I was trying to render out the emotional history between the two characters, because what I did so far felt unconvincing and incomplete, so here goes.

When they first met, Lyra had her short list of boys from acceptable lineages in her head, and was very polite and considerate with them. However, somewhere around her first Quidditch match with Harry, or when she dropped her books and he quietly picked them up from the ground, handed them to her, looked her in the eyes and nodded, she locked in her choice onto him, and since then, her list contained only one name. The thing with her is that she’s incredibly loyal, and she never wavers; in that respect she’s the mirror image of Harry. The difference is, he never knew, because she wasn’t allowed to tell him. The political reasons prohibited it, and it would be treasonous. In her mind, she’ll wait until he changes sides, or the war is over, but her choice was locked in by the time she was eleven years old; in her mind, she was already married to him – before puberty, before the teenage hormones, before the first kiss. It wasn’t a teenage infatuation; it was a life-long choice. It was never a crush. It was never skin deep. There would never, ever be anyone else for her.

But she didn’t tell him. She argued with him, made his life difficult, competed with him, belittled his friends, but she was always polite and dignified about it… until he started dating other girls. This hit her so hard, that she started outright avoiding him. She wasn’t just jealous; she felt betrayed and heartbroken. Hermione figured it out immediately, and when Harry asked why is Lyra avoiding him and changing direction whenever she sees him, Hermione started paying attention and told him that the girl is secretly in love with him, and it’s actually deep stuff; she recognized the look Lyra had when Harry kissed Cho and later Ginny, and it was heartbreak, not hatred or revulsion as Harry thought. Unfortunately, it coincided with Voldemort’s return, and Harry thought that Lyra decided to stonewall him when her Dark Lord returned, since she’s committed to becoming a Death Eater and the only thing he can expect from her now is a violent ambush in some dark corner of the castle. He acted on this belief, and when Lyra understood how he interpreted it, she went furious and it added another layer of heartbreak. She thought about retaliating by dating someone else, but she felt immediate revulsion at the idea. She was absolutely loyal and she made her choice. It was always meant to be forever, and there can never be anyone else. She was additionally frustrated because she knew it was her fault. She never told him. He didn’t figure it out. She never told him that she chose him, but that it needs to wait until after the war. For all he knows, she hates him. So, in her frustration, she lashed out, she was hissy and nasty and he of course interpreted it all as confirmation of his conjecture.

The first thing that ever broke his self-righteousness was when he witnessed Snape’s worst memory: when he understood that his idealised father was a school bully, of exactly the kind that he hates the most. His black-and-white world in which everybody is perfectly sorted out in separate camps broke.

And then there was the incident in the bathroom. When he ambushed her there, she was reduced to crying her heart out to Moaning Myrtle, and then she saw him, with his self-righteous look, now dating Ginny Weasley, looking at her like she’s a villain, and she poured all her frustration and heartbreak in “Crucio!”; but he was always faster and he intercepted her spell with “Sectumsempra!” which hit her like a wall of knives, instantly ending all her frustrated emotions.

There’s something about the physical, sensual reality that tends to snap people out of the nonsense that they have in their heads. When Harry saw that beautiful girl turning pale and sweaty from shock, drowning in her own blood on the floor, all his self-righteous theories immediately left him. She no longer felt like a conspiring Death Eater he was cornering. She felt like a dying victim, completely vulnerable, and his instinct broke out when his mind failed to work; he realised that he loves her, and would give anything to heal her and have her back.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to talk to her later; he had to go hunt Horcruxes with Dumbledore, and had to watch Dumbledore drink that terrible potion, and all for nothing since the real Horcrux had already been taken by R.A.B., and a dummy was left in its place. They barely arrived at the bell tower, when Lyra ambushed them, and Harry had to watch, body-locked and hidden in the invisibility cloak, as Lyra disarmed Dumbledore to give herself the time to speak, and then begged Dumbledore to save the lives of her family, explaining what she was forced to do, apologising for it, but not avoiding guilt. She laid herself bare in front of the Headmaster and begged for her life and the lives of her family. But then the Carrows came, and it was all over; she could no longer speak her mind openly. As terrible and traumatic the death of Dumbledore was to Harry, he unfortunately doesn’t have a one-track mind. He can experience multiple tragedies at once. So, after he went after Snape, and experienced a humiliating defeat adding to his loss, he also started going back in his memories, reliving everything about Lyra. The thing with Harry Potter is this: he has terrible self-control, but he has the memory of an elephant. He remembers everything in clear detail. So, he revised all the things he remembered of her, now understanding that she was motivated by loyalty and love, not hatred and malice. Then he remembered Hermione’s explanation of her actions, and he stood in shock. He then went even further into the past, and realised that she always loved him, but she was inhibited by her love and loyalty to her family. He understood that she was hurt when he started dating other girls, but her hands were tied. She couldn’t say anything, and could only suffer in silence, in addition to other kinds of suffering she had to endure, with her parents being enslaved, and werewolves and thugs prancing in her ancestral home, where she understood that Voldemort will eventually gift her as a prize to one of the disgusting people there. Harry was completely horrified. He didn’t know. She thought herself his forever since she was 11, and he knew nothing about it. He thought her an icy Princess with a stone heart, and in reality, her suffering mirrored his own the entire time.

