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

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 180680

> Sherry now:
> 
> Why was Harry's behavior so wrong?  Several people have said this, 
and it
> boggles my mind.  Lupin needed a good swift kick in the rear, and 
Harry gave
> it to him.  Frankly, I cheered!  If I'd ever gone on and on to my 
friends or
> family with a bunch of self-pitying whining, run out on my 
responsibilities,
> using my disability as a flimsy excuse, any one of my friends or 
family
> would act the same.  Particularly, perhaps, the young people who 
have been
> taught to respect me as a competent, independent person.  And I would
> deserve it and not punch them for telling me the truth.  

Magpie:
I don't think that's an exactly accurate description, though. He's not 
using his disability as an excuse for getting out of responsibility 
because he can't handle it--he's offering to take on more 
responsibility. In fact he's already canonically accepted that however 
little he may like it, his disability gives him a responsibilty to 
take on dangerous tasks that it makes him uniquely qualified to do--
like spy on the werewolves. The guy who steps up and goes to live 
under Fenrir Greyback--who bit him to begin with--because he sees that 
if he doesn't do it nobody else really can and it's necessary for the 
cause (well, seemed necessary--it went nowhere) isn't a whiner who 
uses his disability to get out of responsibility.

The reason he's saying he shouldn't be with his family isn't that his 
illness makes him unable to handle responsibility but that his very 
presence is a danger to them--which is true--under the current regime. 
So it's not like "I can't take care of my family because I have a 
disability" it's more like "my disability puts me on the list to be 
hunted down by the fascist regime and I won't put my family under that 
same level of danger via their association with me." A lot of people 
would find that kind of guilt unacceptable and say if they're family 
was safer without them they'd leave them. 

Far from being something that disgusts Harry, it's something Harry 
himself would do. He thought himself perfectly self-righteous when he 
considered leaving Grimmauld Place when he thought he was possessed in 
OotP and he made similar speeches in this book about not wanting to 
put other people in danger because they're with him. 

-m