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

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 180643

Mike:
I promised myself I would return to Michele's excellent question in 
her Ch 10 discussion, and I think this Lupin discussion dove-tails 
nicely into that. But I'll get to that in a bit.

<paraphrasing the question> Were Dumbledore and the Order right in 
trying to shield Harry, in specific, and all their underage children, 
in general, from the wizarding "real world" of fighting against 
Voldemort? (Michele originally asked to contrast this with the LVs 
apparant non-restrictive age policy, but I'm leaving the DEs out of 
this post)

There is a lot of lamentation in the RL of children growing up too 
soon, or being forced to by the world around them. Much of this, 
imo, started with the cold war threat of nuclear annihilation. What 
with the fallout shelters, the school safety drills in the 50s, it 
was hard to keep the threat a secret from the children.

Now comes our 14-17 year old witches and wizards, suddenly thrust 
into a world with the returned megalomaniac intent on British WW 
domination, at least. Well the Order's kids know this secret, even 
if the rest of the WW's kids don't or are in denial. The parallel is 
there.

Now, obviously, nobody was asking the RL children to fight the cold 
war. But, as Ceridwen pointed out, that didn't stop the teenagers 
from protesting against the war or against "the bomb". However, 
protesting is much different than actually fighting, this is where 
the parallel ends. The RL children don't have the capacity to fight 
in the same way the wizarding children do. 

Yet, the Order and DD seemed adamant about not letting even the of 
age Fred and George join the Order's ranks as active participants. 
And note, this is not a case of the children going against their 
parents, they're trying to join their parents/guardians/adult 
mentors. 

Add into the equation, Harry being even further involved in the 
fight with his soul-piece link to Voldemort's mind, a factor that 
Dumbledore seemed well aware of and still tried to deny. (DD was 
denying Harry the knowledge of why the link existed, the meaning of 
what he was seeing, and the objectives of Order against which 
Voldemort was fighting.) Molly was four-square behind Dumbledore's 
position. To me, she seemed even more adamant than DD, an almost 
fanatical, unquestioning follower of Dumbledore's dictums.

In http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180590

> Alla:
> What business did Molly have telling Sirius not to inform Harry
> about the prophecy? She felt she had a right because she was
> protecting Harry, no?

a_svirn:
None, as a matter of fact. Which Sirius pointed out to her.

Mike:
Since it was deemed Order business and both Molly and Sirius were 
there as members of the Order, Molly was being a good soldier by 
insisting that Harry not be told about the existance of the prophesy. 
That was definitely Dumbledore's position, and they all seemed to 
know it. Sirius seemed to disagree, but he didn't fight it when Molly 
called a halt to the discussion. So Sirius wasn't that adamant about 
telling Harry, was he?

This is different from keeping Hary completely in the dark, which 
Molly seemed to be in favor of and which she unilaterally wanted to 
give herself authority over Sirius to rule. This is what Sirius 
protested and to which both Arthur and Lupin backed Sirius up. It 
makes no sense that Dumbledore would have permitted Harry to relocate 
to 12 GP and then insist that he be told *nothing* of what's going on 
around him. Here, Molly was definitely overplaying her hand.

Lupin, fell somewhere between Molly and Sirius. He wasn't in favor of 
the complete blackout that Molly seemed to favor, yet he sided enough 
with Dumbledore to not want Sirius to spill the beans on everything 
the Order was doing. Lupin believed that the Order should be fighting 
this fight, for now.

In this wizarding world, the idea that children must be kept from the 
fight makes no sense to me. This is a terrorist fight, children 
aren't going to be excluded by the other side as either participants 
or targets. This was born out in HBP and DH. The value of the DA as a 
children's organization is confirmed by their performances in the 
MoM. Yes, hindsight is 20/20, but given the factor of magic in this 
world, to try to exclude teenagers capable of performing quite 
powerful magic strikes me as wrong headed. But to try to exclude the 
literal object of the enemy, the boy shown to be the most capable of 
his contemporaries, was downright ridiculous, imo.

Dumbledore does a 180 from OotP to HBP. We saw him admit that keeping 
the prophesy (both it's existance and content) from Harry was a 
mistake. Now, Dumbledore goes from hiding things from Harry and his 
friends to revealing well kept secrets to Harry, and by extension 
Hermione and Ron, and telling them to keep the secrets from the rest 
of the Order and even their parents.

