[HPforGrownups] Re: Is Lupin a Legilimens? Is that Suspicious?

[fair wynn]

No: HPFGUIDX 157467


> > > Betsy Hp wrote:
><snip>
> > > And perhaps the reason Dumbledore chose Snape for the job of
> > > Legilimency teacher is that Lupin (the man of many excuses) does not
> > > have Dumbldore's complete trust.
> > >
> > > Betsy Hp (who's finding that the more and more she looks at Lupin
> > > the shakier and shakier his good guy status becomes -- hanging by
> > > the interviews here, folks. <g>)

wynnleaf
Well, Lupin is still a good teacher, regardless what kind of person he is.  
Many readers want to say "Bad teacher equates to evil character," but that's 
certainly not true.  Snape is probably DDM, yet he's mean to his students.  
Because the books revolve around a school there's a tendency to assume that 
the good teachers *are* good.  FakeMoody was a pretty good teacher, too.  
JKR saying that she'd like a teacher like Lupin for her daughter means, imo, 
very little about his goodness as a character.

>Pippin:
>Ah, those interviews. No, Lupin is definitely not going to be the sort of
>villain that makes you hiss and throw popcorn at the screen. But there's
>villainy of another kind,  evil that moves in the most exalted circles,
>and has only the very finest friends. There's evil that makes you look
>uneasily down the table and ask, "Is it I?"

wynnleaf
If Lupin turns out to be a traitor, I see him as being far more conflicted 
as a traitor.

The biggest flaw, imo, of the theory that Lupin is a traitor is that he was 
one of the Order members that was at 12 Grimmauld Place when Snape alerted 
the Order to go to the Ministry of Magic during OOTP, as well as tell them 
to alert Dumbledore.   Yet in the Spinners End chapter of HBP, Bellatrix 
knows nothing of Snape's alerting the Order and he certainly doesn't mention 
it and, by his silence, implies that he had nothing to do with it.  His 
action completely thwarted Voldemort's plan to get the prophecy.  So if 
Lupin was a traitor, he did not reveal Snape's action to Voldemort.  Yes, 
yes, I know there's this ridiculously convoluted theory about how Snape is 
really ESE and this was all Voldemort's plan.  In addition to the obvious 
arguments against that, it would also seem highly unlikely JKR would have 
both Snape and Lupin be traitors to DD.  So if Lupin's a traitor, Snape is 
probably not, yet Lupin didn't "out" Snape.

This would make Lupin a character acting on both sides.  An OFHLupin, or 
more likely, just a very, very conflicted character -- weeping over 
Dumbledore's death, partly from the guilt of his own involvement in it.


>Carol: <snipped>
> > No, I don't think Lupin is ESE! but he's dangerously weak (as Snape
> > insinuates to Tonks in HBP)>
>
>Pippin:
>But this is semantic. "I am flawed, you are weak, he is ever so evil." Why
>don't we say that Snape's sadism or Draco's xenophobia is just a weakness?
(snips)
>Wanting to be liked is considered nicer  than sadism or xenophobia.
>but if wanting to be liked leads you to renege on your commitments and
>put innocent people at risk, then maybe it shouldn't be. JKR won't make
>herself popular by saying so -- who is she to tell us that we ought to
>change our ideas about what's acceptable? But I doubt that she's worried
>about that.

wynnleaf
I find it amazing how Lupin could be guilty of (for all he knew) putting 
every child in Hogwarts at risk from a crazed murderer for 9 months and all 
of us readers (me too for years) are willing to forgive him because he's 
"nice," a "good teacher," and he's "sorry."  His excuse of being unwilling 
to tell Dumbledore about risks and mistakes he made as a teenager -- about 
20 years previously! -- is held up as an understandable excuse.  Why do we 
think this?  Because we like Lupin and his niceness.  Most importantly, he 
seems to support Harry.

There's a flaw in this support of Harry, btw.  Why is it that Sirius could 
write to Harry even while on the run, but Lupin -- for all his vaunted 
concern -- can never write him?  I remember wondering in GOF, "where's 
Lupin?  Why's he not contacting Harry, too?"  And then in HBP, as the close 
friend of now-dead Sirius, the person who would have known how Sirius' death 
affected Harry -- but he never writes Harry.  He says at Christmas that he 
couldn't write.  Can't?  At all?  Not even just after Sirius' death?  But of 
course, he never did, even during OOTP and GOF.  JKR has a number of people 
write Harry, including Hagrid, over the course of the books.  Why not Lupin?

By the way, the real importance of the clues about legilimency aren't how 
Lupin could use it, or how well he can do it, or *anything* regarding plot.

The real importance, if Lupin is a legilimens, is that it means that JKR is 
holding back important info from us about Lupin.  You have to ask yourself 
why.  When an author holds back info on a character for this long -- over 4 
books -- then the payoff is usually going to be pretty Big.  Not just an 
"oh, by the way, Lupin can to legilimency."  If he can do it, I'd think it 
means JKR wants there to be some big surprises about Lupin in Book 7.  The 
question is what those surprises are.

wynnleaf

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