Two Wormtails

[olivier.fouquet+harry at m4x.org]

No: HPFGUIDX 118510

 > I must add here that personally, when first reading PoA, I knew
 > almost from the beginning that Sirius was a dog animagus (the
 > name "Sirius Black" was a dead giveaway) and I was sure he was
 > innocent. I admit that there wasn't much of a detective work behind
 > this. It was in part because the Dementors were so obviously the bad
 > guys, so Sirius must have been the good guy, and also the fact that
 > the book was called "the prisoner of Azkaban" and not "the murderer
 > from Azkaban". Probably it was also my personal liking for dogs ;-)
 > but I'm not surprised at all that JKR shares this liking. I also must
 > confess that I thought Crookshanks was the other animagus, that I
 > missed Lupin being a werewolf and that Scabbers!Peter got me
 > completely by surprise. But the clues were there and the mystery
 > (especially as I was sure Sirius was innocent) was there. In the case
 > of Two Wormtails we have no clues, no mystery and no solution in
 > canon.

Olivier
I second you on that one Neri: from my very first reading of PoA, I 
suspected Sirius was innocent. And the book is clearly full of 
mysteries that need to be accounted for. This in my opinion is the 
source of the whole ESE!Lupin problem. PoA is a very ambiguous when it 
comes to Lupin, and for the very good reason that the reader is lured 
into suspecting him of helping Sirius Black (or even of being Black in 
disguise). However, OoP is plain and straightforward when it comes to 
Lupin, as I have shown a while ago (message 101178) by classifying each 
and every scene in which Lupin appears. This is what I wrote about him 
in message 101178.

Is Lupin ambiguous? Well, maybe he is, but the
  least we can say is that the non subversive way to read him is the
  calm, quiet, intellectual guy with a certain talent for human relation
  that

  He's the one that finds the words to tell Harry just enough about
  Voldemort, he seems very close to both Sirius and Molly and he is
  obviously trusted by Moody and Tonks (look down all the references of
  Moody and Lupin talking about Order business). He's courageous, saving
  Harry's life twice and Neville's life once during the battle.

  Pippin has argued that Lupin might want Harry to continue Occlumency in
  order to weaken Harry (it is true that Harry is particularly weak after
  the Occumency lessons). However, Sirius is very concerned about the end
  of Occlumency too. In fact, he is the first to react, before Lupin,
  when Harry says the lessons have ended. We can suspect that Sirius and
  Lupin both know from the start about Dumbledore's plan to trap
  Voldemort in the Mom (look up the fleeting look between them during the
  diner). He has also argued that Lupin's weak points are his cowardice
  and his desire to be liked. However, in all the references above, I
  fail to discern such traits. Even in the Pensieve scene, it is Peter
  and the pair James/Sirius who seems very concerned about being liked.
  Remus is utterly absent, he reads and wants to do some homework.

  Maybe Lupin will turn out to be evil, maybe he will be a traitor to the
  Order, just like Peter was the first time. However, to say that this is
  the natural way to read the character seems to me to be an incredible
  stretch.




 > Neri:
 > So here we come to the crux of it. The only plus to double!Wormtail
 > is that it supports ESE!Lupin. But ESE!Lupin is in itself a theory,
 > and not without problems. So instead of supporting a problematic
 > theory with more canon you support with a more problematic theory.
 > This is not merely going out on a limb, it is going out on a limb of
 > a limb of a limb. I think the only reason you are still up there is
 > that even gravity can't follow the intricate reasoning ;-)
 >
 > Neri

Olivier
Neri, your fierce defense of Lupin has owned you a PARTY LINE badge 
(Principle Altruistic Righteous Teacher: Yummy Lupin Is Not Evil)

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