So, after Dumbledore’s funeral, he approached her and asked for a word in private. She nodded and went with him, and he whispered in her ear that he loves her, and is hers forever if she will have him, but there’s a war looming, it’s going to be dangerous, he wants her to be safe, so nobody must know. She looked at him with wide eyes, and nodded, not trusting her voice.

When he was brought to Malfoy Manor as a prisoner along his two friends, and she refused to identify him, she gave him the look – it said “please win”. It also said “yes”. No hedging, no restraint, no holding back, no reservations – “yes, I’m yours, go win”.

I won’t go into the part when she thought he was dead. She’s a fictional character, and yet the emotions involved are so terrible that I’m compelled to protect them, because people witnessing them would be compelled to turn aside and protect her privacy, because of how bad that was. There were other terrible things in the series – death of Sirius Black. Death of Fred Weasley, of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, Snape crying while holding Lily’s dead body. This was worse.

So, I basically wrote it as a broken mirror of the tragedy of Lily and Severus, where Lyra made a similar error; and she had to watch her love dead, knowing it’s the end of her life, because it was always forever. I didn’t write it as a romance, I wrote it as an almost-tragedy, because that’s the only way it works.

In the end, Harry makes it up to her for not figuring her out in time; he makes their surname Malfoy-Potter, in order to protect her heritage and family name, because she always felt guilty for being a girl and thus causing the family name to be extinct. So, he decided to preserve it, bring it out of the mud where her father buried it with his foolishness, and restored her family honour.

Honestly, I think it’s a better story than the original. 🙂

Biljana argued that my reading of the possible outcomes with Malfoy as a girl is not the only possibility. For instance, they could click together earlier and she could run away from her parents and hide at the Weasleys.

That’s true, but I didn’t choose this option because it would change the story so much, it would no longer be the same universe. Also, there are problems.

When does she actually decide to run away? When they’re 12? 14? Lucius would raise hell at the Ministry. He would claim she’s kidnapped. She would have to testify at the Ministry or in fact at the court, against her parents, denouncing them as actual Death Eaters. She would have to commit actual treason against her parents, be rejected by her entire former friend group in Slytherin, be exposed to extreme bullying at school, be ostracised, lose all the privileges she’s accustomed to, and find herself pressured and persecuted like Harry. Also, the Ministry wasn’t actually inclined to accept Voldemort’s return as a fact. Her story would be met with suspicion. Other causes would be sought. Weasleys would be in trouble because of her. Also, she spent years parroting her parents’ opinion of them and insulting them. They weren’t exactly on good terms. It would be a total shit show. I mean, it’s possible, but unlikely and extremely out of character. I think she would be too young and immature to actually diverge from her parents’ propaganda and influence before the Half Blood Prince times, which is exactly when I find it possible for Harry to change his opinion of her and find her interesting – no longer a stereotypical enemy, but an actual person in serious trouble. He even has understanding for Draco at that point, and gets it. He holds Draco in contempt, but he understands his predicament. So, if we follow the logic of things, this is the first point in the timeline where anything romantic could develop between the two, but they actually don’t have the time to work it out. They are almost always separated. They cross paths in the bathroom and the bell tower. The story in the bell tower is similar enough, yet different. The trembling, frightened Lyra actually begs Dumbledore for help, she asks him to save her parents because they are held hostage. She admits everything and doesn’t even pretend to be there to kill him, but then the Carrows and other scum arrive and interrupt them, as in the books. Then Snape arrives, kills Dumbledore, and all hell breaks loose. Harry is already smart enough to understand that Draco is essentially acting at gunpoint there, but with Lyra, he would feel very protective of her and I think this is the point where he starts working with the idea that they might be a thing, but he doesn’t know her opinion because they never get to talk. Also, he’s so traumatised by the events that anything romantic is the last thing on his mind. So, this is where I feel that the divergence from the Draco timeline is realistic. Before… I can imagine all sorts of things, but they are basically enemies and Harry would perceive her as scary and dangerous. He would not be mature enough for subtlety. However, if she were as nasty with him as Draco in the past, nothing would come out of it. There have to be double meanings and hints that left him awake at night trying to figure her out, things that make sense only in hindsight, so that when he revises his opinion of her, he can look at the past and say “oh wait…”.

