Lupin's gratitude to Snape (Was: DD trust in Snape again)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 154713

Alla wrote:
> <big snip>
> Nope, to me Lupin deserves a respect for trying, it is just when he 
> tries to feel grateful to SNAPE I am not very convinced of his 
> sincerity, that's all. <big snip>

Carol responds:
Forgive me for snipping the rest of your post, but I wanted to focus
on this tidbit. Lupin has suffered once a month since he was a small
boy enduring very painful transformations that involved biting himself
when there was no one else to attack. For about ten months per year in
his last five years at Hogwarts, he had the company of his fellow
Marauders to solace him (and the fear and guilt that preceded and
followed these adventures, which involved several "near-misses" in
which some innocent person might have been killed or transformed into
a werewolf).

After Hogwarts, these adventures stopped, and he nothing to ease the
pain of the transformations. He appears on the Hogwarts Express some
fifteen years later looking ill, shabby, and prematurely lined and
grey. For the next nine months, Snape makes and promptly delivers
perfectly prepared wolfsbane potion and stays to make sure that Lupin
drinks it (PoA Am. ed.  ). For those same nine months (and for the
tenth, if Lupin hadn't run off forgetting to take the potion that
Snape was bringing), Lupin's suffering is eliminated or at least
greatly diminished. He transforms, perhaps painfully, first to a wolf
and then back to human form, but the beast he transforms into is "a
harmless wolf," not a savage, blood-maddened werewolf that endangers
any human who comes near him and tears his own flesh when the blood
thirst is unslaked.

After Hogwarts, Lupin, who can't prepare the potion himself, is left
to suffer again. Each time we see him, he's shabbier, greyer, and more
lined.

Surely he remembers those nine months of peaceful transformations and
wishes he could return to that time of safety and tranquility. Surely
he does feel a deep and genuine debt of gratitude to Snape. And surely
he regrets his own folly in forgetting to take the potion that one
night, losing his chance to return to Hogwarts as DADA teacher, with
Snape the Potions master still dutifully and perfectly preparing him
the wolfsbane potion every month.

Carol, who does not for one moment doubt Lupin's sincere gratitude to
Snape for giving him a nine-month respite from otherwise inescapable
suffering