How to contstruct an ESE!plot was Re: The Secret Revealed! ESE!Arthur

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 147075

Olivier:
> Just so you know, Richard, I don't believe a word of ESE!Arthur, 
ESE! Arthur is just an  exercise in style to show that one can take 
any HP character and build a convincing case  that he's ESE by 
selecting somewhat improbable events and forgetting about anything 
that  goes against the theory. In fact, I'm even a bit surprised that 
anyone could tkink that I was  writing seriously (likewise, it took 
me a long long time and her repeated confirmations to 
believe that Pippin was actually seriously in defending ESE!Lupin). 

Pippin:
I had a feeling I was being teased :) Not that I would complain. 
It was  a similar impulse that led me to develop ESE!Lupin in the
first place. After GoF, the theory was put forward that
Snape's betrayal of Dumbledore had been so strongly foreshadowed
that it *must* take place. Hmmph, I thought, I bet  you could take
any HP character and make a case that they would betray Dumbledore.

I picked Lupin for my test, not because I saw treachery in him,
but because, in her consideration of who might betray Dumbledore,
another poster had listed all the characters who were close to him,
one after the other, with one exception. She had put Lupin and Sirius 
on the same line. 

I began to wonder what JKR was trying to accomplish
by associating these characters so closely that people thought of
them as a unit. Usually authors try to make their characters as
different from one another as they can, conflict being the engine
of drama. I began to wonder if Lupin mightn't benefit, as it
were, from innocence by association.

I was reading a book at the time on how to construct mystery 
stories, and I thought, suppose PoA was a mystery and Lupin was
the villain, what was his crime? The book said that the author
must plant a clue to the crime in the sleuth's second interview
with the villain. Since Harry does not ask any questions of
Lupin in the class, I decided the second interview was Harry's
visit to Lupin's office (ch 8). I read the chapter carefully looking for
something that might have a bearing on Lupin's conduct at
the end of the book, where the crime would be committed,
(this is technically called a "reverse mystery") and what did
I find? Snape, saying he'd made a whole cauldronful of
wolfsbane potion. 

That had the look of a clue about it. The extra potion is
never mentioned again, so why is it in the story at all? It
doesn't tell you anything about Snape that we don't know
already, and even if it was JKR's purpose to emphasize how
enthusiastic Snape is about potion-making, it's  slightly
out of place. 

Okay, so there's extra potion, how does that make Lupin
a bad guy. What could he do with it? Steal it, obviously.

 But why steal wolfsbane?

Snape is making all Lupin needs and more, and it's of no
use to anyone who's not a werewolf. It doesn't even
taste good.

The only thing you could do with stolen potion, I
realized, was take it in secret. And the horrified realization
stole over me that Lupin was supposed to have forgotten to
take his potion at the end of PoA, and that was how
Pettigrew had managed to escape. But, but, if Lupin
*had* taken his potion, then he must've *let*  Peter escape.
And only a servant of Voldemort would do that.


I'd always thought it was a weakness of the plot in PoA  that 
unsuspected Death Eaters were supposed to be after
Peter and yet we never saw them. Omigawd, what if one
of them was right there in the Shrieking Shack all the time?

And there were other things about Lupin's behavior that
night that made more sense if he was on Voldemort's side.
Why was he so excessively guilty?  Why the ambiguous words 
when Sirius begs his forgiveness? 

There was the mystery of his transforming outside the Shrieking 
Shack, which didn't make sense if Lupin's
transformation was unplanned and couldn't be timed, but 
made perfect sense if it was. And then I saw him, in my
mind's eye, shoulder to shoulder with mad!Sirius about to
commit a murder which everyone agrees that James would
never have wanted, and saying, quietly, "You should have known,
Peter. If Voldemort didn't kill you, we would." 

Peter should have known that James's friends would go mad and 
seek revenge? After twelve years? And Lupin wasn't mad, the 
whole point of discrimination against werewolves being mere
prejudice is that when they're not transformed they're just 
as much in control of themselves as other people are. 

I thought what you thought. ESE!Lupin is just silly. After all, 
Snape's betrayal of Dumbledore was
very strongly foreshadowed. It was bound to happen.
So he's the bad guy, right?

But, hold on,  this is JKR we're talking
about.  She was perfectly capable of making it *look*
as though Snape had betrayed Dumbledore, and then,
just as she had with p-poor stuttering Professor Quirrell, 
producing a culprit  seemingly out of left field, but actually 
with clues pointing to him all along. 

But Lupin is a good guy! Except...there ain't no such animal.
There are saints, maybe, but Lupin obviously isn't one of 
them, so who's to say his flaws could not destroy him?
If werewolves are  normal people, then they
have just as much right to make failed choices as others do.
Of course  series regulars aren't supposed to  go wrong,
wouldn't sell a whole lot of lunchboxes that way, but JKR
has been very clear that HP isn't a series. The characters
do change, they grow, they learn, they die -- and they fail.

And I knew. I thought I must be wrong, but I knew.

Even I didn't think sociopath!Lupin made much sense, but after
OOP there was a far more credible reason for Lupin to have
joined Voldemort. Voldemort is apparently the only adult
wizard who is willing to help the Giants and Goblins fight for
their rights. Wouldn't he help the werewolves, too?

And right on cue, HPB provided the answer. He would indeed.
Yeah, Fenrir is disgusting, but if I was fighting Umbridge, I'd
want all the help I could get. And we saw that Dumbledore 
didn't have much power against Umbridge -- most of what she
did was perfectly legal, and Dumbledore doesn't stop people
from doing what the law allows, does he? He'll bend it a bit,
to keep the innocent out of its path, but he's not leading any 
revolution even if Umbridge thought he was. 

Other clues have turned up in later books which support
the theory. The stolen potion motif, for one.

Lupin's "odd, closed" expression in PoA. He must
be an occlumens, but why pick such an obscure way to indicate
it? 

OOP let us know that you can see the Quidditch pitch from 
the DADA office, a seemingly meaningless bit of detail but 
one which  confirms that transformed!Lupin could have spotted
transformed!Sirius at the top of the stands. Just before the
dementors showed up. Lupin seems to know an awful lot
about dementor for someone who says "I don't pretend to be 
an expert at fighting dementors, Harry...quite the contrary...." 
And then you look at what that sentence *really* says.

The twelve year gap in Lupin's history, which remains blank
though we've got at least a skeleton backstory for every other
major character during this time. 

The very curious discrepancies between what Peter Pettigrew is
supposed to have done and his native abilities. And isn't he
exactly the sort of person Voldemort likes to frame -- someone who's
just barely tolerated, friendless or nearly so. Did any of the
Marauders really like him except for James?

Lupin's initial appearance, a stranger handing out candy to children
on a train -- so much for worrying that kids will feel betrayed, isn't
that exactly the 'friendly' stranger they've been warned about?

It takes a fair bit of analysis to come up with a theory like this, 
and why should anyone take the time, unless they're an HP fan with a
thing for puzzles and an unwillingness to be satisfied that Snape is
the one. But perhaps I'm not the only one.

So go ahead, make me a theory for ESE!Weasley that has
wordplay, clues,  plot points and a Weasley standing shoulder
to shoulder with a madman about to kill. I promise not to
laugh. :)

Pippin
whose original ESE!Lupin post may be found at 39362