Perfidious!Lupin(WAS: Against Evil!Lupin responses (long))

[pippin_999 <foxmoth@qnet.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 49652

Marina said:.
>>Lupin's culpability is more severe than Harry's, for precisely 
that reason.  But I never said the two situations were identical in 
all respects.  I'm only saying that Lupin's actions and motives 
were similar to Harry's (they both had important information that 
they knew they should reveal, but kept quiet due to personal 
issues) than to genuinely treacherous people like Pettigrew or 
Karkaroff or Lucius Malfoy (who act from calculated malice).<<

Perfidy: deliberate violation of trust, breach of faith (Random 
House) Base treachery (Shorter Oxford) 

If malice is necessary for perfidy, then I withdraw the term. But 
Lupin's confession is canon, and I stand by perfidy for the 
treachery he describes:

"I sometimes felt guilty about betraying Dumbledore's trust, of 
course...he had admitted me to Hogwarts when no other 
headmaster would have done so, and he had no idea I was 
breaking the rules he had set down for my own and others' 
safety. He never knew I had led three fellow students into 
becoming Animagi illegally. But I always managed to forget my 
guilty feelings every time we sat down to plan our next month's 
adventure. And I haven't changed...
	

Lupin's face had hardened and there was self-disgust in his 
voice. "All this year I have been battling with myself, wondering 
whether I should tell Dumbledore that Sirius was an Animagus. 
But I didn't do it. Why? Because I was too cowardly. It would have 
meant admitting that I'd betrayed his trust while I was at school, 
admitting that I'd led others along with me...and Dumbledore's 
trust has meant everything to me. He let me into Hogwarts as a 
boy, and he gave me a job when I have been shunned all my 
adult life, unable to find paid work because of what I am. And so I 
convinced myself that Sirius was getting into the school using 
dark arts he learned from Voldemort, that being an Animagus 
had nothing to do with it...so, in a way, Snape's been right about 
me all along."

I think the closest parallel in Harry's experience is his theft of
the Weasley car, when he realizes that because of him, Arthur 
Weasley could be in trouble.

"Harry pushed his porridge away. His insides were burning with 
guilt. Mr. Weasley was facing an inquiry at work. after all Mr. and 
Mrs. Weasley had done for him over the summer." -- CoS ch. 6.

Harry feels terrible. But Lupin says he always managed to forget 
his guilty feelings when it was time to plan the next adventure. 
That makes him very different from Harry Potter. Lupin's actions 
*were* calculated.  They were not  spur of the moment like Harry 
stealing the car. 

  There is nothing in Lupin's confession about mixed motives. 
The way he tells it, his conscience and his duty were  on one 
side and his cowardice and self-interest were on the other...and 
cowardice and self-interest won, not just once, not just when he 
was boy, but over and over and over again. Those whom he 
betrayed (his word) were a man who had done everything for 
him, and a boy who was the orphan son of his dearest friends. 

 What would have happened to Dumbledore if one of Lupin's 
close calls had resulted in a biting or a death?  Harry can be 
forgiven for not considering the consequences to Arthur when he 
was only twelve, but Lupin is in his thirties now, and, by his own 
admission, even as a teenager he knew better. He says himself 
that he hasn't changed. 

The way Lupin presents himself in his confession and the way 
that Harry thinks of him cannot be reconciled. Judging from the 
ESE poll, most people think that Harry is right and Lupin is just 
beating up on himself. People have come up with a whole lot of 
reasons that Lupin's conscience *might*  have been weighing in 
on both sides of the issue. But these are conjecture. If Lupin did 
what he says he did for the reasons he said he did it, then 
perfidy is not too strong a word, IMO.

By his own confession, Lupin overcame his guilty feelings.That  
distinquishes Lupin from the other wrongdoers in the books. He 
is the only one whom we know for sure has a functioning 
conscience and a normative value system, and who  ignores 
them, not for fear of Voldemort, but because he wants to. That is 
absolutely essential for the moral meaning of the books, IMO. If 
every evil act is  laid to sociopathic sensibilities like Riddle's or
a diseased culture like that of Slytherin House (or the MoM under 
Crouch), or to coercion by force or fear, then there is no personal 
responsiblity for evil in the Potterverse. 

No, Lupin's choices were not easy--but isn't that where 
Dumbledore says the battle will be drawn? 

Maybe Lupin's confession will turn out to be a load of hooey. 
There is, as I have said, a lot of hooey associated with 
werewolves in the books. Lockhart's dubious homorphous 
charm, Riddle's reference to werewolf cubs and Snape's 
assertion that werewolves' minds work differently than other 
peoples'  all stand  contradicted by Fantastic Beasts.  But I have 
a feeling Rowling is trying to tell us something, and it's not that 
everything about Lupin is what it appears to be.

I could be wrong. Maybe it will turn out that Lupin was indeed 
concerned about his dead friends' honor, though as 
Deranimmer pointed out, letting the man who betrayed them get 
near  their orphaned son seems an odd way to go about it. 

 Maybe Lupin really did feel Sirius was innocent. Thing is,  I can't 
understand why an innocent Lupin would then also need to 
convince himself that Sirius was using dark arts learned from 
Voldemort to enter the castle. Following the logic of that gives me 
a headache.

Or maybe Lupin thought he could use the map to keep Harry 
safe, except that Lupin didn't even have the map when Sirius 
broke into the castle. 


Or maybe not.

Pippin
who still can't trust Lupin, not even as far as she can throw a 
hippogriff, but who appreciates everyone's contributions to the 
thread