Would JKR make Lupin evil?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 39822

If JKR only put Lupin in the story to be the poster boy for persons 
with disabilities, and the only reaction she wants to evoke is, 
"Awww,  poor woobie!" then I concede.  This particular hedgehog 
won't fly. Evil!Lupin is the product of nobody's imagination but my 
own.

But if JKR aspires to more than propaganda, if she wishes to 
invoke not only pity but terror, then Harry may discover that Lupin 
is but the hollowed out shell of the man he could have been, and 
still appears to be. That he  joined the dark forces not because 
he thought it was cool to be dark, but because the terrible burden 
of his condition was too much for him to bear alone. That it had, 
as he says, "nothing to do with weakness" but everything to do 
with indifference and bigotry and hate. 

Then we'll get beyond the poster child version of caring about 
people with serious illness--because the truth is that caregiving 
and advocacy can be humbling, thankless  tasks You'd better be 
prepared for unpleasant behavior from the people you're trying 
to help, if you're going to stick with it. Most people don't suffer as 
nobly as Lupin does-- or seems to.

****
This thread started with Cindy's question, "Who will betray 
Dumbledore?" If the answer is "nobody" then once again, we 
don't need Evil!lupin. But if somebody *is*  going to betray 
Dumbledore, then we may, as Cindy did, follow  a standard 
technique for constructing a mystery story. 

First choose a crime: betrayal.
Then a victim: Albus Dumbledore. 
Give victim a resource base: something so valuable we can 
easily imagine he might be killed for it. In this case, it's Hogwarts 
and the guardianship of the wizarding world.
Make a list of everyone associated with the victim, and decide 
which of them is to commit the crime. Cindy accused Snape, 
which was only to be expected <g>, but  then she did something 
very curious. She put Lupin and Sirius on the same line of her 
list. 

Lupin and Sirius are indeed  similar. Same background, same 
famished, neglected appearance, same circle of friends. Even 
their manner of speaking is far more alike than say, Harry's and 
Ron's. I found I had to keep flipping back to the Shrieking Shack 
chapters when preparing these posts, because my memory was 
unreliable as to  which of them said what.

Novelists usually try like the dickens to make their characters 
different from one another, except, that is, when they're trying to 
confuse the issue--to hide a betrayer from his comrades, for 
example.  Aragorn and Boromir. Gandalf and Saruman.  Han 
Solo and Lando Calrissian. I get very suspicious when I see two 
characters who are almost alike, and are not, or are no longer, 
pals. Especially if they are nice young men and the author is 
paying conspicuous homage to Agatha Christie, to the point of 
giving her sleuth the initials H.P. There are a lot of parallels 
between Agatha's life and JKR's you know.

Young!Quirrell, Young!Riddle, Young!Peter,Young!Barty, all 
seemingly innocent men. Who says JKR doesn't repeat herself? 
And of  all James' old classmates, only Lupin is said to look 
youthful, though he should be the same age as Sirius and 
Snape.

Still, it all started as a joke. I didn't expect to convince anyone, let 
alone myself.

But a funny thing happened when I went looking for clues to 
Lupin's perfidy. It seemed that JKR had been there first. She  put 
in  the cauldron full of extra potion. She made it easy to get into 
Snape's office. She put in Lupin's reluctance to touch Harry. She 
gave us  the empty grindylow tank versus the to-do over finding a 
safe home for Norbert. She shows us Lupin's farewell 
handshake with Dumbledore reprising Harry's greeting 
handshake with Quirrell.  She tells us good guys feel safe when 
they're with Dumbledore but Lupin can't wait to get away. She 
gave us  all of Lupin's ambiguous statements in the Shack, 
where Crookshanks, who really doesn't have much to do once 
he's opened the willow, is there to force Lupin into tortured  verity.


 She explained why  Voldemort's supporters would go after 
Pettigrew.  She even had Pettigrew fake his death twice, so that 
Lupin could  truthfully say: "Everyone thought Sirius had killed 
Peter. I believed it myself..until I saw the Map tonight," even if he 
had initially gone to Hogwarts because he'd learned that Peter 
was alive. I missed this on the first go round, and that's why I  
originally theorized that Lupin must have been after Sirius. You 
see, I really am not that ingenious. But JKR is. 

Debbie offers a reason why it couldn't have been so:

>>>But as a werewolf, Lupin can't pick and choose his victims.  
He may keep his mind when he transforms, but he has no 
control.  That's why the Marauders had 
to become Animagi in order to accompany him on his 
transformations, because werewolves can't resist human flesh.  
So he wouldn't have been able to save Harry.  <snip>  So he 
can't have had a *plan* that included keeping Harry alive.<<<


 The potion, "a very recent invention" is unlike the effect of the 
animagi, which only "seemed to make my mind less wolfish".  
Lupin explains what the potion does, "I keep my mind when I 
transform. I am able to curl up in my office, a *harmless* 
(emphasis mine) wolf, and wait for the moon to wane again." Ah, 
but humans are not harmless creatures, are they? Lupin with his 
human mind and his werewolf body would be capable of 
murder. Nobody yet has come up with a reason why this couldn't 
have happened, if Lupin secretly took his potion after all. 

As for hiding evidence of the crime, Lupin doesn't need to. 
Nobody is going to go after him in the Forbidden Forest on a 
night of the full moon. He can control Dementors, and he has the 
Invisibility Cloak.

If all Lupin's actions are aimed at stalling for time, then he has 
very good reason not to remind everyone what time of the month 
it is. We don't have to award Lupin the TMR award for best 
performance by an amnesiac --"I'm a werewolf! I forgot!" I will 
admit though, that I am amused by the contradictory premise that   
absent-minded Professor Lupin was so delighted with himself 
for remembering to pick up the cloak that he entirely  forgot about 
his imminent transformation. That would be funny, if the 
consequences hadn't been so dire.

I know may other alternate explanations can be contrived for 
most of this. It wouldn't be much of a mystery if they couldn't. But 
you see, the clues are there. I didn't have to invent any of them.

Catja wrote;
>>One of the key tropes of the fairy tale is that of opposing 
duality, the 
conflict between a delineated protagonist/antagonist who, 
importantly, mirror each other.<<<

Oh, absolutely. But Crouch!Moody isn't Lupin's mirror/antagonist. 
How can he be? Lupin's alive, the story's not over, and 
Crouch!Moody is out of the running. 404. Soul-sucked. Void 
where prohibited. Erase *.* 

 No, what Crouch's masquerade sets up is that the masquerade 
is possible. A really clever dark wizard can fool Dumbledore, win 
Harry's confidence, even teach a bit of real and useful Dark Arts 
defense. 

Lupin's mirror antagonist is Snape. Who else? Snape who is 
perhaps part-vampire, Snape whose disposition is the exact 
opposite of Lupin's,  Snape who loathes Lupin from the bottom 
of his heart. And if Snape, at the end of the story, proves to have 
been faithful to Harry all along, where does that leave Lupin?  I 
can't help but find it artistically pleasing, if of the four survivors of 
the Marauder days, two are on Harry's side and two are on 
Voldemort's. Snape and Sirius, versus Lupin and Pettigrew. Let 
the battle begin!

Pippin, tying the green willow around Catja's folklorist hat

"Here's a half a pound of reasons, and a quarter pound of sense
A small sprig of time and as much of prudence
You mix them all together and you will plainly see
He's a false deluding young man, let him go farewell he"
---All Around My Hat (traditional)