Full Moon - A Rant About Lycantrophy Symptoms

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 123946


> Renee:
> Here I was, going to leave this subject alone for a change, but 
> apparently I can't help myself. 
> <snip>
> Apparently, JKR hasn't put much thought into handling this werewolf 
> transformation business in such a way that it makes sense - from not 
> checking any lunar charts to remaining vague about the Wolfsbane 
> regime. From which I deduce that the details surrounding Lupin's 
> lycanthropy aren't very important in the overal story arc, and that 
> it's not particularly meaningful to attach too much significance to 
> them.

Neri:
Renee, I agree with all my heart that JKR didn't put much thought into
the whole transformation thing, which most probably means it's not
something important in the story. I once got very interested with
Potterverse lycanthropy and did a full research on Lupin's symptoms. A
lot of wasted time. What was I thinking? That I'm going to discover
the cure for lycanthropy and win myself an Order of Merlin? Anyway,
after a lot of work I had to stop because too many things just didn't
add up. This unfinished research was gathering virtual dust in my hard
disk for many months now, and I think I'm going to publish a synopsis
now in the form of a rant. And I'm not even going to bother with
annotated quotes, so you'll have to take my word for it or go and look
it up for yourself, if you don't have a better way to waste your weekend. 

You see, I started by asking a very simple, in fact an elementary
question: When, in the phase of his illness, does Lupin appears ill?
In the days just before the transformation? After it? For this I
needed to track his transformations over the school year, and
immediately I ran into the first flint. Looking at the calendar of any
year, from Halloween (Oct 31) to Christmas (Dec 25) there are 55 days.
A lunar cycle (as Renee mentioned) is between 29 and 30 days. In
Halloween day Harry sees Lupin taking his potion, but Lupin still
appears in good health and shows up for the Halloween feast that
night. So this must be during the week before his transformation
(Lupin tells us in the Shack that he has to take the potion for a week
before the full moon). And indeed, several days after Halloween (I
couldn't find exactly how many from the text, but definitely more than
two days) Snape substitutes for Lupin in DADA.

Up until here everything fits. But in Christmas Lupin isn't present at
the feast, and from DD's comments it's clear that this is the night of
his transformation. This just won't work. The 55 days between
Halloween and Christmas are a bit less than two lunar cycles. If Lupin
indeed transformed in Dec 25, his previous transformation (the
memorable Snape substitution) should have been in Nov 26, which is
almost four weeks, not seven days, after Halloween, and the
transformation before that would have been Oct 28, which is BEFORE
Halloween. So why is Lupin taking his potion in Halloween's day???

If OTOH you assume that at Halloween it was indeed sometime during the
week before transformation, and start counting from there, it means
that the transformation in which Snape substituted for him was between
Nov 1 and Nov 6, so there was another transformation we are not told
about sometime between Nov 30 and Dec 5, and so at Christmas, when he
doesn't make it for the feast, Lupin should still be several days
before his next transformation (Dec 29 the earliest, but probably
later).  

This inconsistency immediately foiled my plans to have a nice sample
of transformation dates for concluding at what phase of the moon Lupin
is sickly. So I just gave up the Christmas transformation as a flint
and went for the Halloween case, because it is much more detailed. So
in Halloween Lupin is during the week before his transformation, Harry
sees him taking the Wolfsbane Potion during the day, and in the
evening at the Halloween feast he looks "as well as he ever did" and
"talking animatedly" with Flitwick. Several days later he is
"indisposed" and Snape substitutes for him in DADA. Several additional
days after that he shows up for his class, but he looks very ill. So
this means that whenever Lupin looks ill, it is during several days
AFTER his transformation. Sounds logical, right? A transformation must
be a very tiring an unhealthy experience.
 
This would imply that at the start of the school year at the Hogwarts
Express, when Lupin appeared very unwell (at one point the trio were
afraid he's dead!), he was just after his transformation. Several days
after the Hogwarts Express, during his first DADA class (the boggart
lesson) he is already looking much better, "as if he had several
square meals". 

But very frustratingly, having a transformation a day or two before
Sep 1, the canon date for the Hogwarts Express, fits PERFECTLY
(exactly four lunar cycles) with the Christmas transformation, the one
I already had to discard as a flint. But if you count backward from
the week-after-Halloween transformation (the one from which it is
possible to conclude that Lupin feels ill after the transformation)
you'll find that at the Hogwarts Express (Sep 1) he was in the week
BEFORE his transformation. Nothing adds up.

At this point I realized that I won't be awarded the Order of Merlin
any time soon, nor am I going to astound the members of HPfGU with a
well annotated and dated study of Lycanthropy symptoms. So I set my
sights lower, gave up on the transformations during the school year as
a one big flint, and went straight for the famous and detailed
transformation at the night of the Shrieking Shack. Does Lupin appear
ill before this transformation, or after it?

Well, it certainly doesn't look like it was before. The day of the
transformation night Lupin is well enough to conduct the DADA final
exam. We aren't specifically told how he looks like, but the exam
includes several dark creatures, and we know that not all the students
were up to handling all of them, so good shape seems to be required
from the teacher. And Lupin sounds quite cheerful when he commends
Harry for his success in the exam.

Aha! So he must be ill in the days after the transformation. Right? 

Wrong.

In the very day after the transformation night, when he is supposed to
be exhausted, Lupin resigns and during his whole talk with Harry, in
which we get plenty of information about his manner, he is never
described as tired, sickly or weak, although this would have fitted
very well with the tone of the conversation. It is almost expected
that JKR would use here words like "pallid", "exhausted" and "old", in
order to play on our sympathy for Lupin, but she doesn't. At the end
of this conversation Lupin says to DD "there is no need to see me to
the gates, I can manage
", and leaves the room carrying both his
suitcase and the empty grindylow tank. Neither DD nor the sympathetic
Harry feel that he'll need any help carrying these all the way around
the lake to the gate.

So in fact, around the most famous transformation of the year, Lupin
is NEVER described as looking ill.

Hey (I thought to myself). This might be a clue! What was special
about this last transformation? Lupin forgot to take his potion! He
had a good fight with Padfoot and a run around the grounds instead of
curling in his office. So maybe it is not his lycanthropy at all that
makes Lupin feel ill. It's side effects of the Wolfsbane Potion! Not
an Order of Merlin size discovery, to be sure, but might I still scrub
an article in the Salem Medical Journal?

Nope. This doesn't work either. Because in Snape's Pensieve memory in
OotP, many years before the Wolfsbane Potion was even invented, young
Remus is already looking "peaky", and Harry thinks the full moon might
be approaching. In fact, pensieve!Remus looking ill during the days
BEFORE his transformation is also suggested by pensieve!Sirius wishing
it would be full moon already. And this of course is a glaring
contradiction with the well-documented week-after-Halloween
transformation above.

As I say, nothing adds up. JKR can't even decide in what phase of the
moon Lupin appears ill.

And you won't catch me studying Potterverse lycantrophy with a ten
feet pole, even if I get a thousand galleons grant from the Lexicon.

Neri