Say it isn't so Lupin!!!

[Dana]

No: HPFGUIDX 170010

Pippin:
> I think OOP shows us very strongly what is wrong with this
> line of reasoning. It is just not enough to have acceptance from
> your friends. That can't make up for being deprived of your
> rights or being considered so monstrous no stranger would ask
> you to dinner, or let you be near their children,  or even 
> share a hospital room with you. 

Dana:
And yet he still tries to live as any other wizard and against all 
odds he maintains himself and keeps control even though life is 
getting harder by the day. 
OotP does not show us there is something wrong with this reasoning 
because it is Hermione, Winky, Dobby and the rest of the house elves 
that show us that change cannot be pressed upon a group that doesn't 
want change. Dobby does not have the support of his kind and still he 
changed and now is paid for his services. The rest of the house elves 
shunt him for it and are disgraced by his way of thinking. Winky 
can't get over losing her master and is not able to perform normally; 
she is resisting the change she endured when both her masters were no 
longer there to serve. Hermione tries to free the house-elves against 
their will and it leads to them no longer cleaning the Gryffindor 
tower and not more free house-elves. 

Change can only exist if one person within such a group chooses to 
change and no matter how hard the struggle, maintains his chosen 
path. And Lupin does and although he strays for a moment when he 
rejects Tonks love for him in HBP, at the end it got him back on the 
right track. 

> Pippin:
> Lupin's is not the voice against bigotry in canon. What has
> he ever done to win acceptance for werewolves?  He has always
> tried to conceal what he was, as a student and then as a teacher.
> It's Hermione who has been working to change the hearts and
> minds of the WW. If she continues to believe in equal rights,
> and tells Harry why, despite Lupin's treachery, he should too,
> it will do far more for the cause of civil rights  in the RW than
> creating pity for werewolves, who after all don't exist.

Dana:
Yes, he is because he chooses to remain living among wizards and not 
chose the life that has been dedicated for werewolves by Greyback. 
Lupin was send to spy on the werewolves but he in order to do that 
had to gain some trust and now with Greyback gone, Lupin might become 
the factor of change within the werewolf group and with them and his 
friends together, after LV is defeated, they can start to demand to 
be given rights like other humans within their society do. 

I'm sorry but to me it seems ESE!Lupin is just a figure of the 
imagination and actually proofs JKR's point because applying the 
suspicion to him being ESE is what the rest of the WW does too, that 
werewolves cannot be trusted. Yes, he has tried to conceal WHAT he 
was but not WHO he was and he was just scared that people would not 
judge him for who he was but for WHAT he was. He has trouble 
attaching himself to people because of that and when he does attach 
himself then he is again very afraid to lose it but that does not 
make him a traitor. 

On the contrary, his problem of telling the truth in PoA because of 
the internal conflict he was struggling with, indicates that he would 
never want to betray his friends and he could not chose between 
revealing a secret he shared with one group of friends to a person 
who gave him a chance to a normal life, who made it possible for him 
to have these friends. So instead he denied Sirius using his animagus 
form to enter the castle. It was wrong no doubt about it but he still 
did not want to just betray any of them. Sure he states that he just 
did it because he was scared of losing DD's trust but he also gives 
himself the guilt of his friends becoming illegal animagi, while 
James and Sirius are surely not people who could be told what to do 
and even if Lupin had been against it they would have done it anyway. 

Hermione has not been changing the hearts and minds of the WW because 
people do not take her endless preaching seriously. Although she has 
the heart in the right place she only looks at it from her own point 
of view and not from those she is making a statement for. It is 
somewhat like setting free minks by environmentalist, these animals 
are not sweet cuddly creatures and in one such an attempt they killed 
every single pet they came across in their search for freedom. So 
they saved the lives of these animals while causing the death of many 
others. That was not what they set out to do but it nevertheless had 
this result. Setting these animals free is not the way and it 
actually had a negative effect on public opinion because these 
animals were so aggressive that no one was sorry they ended up as 
coats. 

Change within human communities has to come from within the community 
and the people it involves because people not living their lives they 
do, cannot possibly understand what it is like for them and then when 
the people who's rights it concerns fight for it then people outside 
these groups can fight along side them as supporting factor. 

The house-elves should be given the right to chose if they want to 
change or not. You cannot force freedom as Hermione perceives it upon 
them. Winky is free but totally miserable and that means it would 
never work to force them to be free. The only thing the WW can do is 
allow the house-elves to serve people on their own conditions so that 
giving them clothes is no longer needed to release them from their 
obligations. Treat them bad and you find yourself without a servant 
but still they must want these changes in regulations themselves or 
otherwise it will not work. 

It is just my opinion but I do not think any of the books gives 
indication that Lupin was put in there to show a disease will give 
you no other option then to be ESE. Lupin is extremely brave 
regardless of not believing enough in himself. Lupin will open up the 
way for those werewolves that will choose to be human first and 
werewolf second and eventually when more werewolves chose to live in 
harmony with the WW the more the bigotry against them will decrease. 

Molly was a bigot against werewolfs but she still respected Remus and 
let him comfort her. Harry can't even see the dangerous part Lupin 
has to him and neither could his dad. So the more people you know who 
are what they are the more acceptance will grow but it still has to 
come from within and them making the first step and proof that they 
are not out there to kill and make as many werewolves as they 
possibly can. Greyback is like that but like Remus, werewolves not 
under his (Greyback) control might not specifically want to chose 
such a life either. 

JMHO

Dana