Not so ESE:Lupin

[Justine]

No: HPFGUIDX 98625

So many Lupin supporters have used the JKR quote about wishing she had someone like him as a teacher to dispute the ESE theory.  Now, I still think it's valid, of course.  Why would she want someone who's ever so evil as a professor?  But there's more to the quote that, I believe, we've been missing:
 
"I was also playing with that [intolerance] when I created Professor Lupin, who has a condition which is contagious, of course, and so people are very frightened of him; and I really like Professor Lupin as a character because he's someone that also has a failing, because although he is a wonderful teacher (one I myself would have liked to have had as a teacher) and a WONDERFUL MAN, he does like to be liked and that's where he slips up. He's been disliked so often that he's always so pleased to have friends, so he cuts them an awful lot of slack." 
     -- J.K. Rowling (RAH) 
 
And there it is.  Emphasis mine.  We all know she picks and chooses her words with great care, and she does not say he is a wonderful ACTOR, nor does she say he is a NICE man ("nice is different than good"), nor a TALENTED man, and she certainly makes no intimation that we should be watching him, as she does for Snape... I can't recall where to find that quote, though.  She says he is a "wonderful man" with a flaw.  Now, he's found people who like him already:  Harry, the Weasleys, Hermione, Dumbledore, Tonks, etc.  Why would he screw that up and betray them?  (Though I shudder at the fanon that ships Remus/Tonks!  ::shudders::)  Sure, he has a failing, something that causes him to "[slip] up," but I certainly don't think Jo would call him a "wonderful man" if he were siding or contemplating siding with Voldemort.  We've already seen him slip up--he was afraid to tell his friends to leave Snape alone, he was afraid to tell Dumbledore about Animagus Sirius... perhaps he'll slip up
 again in book six or seven, but I think that "[slip] up" is a rather light term for betrayal by someone who is ever so evil.
 
If this has already been brought up, I apologize.
 
Justine, who realizes that the quote from Into the Woods is a bit ironic


		
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