Lupin and Tonks

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 148313

Note to List Elves: Yahoo ate my first version of this post, so I'm
trying again. I'll delete the duplicate if there is one.

I recently noticed something that escaped me on previous rereadings of
HBP: In "A Very Frosty Christmas," Mrs. Weasley is playing Celestina
Warbeck *love songs* on the wireless. This can't be for the benefit of
Bill and Fleur, who don't need encouragement, thank you, and Fleur in
any case is contemptuous of the music. But Lupin is there, and his
reaction is to stare into the depths of fire "as though he could not
hear Celestina's voice, either hiding or suppressing his feelings (Am.
ed. 330). Meanwhile, Ginny thinks that Mrs. Weasley is trying to
interest Bill in Tonks by frequently inviting her to dinner (94,
obviously a futile endeavor), but Mrs. Weasley, who has been giving
Tonks "tea and sympathy" (83), may be trying to provide her with
opportunities to be with Lupin. "Dear, why not come to dinner at the
weekend. Remus and Mad-Eye are coming--?" (82).

Tonks can't be depressed, as Harry thinks, by Sirius Black's death
(although the changed Patronus, a large four-footed animal, is
probably a red herring to make the reader think he's right). Nor can
she be suffering from survivor's guilt, as Hermione suggests (95).
After her recovery from the mysterious green-lit spell (either a
non-AK or a failed nonverbal AK), she's her old self again, pink hair
and all, in the final chapter of OoP. The mousy brown hair appears
some two or three weeks later at the opening of HBP. Hermione says tha
Lupin tried to talk to her (95), but his misunderstanding of her
reasons for being depressed could have made matters worse,
particularly if she confessed her feelings for him at that point and
was rejected. Apparently, she's done so more than once, if not exactly
the "million times" she claims to have done so in "The Phoenix Lament"
(shouldn't that be "Phoenix's"?), p. 624. 

When Tonks suddenly appears in the seventh-floor corridor, claiming to
have tried to see Dumbledore (has she been hiding there in one of the
Invisibility Cloaks, watching Harry under DD's orders, perhaps on
Snape's information?), her eyes fill with tears as she tells Harry
that the Daily Prophet's articles about catastrophes in the WW are not
up to date (466)--and the next incident we hear about (from Hermione)
is the murder of the five-year-old Montgomery boy by the werewolf
Fenrir Greyback, the same one who bit Lupin (473). Almost certainly
that's the incident Tonks is referring to (she asks whether Harry has
had any letters from Order members, presumably Lupin). I'm guessing
that the incident has hardened Lupin's resolve not to enter a
relationship with Tonks, perhaps for fear that without his Wolfsbane
Potion and in company with other werewolves, he may do something
equally horrible. (Another of the "million times" she's told him that
it doesn't matter?) 

(On a side note, I don't doubt that Tonks tried to see Dumbledore and
that it related to Lupin, which explains her emotional state, but I
think she may have been in the hallway chiefly to keep an eye on
Harry, under the Invisibility Cloak as previously indicated. It seems
to me very unlikely that Snape is deceived by Draco's polyjuiced
friends, but it's impossible for him to watch them himself without
being detected, which may have been one of the things that he and DD
were arguing about it the forest. DD could have sent Tonks to watch
for Harry in the seventh-floor corridor as an alternative without
necessarily providing any additional information. I don't think she's
in the corridor by accident or coincidence, if only because, as Harry
points out, DD's office is on the other side of the castle [465], so
she'd be unlikely to take that route to return to the entrance hall,
and because her appearance is so sudden and silent. "Walking toward
him as if she often strolled down this corridor" [same page] could
also be a clue, although Harry would probably have seen her on the
Marauder's Map had she done so previously.)

Why JKR should keep Tonks's reasons for being depressed mysterious
until the end of HBP is unclear (yes, it ties in with Merope's loss of
powers and the devastating effects of unrequited love; it introduces
the changed Patronus motif, which may be important in Book 7; and it
shows Harry being wrong again, but none of this seems a sufficient
explanation for the Tonks/Lupin subplot). Maybe she just wanted to
make the fans of those two characters happy and give readers and Order
members something to celebrate (in case Bill/Fleur is insufficient).
More likely we'll see a happier, more magically efficient Tonks and
Lupin working together to help Harry in Book 7. 

In any case, just as Harry is wrong that she's mourning the death of
her cousin, I think that readers who suspect a polyjuiced Tonks are
also misreading the evidence. And although I think she was in the
seventh-floor corridor for a reason, to watch over Harry, I think she
also had a reason to talk to Dumbledore (the Fenrir Greyback
incident). Maybe she hoped to persuade him to find a less dangerous
assignment for Lupin, and his absence explains why she's even more
tearful and depressed than usual on that occasion.

Carol, not labeling this as a SHIPping post because my concern is a
close reading of the text to determine what's up with Tonks and not
whether Tonks should or shouldn't love Lupin