Shipping Draco with...

[aedifica]

Draco's comment to Daphne a few weeks ago seemed to me to imply that he fancies someone, and I started wondering who. Then his comment to her today that "If [he] well and truly fancied a girl there are very few things that would stop [him] from asking her out" seems to imply that if there is someone he fancies, there's something big standing in the way. Perhaps she's a Muggleborn, who's in service to a friend of his?

Comments

[alt_player]

Daphne, for one, now believes he is gay.

[aedifica]

That would make sense of a number of things too, and I can't believe it didn't occur to me! (His lack of interest in physical stuff with Pansy, for one thing.)

[kiya]

Yeah, I got that impression from her strikeout.

[batrachian]

The 'sensible' explanation is that he's gay. I like the narrative possibilities inherent in Draco/Hermione, though.

[aedifica]

I do think later comments on the same entry might be confirming my initial guess. I had to stop and think who Moebius Ollivander was and why we'd heard his name again recently. I can't find the post right now, but it was in context of him being the one who'd assaulted Hermione, and Draco being shocked that he hadn't remembered that.

[aedifica]

Here's that comment thread! http://alt-hydra.dreamwidth.org/27722.html?thread=363850#cmt363850 (Dreamwidth comment search FTW.)

[aedifica]

And also this thread shows Draco has been thinking about Hermione a lot.

[kiya]

I suspect his lack of interest in the physical stuff elsewhere probably has a lot to do with how totally creeped out he appears to be by his parents' sexual permissivity and their open relationship.

[annia]

Totally shipping Draco and Hermione. But then I've always shipped them since A Very Potter Musical (Granger Danger, anyone?) so any hint I will pounce on.

[contrariwise]

Well, that and I got the impression that Rowena Robins had in fact successfully seduced him back in... what was that, Christmas hols? And that he had hangups from that.

[contrariwise]

Draco/Hermione was actually my first ship upon joining the fandom. That's what the first HP fic I found was, back in the day. Though it's rather different here, I like it. (Though I liked Draco/Pansy too, I was so sad when they broke up.)

[contrariwise]

And for once, Draco doesn't seem to be thinking about how his words might sound. I kind of love that.

[aedifica]

I don't think it's ever crossed this Hermione's mind, though--or else she knows but either isn't interested or doesn't think it would work. (I'm basing this on how she was encouraging him to go out with Daphne a little while ago.) I wonder how she'd feel about it?

[capericious]

I seriously love the idea of Draco/Hermione in this 'verse--they're both swotty and they both love Harry and they both lack tact and don't believe in crossing stuff out--but Draco is way too angsty/teenaged and has some serious issues with intimacy and love that he needs to work through. His need to be loved the most, as he wrote while breaking up with Pansy and his apparent gratitude to Hermione for considering his feelings, in the paragraph he struck out, make me nervous about his emotional fragility and, I dunno, whether he's fully seeing Hermione for herself? I mean, I think he admires her brains and sees her as more than a muggleborn but he also just seems to want someone to attach his emotions to which is pretty objectification-y and he's really coming on a little too Heathcliff right now.
Regarding Hermione, I think her pestering him about what he did with Sam Montgomery might be some sort of interest? I certainly hope so since if Draco could actually keep it casual and not worry about whether they'll live together once they graduate, they'd be super-adorable.
All that said, I am looking forward to whatever torment Draco devised for Ollivander.

[batrachian]

Well, this thread is reading, to me at least, like a jealous-and-not-admitting-it Hermione.

Wonder how long it'll take her to fess up?

[aedifica]

Oh! I thought someone had sent him a prostitute. I'll have to go back and re-read that entry with your idea in mind.

[aedifica]

Yeah, that makes "you could see to it that she never works anywhere in the Protectorate for the rest of her life" make more sense. Thank you!

[alt_player]

No, that was a different incident.

[contrariwise]

...I don't even remember that!

[contrariwise]

Welcome! That whole post actually completely baffled me until Draco and Lucius were talking soon after. Made a lot more sense after that.

[kiya]

You know, this notion puts a lot of interesting perspective into that thread where Draco was interrogating Hydra about whether or not she got some kind of kinky thrill out of being with a muggleborn.

[alt_player]

Just to clear up confusion:

There was this incident here.

And a few days later, a conversation between Draco and Lucius in which Draco says that Rowena came on to him and compared him to his father, which leads to Lucius and Draco discussing L & N's marriage. However, Draco's cross out in this post indicates his father might have been behind whatever happened "the other night at the club"

i can see why people might think the first post was about Rowena because posts were made within a few days of each other - but the first post was a separate incident from Rowena, and what happened has not really come out on the surface of the game.

[kiya]

Context for people who don't know what I'm talking about.

[annia]

Right, this is probably not going to make much sense because I'm in massive brain fart mode but whatever.

Just re-reading over all the links people have posted and having a think, I've got an idea that perhaps Draco does fancy Hermione because she is Muggleborn. Not that he has a kinky thing (thank you Kiya!) for Muggleborns as such but because of what it means.
It appears that he has issues with intimacy/sex and with Hermione that's something he can avoid. Because they're never going to be able to be public so there's never going to be peer pressure or anything like that. Plus, if they did, there's always the chance they could be caught and that would be bad for both of them (to put it mildly) and possibly for the ISS/Order.

Also, with just how screwed up the universe is, there's the issue of a pureblood trying to get a Muggleborn to sleep with them and the Muggleborn has to do it because otherwise the pureblood could make some shit up and get them sent back to the camp. So from that perspective, he might feel like he can never ask Hermione to be in a relationship with him because it wouldn't be fair on her because of the power issues.

I don't really know what I'm trying to say. Like, maybe Draco fancies Hermione because he can't actually be with her and that's safer than fancying somebody he could be in a relationship with. Maybe he feels safer fancying her because he knows that there's no chance they could ever be together. Whereas if he fancied somebody else, then there's always the off-chance they could end up in a relationship and then he might have to deal with his issues with intimacy/sex and he doesn't want that.
Also, if Hermione does fancy him back, he's got the perfect get out clause that they can never be together because it would be too dangerous for her.
Plus, maybe he thinks that he can't ever say how he feels about her (because of the above it being too dangerous for her and other stuff) so he feels like he can't act on his feelings like he possibly could with somebody else, so therefore there's no chance of his feelings getting hurt, or being rejected because he can't actually put himself into the position of that happening.

I don't know. I haven't explained that well but I hope you can kinda see what I'm trying to say.

[aedifica]

I think that makes a lot of sense.

annia - DW Comment dw_null@dreamwidth.org wrote:

[kiya]

I think it's also clear that Draco genuinely respects Hermione - I mean, he can't resist twitting her (and she can't resist twitting him), but when he was looking for practical advice on how to get through the Notts' party without losing a handle on his faculties, he immediately figured that she might know something he didn't.

He has a lot of self-hatred going on, and a lot of personal ghosts. (The bit a while back where he said something like, "You mean you don't have nightmares every night? How interesting" - I think to her! - about broke my heart.) There aren't a lot of people who have any earthly idea what his life and interior narrative are like, and he's not forthcoming about any of it.

He wants to be a better man for someone - I thought when I saw some of that stuff it was Pansy, but a lot of the stuff that might be him thinking about Hermione as stuff that I parsed as "I don't really want to break up with Pansy but I feel that I fundamentally have to". I'm not as sure what 'being a better man' means to him, except that it includes some sort of dealing with that self-hatred somehow.

And I don't think he's shown it to many people. And it would take someone who actually knows something about it to help him deal with it.