Tom Felton is trending.

Fucking finally.

Today, Draco Malfoy becomes 38.

I learned about his existence when I was 11, some 18 years ago. At first, I chose the easier path, becoming interested in the main characters (I chose Hermione – I never really liked Harry, because he wasn’t appreciative enough of the great opportunity of studying all those cool subjects at Hogwarts while I was wasting my time at my crappy school, learning nothing useful.) Then I discovered my love for Snape (I loved his sarcastic remarks aimed at Harry and Ron, I thought they were funny), and I guess it was through Snape that I came to love Draco.

Loving Draco wasn’t easy at all. The books were trying too hard to paint him in a negative, pathetic light. I always thought there is more to Draco than JK Rowling is willing to share with us. She just needed a stereotypical bully to make her main characters look good in comparison. But I always had an active imagination, and in my mind, I thought about Draco’s story; about his mannerism, his idiosyncrasies, his strengths and weaknesses. At the time, I didn’t know anything about fanfiction. Naturally, my first ever introduction to the brilliant world of fanfiction was through Draco.

I learned that fanfiction has the power to break the author’s dictatorship over the characters. So, Rowling didn’t like Draco? Fine. I will find other authors who do. And I did. People who saw potential in Draco and invested so much time, effort and love into painting his character in all different colors. I loved the Draco in those stories; the Draco that was not just a foil with predictable behavior and comments, but the protagonist of his own story, with his own conflicts and struggles, his own moments of success and failure.

At a very young age I realized that I will not allow an author to dictate to me who to like and who to dislike. I will not allow ‘anyone’ to do that to me. Even now at 28, I am still seeing fans asking others to ‘justify’ their interest in a ‘problematic’ character, and frankly, I am tired of seeing that. I am sure that characters like Draco are, too.

So I guess, what I am trying to say, is that my interest in Draco at such an early age taught me how to liberate my mind, my imagination, my opinions. It taught me to think independently from the author, that I don’t have to agree with everything I read in books. That the ‘reality’ seen through Harry Potter’s eyes is subjective, that we all like to think of ourselves as the actual hero of every story, and in many cases, villian is not an unredeemable monster, but just someone who doesn’t agree with our version of reality. This realization helped me through a lot of hard times because my values differ greatly from those of my country - which is a dictatorship.

Liking Draco Malfoy was the harder choice, but it taught me more things than going with the flow would have ever done.

So...happy birthday Draco Malfoy.