Remus Lupin: Good man doing nothing (long!)

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 149223

Enough about Snape, let's tackle the real mystery man of the series, 
Remus Lupin.  For over a week I've been pouring through the books 
(this site was particularly helpful: 
http://www.geocities.com/willowsevern/ ) trying to get an accurate 
overview of the man.  It wasn't easy.  And yes, there were times I 
thought my brain was going to explode. Because Lupin is slippery.  
He's so very polite and sensitive and a wonderful teacher and yet 
he's remarkably laissez-faire  with Harry's physical and emotional 
well being.  So how to respond to this seeming dichotomy?  There's a 
classic quote that I think sums up Lupin quite nicely: 

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do 
nothing." –Edmund Burke

Remus Lupin is a good man.  But he's an expert in doing nothing.

The first two books Lupin does such a good job at doing nothing we 
don't even hear about him.  He may possibly be one of the "friends" 
Hagrid contacted to create the photo album he gives to Harry in 
PS/SS, chapter 17.  But if he *was* one of those friends he ignored 
the colossal hint that Harry was out and about in the WW and curious 
about his parents.  Instead, he ignores Harry for an entire year.  
(Actually, as a friend of James, he's been ignoring Harry for ten 
years.  We have nothing in canon suggesting Lupin asked about or 
even cared what happened to James' orphaned son.)		 

So, nothing substantial until he arrives on the scene in PoA.  And 
when we meet him he's sleeping.  Not merely napping, he is sleeping 
*hard*.  He misses the near confrontation between Harry and Draco 
[80], and the rather loud confrontation between Crookshanks and 
Scabbers (which causes an even louder one between Ron and Hermione) 
[78].  Ron even worries for a moment that Lupin might be dead, and 
rather than dismissing him out of hand, Hermione checks to make sure 
Lupin is breathing [79].		

Lupin doesn't wake up until the dementor arrives, and his moment of 
action is a bit late.   "But the door slid slowly open before Lupin 
could reach it." [83]  He tries to talk the dementor down and when 
that doesn't work *finally* uses a bit of magic. [85]

It's an interesting introduction, I think.  Lupin sleeps through 
everything and when the children are confronted by an evil they 
can't fight, he's late at chasing it off and Harry suffers.  The 
reason I focus on this is because this is Lupin's method of 
operation throughout the rest of PoA and most of the series.

He's reluctant to teach Harry the Patronus spell [189], he's slow to 
tell Harry about his connections with his father [241].  He *never* 
steps forward to tell Dumbledore about Sirius being an animagus, 
even after it looks like Sirius came frighteningly close to killing 
Harry [265-268].  (Sirius is the one to finally tell Dumbledore 
[428]).  Unless he's forced to it, it seems that Lupin would much 
prefer to sink unnoticed into a corner.  Even if he's needed.  Even 
if good people suffer from his inaction.

In GoF, Lupin doesn't appear once.  He doesn't write a single letter 
to Harry, he doesn't have a single conversation.  Sirius risks his 
freedom and possibly his soul to see or talk to Harry [335,521] and 
Lupin, who'd have made a handy go-between, doesn't help.

But then something changes.  In OotP, Lupin *gets involved*.  He 
volunteers for [50] and actually appears to *lead* the mission to 
collect Harry from the Dursleys.  He takes part in discussions [89-
97] to the point of taking control at times [90].  He's efficient, 
decisive and forceful when he needs to be.  Had I been wrong?  Was 
the Lupin of the past books an inaccurate view of the man?

Enter Snape's worst memory.  (No really, dive on in.  You need to 
see this.) *Here's* the Lupin we know and love and have a hard time 
getting a handle on.  

Interestingly enough, he mirrors Snape in this scene.  Snape 
is "stringy, pallid" and concentrating on his exam [640-641]; Lupin 
is "pale and peaky" and "absorbed in the exam" [642].  Compare them 
to Sirius and James, grinning, finished, totally confident, totally 
at ease [642].  (Peter, or "Wormtail" as Harry calls him, is doing 
his own thing (one of these boys just doesn't belong?).[642])

But get the boys out into the sunlight and our Lupin of past books 
is quite apparent.  The bullying of Snape begins.  JKR pulls no 
punches; she gives us no out.  James and Sirius gang up on and 
overpower a non-provoking (in this scene) Snape.  Lupin doesn't like 
it; he doesn't like it from the get go [645].  Lupin is a Prefect.  
His friends are breaking the rules, and they're engaging in behavior 
he disapproves of, and Lupin does.... nothing.  He is a perfect 
example of Edmund Burke's good man passively allowing evil to 
triumph.  If James was stopped in his intention of showing Snape's 
genitals to whomever cared to look, Lupin was not the person who 
stopped him.

