Say it isn't so Lupin!!!

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 170083

Jordan:
 I know you meant real people rather than characters, but...  
> that's part of the "meat" behind this argument against ESE!Lupin: If  
> Lupin is ESE, Snape is right for being an anti-werewolf bigot, and  
> that's not a message that JKR would be putting in the books.

Pippin:
But Snape's anti-werewolf bigotry alienated Harry and convinced
him to aid Lupin, so if it turns out that Lupin was guilty, Snape's
bigotry will be exposed as counterproductive. 

I am confident that we will find that both Snape and Sirius had
better reasons to suspect Lupin than anti-werewolf bigotry. 

Jordan: 
> My problem with this is that there is _no_ mechanism in canon by  
> which this could happen and be in any way under Lupin's control. 

Pippin:
We already have canon that Fenrir positions himself near his 
victims. To do that he has to know when he is going to transform.
The prank also does not work unless there is assurance that Lupin
is going to be transformed when Snape finds him. Having the
transformation occur at a calculable time is not the same
as being able to transform at will, of course. 

Alla:

Not if HBP and DH were really planned as two parts of one book, as
JKR noticed, then it is quite possible that the **traitor**, the
real one is already revealed and the book 7 will deal with
repercussions of what happened on the Tower, IMO.

Pippin:
Any society that relies on bonds of mutual trust and obligation
is going to resonate with anxiety about traitors. JKR has been building
it up ever since Hagrid first told Harry about Voldemort. It doesn't
make sense for her to have that anxiety diminish before the
climax of the last book. 

Alla:
Would ESE!Lupin still stand up on its own? Or is it just a way to
exonerate Snape? What literary purpose ESE!Lupin serves if we
**assume**, just for one second, that Snape is if not evil, but at
least grey and did that horrible thing on the Tower?

Pippin:
The literary purpose of having Snape's evil unproven, is, as JKR 
said, to continue the story for another book. But as for standing
without the events on the Tower, I remind you that the theory
has been around in one form or another since post 39362,
long before the publication of OOP, much less HBP.

It was predicted that Snape would betray Dumbledore, 
and  it was also predicted that this betrayal would prove
false and the real betrayer would be someone else. Other
candidates have been mentioned, but there isn't nearly the
canon evidence for them as there is for Lupin.   

Alla:
And then I come with wierd picture of the guy who to me is metaphor
for disability to come up as evil. 

Pippin:
JKR said he was a metaphor of people's *attitudes* towards
disability. Is there any argument that some of those attitudes
are destructive? And yet there's this resistance, this refusal,
to believe that someone good could actually be destroyed. 

"Good" werewolves, *Gryffindor* werewolves,  would be 
just be too pure and sweet-natured to be drawn into 
revenge against society. Codswallop, in my
opinion. Look at what Harry, he of the pure soul,  was 
capable of after a bare ten months of Umbridge's regime.

His mind played a terrifying trick on him -- it forgot every
single reason he'd ever had to distrust or doubt Snape, or
to think that Snape would want to harm Sirius, and
filled him with the expectation that Snape would help him
*save* Sirius. (*I* think he was right, but can you imagine
PoA Harry believing any such thing?)

He followed Hermione, with no idea what she was up to, 
aiding her in a plan which, if it had worked, could have 
made Harry an accessory to murder.

All of this would go along way in helping us understand
how Lupin could turn for help to   someone he'd
thought he couldn't possibly trust, or get involved in murder.

That would give  literary purpose to OOP, which is otherwise 
hugely digressive. Maybe Book Seven will be about Harry
learning to be OFH, which is the only way we could understand
Snape being OFH. But I don't see it. It wouldn't be much
of a bildungsroman, because Harry's always known how
to be independent. 

Each book in turn is about Harry learning what it means
to be part of a *group*:  a wizard, a Gryffindor,  a Potter,
a Hogwarts champion, a human,  Dumbledore's
man. HBP and DH are two parts in that both are about
becoming Dumbledore's man, because, IMO, Harry
won't really be Dumbledore's man though and through 
until he accepts that Snape is Dumbledore's man as well. 

Pippin