It’s actually not easy to work out the details, because if I make them too friendly, the story doesn’t work, and if I make them too hostile, it also doesn’t work. I have to make her just hostile enough, and just friendly enough. She would help him with Potions homework, and he’d be surprised at the matter-of-factness and lack of hostility and condescension in the act. He would pick up her books when she dropped them, return them and she would say “thanks”. There would be a level of civility between them, a level of acknowledgment and respect. However, they are both too young, too indoctrinated into black and white thinking and cultist propaganda, to be able to actually figure out anything subtle. Sirius has to remind Harry that the world isn’t cleanly separated into good people and Death Eaters. He needs to understand that his father used to be a school bully. He needs to understand that Snape was his mother’s childhood friend. Before that, he’s simply too immature to understand anything. Also, Lyra needs to experience tragedy that resulted from her parents’ choice for Voldemort. They need to be humiliated and suffer in their own home, surrounded by werewolves and thugs. They need to be degraded, humbled, and afraid for their lives. Only then can they understand that they were wrong, that their side was wrong all the time, and then she starts understanding that Harry was right, that he’s actually fighting for her freedom, and stop hedging – this is the point where she’s all in. I can’t see it before. The characters aren’t at the right mental place, they are too young, the events have not progressed sufficiently. Also, I don’t see Lyra as girlfriend material for Harry. I don’t see them dating. It either doesn’t work at all, or it’s instantly much deeper. They switch to husband and wife on a click. When they’re too young, he’s too immature to understand that she left the door open for him, he doesn’t understand the subtle messages beneath her actions. He understands the Death Eater propaganda she spews, he understands the racial insults against his friends, he understands that her parents serve Voldemort and she seems thrilled to join them in that respect as soon as she’s of age. She’s scary. However, she’s also a beautiful, vital, polite and respectful young lady who occasionally just happened to do something nice for him without making it weird, and he can’t figure her out. The idea that they could date at that time is just so out of character and so out of storyline that I just can’t make it work. Later, in hindsight, he gets it. She felt respectful because she actually was. However, she was also an immature brat, she also believed in an evil ideology, and her parents were actually Death Eaters. None of that can be just washed away. They all had to change.

The last article about the female Malfoy made me think. I assumed the girl would be brought up with better manners than Draco, because propriety, manners, social standings and histories of important families and their members would be something to always keep in mind. After all, Narcissa was a Black, and they had that family tree posted prominently on the wall. Who is who is the cornerstone of their world. You want to maintain connections, be good with the right people, and even if important families are on the other side in a wizard war, you don’t want to burn the bridges permanently. You want to leave doors open. You don’t want to create mortal enemies with careless words, which is easy to do if you’re ignorant and arrogant.

So then I thought, wouldn’t Draco need to know most of that, as well? And wouldn’t that child have a governess, or a tutor, who would make sure that they know all that when you wake them up at 3AM in the morning, the way Black children were constantly taught that?

Apparently not, because Draco went around making enemies and antagonising people, while honing alliances with the children of Death Eaters. Almost everything he did was a social faux pas of some kind, or he made a fool of himself by making wrong assumptions due to ignorance. For instance, he assumed that Potter is poor because he’s hanging out with the Weasleys. First of all, it’s not going to work as an insult if it’s not even remotely true; Potter is one of the wealthiest people in the world, he could buy a small country if he felt like it. Second, you don’t antagonise the last heir of the only family in the world that can actually threaten yours in stature. Third, if you don’t have anything constructive to say, shut the fuck up. It’s amazing that Malfoy just went around with his two henchmen who were dumber than rocks, and antagonised people. That’s not what noble or wealthy people are supposed to be doing at school. You’re supposed to build connections, alliances, your future network. If you can’t make someone a friend, at least don’t make them an enemy. Stay on neutral terms. Leave the doors open. Whatever you currently think of someone, you’re in the same school. You’re in approximately similar social class. You’re in the same social circle. Be nice to people. If you can’t be nice, be neutral or distant.

