Maligning Lupin

[spotsgal]

No: HPFGUIDX 149832

> 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?

Christina:

Yes I would, as long as I knew that the driver had been drinking.  
Harry knows that Lupin didn't take his potion, and that that is the 
reason he endangered the children.  Taking responsibility for 
putting the children in danger is also indirectly taking 
responsibility for the method by which he put the children in danger.

And even if I didn't see it as a full apology, it wouldn't bother 
me.  I think Lupin has made his apology in many ways.  He certainly 
has never gotten an apology from Harry, who put five schoolmates and 
several key members of the Order in danger for ignoring direct 
instructions to learn Occlumency (from pretty much every adult in 
the book).


> Pippin:
> 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.

Christina:

Harry chooses who to blame.  Even after DD takes a portion of the 
blame for Sirius's death in OP, Harry still holds on to blaming 
Snape.  Harry blames himself for Cedric's death, even as others have 
told him not to.


> 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?

Christina:

I see a distinction between disconnecting one's conscience and 
pretending not to hear it.  That is, I don't think Lupin turned off 
his smoke detector - it's still there, blaring in the background.  
He's just going about his business despite it.  And as good as Lupin 
has gotten at ignoring his conscience, he still seems to have a good 
sense of right and wrong - he *can* hear it going off.  That seems 
to cause him grief ("...there was self-disgust in his voice...'I 
have been battling with myself...'") that I can't see him actively 
pursuing.  Contrast this with the twins, who sometimes don't even 
seem to understand when they are doing something wrong.

Lupin's conscience also leaks through at times.  He doesn't 
ignore his conscience in SWM enough to visibly enjoy the scene.  
Sirius also mentions that Lupin made them feel ashamed from time to 
time, suggesting that Lupin mentioned being uneasy about Sirius and 
James's bullying.


> Pippin:
> 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. 

Christina:

Well, no, he doesn't.  But I see that as a relatively normal thing, 
which I why I see the reasons behind the actions as so important.  
For example, if someone has lied to keep their mother from worrying 
about them, or to keep the peace (ie, "do I look fat in this?"), I 
don't think that that necessarily means that they could join a 
terrorist organization and lie about their participation in it, or 
have an affair and keep it a secret from their spouse.  Lupin had 
reasons for ignoring his conscience, and ignoring those reasons is 
like saying that every person that tells lies is capable of telling 
*any* lie.  Lupin ignores his conscience only under certain 
situations, and not others.  If you want to predict whether he will 
ignore it in the future, it's necessary to look at the conditions 
under which he did it in the past.

I still also fail to see a clear motive - even if Lupin has the 
ability to put aside his conscience, he still needs quite a 
compelling reason to do so.


> Pippin:
> 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.

Christina:

I certainly don't think it was rosy, but I also don't see Lupin as 
miserable.  He's certainly plenty poor when we see him in PoA, and 
he's surprisingly cheerful.  If anything, he seems to accept his lot 
in life with a fair amount of stride.  And Lupin's need to take off 
work for "sick days" may have been what made it difficult for him to 
keep a job (not his potential employers' discovery of his 
lycanthropy).


> Pippin:
> 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> 


Christina:

I don't see why James *would* have said those things, because I 
honestly don't blame him and Sirius for believing Lupin was the 
spy.  They acted completely logically.  James had three close 
friends, and somebody was handing information to Voldemort that only 
the people closest to James would have known.  James knows it isn't 
him.  He probably figures that Sirius is too emotional to hide 
something like that (and too filled with hatred for his family).  
That leaves Peter and Lupin...who would you suspect?  The two men 
probably went with a line of thinking much like yours..."he's lied 
to us before, we know he has it in him, being a werewolf is tough, 
etc..."  A few well-placed lies by the lovable Peter, and suddenly 
everyone is convinced.

Maybe you've heard words like that before, but I doubt they were in 
the context of protecting the lives of somebody's spouse and 
*child*.  Sirius and James aren't being paranoid, they are being 
practical.  James cannot afford to be nostalgic and emotional; he 
*knows* that there is somebody out to get him, and he must figure 
out who that person is.  His family depends on it.


>>> Pippin:
>>> 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:

Okay, his insane torturer of a cousin.  Whether she kills Sirius or 
Crucios him into incapacitation is immaterial.  The Longbottoms 
certainly aren't telling any tales.  She's evil and has no qualms 
about hurting others.  That was the point I was trying to make.

