It came to most readers as a surprise. Draco and Myrtle…friends?! Even if you can use the word “friends” loosely when dealing with a ghost, Draco did confide more in Myrtle than he did his friends and probably even his parents during the toughest part of his young life. But why would he confide in Myrtle when she was muggle-born?
The easy answer is that she’s dead, and that kind of negates every prejudice one could’ve had against her while she was alive. But, there is also an argument to be made about the segregated cemeteries in the south. Those people are dead, so they shouldn’t care, right? Yet, the relatives are still thinking that a dead black person would taint their family member if they were buried next to each other. If that could happen only 50+ years ago, surely Draco could be bigoted enough to say, “I don’t speak to mudbloods, alive or not!” There could be a bigger reason as to why Draco overcame his prejudices to talk to Myrtle, and that reason could be that he’s growing up and away from the person he was at the end of the last school term.
During the summer break, Draco would have been initiated into the Death Eaters and “approached” by Voldemort to complete the task of killing Dumbledore in order to be a fully qualified Death Eater. Dumbledore is someone that stood against everything his parents stood for (even if they were some of Hogwarts’ benefactors), but wasn’t anyone Draco had any true personal bias against. Being charged with such a task, he probably started doing some deep thinking-probably the deepest he’s ever done “off camera”, as it were.
As alluded to in the beginning of the sixth movie, Draco is heavily depressed, even going as far as to make not-so-heavily-veiled comments about killing himself. He was probably also thinking about the value of life, what it actually takes to kill someone, and what it means to kill someone whom you don’t have anything against. This train of thought probably led him to think about what he was really into-he had gotten himself involved in a war that he knew virtually nothing about except for what his parents spoon-fed him. Everything he stood for was being put to the test by the task he was given, and he was probably afraid of failure and afraid of what could happen if he was successful. And-most importantly-at the end of the day, a dead mudblood and a dead full-blooded wizard are identical. In death, there’s nothing distinguishing one from the other. So, if that’s true for corpses, it must be true for the living.
This train of thought is probably what made Draco befriend Myrtle despite the circumstances. Who really knows how he really got to meet Myrtle-whether she traveled to the boy’s lavatory or, since he knew about her beforehand (as shown in The Chamber of Secrets), actively sought her out to talk/clear his conscience. The reason he kept talking to Myrtle, however, is because he grew a little and realized that even though he was confused about who was right or wrong in the War, he couldn’t kill someone just because of their background or belief system.
*Draco screencaps by patheticality@LJ
