Remus WAS Re: PoA Ch 10 Post DH look

[cubfanbudwoman]

No: HPFGUIDX 181485

Alla:
> So, after my long winded beginning, I actually have a question. 
> Could you elaborate why Remus was right not to contact Harry?
> 
> Do you see any GOOD coming out of it? I mean, would it hurt Harry 
> to have somebody friendly to talk to in his early childhood?
> 
> I do not doubt that Remus loves Harry, I just do not see him doing 
> anything for the son of his dead friends when he was little,
> anything at all.
> 
> I see his unwillingness to interfere as very in character, but do not 
> find it sympathetic, I am afraid.


SSSusan:
Not Jayne here, but posting anyhow. :)

Methinks, Alla, that you should simply have another reason to be 
annoyed with Albus Dumbledore here.  Don't you imagine that DD 
*instructed* Order members/Potter family friends NOT to contact Harry?  
I thought the whole point of putting him in a Muggle home was to keep 
Harry from knowing about his wizarding heritage.

Or are you saying that Remus could have simply begun corresponding, 
saying he knew Harry's parents, but saying nothing about the 
particulars of their friendship (wizardhood, Hogwarts, the nature of 
their deaths, etc.)?

Either way, I have a feeling DD said "Don't!" once he'd placed Harry 
with the Dursleys.  And Remus, as we all know, isn't exactly one to 
stand up and defy someone.

Interesting to me is that you used the phrase "unwillingness to 
interfere."  That intigues me.  Do you think Remus would've seen 
contacting Harry as interference, as opposed to defiance?  Or do you 
think DD issued no instructions to stay away from Harry?  

I was watching TMWSNBN (OotP) tonight and saw the point where movie!
Harry is upset by the trouble he's gotten his friends into via creation 
of DD's Army.  He says (paraphrasing), "I just wanted to help, but all 
I did was make things worse.  I think it's time I go it alone."  That 
scene struck me as Harry taking on sort of a defeatist attitude, and it 
sort of parallels how I imagine Remus back when Harry was a baby.  That 
is, "defeatist" is an attitude I can readily see in canon!Remus.  I 
think his natural quietness, his tendency to take a back seat, his 
tendency not to speak out -- all of that mixed with his "affliction" 
and the danger he knows he poses to others with it, made him 
susceptible to a defeatist attitude.  

IOW, once James & Lily were dead, Sirius thought to be a traitor & in 
Azkaban, Peter presumably dead, and DD having stowed Harry away with 
Muggles, I could see all of that adding up to a Remus feeling very 
defeated and "I give up'ish."  

Which doesn't mean you wouldn't still want to shake him, heh.  But it 
might explain why he didn't feel any inclination to write to Harry or 
try to see him.

Just a few rambling thoughts.

Siriusly Snapey Susan