DD and the rat: Conspiracy theories compared [LONG]

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 115948



> Lissa:
> 

> But the big person is Dumbledore.  Dumbledore let Remus 
into school when no one else would, and gave him work when 
he hadn't been able to find any.  Beyond that, Remus KNOWS 
this, and certainly seems grateful in PoA.  <

But he also admits that he has twice betrayed Dumbledore's 
trust. Once by leading his friends to become illegal Animagi and 
breaking the rules Dumbledore had made for his safety, and 
again as an adult, by not telling Dumbledore that Sirius was an 
Animagus. He also failed to turn in the Marauder's Map, which 
wouldn't have revealed his earlier betrayal, and would have 
revealed Sirius if he was on the grounds. 

That Lupin did this because he had doubts about Sirius's guilt is 
a pervasive bit of fanon, but the books don't support it much 
more than Leatherpants!Draco. Lupin says at least  three times 
that he thought Sirius was guilty.

"Everyone thought Sirius killed Peter[...] I believed it myself --"

"And so I convinced myself that Sirius was getting into the school 
using dark arts he had learned from Voldemort."

"All this time we've thought Sirius betrayed your parents, and 
Peter tracked him down--but it was the other way around, don't 
you see?"

Lissa: 
> To align with Voldemort is to align DIRECTLY against James, 
Sirius, Peter (in theory), and Dumbledore.  It's to bring about 
their destruction.  I can understand that Remus may be 
frustrated.  I can understand where there was an appeal- and I 
do think that's why Sirius thought that he was the spy.  But I can 
not see Remus going directly against those four, when they have 
meant everything to him.  And even above MWPP, I can not see 
him going against Dumbledore, who is the only person to ever 
take a public risk on his behalf.  And if Voldemort is going to win, 
Dumbledore must be destroyed.  Remus is plenty smart enough 
to know this.<<

I remember from history class that revolutions happen when 
rising expectations are stalled. That's what happened to Lupin. 
Whatever he thought was going to happen after Hogwarts, the 
fact remains that he says his transformations while he was there 
were the happiest times of his life. Clearly things got worse for 
him after he left school--besides a statement like that being 
classic novelese for "The author wants you to know that this 
character has never really adjusted to adulthood." 

Remus *is* smart--but he has often been unwise. We also don't 
know if he made some new friends when he left school. What 
was he doing for the Order? He would have been isolated from 
other werewolves while at Hogwarts. Meeting them might have 
changed his perspective.

And Voldemort's cunning can't be left out of the picture either. We 
have Sirius's word that most wizards didn't realize what he was 
capable of until late in his rise to power. We saw in OOP what 
Dumbledore was like as master of the Order--aloof, remote, 
wary of revealing himself to anyone, like Lupin, who seems to 
have legilimency talents. And we never see that Lupin has an 
emotional closeness to Dumbledore the way that Harry or 
Hagrid or even Snape has. 

 If Voldemort presented himself to Lupin as he did to Ginny...as 
someone who really cared about him, when Lupin's old friends 
were pre-occupied with the Order--well, who knows what might 
have happened? 

The fact that JKR has left us so much room here to speculate is 
in itself suspicious, IMO.

Pippin