Harry, very properly I think, is horrified.  When he talks to Sirius 
and Lupin about what he'd seen Sirius is, again quite properly, "not 
proud of it" [670].   Strangely enough, Lupin doesn't seem all that 
bothered by his own behavior.  He does admit that he never told 
James or Sirius to "lay off Snape" [671], but he seems to take 
Sirius's excuse that Lupin did manage to shame them from time to 
time as valid.  That disturbs me a bit.  Because Sirius gives Lupin 
a pass and Lupin seems to take it.  But the thing is Lupin saw a 
wrong being committed and quietly let it happen.  That's... not 
good.  And I'm not sure Lupin realizes this.

Although...  after this little scene, Lupin seems to slip back into 
sleep again.  Though he says he's going to get Harry's Occlumency 
lessons back on again, there's no indication he took any action at 
all.  (Even his statement reads as vague: "If anyone's going to tell 
Snape it will be me!" [672] doesn't mean Snape is going to be told 
anything by anyone.)  Perhaps Lupin isn't as comfortable with the 
reminder of past mistakes as he appears to be and that causes him to 
regress back into his old passive ways. 

Lupin does take part in the battle at the DoM, but he's strangely 
inactive.  At least, as per the text.  It makes sense that he's 
participating in the battle, but the reader sees him only twice.  
Sirius is the great warrior here.  He takes on several of the Death 
Eaters at different times.  Lupin shields Neville and Harry from 
Malfoy once [804], and then drags Harry back from running through 
the veil after Sirius.  At which point Lupin shares what might 
possibly be his personal motto: "There's nothing you can do..." 
[806].  

There's a moment, at the end of OotP, where it seems that Lupin has 
woken up again.  He joins with Arthur, Mad-Eye and Tonks to confront 
the Dursleys at the train station.  But Arthur, not Lupin, seems to 
be in charge now [868].   Lupin goes along with it, but he doesn't 
appear to have initiated the confrontation.

By HBP Lupin seems to be fully back to old tricks.  We neither see 
nor hear from Lupin until Christmas.  (Not like Harry would have 
appreciated a note or anything, right, Lupin?).  At our first 
glimpse of him he's lost in a daze, staring into the fire [330].  He 
perks up when Harry shares his suspicions regarding Snape and Draco 
with Arthur, but then he takes a strange turn.

Lupin launches into a speech about the need to blindly and 
unquestionably trust Dumbledore [332].  Where does this come from?  
He didn't trust Dumbledore blindly before.  Throughout PoA Lupin 
rarely if ever turned to Dumbledore for help or advice. (We *know* 
he shared no information with Dumbledore.)  And now suddenly it's 
like he's joined a cult.  Must not question Dumbledore, must not 
dislike Snape.

Then there's the way he talks about being with his "equals" and his 
bitterness about becoming a spy among the werewolves [334].  Lupin 
does not appear to be very happy with Dumbledore.  And while he's 
able to suck it up and engage a bit more fully with Harry, there's 
definitely something going on.  Lupin doesn't attempt to contact 
Harry again.

So what changed from GoF to OotP and then changed again by HBP?  
Tonks could be the answer for the first change, love of a good woman 
and all that.  Only that doesn't explain why Lupin shut her out so 
completely by the opening of HBP.  The death of Sirius could provide 
an explanation for Lupin's shut-down in HBP, both his renewed 
passivity and his dismissal of Tonks.  But I'm not sure that Sirius 
has any hand in Lupin waking up for the bulk of OotP.  Why didn't 
Sirius's return affect Lupin in GoF?  Did Tonks wake him up in OotP, 
but then couldn't help him once Sirius died? 

I suspect there's a tie into Dumbledore somewhere in there.  Mainly 
because of Lupin's weird take on Dumbledore as his (and everyone's) 
personal moral compass.  And then there's his strange reaction when 
he's told of Dumbledore's death in HBP.

"No!" Lupin looked wildly from Ginny to Harry, as though hoping the 
latter might contradict her, but when Harry did not, Lupin collapsed 
into a chair beside Bill's bed, his hands over his face.  Harry had 
never seen Lupin lose control before; he felt as though he was 
intruding upon something private, indecent." [614]		

Lupin is having a rather noticeable breakdown.  Why?  Why Lupin more 
than any other character?  It's like Dumbledore's death is one more 
thing piled on top of an already heavy load.  But what is that heavy 
load?  Does Lupin feel somewhat responsible for Sirius's death?  
Does he feel that he acted too slowly in PoA, or should have acted 
when the Occlumency lessons stopped in OotP?  Or did he have some 
information on Snape that he chose not to share?

Honestly, I have no idea.  Lupin is a bundle of contradictions.  
It's easy to see how his behavior can seem suspicious enough to 
grant him the ESE moniker.  It's also easy to see why he's 
considered such a wonderful person.  Frankly, I think Lupin lacks 
the sort of initiative required to become ESE.  And I also believe 
his pleasant passivity hides a wealth of pain.  Snape referred to 
him as weak, and he is.  (As he'd admit to you, himself.)  But he 
doesn't have to be.  We've seen Lupin take action and he's good at 
it, a natural leader.  He is a good man.  Now if only he'd *do* 
something.

[All page numbers refer to Scholastic hardback editions of the 
books.]

Betsy Hp, sooo glad to be done with this!