determined that nobody see anything underneath.
But Harry notices something is wrong.
Eventually he discovers what happened.
And that would fundamentally alter the way he sees her.
Because Harry understands this.
Maybe better than almost anyone at Hogwarts.
Harry knows what it's like to be a child living in a house where an adult can hurt you and everyone outside that house has no idea. He knows what it's like to dread going home. He knows what it's like to cover up what's happening and then show up at school pretending everything is normal.
And suddenly Harry has to reconcile two apparently contradictory facts:
Malfoy is awful to him.
And Malfoy's father is awful to her.
One doesn't erase the other.
That's much more interesting than simply revealing that she was secretly nice all along. She can still be prejudiced. She can still call Hermione a Mudblood. She can still bully people. Harry can still genuinely dislike enormous parts of who she is.
But now he can't flatten her into Malfoy = bad anymore.
And crucially, she knows that he knows.
Imagine how humiliating that would be for her. Of all people, Potter knows.
So maybe she becomes even nastier toward him afterward.
And Harry can't understand why.
Hermione probably can.
That gives you an emotional thread that can sit quietly underneath the next several books without taking over the story.
Then Half-Blood Prince is where the idea becomes almost absurdly perfect, because the story Rowling already wrote starts behaving like a dark romance without actually being one.
Harry becomes obsessed with Malfoy.
Where is she? What is she doing? Why is she disappearing? What is she hiding?
Everyone else thinks Harry is being ridiculous. Ron could basically spend half the movie going, “Mate, you realize you talk about Malfoy constantly?”
And Harry's answer is completely sincere:
“Because she's a Death Eater!”
Which, of course, she actually is.
That's what makes it work. You don't have to turn her into a misunderstood sweetheart. In fact, doing that would ruin it. She's genuinely involved with something horrifying. Harry's attraction doesn't make his suspicions wrong; it makes the situation worse.
And now the earlier Lucius storyline pays off.
Harry knows what her father is capable of.
So when he realizes Voldemort has given Malfoy an impossible assignment, Harry can understand something the others might miss: this isn't necessarily an honor. It may be another form of punishment directed at the Malfoy family.
Then you get the bathroom scene.
Instead of simply being a brutal confrontation between two enemies, Harry finds the girl he's spent years fighting (and whom he now suspects of being a Death Eater) crying alone in a bathroom.
For once, there's nobody else around.
No Crabbe and Goyle. No Ron and Hermione. No audience.
Just Harry and Malfoy.
And everything explodes.
Harry nearly kills her.
Now imagine him standing there afterward, looking down at her bleeding on the floor.
Because he's seen Malfoy hurt before.
Her father did it.
And now Harry has too.
That realization would absolutely devastate him.
Then the Astronomy Tower takes it further. Harry watches her stand over Dumbledore and realizes she can't do it.
Not because she's secretly been good all along.
Because she's sixteen, terrified, trapped by her family and Voldemort, and discovering that becoming the person she was raised to be is much easier in theory than in reality.
And then you arrive at Malfoy Manor.
That scene barely needs to change at all.
She's asked whether the disfigured prisoner is Harry Potter.
She knows.
Harry knows she knows.
And she says she isn't sure.
That's the moment.
No kiss. No confession. No sudden declaration that she's joining the good guys.
Years earlier, Harry learned what happened to her when Lucius discovered she'd gone to a school dance with Harry Potter.
Now she's standing in Lucius Malfoy's house, surrounded by Death Eaters, with Voldemort potentially one summons away.
All she has to do is say:
“That's Harry Potter.”
And she can't do it.
Harry realizes that Malfoy may have just saved his life.
That also gives Harry saving her during the Battle of Hogwarts much more weight. Neither of them has formally switched sides for the other. They just keep reaching moments where the other person's life is actually in their hands and they can't let them die.
The crucial thing is that I wouldn't actually have them become a couple during the main story. That would make it too neat. Let the war finish first. Let Malfoy remain complicated: proud, damaged, occasionally awful, deeply attached to her family, and forced to reckon with what that family taught her.
Then, after Voldemort is gone, you finally allow all those years of hatred, fascination, attraction, guilt and reluctant respect to become something else.
And suddenly Harry's romantic story isn't something that appears relatively late in the series. It's been quietly developing since the first book.
It even reinforces one of the central ideas of Harry Potter: the family you're born into doesn't have to determine the person you become.
Harry isn't defined by the Dursleys. Sirius isn't defined by the Blacks. And Malfoy doesn't necessarily have to become what Lucius intended his daughter to become.
That's why I think the idea is so compelling. It's not just “Draco would be hotter as a girl” or an enemies-to-lovers gimmick. Changing one variable creates a seven-book romantic arc almost entirely out of material that's already there.
And then, after everything Harry Potter has been through, you get the most ridiculous possible final punchline:
Harry Potter marries a Malfoy.
Which means Lucius Malfoy has to spend the rest of his natural life knowing that the daughter he once beat for going to a school dance with Harry Potter eventually married Harry Potter.
And Harry Potter is now the father of his grandchildren.
Christmas at Malfoy Manor would be spectacular.
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