Say it isn't so Lupin!!!

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 170089

Jordan Abel wrote:
> <snip> 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.

Carol responds:
Although I'm not an ESE!Lupin advocate, I'd have to disagree. The HP
books are all about the importance of your choices, and it's Lupin's
choices, right or wrong, that matter. It won't reinforce anti-werewolf
prejudice if Lupin turns out to be a traitor, or at least, to make
some grave mistake, because doing so will have nothing to do with his
being a werewolf. Snape's "anti-werewp;f prejudice" is perfectly
understandable. Not many people who had been tricked into confronting
a fully grown werewolf at sixteen would be able to refrain from
prejudice against such a monster, especially if they thought he was
privy to the (perceived) murder attempt in the first place and now saw
the same werewolf running out without his potion to aid the murderer
yet again, endangering three students in the process. (As long as the
werewolf remains in human form, Snape can safely listen in until he
hears what he thinks is enough to prove himself right.)


Nor is Snape (who has just caught a man he believes to be a murderer's
accomplice in the act of helping him, only to be told that his
suspicions stem solely from a schoolboy grudge--Snape is never at his
best under such circumstances) alone in regarding Lupin as primarily a
werewolf. Even his fellow Marauders seem to regard him chiefly as a
werewolf (and not at all as a Prefect) in Snape's Worst Memory, and it
seems that their suspicion that he was the spy whose information was
helping Voldemort kill off Order members was based primarily on his
being a werewolf as well. In fact, Lupin himself seems to regard
himself primarily as a werewolf, both in wanting to maintain that
secret as long as possible in PoA and throughout HBP in his references
to "my equals" and his unsuitability as a husband for Tonks. IMO,
whether he's the traitor or not, JKR is showing that Lupin's
weaknesses stem from his own personality, as do his strengths, and he
is above all a flawed person, not a monster. (We have the monster
werewolf in Fenrir Greyback, a foil to Lupin in many respects.) 

I do think it's suspicious that after having lukewarmly defended
"Severus" in HBP, he turns suddenly and violently against him. Instead
of saying "It's all my fault" and "Dumbledore trusted him" like the
other characters, he doesn't blame himself at at all and brings up
every reason he can think of to make it look like Snape planned to
murder Dumbledore all along. He even suggests that snape would have
murdered Hermione and Luna if they had objected to taking Flitwick to
the hospital wing, which, IMO, is just absurd. Snape has no idea how
things will fall out on the tower, and even if he's ESE! (which, IMO,
is extremely improbable), he's not going to kill two students for no
reason. After all, he can cow people with a look *and* he's a
Legilimens. At most, he'd have Stunned them so as not to burn his
bridges. (OFH!Snape, assuming that he didn't have to kill DD, could
have argued afterward that they were in his way and he had no choice.)
Anyway, Lupin's shock at DD's death followed by his coolly controlled
attacks on Snape are interesting in contrast with, say, Slughorn's "I
thought I knew him" and Hagrid's silent weeping, not blaming anyone
after having defended Snape as long as it was still possible to do so.

At any rate, JKR is certainly not going to support anti-werewolf
legislation that turns people like Lupin into social outcasts, nor
will she make werewolves (with the possible exception of Fenrir
Greyback) look like monsters rather than people. But it has nothing to
do, IMO, with Snape's view of Lupin, which is entirely personal. He
knew the firsthand the danger Lupin represented as a werewolf, and he
thought he knew that both he and Sirius Black were capable of murder.
(as indeed they were: they would have murdered Pettigrew if not for
Harry's intervention.) He wants his students to know the danger within
the walls of the school, the not-so-tame werewolf who will be
extremely dangerous if he doesn't drink Snape's carefully prepared potion.

Carol, who suspects that most witches and wizards, except those as
enlightened as Dumbledore, would be anti-werewolf "bigots," too, if
they'd been in Teen!Snape's shoes