Maligning Lupin

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 149778

Replies to Renee and Christina --

> Renee:
>  Even if a werewolf were to join Voldemort for reasons that had
> nothing to do with his lycanthropy, the Wizarding World would
> still maintain it did, instead of ascribing it to human fallibility.
>
> Pippin:
> Yes! Yes! And they'd be wrong. <snip>
>

Renee:
They'd be wrong, but - and now we're back to where we were a couple of
posts ago - they won't have any reason to change their minds about
werewolves. In order to do so they'd need an incentive in the form of
a good werewolf who has fought for the good cause. 

Pippin:

There are many Muggleborns and halfbloods who should
understand that human fallibility, exacerbated by poverty and
discrimination, can precipitate crime and terrorism without 
any help from Dark Magic or mind-altering diseases. Those
people are going to have more influence once Voldemort is 
defeated, or so I hope.


As for the Trio, they've got Bill. They may even be able to salvage
Lupin's reputation. That'd be a very Agatha Christie type ending, 
where the guilty party dies but his crimes are covered up to keep 
from discrediting his life's work. 

I can just see a scenario where Lupin dies, Snape
takes the rap and is punished as a traitor, and listies debate forever
whether Snape nobly sacrificed himself or got just what he deserved.
Shades of Sydney Carton. JKR did say that ATOTT is on her favorites
list. 



Renee:
 We also read that werewolves are contstantly shunted between the
Beast and Being department of the Ministry. To me, this says they're
considered to be different.

Pippin:
The educated opinion about werewolves is that they're human,
FBAWTFT tells us so, and that's a ministry approved text. 

My thought is the tug of war between the Beast and Being divisions is
mostly logistical. The Beasts folks would have all the staff and
equipment they need to deal with transformed werewolves, so why
duplicate it in Beings? The Beings folks would counter that 
werewolves, being human, deserve a sensitivity to their needs 
which the Beasts folks don't have. 

Bottom line, it's a rare bureaucrat that'd vote to make his
department smaller.<g>


Christina:

Lupin obviously knows he didn't bite anyone; he is saying that he
put them in a situation where they *could* have been bitten, and
that *that* must never happen again.  Lupin recognizes the danger
that he put the children in, and voices that recognition to Harry.
An acknowledgement of one's mistakes is an apology, or at least the
beginnings of one.

Pippin:
Let me try an analogy. 

Suppose someone almost runs you over with his car. He admits
he's a dangerous driver and says it must never happen again, 
but he says nothing about the fact  that he'd been drinking
or that  the accident allowed a murderer to escape.

Would you call that an adequate acknowledgment of his
mistakes?


Even with the most charitable, non-ESE interpretation of events,
Lupin's failure to take the potion was totally preventable
on his part. He didn't acknowledge that it had anything
to do with what happened. He also completely ignored the
fact that Pettigrew's escape was a bigger threat to Harry
and the other children than anything Lupin could
have done. Lupin might have bitten any one of them.
But Pettigrew could have killed them all.

Lupin leaves Harry blaming himself for Peter's escape
and blaming Snape for forcing Lupin out of a job that Lupin
later acknowledges  he'd have had to leave anyway.

Lupin quite see the parents' point that he's dangerous.
What he doesn't appear to see is that it's his carelessness
that made him dangerous, not his lycanthropy. I think
that's important.

Christina:
I still feel that this completely ignores the reasons behind
Lupin's decisions.



Pippin:
The reasons aren't important.


Christina:

Of course they are!  The key to a person's character
(not 'character' as in moral value, but 'character' as in the set of
traits that are attributed to a certain person) is not in the things
they do, but in their motivations. 

Pippin:
I guess I didn't make myself clear. I meant that Lupin's motivations
for disabling his conscience don't matter in determining the results. 

If you'll forgive another analogy, I've been known to disconnect the smoke
detector  when I broil a steak. Obviously it's
not because I want to be caught in a burning house. But if I
don't hook it up again when I'm finished, it could still happen. 

Lupin tells us he  still forgets his guilty feelings or
finds reasons to think they are unrealistic. In other words, he 
disconnected his conscience because, like my smoke detector, it 
was oversensitive.

Is it unreasonable to think he might have paid a price for that?

I'm not saying Lupin put "Wednesday: dentist, Thursday: actively 
pursue evil" in his pocket diary. But  Lupin does *not* 
see a twinge from his conscience as a reason to immediately stop
doing something.  That's a crack in his defenses that someone as
cunning as Voldemort could easily find a way through. 