Basically, Draco Malfoy is such an unclouth brat, that he really goes out of his way to make enemies of people, and without any need for it whatsoever. It’s amazing. For instance, yeah, mock Potter by saying he’s a little baby crying for his mommy. That’s going to help you with someone whose parents were murdered by your parents’ demonic cult leader, so he had to grow up without them since he was a year old. That sounds like a crash course in things to avoid because you had a tutor as a child, someone who told you what things you should never do unless you want to make enemies for life who will eventually find a way to end you.

Then I cross-referenced the Harry Potter universe with the Salvos universe by Melas Delta, and sure, the nobility there have personal tutors or butlers who take care of their manners, presentation, etiquette and keep them informed about the people they are encountering. Saffron, for instance, is a Lady of the Merryster family, a wealthy noble; she has Matthew, her butler, around her at almost all times, and he watches that she doesn’t do something stupid. Sure, she’s arrogant and I suppose she’s a rich brat like Draco Malfoy, and she addresses servants and subordinates in a pretty arrogant manner, and she’s also whiny, demanding and conceited, at least in the beginning. However, when she meets an important person she doesn’t know, her first assumption is that this might be someone much more important later on, and she’s polite, graceful, and creates a place for a social connection for later on, if that materialises. For instance, when she meets Salvos, Salvos is of very local notoriety, but impressive, and seems to climb the social ladder very aggressively. Saffron is very kind with her, doesn’t act pompous or distant, and creates a friendship that proves to be the most important one she ever made, because when they met again, Salvos was a lvl. 105 Liberator of the Plaguelands, famous and wealthy, and they ended up being roommates in the same school, and soon thereafter Salvos saved her family from Belzu when they would have otherwise all died. So, by acting with poise and tact and befriending a currently marginally important person she made the best move in her entire life. She could as well have told Salvos that she’s not anywhere near important enough for her to talk to, and that would be that.

Later, Saffron teaches Salvos exactly the things somebody should have taught Draco Malfoy – don’t offend people with your careless actions. Treat their emotions with tact. Don’t make enemies. Try to make friends when possible. Cultivate your image as a smart, competent, reasonable and kind person, rather than a foolish, careless idiot who offends people when that brings nothing, and kindness wouldn’t cost you anything really.

Salvos universe, honestly, makes much more sense than the Harry Potter universe in that sense – here, the nobles actually act in a manner that’s constructive if you want to have a good network of social connections, be able to navigate on that network later on by offering services, calling on favours and so on, and not making enemies where that’s not useful or necessary.

Even with enemies, if you can’t actually kill them, it might be a good idea to not annoy them constantly. If you annoy them, they will remember that you’re a problem and focus their attention and energy on destroying or disrupting you. If you leave them alone, they will likely not think of you and do something else that won’t bother you. If someone’s an enemy, insulting them to the point where they make their mission in life to ruin you is the worst you can do.

In the Harry Potter series, Malfoy keeps going out of his way to cultivate his enemy roster. It’s like he has a list of the most important people on the other side of the wizard war, and insults them in ways that will stick. Eventually, his family is defeated, loses its social standing, and barely escapes prison. Well done, mate. 🙂

So, that’s the limit of the Lyra Malfoy thought experiment I made in the last article. If there’s no governess to drill that stuff into the child from early on, and the parents spoil them, the result is Draco Malfoy, and it’s not magically better when it’s gender-swapped. A spoiled girl with poor manners, that commits a social faux-pas with every stupidly arrogant move will still make enemies everywhere.

So, I made certain assumptions in my thought experiment that have no basis in the original books, but I needed them in order to produce a functional person that would make the concept work. I made the assumption that a girl would have more training in social grace, because of one single difference: if Malfoys have only one female child, they will become extinct in the male line. The name Malfoy dies when she’s married. Their wealth and family heritage merges into those of her husband. Absolutely everything depends on the quality of the man she marries. This wouldn’t apply for the male child. As long as he brings in someone decent as his wife, everything is fine. The family name, wealth and fortune continue undisturbed. Draco’s choice of a wife is up to him, and it doesn’t matter, as long as she’s not a muggle-born. He has all the choices in the wizard world. Lyra does not. It has to be someone that could be trusted with the continuation of the Malfoy heritage. There are only a few families important enough for her to marry into, wealthy enough for it not to be a terrible mismatch, and they have male heirs of her age. Harry Potter is firmly entrenched at the first place of that list. He’s descended from the Peverell family that became extinct in the male line, and a Deathly Hallow is his family heirloom. His origins are tied to the roots of the history of the wizard world. His wealth is enormous, and his social clout is even greater.

