Where Draco Malfoy is concerned, it is actually the number Six that serves as a motif throughout the story.
So much has been made of how seven is “the most powerfully magical number” (HBP23) in Harry Potter, with it serving as something of a motif throughout the series… to the point where my podcast, The Three Broomsticks
, has a recurring segment about the “seven ingredients of today’s special.” But considering how much has been written about sevens in Harry Potter, I thought it worthwhile to consider the number and character that never quite measures up to Harry and his sevens.
Where Draco Malfoy is concerned, it is actually the number Six that serves as a motif throughout the story. To illustrate that, I’ve come up with six instances of the significance of six where Draco is concerned.
#1: Most obviously, it is the sixth book in the series that truly offers Draco the spotlight. He goes from schoolyard rival to a character of vital importance in Half-Blood Prince.
#2: Zeroing in further, note the only chapter in the entire series named after Draco: the sixth chapter of the sixth book, “Draco’s Detour.” Draco gets the six-iest chapter of the whole series! (Draco is also quite prominent in the sixth chapters of Sorcerer’s Stone and Prisoner of Azkaban, but I’ll allow that has more to do with the cadence of the books than with any intentional numerology.)
#3: A trivia question for the ages – and one where I owe the Lexicon’s Atlas of Hogwarts a huge debt – is that Draco is front and center in the only event and only location mentioned on the sixth floor of Hogwarts. The bathroom in which Draco is crying to Moaning Myrtle, where Harry and Draco end up in a bloody duel, is on the sixth floor.
“Harry made his usual detour along the seventh-floor corridor, […] but then he saw Malfoy’s tiny labeled dot standing in a boys’ bathroom on the floor below.” (HBP24) The floor below the seventh is logically the sixth. And there is some symbolism here, where Harry descends from his level (seventh floor) to Draco’s (sixth floor) and ends up successfully using Dark Magic for the first time.
#4: Staying with the scene in the sixth-floor bathroom, exactly six spells are cast (or attempted) in Harry and Draco’s duel. (HBP24) To enumerate them in detail:
- Malfoy’s hex missed Harry by inches, shattering the lamp on the wall beside him
- Harry […] thought Levicorpus! and flicked his wand
- Malfoy […] raised his wand for another — […] there was a loud bang and the bin behind Harry exploded
- Harry attempted a Leg-Locker Curse that backfired off the wall
- Malfoy, his face contorted, cried, “Cruci —”
- “SECTUMSEMPRA!” bellowed Harry from the floor
#5: The senary motif first came to my attention when writing my essay, “Borgin, Burke, and the Half-Blood Prince.” In Chamber of Secrets chapter 4, “At Flourish and Blotts,” both Harry and Draco spend some time perusing the wares at Borgin and Burkes. Harry notices seven items (of course!) but Draco only notices six of them – the glass eye, the shelf full of skulls, the Hand of Glory, a long coil of hangman’s rope, the cursed opal necklace, and the Vanishing Cabinet.
#6: There are seven security guidelines issued by the Ministry of Magic for “Protecting Your Home and Family Against Dark Forces.” (HBP3) The sixth of these seems particularly relevant to our sneering Slytherin: “6. Should the Dark Mark appear over any dwelling place or other building, DO NOT ENTER.” Both Harry and Dumbledore dismiss all of the Ministry guidelines out of hand, but this would have been sound advice for them!
An important part of Draco’s plan to orchestrate Dumbledore death was the Dark Mark. “We decided to put the Dark Mark over the tower and get you to hurry up here, to see who’d been killed,” said Malfoy. “And it worked!” (HBP27) If Harry and Dumbledore hadn’t entered the place with a Dark Mark over it, Draco would not have been in a position to Disarm Dumbledore and throw a wrench into all of the headmaster’s elaborate plans!
Zooming out, it’s interesting to consider what Jo had in mind when assigning the number six to Draco in the numerology of the series. On the one hand, it could be something that grew organically from his starring role in the sixth book – it’s surely no coincidence that most of the sixes I found are in Half-Blood Prince. But on the other hand, I think it may be relevant that it’s one less that Harry’s signature seven. Maybe Jo is trying to tell us that no matter how much Draco thinks of himself as Harry’s equal or superior, he never quite measures up, and is stuck with the slightly lesser number.
Given that the fandom is still discovering septets throughout the HP series all these years later, I am sure that this list of six is nowhere near comprehensive! I’d love to see what other sextets readers have noticed in the comments below.
And if you’d like more of my analysis about Draco Malfoy, check out my book Malfoy: The Most Treacherous Family.