HP Kids Lineup 🪄✨👟

HP kids lineup 🪄✨👟

Ron and Draco: True Nemeses

So I'm a big fan of Ron. He has been my favorite characters since forever and is my second favorite fictional character of all time. As such I've always like Ron-centric content. Fanfics, fanarts, little headcannons, all of which make me fall more and more in love with the character.

And I came across an answer in Quora that perfectly described Ron and Draco as opposites. Two sides of the same coin. I already thought so as well as I always saw Draco and Ron as the two first kids Harry met at his age, both of which to him seemed completely different while still remaining somewhat similar in certain aspects.

Both Ron and Draco come from ancient Pureblood families that have a long history in the Wizarding World

Both grew up with their fathers' opinion on muggles, muggle-borns and half-bloods influencing them

Both grew up in households that showed them unwavering love

Both made an impression that lasted on Harry

Both held care and loyalty for their families and close friends (Ron with Harry and Hermione; Draco with Crabbe and Goyle: This is even more evident in the Deathly Hallows were Draco seems legitimately saddened by Crabbe's death)

But it was the differences that made Harry choose Ron as his best friend and Draco as his school nemesis:

Draco was rich in wealth but poor in values; Ron was poor in wealth but rich in values

Ron was nice, humble, brave and loyal; Draco was rude, vain, cowardly and always looked out for himself mostly

Draco was an only child so Lucius and Narcissa spoiled him rotten with gifts, attention and love; Ron had a lot of brothers, and as such had to (from his perspective) compete for that same attention and love

Draco was a bully; Ron was a friend

All of these reasons as well as others led me to question, just why Draco was Harry's nemesis and then I remembered that Harry's nemesis was Voldemort. Not Draco.

And I think it was a missed opportunity to have made Harry the one to suspect Malfoy and not Ron. Now this may or may not come from the fact that I mostly hate a lot of HBP, but I also have a lot of reasons behind it.

While Harry has never liked Malfoy him immediately thinking that Voldemort recruited him to be a Death Eater was never really believable for me. We even see in OoTP that Harry doesn't really consider Malfoy a threat. After Lucius is arrested and Draco threatens Harry, he only sees this as laughable not something to be scared of.

So him changing his perspective to a 180 in HBP never seemed logical to me. Ron, however, I would completely see thinking that Malfoy was a Death Eater.

From the start while Malfoy had always teased and bullied Harry, Ron and Hermione as well as others like Neville, Luna or others his attempts to bully Harry and Ron were where he "shined". The Potter Stinks badges, buying the Slytherin Quidditch team and becoming Seeker just to spite Harry as well as the Weasley is Our King song, making fun of his dress robes, etc...

However, the type of personalities that both Harry and Ron have are vastly different. Harry doesn't mind these attempts at annoying him as he sees Malfoy as pathetic, but the thing with Ron is that he is much more self conscious than Harry.

Malfoy got the entire school to actually sing a song about Ron's poor skills at Quidditch which only increased his nervousness making him fail. Not only that, but in the books Malfoy made badges that said Weasley is our King as well.

So we have this boy who has made fun of Ron year after year, his financial status, his family, his friends, himself and now he's doing something incredibly suspicious just months after his father threatened Ron's sister with death in the Department of Mysteries. And he is suspicious of him, but he's two best friends just take Ron's suspiciousness as his natural inclination not to trust Slytherins, specifically Draco Malfoy.

And with that I present to you a very small piece of fanfiction inspired by an AU where Ron suspected Malfoy:

Harry and Hermione didn't seem to understand, or it was more like they didn't want to understand. It was as if his voice didn't matter, as if years of loyalty towards the two didn't matter for one bit, like Ron Weasley could only say something stupid and inappropriate if he ever opened his mouth.

But he wasn't stupid, he knew that. He got more than the average student in O.W.L.s, he beat McGonagall's chess set, he help figure out where the opening to the Chamber of Secrets was, he knew that Malfoy was a Death Eater from the beginning.

That last one still left a bitter taste in Ron's mouth. He had been telling Harry and Hermione for months that Draco Malfoy had taken the Dark Mark and was doing Death Eater activities for You-Know-Who in Hogwarts, but they just wouldn't listen.

Just like Hermione didn't listen whenever he told her that house-elves didn't want to be free, or how Lockhart was clearly a fraud, or just like Harry didn't seem to actually listen to him when he told him that he didn't like hearing You-Know-Who's name. It was as simple as that, but unless Ron Weasley had food in his mouth they wouldn't pay him one single fraction of attention.

They didn't know Malfoy like he did, they wouldn't know the lengths that the bloody ferret would go to just to be daddy's perfect little Death Eater, the lengths he would go to spoil everything.

Because they just didn't. They couldn't know the humiliation of being the school's punching bag for months. They couldn't understand how unfair it was that a family like the Malfoys was more respected than his just because they had more money. They couldn't understand how Malfoy's father had a part in the fine that his father had to pay after Harry and he had to go in the car to Hogwarts.

And Ron had been fine with that, he had been understandable about it, but now he knew the truth. They didn't care.

Because as he sat in his bed listening to Harry and Hermione come up with another bloody thing that they had to get in the stupid hunt of theirs in woods that froze his bollocks off with little to no food, he finally understood. Ginny, his own little sister, who was trapped in a castle with Snape and other dark wizards, had been sent to the Forbidden Forest where she could die.

In fact all of his family could be dead, and he would be none the wiser.

They didn't care.

So he stood up and clicked the Deluminator leaving them all in the darkness. They could feel as he felt about his family's situation. They could hear their own heartbeats as he did whenever he laid down in bed scared about waking up and finding out that he was the last member of his family left alive.

Someone called his name, but Ron could only hear the voice. Silky, smooth, seductive and speaking its every thought into his mind.

They don't care. They seemed to have forgotten about you, about your family, about anything but themselves.

He clicked the Deluminator once more and stared into the green and brown eyes of Harry and Hermione.

"Remember me, have you?"