Lupin's untainted chocolate

[Diana]

No: HPFGUIDX 86269

snapesmate wrote: 
 Also I have read a post that mentioned 
> Lupin handing out tainted chocolate.  I do not recall canon that 
says 
> the chocolate was "tainted".  Am I drawing a blank on that as well?
> Lynnette, who thinks Snape IS a good guy, even if he is NOT a nice 
> guy!

Diana (me) writes:

Here is the quote from PoA: [Set Up: Lupin has handed out chocolate 
to all the students in the train car with him after driving away the 
dementor.  Too embarrassed about collapsing from the dementor's 
effects, Harry hasn't eaten his chocolate yet.)

QUOTE: Professor Lupin had come back.  He paused as he entered, 
looking around, and said, with a small smile, "I haven't poisoned 
that cholocat, you know..."
Harry took a bit and to his great surprise felt warmth spread 
suddently to the tips of his fingers and toes.END QUOTE

The chocolate was NOT tainted, but another poster used this incident 
and Lupin's light-hearted comment as grounds for the theory that 
several red herrings suggesting that Lupin wasn't a good guy were 
placed throughout the book purposefully by JKR. The point of these 
red herrings was that when Lupin embraced Black in the Shrieking 
Shack, the reader (along with Harry) would be equally stunned by 
Lupin's appearing to be in leaque with the presumed-evil Black.  

While Lupin's being evil never actually crossed my mind because he 
spent all that time with Harry teaching him the Patronus Charm 
(meaning plenty of opportunities to injure/kill Harry were never 
acted upon), his sudden embrace of Black in the Shrieking Shack was 
surprising because I wondered why a good guy (Lupin) would side with 
Black (portrayed as a bad guy through most of PoA).  It made me 
eager for the explaination about what was really going on with 
Black, which is what JKR was trying to do all along - get the reader 
intensely involved with the story.  

Diana L.