Say it isn't so Lupin!!!

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 170067

Dana wrote:
<snip> LV is not promising the werewolves more rights as wizards or
that he will change WW legislation so werewolves will be able to get
paid work and thus improve Lupin's current situation. He only promises
that they will be able to get their revenge on the WW by inflicting
all the fear they can possibly inflict and fulfill their blood thirst
on whoever they like. 

Carol:
I agree so far. And, BTW, I'm not an ESE!Lupin supporter, but I see
him as rather weaker than you do.

Dana:
Lupin wants to be liked not be feared more and he specifically dicates
he is not liked by the werewolves either because he bares the signs of
living among the WW. He is not freely accepted in their mids either
just like Hagrid is not accepted among the Giants, Dobby is not
accepted among his kind and Firenze is shunted from his for
associating himself with humans.  

Carol:
Interesting comparison. However, Hagrid is not a true giant, only a
half-giant. Grawp might fit your analogy a bit better. (He was too
"small" and was bullied by the giants. Now he's almost certainly an
outcast, having been somewhat civilized by Hagrid.)
> 
Dana:
> <snip>
> You are forgetting that Sirius was not the only one that became an
illegal animagus on Lupin's behalf and that Sirius was not the only
one that roamed the castle, the grounds and Hogmead with a fully 
fletched werewolf. Lupin did not keep this information from DD to 
protect Sirius but to protect James and Peter, two friends who he 
believed to be dead. Loyalty to a friend does not dissolve into thin
air the moment that person dies. It is even worse because that person
is no longer there to defend his own actions. What is Lupin to do, 
smear his dead friends' names and just forget what James and Peter had
done for him when they were young? That is why he is denying to
himself that Sirius might be using his animagus form to get into the
castle, not to protect Sirius from being caught but to protect the
secret that Lupin once shared with his best friends. A secret that at
the time made Lupin's life worth living and gave him the best time of
his life he ever had. A secret that betrayed DD's safety precautions
he set out so that Lupin could have a chance to be part of WW society.
That made it possible for Lupin to have such great friends in the
first place. 

Carol responds:

Lupin himself says nothing about "betraying his friends." He says that
he didn't want to admit that he had betrayed Dumbledore's trust. Also,
I don't see how admitting that his former friend Sirius Black, whom he
believes to have betrayed James and Lily to their deaths, killed
twelve Muggles, and murdered Peter Pettigrew, is an Animagus and knows
secret passages into the castle would be betraying his friends,
especially since Black is believed to be out to kill his own godson,
James's son, Harry. 

As for the secret that made his life worth living and gave him the
best time he ever had, he knew himself that he was endangering the
people of Hogsmeade. And how would admitting that his friends had
become animagi out of friendship for him be betraying them?

If loyalty doesn't dissolve and friendship doesn't fade, why did
Sirius and Remus suspect each other of being the spy? Why did Peter
betray them all, especially James, for whose death (and his wife's
death) he's as responsible as Voldemort and for Sirius's imprisonment
he's also largely responsible?

Lupin, AFAWK, believes that Sirius betrayed the Potters and is out to
kill Harry, and even if he secretly can't quite believe it, he still
owes it to Harry and to James to tell Dumbledore what he knows. He
certainly has no difficulty turning against Peter, even offering to
kill him, when he discovers that his "dead" friend was actually the
traitor, nor does Sirius, who has wanted to kill Peter for twelve years. 

Anyway, I think you're assuming motives for Lupin here that aren't in
canon. He endangered people as a teenager, he endangers HRH by rusing
out (quite understandably) without his potion (I blame the DADA curse,
actually), and he would have endangered Harry all year long by
withholding information about Sirius Black had Black really been the
murderer that Lupin himself, based on what canon evidence we have,
thought he was (along with evryone else).

I'm not arguing that Lupin (I actually typed "Pippin"--sorry, Pippin!)
is ESE, but I don't see how we can deny weakness that he admits to
himself.
> 
Dana:
<snip> He 
> probably watched the map very closely on other nights for any sign
of Sirius making another attempt to enter the castle and by taking the
map away from Harry he prevented Harry from wandering outside the
castle grounds. <snip>
> 
Carol:
And yet he was loyal to Sirius and didn't want to betray him? He
placed loyalty to a "murderin' traitor" over Harry's life, the memory
of his friendship with Sirius over loyalty to the murdered James's
son? If that's loyalty, perhaps it's not the virtue I thought it was.
also, taking the map away did not prevent Harry from wandering the
castle grounds, as we see when HRH go to Hagrid's on the night of
Buckbeak's scheduled execution--or from entering Hogsmeade, which he
could still do using his Invisibiility Cloak and the humpbacked witch
passage. (All Lupin does, actually, is confiscate the map from
*Snape.* He doesn't turn it in to Dumbledore, which he would do if he
really had Harry's welfare in mind. Again, I'm not saying that he's
ESE, but he's not at his moral best in PoA. As I said, I believe that
the DADA curse is playing on his weaknesses, especially his fear of
DD's disapproval, and causing him to do what's easy rather than what's
right. And how convenient for Voldemort that Lupin just happened to be
looking at the map just as Peter Pettigrew (well, poor Ron, with
Pettigrew in his pocket) was dragged into the tunnel by Sirius Black.
And all on a full-moon night when Lupin hadn't taken his potion. But,
IMO, that doesn't excuse Lupin from responsibility for his actions,
including the neglect of his duty to tell DD all he knew about Sirius
Black, and his excuse that he didn't want to lose Dumbledore's trust
is as pathetically weak as watered-down tea; DD would have trusted him
*more* if he'd told the truth. As it is, DD's only course of action
would have been to ask for Lupin's resignation if he didn't offer it
himself. And *not* because parents would be writing to DD demanding
his resignation but because he, himself, had failed to act responsibly
and had endangered his own students. ("In a way, Snape was right about
me all along.")