So, I made an assumption. Narcissa Malfoy, nee Black, who memorized that Black family tree since she was a child, would begin teaching that to her daughter before she’s walking. To a pureblood supremacist like herself, that would be the most important thing in the world to learn. Lyra would learn that the most important thing for her is to marry a person suitable for continuation of their family line, and she would know all the suitable candidates by name, with their entire family history. She would know what Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom and the other one or two candidates had for breakfast when they were five. She would know never to make fun of them, never to hurt them with anything personal enough to stick, never to make fun of Harry Potter for his dead parents, or make fun of Neville Longbottom for his parents being tortured to insanity by her sister.

A boy would be taught that he represents the Malfoy name and needs to hurt their enemies and make them afraid. He would go around and cultivate the enemy roster, regardless of how unwise that is strategically, because he would be a spoiled brat, and that would be because family line depends on him marrying anyone. It doesn’t depend on him marrying a person from a specific, very short list. Lyra would, therefore, be taught better, by her mother, or by a governess. It would be the air she breathes. When she talks to Harry Potter, she knows she’s talking to the single most desirable man for her to marry. She also knows he’s at the very top of the list of family enemies. The way to reconcile the two is to show the flag, but do it in a very precise, tactful way, that will hurt Potter enough to make him reconsider his political position, and yet never hurt him personally in a way that would close that most important door. Lyra would be trained as a supreme diplomat. Her social skills would be dark, but precise and focused. She would be under a lot of stress to maintain all that posturing and facade, and she would have an outlet in Quidditch, where she would get sweaty, dirty, rained on, flown into a wall by Harry, or ploughing his head into the dirt in return, and after they would be patched up in the hospital wing and cleaned up, she would look pristine in her school uniform, with not a hair out of place, and Harry would wonder if that’s even the same person. He would be slightly better than her as a Seeker, because he is better than Draco, and I think it would remain that way with Lyra, but it’s close. What’s not close is the difference in their verbal skills, where she absolutely pulverises him when they have an exchange of quips. His are blunt and emotional, and hers are an icy scalpel. She would politely greet him in the corridor, look at Hermione beside him, and say “You have a very nice pet hamster, Potter. Did you buy it at Diagon Alley, or did it follow you home on its own?”, to which he would fume impotently trying to figure out a way to defend his friend’s honour, but nothing coherent would come out, to great entertainment of the crowd. He also wouldn’t have the option to kick her teeth in, the way he would with Draco. With a girl who never got into his face, remained calm, poised and at a polite distance, physical violence is never an option. There’s no exchange of ambushes that end up with bloody heads, no wand duels. She never draws a wand at him, ever, until that fateful day in the bathroom, which is why that would have a devastating impact on him later. They don’t have a history of violence between them outside of Quidditch court, and that’s always contained within the rules of the sport. The first ever violence between them is her using Cruciatus curse, but interrupted by a faster duelist using Sectumsempra, slaughtering her and having her survive only because the spell missed her neck, and because Snape happened to be nearby. Harry would not be able to brush that one away the way he could with Draco – it was war, he was dealing with a Death Eater who conspired to kill Dumbledore and let a horde of Death Eaters into Hogwarts. They had a history of violent encounters between them, and Draco was using Crucio as his opening move. Sure, Harry wouldn’t have used Sectumsempra had he known what an evil spell that is, and that thing is so evil you get to Azkaban for using it on a human. Using it on Draco was really bad, but he managed to get past it. Using it against that dignified, capable girl, who never before even thought of violence against him, because she was defensive about being caught crying in a girl’s bathroom, and reducing her to drowning in her own pooling blood on the floor, that’s something you don’t just get over, that’s an injury you can repay only if you marry her and care for her your entire life. That event changes things between them forever, because here, Harry loses his white knight aura. He always assumes he’s the good guy, the enemy is the bad guy, and things never change. Now, he did something that makes him the bad guy in his own eyes. Lyra was trying to keep herself and her parents alive when they were the hostages of Voldemort in their own home, and she was crying because she was forced to do something she didn’t want to, but if she didn’t, her family would be killed for treason. It’s not exactly an enemy he imagined, and seeing her bleeding on the floor didn’t make him feel like a white night slaughtering a dragon, it made him feel like Jack the Ripper.

