Lupin/ Father Figures

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 165068


> Debbie:
> Werewolves are mistrusted by *most* wizards, not all.  Dumbledore 
found him trustworthy.  

Pippin:
I'm afraid that Lupin, like Harry, fears that Dumbledore trusts people
because he refuses to see the evil in them, not because he's forgiven it.

> 
> Pippin:
> Would Fenrir admit to being evil? Or would he say that he has
> a right to revenge?
> 
> Debbie:
> To borrow the words from another Voldemort supporter, 
"There is no good or evil, there is only power and those too 
weak to seek it."  The WW hasrejected Fenrir, and he in turn 
rejects the WW's laws and values.  Or, to
> put it more bluntly, "F*** you, WW."

Pippin:
But one of the things Rowling shows us is that unless you're a
psychopath or part of an angry mob, it's a lot easier to say 
"there is no good and evil" than to live by it.  The Malfoy 
family is a very good illustration of that. Even Quirrell
begged and pleaded not to be made to kill the second unicorn.
He was already under the curse for killing the first one; 
it shouldn't have mattered. But it did. 

Fenrir may be a psychopath. But if he isn't, then I'm betting his
moral code isn't so different from the rest of the WW's. They're
not exactly into showing mercy towards their enemies or avoiding
harm to innocent people. Plenty of them aren't anywhere near 
subscribing to Dumbledore's lofty principles of second chances,
opening one's heart to strangers and regarding differences of
habit and language as superficial. Lupin's tragedy, IMO, is that he
has the compassion to feel the truth in Dumbledore's philosophy,
but he's been too cowardly to embrace the loneliness that 
Dumbledore has had to endure, without friends or confidants, 
because of it.

Debbie:
> But unlike Fenrir, Lupin hasn't rejected the moral code.  He wants 
to belong to the side of good.

Pippin:
Does he? He wants to be with people who like him. If they want to
do things that are against his conscience and they don't share his
guilty feelings about it -- what then? When has he ever had the guts
to say, "I can't go along with this." 

> Debbie:
> Most of them seem to have become Voldemort supporters for 
some combination of power, revenge or freedom to give full rein 
to blood thirst.  I can't see that any of these would be attractive to 
Lupin. 

Pippin:
Voldemort's accomplices all have their individual reasons. Quirrell 
wanted knowledge (a form of power), yes.  But Ginny wanted a friend, 
Pettigrew wanted protection, Crouch Jr. wanted a father,
Kreacher wanted a master who shared his values, Draco wanted to
restore the family fortunes. The goblins, according to Lupin, will
be tempted by their rights and their freedoms. Are you absolutely sure 
there's nothing on that list that Lupin would want?

Debbie:
 He wants to be part of the *good* side, and thanks to Dumbledore, 
he is.  

Pippin:
But when it's come down to a choice between what's good and what
his friends want to do, Lupin has unfortunately always gone with
the crowd. He needs to be part of a gang, and I'm not sure that
Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs were  there for him after Hogwarts.
How could they have been? It would hardly have been practical
to keep up the animagi outings once they were living apart.

It would be nice to think so, and if they were all cozy right up to
Peter's betrayal, than ESE!Lupin will sink like a stone to the bottom
of the bay where so many listies think it belongs. But the canon
so far is pointing the other way.

> Debbie:
> But don't his friends already know what he's like?  He's evidently 
repulsed by living among his *equals*, the werewolves.  He knows 
he is not like them although most of the WW would lump them 
together.

Pippin:
I'm afraid he sees that he *is* like them, although he doesn't
want to be. But he thinks he's like them because they're monsters,
when the truth is he's like them because they're human. Not
the best sort of human, but neither is Umbridge.

I got rather tired of Harry's 'chest monster' but I think it's there
because JKR wants us to remember, when the time comes, that
all of us can feel at times as if we have a monster inside us. But
I'm afraid Lupin, when he felt the monster inside him, must have
felt it was there because he was a werewolf, and as if all the
horrible things he'd heard about werewolves must be true after all. 

I fear that like most of the WW, he's  bought into the idea that 
an evil werewolf is qualitatively different than an evil human. 
Ie, unsavory humans are that way because they've made bad 
choices, but unsavory werewolves are bad because they're 
werewolves, and what can you expect?

We all think it's a miracle that Harry never bought into the
negative self-image the Dursleys tried to instill in him. But
dare we think that lightning struck twice and Lupin was
also immune to society's messages? 

Pippin