Seriously, Narcissa Malfoy is not a "Strong Woman"

An Essay

God, I still hate the title I gave this post. At least it’s not as stuff and scholarly sounding as the first one I came up with though.

Read at your own risk. There are elebenty bajillion spoilers below but I don’t feel bad. The book was published eighteen years ago and even the film came out in 2011. None of this is new.

Also, just to be clear, this post is meant in no way to reflect poorly on Helen McCrory who played Narcissa Malfoy to an amazingly high level and is worthy only of praise. Siriusly, nobody get butthurt thinking I’m dogging an actress who did a phenomenal job. There is no need to blacken my name for something I didn’t do.

At any rate…

I don’t know why I’m thinking about this today, but here goes.

I’ve been known to hang out on Facebook when I’m not writing nonsense to torture you all with. I even enjoy it sometimes. One of the things I’ve been known to do from time to time is to join groups for Harry Potter fans. I have, in fact, been in very many of them over the years. There’s a good reason for that: I love Harry Potter. I don’t obsess over it the way some of my younger compatriots do. I don’t find it necessary to put everyone from every property in houses, for instance. If you read my blog then you know that I haven’t limited myself to reading Harry Potter. If you’re wondering, I consider myself to be a Ravenclaw and the Pottermore quiz can get over itself, but other than that, I don’t get into things the way a lot of fans do.

Yep, that’s me and my two daughters from awhile back.

I do, however, love to debate any theories that I have a strong opinion on in any of the fandoms that I follow. And, if I follow a fandom, I probably have a strong opinion about just about everything I hear about it. If someone finds a controversy that I don’t have an opinion on it’s usually because I’m just hearing about it and I will probably have a strong opinion about it in the next few seconds to a minute, tops. That’s just me. I tend to be very opinionated.

And, speaking of opinions and Harry Potter, I’m sure you’re all super shocked to find out that I have one. I’ll give you a second to recover and catch your breath.

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Okay, that should be long enough.

There is a conversation I’ve heard many times in many Harry Potter groups and the opinions on said subject tend to vary. Gender seems to play a big part in that, but not always. Still and all, I’ve had this stuck in my brain for close to two decades now. It’s time to let it out. Those of you who are Harry Potter fans will know what I’m talking about but for the rest of you, let me set the scene.

I’m referring to what is known as the Battle of Hogwarts, or, in a more generic sense, “the big fight at the end.” The entire series has led up to this point. This is the chance that Harry and friends have been fighting for since the beginning of book one. It’s a chance to end Lord Voldemort (the Big Bad Evil Guy) once and for all. Voldemort shows up with his army (the Death Eaters) and attempts to put paid to all those who oppose him. It’s high drama. People are fighting and dying. Harry loses several close personal friends that day, killed by Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Voldemort makes an announcement. If the good guys send Harry out to face Voldemort he’ll stop the battle.

So Harry takes it upon himself to turn himself in. Having seen his surrogate family weeping over the loss of one of their own and the parents of his godson lying dead on the ground next to each other, he can’t take it anymore. In a moment of weakness, he decides to turn himself in. He sneaks out of the castle to where Voldemort is hanging out with his closest allies and offers himself up to stop the fighting.

At some point, I may have to do an essay about Harry here too, because that was a straight up betrayal in its own right but that’s not the subject of today’s post.

Voldemort, being Voldemort hits Harry in the face with an Avada Kedavra AKA The Killing Curse. Harry falls over, apparently dead. Enter Narcissa Malfoy.

Narcissa is instructed to make sure Harry is dead. She walks over, realizes that he is still breathing and very quietly asks Harry if her son, Draco is okay. Harry, just as quietly, informs her Draco was doing just fine when Harry saw him last. In exchange for this information, Narcissa turns around and informs the man she has sworn loyalty to that his deadliest enemy is now dead. The party begins immediately with Voldemort announcing to all and sundry that Harry is dead and he has won. (It all has to do with a prophecy. For more detail read the books and/or watch the movies. They’re worth your time.)

The controversy comes in the reaction to what Narcissa did. I’ve seen two reactions to this scene and they’re polar opposites.

The reaction that I’ve seen from primarily women (and especially mothers) is that Narcissa’s actions were those of a strong woman. She had the courage to look the Dark Lord straight in his cakehole and lie to him, knowing what he would do if he realized that he had been lied to. To top it off, Voldemort was known for reading minds (in HP it’s called Legilimency) and she managed to prevent him from doing so. Narcissa is, in this sense, seen as being a powerful woman whose primary concern is the wellbeing of her family. She risked her neck to check on her son. This is seen as honorable.

I disagree. To me, Narcissa is a coward and a sell out. She turned her coat and lost the war for her side simply to find out how her son was doing. In doing so, she betrayed not just Voldemort and his Death Eaters but Draco and his father/her husband Lucius, both of whom were fighting in service to Voldemort.

Let me repeat that: Narcissa was on a battlefield where both her son and her husband were fighting in a war. There had been multiple deaths already and on both sides. (And someday I’ll write an ode to Molly Weasley for her role in the battle and how she did it right.) Narcissa could have ended both the battle and the war with the words “He’s still alive” and probably a quick jump to either her left or right to get out of the way before Voldemort blasts him again. She was a villain. She could have asked Harry about Draco and turned him in anyway.

And, if we want to talk about family, let’s talk about how much better things would have turned out for the Malfoys if she had done what she was supposed to: They would have been on the winning side. Voldemort had no friends, but he was smart enough to reward his supporters. Lucius and Draco were both part of his inner circle. They would have gotten some of the greatest rewards that Voldy had to offer.

Instead, she gave up her family, her Dark Lord and her cause all out of a sense of gratitude toward her sworn enemy. That’s not “a mother’s love”. That’s treason. Narcissa’s actions could very easily have led to the deaths of both her husband and her son and all because she couldn’t hold it together for five seconds in order to end the battle and the war in favor of the side that her whole family was fighting for.

I have kids. I worry about them every day. It would be a babillion times worse if they were off fighting a war, especially if I knew one or both of them were actively involved in a battle that was taking place at that exact second. That doesn’t excuse it. She was acting as a soldier serving in a battle. It was her job to put personal concerns aside and do the job she was there to do.

And yes, I get that she was one of the bad guys and I was supposed to be rooting against both her and the cause she served. The series got its happy ending because she sold out and I shouldn’t forget it, but whatever. I don’t like the woman because of what she did. Period. Dot. End of sentence.

Feel free to disagree in the comments. Disagreement, fightin’ words and throw crockery are welcomed.