Lupin's behavior (Was: CHAPDISC: DH11, The Bribe)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 180606


> > > a_svirn:
> > > I don't understand it. How can a character be a voice of readers?! 
> > 
> > zgirnius:
> > By saying what we would like to say to the character ourselves? 
> > Though, if the author imagined her readers would want a certain thing 
> > to be said, and wrote the scene to produce this effect, it might be 
> > more accurate to suggest it was the voice of the author. 
> 
> Magpie:
> 
> However, I don't think any of that applies here to Harry, speaking for 
> this reader. All I'd seen of Lupin/Tonks was a weird relationship where 
> Lupin was never happy and Tonks was blissfully unaware of her husband's 
> state of mind and everyone else said he should be with her and ignored 
> his ambivalence as well.

Pippin:
Tonks was not unaware of Lupin's state of mind, at least in HBP. They'd
discussed their relationship a lot according to what both of them say. 
It's the same as the (non-canonical) Arwen/Aragorn subplot from the 
LOTR movies: he thinks she'll be better off without him, so he tells her 
their love is not real, and she, no surprise, knows him well enough
not to believe him. The people who don't believe Lupin know him
pretty well too, most of them since he was eleven years old. 

I wasn't surprised when Lupin ducked out, because he said he was a coward
back in PoA, and I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since.

Daredevilry -- risking your life for thrills-- is more than compatible with 
cowardice. Lupin has an old habit of drugging himself with danger to avoid
his responsibilities. The opportunity to do so is the downside of Gryffindor
bravery. 

And that brings us to the downside of Gryffindor chivalry: 
disempowerment. In order for someone to be a protector, someone else 
has to  be a weakling. 

There's nothing wrong with helping someone who  really needs it. But
Lupin is not offering Harry help with the weakness we perceive. He doesn't
want to take over  responsibility for the mission or give Harry guidance 
on how to complete it. He doesn't even want to know what it's about. 
He's only offering himself as a kind of  bodyguard, and
this to someone who's survived more confrontations with Voldemort
than anyone else. It's insulting, really. 

Magpie:
. And she wonders what the scene would have been like if 
> Lupin had shot back with his own meta commentary, demanding to know why 
> Harry had to play the lone boy martyr hero when so much was at stake 
> when it would have made far more sense to work together to destroy 
> Voldemort.

Pippin:
They *are* working together, but like "pillars four", not like one pillar
trying to do everybody's job. Harry can't protect Tonks and her unborn child, and
if the baby is a werewolf, there may be no one for them -- except Fenrir
of course.


Pippin
having dismaying ideas of what would happen if a fetus
transformed and wishing she'd never seen 'Alien'