As much as I disagree with the original position of keeping these 
young wizards in the dark, I find this new position of Dumbledore's 
to be dumfounding. "Harry is our best hope" is fine, but Harry is our 
only hope and the only one that can do everything that needs to be 
done is small-minded and insulting to the rest of the people he had 
recruited to the fight.

In http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180581
> a_svirn:
> Personally, I think it was the rest of the order who were 
> irresponsible, sitting on their butts and waiting for three 
> seventeen-year-olds to do the entire job. At least, Lupin 
> *tried* to do something. <snip>  They could use help, and 
> he was an asset in the Defence from the Dark Arts. 

Mike:
When did DD tell the Order that he was turning over the fight to 
Harry and company? More to the point, how did the Order interpret 
Dumbledore's orders to mean "Stay the hell out of it, let Harry, Ron, 
and Hermione go it alone"? The Order comes together to get Harry out 
of Privet Drive safely and then,... what? Does a radio show? That you 
have to have a secret code to receive?

I don't know what the rest of the Order was doing, but it seemed to 
me that Lupin was the only one acting responsibly at this time. OK, 
maybe he was doing it for the wrong reasons. That seems to be shown 
true by his later demeanor towards Harry after Teddy was born. Still, 
how can Lupin's offer to help be looked upon as cowardice? Did he 
join the Order to watch from the sidelines, to sit at home and give 
his pregnant wife moral support? This is the second reincarnation of 
the Order. What was their purpose the first time, to cheerlead for 
Dumbledore? Because the second reincarnation sure seems to be for 
the purpose of cheerleading for Harry, based on all they do in the 
second fight.



[Re: Lupin's offer to help in Ch 11 vs. Lupin fighting in Ch 31]
> a_svirn:
> How? How it is different? Were Harry, Ron and Hernione going on 
> some protracted World Tour? Was not their quest about defeating 
> Voldemort and making a better world? 
>
> <snip>
>
> And I really don't understand the argument about "following HRH to
> do what, he doesn't know". He has been doing exactly that all his
> years in the Order. Every member of the order has been doing this
> very thing, because that was Dumbledore's style of leadership. 

Mike:
Furthermore, Lupin may not know the secret mission, which is a poor 
choice by DD in itself imo, but why should he be thinking that he 
can't help the kids? He is offering his help to the Trio while they 
are ensconced in 12 GP. From all indications, the Trio were planning 
to make 12 GP their HQ again. Lupin could come and go from there just 
as easily, or easier, than the Trio could. There's no reason he 
couldn't take the same precautions regarding his "furry little 
problem" with the kids at 12 GP, as he was employing with Tonks at 
her parents home.

This is long before the **unplanned** camping trip from hell. As far 
as any of them know, they aren't going anywhere soon. They intended 
and tried to return to 12 GP after their Ministry raid to retreive 
the locket. So why would Lupin's lycanthropy be a factor *at this 
time*, nobody was intending on going camping?

Taking the Tonks factor out, there is no difference between Lupin's 
offer to help in Ch 11 than there was to his helping in the Battle of 
Hogwarts. In fact, based on Tonks actions later on, it seems logical 
to assume that Tonks would have joined Remus in his offer to help, 
were she not pregnant *at this time*. 



> a_svirn:
> Still I'd say Harry had no business to insult him. Except, 
> that it seemed to have worked for Lupin, so maybe he needed it. 

Mike:
The only place where I have a slight disagreement with a_svirn is in 
Lupin's actual reason to offer help. After Lupin's long self-pity 
rant and his admission of running from the problem, it seems obvious 
that the *real* reason Lupin is there is not completely altruistic. 
Just as obviously, as readers we're meant to understand that Remus is 
running away from what he thinks was a bad choice, and that Harry did 
shock him out of his depressive funk.

Not that Harry was *in* the right to do so, but JKR made him right to 
do so. Yeah, I understand Harry's thinking. No, I don't think 
Dumbledore's death made him the arbiter of "what's right" in his 
friends and/or compatriots lives.

Mike