Honestly, I don’t know how he didn’t guess what that spell does – its name translates to “be sliced apart forever”, which can’t be good however you put it. I think the reason why Potter used it was because Malfoy’s use of Crucio put him in the same mode he was in the last time that was used against him, by Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange. That spell means fight to the death for him, and he used the worst thing he had at the top of his tongue. It turned out to be much worse than he intended.

So, here’s where the things between them change. He no longer feels like a victim of a cold Princess who insults his friends. He feels he owes her, big time. So, he sees her future actions with much more understanding and less judgment than he used to. He already saw through Voldemort’s eyes that her family are prisoners in their own home, and now that really clicks. He starts feeling for her, and understands what a terrible position she is in, and only trying to save her family now. It’s no longer an ideological war, where she’s at the opposite side. Sure, her parents kind of had it coming, but she’s innocent in all this, and was always just trying to be a good daughter. Also, when he and his friends were captured and brought to Malfoy Manor, she refused to positively identify him, risking everything to save him, thus putting him into even more debt – and the look she gave him, meaning “please win”, felt like complete surrender. Harry is very intuitive in a crisis, and he read everything in that look; it was a look of a wife putting all her trust in her husband. Her life, her family, her entire future. There was no longer any balancing between the two lists, and he understood then that he could always feel some of that look in her, and it always haunted him because he couldn’t figure it out. He could never figure out why her insults always tore at everything around him, while making a protective shell around him, making him feel precious. Her insults made him feel like a great noble Lord who is demeaning himself by the company he keeps, and it would have been so much easier for her to tear at him personally, with how good she was at it, and how vulnerable he was. Others did it all the time, but never her.

When he returned to Hogwarts in search of the Horcrux and students had to choose sides, she came to his side without hesitation, without a second thought. No drama; she held his hand briefly, but the intimacy of that moment was staggering, because in their hearts they were already married at that point. And then he went to the woods alone to be killed, and she had to watch Hagrid bringing him there as if dead, and she had to watch.

Later, he would joke that he owes her three times over, for the bathroom, for the Manor, and for putting her through that. She got serious. “No, that’s not true. In the bathroom, I had it coming. I used Crucio against you, and when my mind turned on enough to realise what I had done, I felt I had it coming. I deserved to be hit by that horror. It was also a payback for all the insults over the years, when I felt I had to be terrible with you because you’re the enemy and I had to show the family colours. I deserved punishment. Also, when I refused to identify you, I was already on your side in the war. I was not saving an enemy, I was just doing the only thing I could in the war against that evil. I couldn’t do it openly yet, but don’t think I changed sides only when I could openly stand at your side. I was almost there even before the bathroom, and I was definitely there after Dumbledore’s death. We just didn’t get to talk, and my parents were prisoners. But for putting me through those moments when I thought you were dead, you will repay me for as long as you live”.

But of course, this ending would only be realistic if Lyra received a proper upbringing, of the kind Saffron received in the Salvos universe. Saffron can be seen acting as entitled and arrogant as Draco. She’s also a coward who freezes and freaks out when she’s physically threatened. However, Saffron was taught proper behaviour and she had Matthew to make sure she behaved. A properly raised Malfoy girl would still be a pompous, arrogant, spoiled little Princess, but she would also be taught what you never do. You never strike at soft targets when the person you’re arguing with is someone whose children you might want to bear one day, and this needs to be the undertone of every argument with male heirs of noble families you will ever have. If you want to preserve your status as a Lady, you need to address a heir of a noble family as a Lord. He might currently be your enemy, but those things can change, and his status as high nobility remains. A boy would be taught to just show the family flag to the enemy. A girl would be taught that as well, but also that there are only a few people who can be trusted to carry that flag and keep her family in a place of honour with her at their side. If you insult such a man in a way that will stay with him forever, you may just have destroyed your family’s future.

