So they were showing a bunch of Harry Potter movies over the
course of the Memorial Day weekend and I watched a few with my oldest because,
frankly it’d been a while since I had seen the films.
In “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” we see early in
the film Draco being a general dick and tearing a page out of a book. That scene right there sparked a huge fan
theory that Draco slipped the page to Hermione because he secretly had a crush
on her and…well it spools off from there.
But I have a slight variation of that theory.
The torn page Hermione ends up with in the film is the one
Draco tore out, but he didn’t give it to her.
Draco’s early characterization, wonderfully performed by Tom
Felton, shows him being a selfish dick most of the time. Okay, all the time, but prior to going to
school this year his father engineered a plot to restore Voldemort by way of
using Tom Riddle’s diary. So we know,
obviously, that the diary was in Lucius’ possession and probably accessible to
a disrespectful punk like Draco. Draco,
one way or another gleam from the diary that the Chamber of Secrets houses a basilisk,
and his dad is going to unleash the beast in the school, but doesn’t learn any
more than that. In going back-to-school
shopping, he comes across a book about various monsters, including a page on basilisks. Why buy the book when you only need one
page? He knows that thing is going to be
stalking students and he likes being alive so he wants to know everything he
can. He’s selfish, not stupid.
So he goes into school with torn page in pocket.
Now Draco doesn’t know a lot. He has no idea who the heir to Slytherin is,
nor does he care, he just knows what he needs to know.
While Ron and Harry are off having their spider adventure,
Hermione goes looking for answers from the restricted section and comes back
petrified but with a torn page from a book clutched in her hand. The book on the other hand, is nowhere to be
found, and this would normally be way out of character for Hermione as she
would feel physical pain if she destroyed or defaced a book. So where did the page come from?
I think Draco either discarded it feeling he had enough info
to survive, or she saw him with it and swiped it when he was distracted, which
given that she had botched her own portion of the polyjuice potion and couldn’t
help Ron and Harry with the interrogation, it seems likely she would have taken
more direct measures to find out what he knew.
That’s one theory.
The other theory is Draco is just being a little prick and
the page Hermione had was just notes she was taking while in the restricted
section.
