Unreliable narrator (Was: Snape's stalling)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 116997


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "nkafkafi" 
<nkafkafi at y...> wrote:
> 
> 
> Neri:
> 
> My problem with the Snape fans is that the "subversive 
reading" (is this the term?) always seems to be in ONE direction. 
Somehow it is always to make Snape look better than what the 
way he comes out in the text, never worse.<

LOL! I had the opposite impression...that  anti-conspiracy 
theorists are always saying JKR didn't *mean* to make  Lupin  
look bad <g>.  Personally, I believe I agreed with you on the time 
line but there are still quite  a few reasons for why Snape couldn't 
have made contact with the order. Primarily,   I am sure he 
believed Harry  and his friends were safe enough in the 
forest--safer than they would be at the school, since Umbridge 
would have had them all expelled for breaking into her office and 
attacking the I-squad.


Actually, unless JKR has gone and revised the text as she 
sometimes does,  I can prove that the Harry POV 3rd person 
limited narrator is unreliable.  JKR confirmed in chat that Lupin 
changes when the moon is up.

http://www.quick-quote-quill.org/articles/2000/1000-scholastic-ch
at.htm

*****
Can you explain how Lupin turns into a werewolf, since he didn't 
turn in the Shrieking Shack in Prisoner of Azkaban, but instead 
he turned only when the full moonlight hit him outside the 
tunnel? If he only turned into a wolf in the moonlight, why didn't 
he just stay inside? Did it have to do with the potion? Or was the 
moon not up yet?

The moon wasn't up when he entered the Shrieking Shack.
******



Evidently, the position of the clouds has nothing to do with it...but 
that's not what our narrator thinks...
-----
A cloud shifted. There were suddenly dim shadows on the 
ground. Their party was bathed in moonlight.  -- PoA ch 20.

"Here comes Lupin!"said Harry as they saw another figure 
sprinting down the stone steps and haring toward the Willow. 
Harry looked up at the sky. Clouds were obscuring the moon 
completely. -- PoA ch 21

The moon slid out from behind its cloud. They saw the tiny 
figures across the grounds stop. Then they saw movement.--
"There goes Lupin," Hermione whispered. "He's transforming--"
--PoA ch 21
----
This has serious implications for Lupin theory. If he changes 
only when the moonlight hits him, as Harry seems to think, then 
he might have thought it was safe to return to the castle on a 
cloudy night. But apparently he had no justification for thinking 
so.

Now, if  anyone wants to refute  all this by supposing authorial 
error, go ahead -- but in that case it's not  the sole province of 
conspiracy theorists, is it?

Pippin