So, there’s the limit of the gender-swap. It would only work if the girl was brought up properly and learned to be considerate and mindful of those things since early childhood. A Malfoy boy at 10 can be a spoiled brat. A Malfoy girl at 10 is also a spoiled brat, but she’s had it hammered into her head the exact names of boys she is never, ever allowed to be a spoiled brat with. With them, even if they are currently enemies, she needs to be respectful and considerate. Sure, she would insult Ron and Hermione horribly, demeaning their humanity in every way. Harry would be so mad he’d go pound a pillow in his bedroom until his hand hurt. But the infuriating part would be the way she greeted him every time, before proceeding to tear at his friends. There was something in her stance that made him feel precious, respected and cherished, and he couldn’t understand how that can coexist with the vitriolic contempt she has for his friends. So, that’s the difference that would have to exist for them to be romantically involved later, because we have to have in mind that Harry and Draco never really became good friends, despite being allies in war at some point. They were polite and cordial, but that was it. In order for there to be more, you can’t just make Malfoy into a cute girl and expect that to override everything, because it wouldn’t. You can’t have that girl be disrespectful and demeaning to him personally, insult his mother and ridicule his deep wounds, and expect them to get over it just because hormones are flaring. You can’t have her be a total bitch and have him like her. There must be that something that’s haunting him from early childhood, where she never tears at his obvious soft spots despite having the ability to do so. There must be the fact that she never hits him, she never fires a hex at him in anger, never gets into his face, despite the fact that she could. He needs to keep wondering why, despite being angry at her, and despite knowing she’s the enemy. She needs to be very precise and selective about being an entitled bitch. Saffron is an excellent example of a character of that kind, written well.

I found a new trend on the Internet – the Harry Potter fans are going crazy over the concept of a gender-swapped Draco Malfoy. Apparently, a spoiled crybully little shit is suddenly hot if it’s a cute looking girl. The idea is, the Malfoyette is still the same nasty shit as in the books and movies, but eventually as Voldemort turns on her family she and Harry have a rivals-to-lovers arc and end up married.

At first, my reaction was sure, why not, it could work. The second reaction was, well, despite all the pop culture and fringe forum lore on the Internet, boys don’t actually like the girls who bully them because they are too cowardly to be feminine with them. It’s actually a red flag for boys, because you never want to have that at home. A person who’s too cowardly to talk to you directly about how she’s feeling, and instead attacks you, blames you, makes your life a living hell in hope you’ll somehow figure out what she’s actually thinking and being too cowardly to admit, and you’ll magically take charge and make everything great, because that’s what a true man would do – and of course while you fail to read her insane mind, she keeps telling you how much you suck as a man.

As I said, women like that are a red flag. Men who marry them always regret it, because no amount of hot can fix crazy. Also, bossy women are a thing in Lesbian and beta-male circles, but normal men find them horribly unattractive – they are basically men with boobs, and we’re not into men. So, the Malfoyette, or Malfoid as she’s called online, would be a double red flag for Harry. He’s into a combination of kind, loving, straightforward and competent. He can’t stand cowards who can’t state their mind clearly, isn’t into double-faced games, and is actually superficial in a sense that he accepts things at face value. If you tell him you hate him, he’ll accept that you’re an enemy. If you smile at him and are polite and friendly, he’ll appreciate you and be your friend. He won’t bother cutting through seven veils of nasty, hostile, bullying, cowardly and deceptive to discover that a mean girl actually likes him. So, won’t work.

However, then I thought of the third layer and decided why it could actually work. You see, you can’t just gender-swap a character and have them be realistic. That’s the delusion of the LGBT ideologues – that women are just men with different sexual hardware that were brought up to “present female”. That’s nonsense; women are a completely different thing, and are brought up as a completely different thing because they are, and people used to be reasonable enough about that, but today it seems to be a radical idea for some stupid reason. Sure, the Malfoy girl would be brought up to believe she’s special because she’s the sole heiress of the wealthiest pure-blood wizard family. However, that’s exactly the thing – they are pure-bloods. When they have a child, they start planning marriage within other pure-bloods when the child is still in diapers. Malfoys would be strategising around whom she should marry before she could walk. The only candidates would be other pure-blood and wealthy half-blood families. The Weaslies are pure-bloods, but also poor as dirt. They hate them on principle. The Blacks have no heir; the family endpoint in the male line is Sirius. Lestranges have no children. Crouches have no children. The best options for their daughter would be Neville Longbottom, Cedric Diggory and Harry Potter. Of those, Harry Potter is the wealthiest, most famous and most reputable. His wealth is probably a close third, behind the Malfoys and Lestranges, and he later inherited the Black family wealth, bringing him to a close number two. They would see him as an obvious choice, and not as a family rival which was the case if they had a son. In either case, the child would be brought up hearing things that indicate either family approval or disapproval of other families and their heirs, and Malfoyette would keep feeling approval of Harry Potter. Sure, they have their Death Eater nonsense and pure-blood supremacism mixed with everything, but their girl would be subtly steered in the direction of those three boys from early infancy.