Dana:
> To answer Betsy, Lupin did not betray James by keeping the 
information from DD because it could possibly have put Harry in 
danger because Lupin was keeping an eye on Harry personally in an
attempt to make up for his reluctance to give their childhood secrets
away. <snip>

Carol:
I suppose you could use his watching HRH on the night of Buckbeak's
execution as an example, even though that action had unforeseen
consequences, but he could hardly have kept an eye on Harry before he
had access to the Marauder's Map, nor do I see any evidence that he
did so. He certainly didn't keep Sirius Black from entering the castle
twice, terrorizing the students by slashing the Fat Lady's painting
and Ron's bedcurtains. and it's surely DD, not Lupin, who finally
orders Flitwick to teach the front doors to recognize a photo of
Black. Telling DD what he knew about Black, would have protected Harry
(if Harry really were the intended victim) and been loyal to James's
memory, but he was concerned instead about DD's faith in him.

Dana:
> Why would he want to stop it [the full-moon excursions] at any time?
It was the best time he  ever had. <snip>

Carol:
For the sake of the residents of Hogsmeade whose lives they were
recklessly endangering?

Dana:
> <snip> he is afraid that DD will start to see him as a werewolf
because he no longer trusts Lupin's human part (and might even have
been the reason for his temperary leaps as DD indeed sends Lupin to
spy on the werewolves). <snip>

Carol:
I don't understnad what you're saying here. What "temporary leaps"?
(What's a "temporary leap"?) And where is the evidence that Lupin
fears that DD would start to see him as a werewolf? Dumbledore, who
made special provisions so that a werewolf boy could go to school, who
allowed Lupin into the Order of the Phoenix, who gave him a job at
Hogwarts, see Lupin as a werewolf? Why would he think that and where
is the evidence that any such thought entered his head?

Dana:
[This snippet is out of sequence, sorry]: Werewolves live in
seclusion not because they were pushed out of society but because
most of them were pushed into seclusion be Greyback rain as he can
have control over them this way instead of having them develop their
own conscience and a sense of self as humans.

> {Back to normal sequence:] The werewolves live under the suppression
of Greyback who himself seems to live the way he wants too but he is
not looking out for the werewolves well being as they still have to
take care of themselves. <snip>

Carol:

Again, I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. Are you saying that
Greyback *reigns* over (rules) the werewolves? I think we see that
some of them follow his lead, but I see no evidence that he's the
Alpha werewolf, so to speak. Can you clarify and maybe cite some canon
so that I can follow your argument here? (I'm not arguing with you
here; I'm just not sure what you're saying.)

I thought that you said somewhere in this message that Umbridge's
anti-werewolf legislation was specifically passed because of a
werewolf being hired at Hogwarts, but I can't find the passage, so
maybe it was in another post (or I imagined it??). At any rate,
according to Sirius Black, Umbridge's legislation was passed two years
before he speaks to Harry from the common room fireplace in OoP (Am.
ed. 302), at which point it's only about a week into the term. So
unless Umbridge already knew that Lupin was a werewolf two years
before that, just at the point when Lupin was starting to teach at
Hogwarts, I don't see how the werewolf legislation could have had
anything to do with him. It certainly didn't result from Snape's
telling Fudge (in essence) that he'd conjured stretchers to save three
students from a werewolf (much less letting slip to his students that
[ex-]Professor Lupin as a werewolf), which occurs at the end of
Lupin's year of teaching, about sixteen months before the conversation
between Sirius Black and HRH in OoP. (Please forgive me for being
unable to locate the comment that I'm responding to and for
misunderstanding or misattributing it if that's what happened.)

Carol, who agrees with you that Lupin is a weak (not evil) human being
who (IMO) still doesn't understand that there are more important
things than being liked, and one of them is placing the safety of your
students above the embarrassment that would result from revealing a
youthful indiscretion