Sirius may have been a good wizard back in the day, but there wasn't 
really any reason for him to brush up on his skills while moping 
around GP - he wasn't supposed to leave the house.  And he obviously 
*wasn't* the wizard he used to be, if he got hit square in the chest 
in the DoM.

I'm still unclear on just how Sirius living would have hurt Lupin.  
If Sirius had inquired about the prophecy, Harry would have given 
him the same answer DD gave Harry when he asked about it himself -
 "It's fine, Sirius, DD was the one who heard it and he can remember 
it."  Of course, ESE!Lupin would never have had a problem if he 
just hadn't told Sirius about the prophecy in the first place, so 
I'm a bit confused as to why he would have done so.


>> 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."

Christina:

It isn't who *made* Sirius shut up in the end, it's who wanted to 
stop him from speaking in the first place.  Lupin backs Molly up, 
but Sirius wouldn't have stopped talking if Molly hadn't said 
something in the first place.  Lupin didn't show any signs of 
wanting to stop him prior to that.


> Pippin:
> 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:

Dumbledore is the head of the Order, and he obviously has made it 
clear to his group that Harry is only to be told what he needs to 
know - hence the fight at the dinner table.  Therefore, since DD has 
control over what Harry knows, he and he alone could have prevented 
Harry from going to the MoM (by warning him that LV would try and 
lure him there).  And even then, DD doesn't emphasize the fact that 
he should have told Harry about the prophecy, he emphasizes the fact 
that he should have warned Harry about the LV's possible abuse of 
their mind connection.


> Pippin:
> 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. 

Christina:

His face hardens and his voice is filled with self-disgust at the 
idea of keeping Sirius's Animagi form from Dumbledore.  If you are 
going to put importance on the fact that Lupin was unemotional while 
killing Peter, equal importance should be put on Lupin's statements 
of self-hatred for lying to Dumbledore.

When Sirius and Lupin decide to kill Peter, Lupin speaks "grimly," 
while Sirius grins about it.  Lupin's famous "good-bye" line to 
Peter was spoken "quietly," which IS an emotion.  It's quite 
different from Snape's gloating, just a few pages earlier.


> Pippin:
> 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? 

Christina:

In terms of Lupin's character, it isn't so much an objection to the 
possibility that he could betray his friends.  I just don't see the 
motivation.  I don't see Lupin's good time with his friends as 
a "lark."  I see it as a young boy finally discovering the joys of 
friendship and getting carried away with that.  

It isn't a matter of being for or against werewolf liberation.  Each 
side of the war has a different view of what "werewolf liberation" 
means.  For LV, it's giving the werewolves fresh meat and the 
ability to get revenge on wizardfolk.  For Dumbledore, it's 
providing the werewolves with education and jobs.  I think Lupin can 
tell the difference.  Also, I don't think Lupin would be stupid 
enough to fall for LV's claims of werewolf freedom when he's 
advocating discrimination aganist Muggleborns.  With the right 
motivation, I think anybody would go over to the Dark side; for 
Lupin, it would have to be something huge for him to turn his back 
upon the people that have made his life better, particularly 
considering that Lupin lacks a lot of the qualities that predispose 
one to being a DE - prejudiced pureblooded upbringing, a huge self-
preservation drive, love of power, a clique of Dark friends to lead 
him in, etc.  I can see somebody like Snape "falling in" to the Dark 
side just as a function of the natural path he was on.  I can see 
Peter Pettigrew deciding that LV was going to win and switching 
sides to save himself.  Lupin is much trickier.

The bottom line for me, theoretically, is that ESE!Lupin completely 
fails the litmus test I give to all theories - What questions does 
this theory answer?  ESE!Lupin gives the solutions to no mysteries 
and is exceedingly complex.  With just one book left, JKR must 
economize, and this theory just isn't elegant enough.  Add that to 
the fact that it's hard to explain away some of Lupin's actions (if 
it's so dangerous for Sirius to know about the prophecy, why did 
Lupin tell him in the first place?).  It's also thematically 
repetitive - we already have the bad guy who seemed to be so nice 
(Moody), the Marauder traitor, the big bad wolf.  Your brand of ESE!
Lupin also affords redemption for Peter (IIRC), which I find even 
more difficult to believe than the notion of ESE!Lupin itself.

Christina