Pippin:
Where do you see that Lupin likes being poor, jobless,  an
unpopular dinner guest, and being persecuted by the Ministry?  He
needs his wizard friends to shelter him from things which he
wouldn't have to suffer in the first place if wizarding society
was fair.



Christina:


We have no canonical evidence that Lupin's young life was anything
like you described. <snip>

Pippin:
"...he let me into Hogwarts as a boy, and he gave me a job,
when I have been shunned *all my adult life* (emphasis mine),
unable to find paid work because of what I am."

I'm afraid young Lupin's life post-Hogwarts wasn't as rosy as you 
think. His school days were the happiest of his life. Then he 
couldn't find paid work (did the word get out on the QT?)  Order
members started dying, and his friends started thinking he might 
be a spy.

I don't know why James didn't say "Look, Padfoot old chum, 
I know we're all on edge and  someone close to us is a traitor, 
but Moony is no more a Death Eater than I am. I trust Remus
Lupin completely. And if you think otherwise, you've got a twig loose."

 Heaven knows, *I've* heard words to that effect often enough <g> 

What I know is that James switched secret keepers, and Remus was not told. 

I know there's a honking big gap between Hogwarts and
 Godric's Hollow. On one side  we've got the
Four Musketeers. On the other side, James is dead, Peter is a fugitive,
Sirius is a convicted criminal, and Lupin is ... a big fat
question mark. 

We can assume that adult Lupin is angry on the werewolves' behalf because
he's mad about Umbridge's new laws and they don't 
affect him personally. (They can't, since he's only had one
paid job and he lost it before they were passed.)

The werewolves think they'll have a better life under Voldemort, and
with Umbridge out there, it's hard to argue with them. 

If she was willing to set dementors on an innocent boy and even
crucio him, what do you think she's been doing to werewolves? 
Just passing laws? 

Can you blame the werewolves for thinking they should fight fire with
fire? Well, of course. But plenty of wizards felt that Crouch
was justified in doing that. Interesting that we don't have Lupin's
opinion on Barty Sr. 



Pippin:
ESE!Lupin might prefer not to kill Sirius, but in that moment he
had more to lose by Sirius surviving. Being caught as a murderer
would not be worse than being caught as a DE spy. Either way,
Sirius and Dumbledore would not want to be his friends any more.
But if Sirius died,  Dumbledore's precious trust could be
preserved.


Christina:

And you've lost me.  First of all, there's no need for Lupin to risk
killing Sirius himself - the man is standing in front of a cursed
veil, goading his insane murderer of a cousin.  Honestly, I don't
think she needed any extra help.


Pippin:
Excuse me? What canon do we have that Bella had ever killed anyone?
Crucio seems to be her specialty. Sirius was known to be a formidable
wizard and a clever warrior -- how on earth could Lupin be sure
that he would lose the duel? And then Sirius would certainly ask Harry if
the prophecy was safe, and Lupin would have had some 'splainin' to do.


Christina:
  We can also assume that Lupin was going to allow
Sirius to keep talking.  It is *Molly* who stops the flow of
information. 

Pippin:
Since when has Sirius done what Molly wanted? It's
*Lupin* who shuts him up. "I think Molly's right,
Sirius. We've said enough."

Molly knows where the 'weapon' Voldemort wants is located,
and that Order members will be stationed to guard it.
I doubt very much she knows any more, since Dumbledore lays
such emphasis on the point that he and he alone could have 
prevented Harry from going to the MoM. 

Christina:
 Everyone knows that fists aren't the answer, but
there is still that little part a lot of people that cheers when
Harry lunges at Draco in OotP.

Pippin:
And that part of people is solidly rebuked when Fake!Moody
bounces ferret Draco, and we later realize that's one of the
things that should have tipped us off.

You're telling me Remus is not emotional, but he expresses emotion
all the time in the shack. He's tense, he turns pale, his voice
shakes, his face hardens and his voice fills with self-disgust --
but not over killing his old school friend Peter. 


I'm curious about that.

The bottom line for you, I guess,  is that you can't see Lupin betraying
the friends who did so much for him. What I see is that Lupin did
consider that he'd betrayed Dumbledore, who'd done so much for him,
for the sake of a good time with his friends. 

If he could do that, betray a man who'd helped him so much just for a 
lark,   couldn't he betray his friends for the far nobler cause of 
werewolf liberation? 

Pippin