Everyone loves to hate on Draco, but I don’t see the reason for it. In my opinion, Draco Malfoy deserves to be more loved, not abandoned and hated. His mother is the only person that I feel actually cared for him. Maybe if Draco had one more person that comforted him like his mom, he wouldn’t seem as bad as a lot of people see him. The first time I read Harry Potter, I felt bad for Draco. I know that in the stairwell at Hogwarts Draco sounded like he was critiquing Ron, but in my eyes, Draco was just saying how he was a Weasley. I mean, all of us had an attitude when we were nine and ten. If Harry had just accepted Draco’s friend request, I’m sure that Draco and the Golden Trio would’ve warmed up to each other.  And that is why I believe Draco is the most underrated character in Harry Potter.  This led me to realize that oftentimes the best characters are the underrated ones.

What is an underrated character? Nicole Sniadowski, tennis player at Centercourt Marlboro and Harry Potter enthusiast, believes that an underrated character is a character that does not have the amount of screen (or page) time they should have. However, Olivia Rajewski, an eighth grader at Woodbridge Middle School, thinks differently. “They are an underrated character if you can tell the character is important to the story, but there isn’t much attention on them,” Rajewski stated. Tyler Malmstrom, a teacher at WMS, says that an underrated character “is a character that makes the reader emotionally connect”. An underrated character is a character that could be so special to the book or movie, that their appearance wouldn’t matter as much if they were the protagonist.

As we already know, I think that Draco is the most underrated character, but not everyone thinks he’s the MOST underrated. Malmstrom thinks that Neville and Luna are the most underrated characters, and I respect that. Neville could have been Harry, Voldemort killed both of his parents, and Luna helped all of her friends when they needed a little hint to achieve what they wanted. In Malmstrom’s words, “Neville is a goofy person, this whole series could be about him.” Sniadowski agrees with him. However, Rajewski sides with me and agrees that Draco is the most underrated. “I feel like he is misunderstood in a way and is not as bad as everyone thinks”, she stated.

All of the characters that were discussed deserve more than they got in the series, but if they did, would we still feel the same way about them? I don’t think I would feel this bad for Draco if he had just one good friend or relative. Neville wouldn’t seem as heroic at the end of the series if he wasn’t considered underrated. If he was a main character it wouldn’t seem as if he had broken out of his shell to save his friends, it would just be an everyday thing that he does. If Luna hadn’t forced Harry to talk to her in the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry never would have found the sixth horcrux. Underrated characters have an extremely important role for readers.