“Draco, Draco, you are not a killer.” Dumbledore calmly says to the boy standing across from him whom he knows was ordered to do that very act. The boy has been built up as one of the main antagonist of the series, and yet at this point the reader can feel nothing but sympathy for the would-be-assassin.
The boy has done exactly as he was commanded to do, and has cornered the best wizard of the age unarmed on top of a tower, yet his smug and boastful visage is starting to crumble under Dumbledore’s calm demeanor. “I haven’t got any options!. . .I’ve got to do it! He’ll kill me! He’ll kill my whole family!” the now distraught Draco confesses. This sense of internal struggle is a new concept to the reader in the otherwise static Draco; and with it Rowling shows us that even those put in the worst imaginable situations still have room for redemption. Draco is born into this family, these expectations, and now it is shown what effect this has had on his psyche. The rich boy with a false sense of entitlement, the antithesis of our Harry, is shown for the first time as not merely the foil which highlights the protagonists own qualities, but as a human being.
The fact that Rowling can create these feelings of sympathy is a testament not only to her writing, but to our own willingness to see the good in everyone. Dumbledore is the embodiment of forgiveness and it is through him that Draco is able to confess his sins and show his remorse.
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