bkub's Malfoid and the Azkaban gags

What does bkub’s drawing show?

On a flat green background a tall Malfoid stands with both hands on her hips and glares sideways out of the corner of one green eye. She is scowling, her cheeks are pink and her bottom lip is pushed out. Long blonde hair, a dark robe with green lining, a striped tie, a grey pleated skirt. It is bkub’s thick-outline style, the same one Pop Team Epic is drawn in, so even the sulk looks soft.

Down the left side, three tiny scenes are stacked on top of each other. Each one comes from Prisoner of Azkaban, and each one ends badly for her.

What are the three Azkaban gags?

At the top is Buckbeak. A hippogriff head clamps its beak over her skull with a ガブ, a chomping sound, while she sobs with her mouth wide open and shouts 父上ー, “Father!” In the book Draco insults Buckbeak in Hagrid’s first lesson, gets slashed on the arm and milks it, and his father makes sure the hippogriff is put on trial. bkub skips all of that and goes straight to the crying.

In the middle is Hermione. A small curly-haired Hermione with a smug cat mouth bonks her on the head with a fist, and Malfoid cries into her sleeve. In the book Hermione slaps Draco when he laughs at Hagrid for crying over Buckbeak. The film turned the slap into a punch, and that is the version bkub draws.

At the bottom is the Shrieking Shack. Malfoid skids along the ground face first, ズザザ, beside a blobby ghost outline wearing round glasses. That is Harry under the Invisibility Cloak, who ambushes Draco there in the third book. bkub draws him as a sheet with specs, the only thing in the picture with no body.

Why does it work as a Malfoid joke?

Most Malfoid art is about her being mean to Potter and then blushing. bkub went the other way and picked the three moments in the third book where Draco loses, then drew a girl who loses them loudly. The big figure is the face she makes afterwards, pretending none of it happened.

The post went up on October 1 with no caption at all, a few days after Japanese X started passing Malfoid art around. It was the first of three posts by well-known Japanese artists that week, ahead of NEZBOX on October 2 and Shun Saeki’s Gyarufoy on October 4. As of October 10 it has passed 100,000 likes. The Buckbeak panel also turns up on our Malfoid memes page, as the Japanese take on her favorite threat about her father.