So, everything else would work similarly; she’d be a spoiled little shit, only in a skirt, and she’d try to make friends with Harry and antagonise his other friends, and he’d see her for what she is and politely tell her to piss off. That rejection would make her pride go ballistic and they would become rivals in everything and she’d try to make his life miserable for rejecting her. It would actually work better than with Draco, who feels like a gay little shit when he does it. Men don’t actually act like scorned girls when other men reject them, they shrug and don’t give a fuck.

Also, she wouldn’t be named Draco or Dracona or some similar bullshit. She would be named according to some other constellation that sounds feminine but regal. Lyra, Andromeda, Cassiopeia. Lyra actually sounds most likely since Andromeda Tonks already exists and Cassiopeia sounds hard to pronounce. See how that works? You can’t just gender-swap a guy to a girl and have everything remain the same. Everything is different. So, the Malfoyette gets to be Lyra Malfoy. Sure, she gets to be a pompous, entitled little shit, but she would be brought up to be a feminine, dignified, entitled little shit – the Malfoy princess. Harry would find that supremely unattractive and would hate her guts, so one would expect the rest of the books to be the same, with the rivalry, mocking and all, but I wonder whether that’s realistic, since this girl would see it below her feminine dignity to compete with a boy trying to get his attention and approval. Sure, her pride would be hurt, but she would go about it some other way. The quidditch rivalry would likely be the same, but she would be unlikely to just go and bully him for attention. Possible, but unlikely. What would be different is that her parents would steer her in the direction of Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory, since Neville Longbottom looked like an insecure loser. She would date Cedric to make Harry jealous, for instance, and would be mad when it wouldn’t work. However, when Cedric gets killed everything would change. She’d get really shaken, and she’d absorb the reaction of her parents who would also be shaken because now, Harry Potter is both the best husband-candidate for their daughter, and an obvious enemy of the Dark Lord, and also her daughter’s school rival. There would be quite a circus around that, and she would feel it, because she’s highly attuned to her family. Also, Harry would feel survivor’s guilt and see her struggling and would be sorry for her, so his feeling for her would change when he sees a vulnerable person under all that armour. Also, later on, when she’s struggling because Voldemort wants her to kill Dumbledore and her family is taken hostage, Harry would be more likely to feel for her, rather than see a threat manifesting. But it would be when she catches her in the bathroom, she instinctively tries to hit him with the cruciatus curse, and he instinctively responds with sectumsempra and essentially slices her body into shreds, and he feels extremely guilty about it, that’s where they would actually connect if Malfoy was a girl. I think they would start secretly dating after she fails to kill Dumbledore and Snape takes over, and they would both be broken from it all, but the death eater family situation wouldn’t be resolved until the final battle, where Harry actually gets support from Draco and is saved by Narcissa lying about him being dead; with the gender swap, they would become a couple at that point, because him and Ginny have as much chemistry together as water and oil.

So yeah, I guess it might work. The thing is, Harry doesn’t actually understand his social status in the wizard community. Sure, he understands he’s famous, mostly for the wrong reasons, but he doesn’t understand how his wealth is perceived. He was brought up as a destitute orphan and instinctively sees himself as the underdog in every situation, and sees powerful people as bullies and assholes. He doesn’t understand that he’s second wealthiest ancient family heir out there. That’s what would make it hard for him to have feelings for a spoiled little princess. However, when the girl in question is vulnerable and all that arrogance and shielding are removed, he would feel protective and that’s when things would happen. Also, her family lost all their standing after the war, although their wealth remained. They barely escaped imprisonment, mostly due to his testimony. They would no longer feel like the enemy – basically, the more powerful Dursleys, which is why he initially disliked Draco; he felt like Dudley. But when he understands that he sliced up a desperate, crying girl who got instinctively defensive with a slaughter spell, I think his self-righteousness and projection would permanently end there and he would see himself as a bully and he wouldn’t like it one bit.

I would rate the concept as possible, but needs work in order to be truly plausible. 🙂