Draco Malfoy

In the first few books Malfoy is shown as a flat character. He's Harry's enemy because he hates mudbloods and picks on him and his friends. Malfoy acts as the upper class, snooty wizard who comes off as no more than an annoying jerk with a mean streak. He represents the wizards (Lucius Malfoy) who think they are better than others and the wizarding law because they are rich purebloods. It is decided by readers and Harry that Draco is a bad guy and evil to the core when really he's mostly a product of his environment. It's learned in The Goblet of Fire that Draco's family truly is part of the dark side as Lucius is revealed to be a death eater. Instead of Draco being a jerk with a mean streak, he's shown as being in cahoots with Voldemort and this provides greater depth to his character and a darker side. However, this new side of Draco as being an evil friend and servant to Voldemort is examined further in The Half Blood Prince. Draco is no longer displayed as a deeply evil, one faced character, but he is both afraid of what he has been asked to do by Voldemort and begins to question it. There is a sympathy drawn from the reader at the moment when Draco fights Harry in book six because he fights more from fear than hatred or vindictiveness. He has terrible and important choices to make in this book and finds neither appealing. He could murder Dumbledore or lose the love and respect of his father in which he's been pining after the entire series. This is shown in book two when Lucius jibes that a mudblood is top of the class instead of him and Draco is hurt by the comment. His decision to join the Voldemort is more an attempt to gain his father's love and acceptance rather than being a purely evil guy. This is shown when he is unable to kill Dumbledore because consciously he knows this is or wrong and or possibly he is to scared and weak.
The new dimensions to Draco's character work on the theme that not everyone is characterized so black and white and who may seem evil may not be. It also plays on the importance of fatherhood in the novel and what it means to characters like Harry and Draco and how the two understand and assess it. Would you murder for your father's sake? Harry's father died for his son, would Lucius do the same? At the end of the day, Draco and Harry are not their father's and have different choices that could both please and upset them. This struggle within Draco between loving his father and doing what he feels is ok within himself allows readers to see a new side that isn't just evil. It shows a more loving side that has a conscious.