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

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 180683

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sistermagpie" <sistermagpie at ...> wrote:
>
> > Sherry now:<snip snip>
 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.  
> 
> 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. 
<snip>
> 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. 
> 

Pippin:
IIRC, the point of Harry's conversation with Phineas was to show us that
Harry was rationalizing: he told himself that he was worried about the
danger to his friends, but he was more worried about being different
from them in a horrible and unique way. Now Harry perceives that 
Lupin is doing the same thing. 

Just as Harry forgot about Diary!Ginny, Lupin has forgotten that Harry 
knows something about being treated as an outcast by his own 
family and being viewed as a dangerous  freak with criminal 
propensities and powers he could not control. I think we can imagine
what it would have meant to Harry during those times to know that
he had a father who cared for him, even one who couldn't do anything
to help him. I think that  gives Harry the right to state his point of
view, though it could have been done more tactfully. But then I'm three
times his age.

Anyway the idea that if Lupin forgets that he is a father, the WW
will conveniently forget that Tonks was his wife and the child is
his seems fallacious on the order of a kid hiding his eyes and 
supposing it makes him invisible.
  
Tonks didn't keep her marriage a secret. What's she supposed to do,
 obliviate everyone who can count to nine? <g>

Lupin is not proposing to protect Harry in addition to protecting
his child, or in order to protect his child from Voldemort. He's 
proposing that the child won't suffer by his absence, which is absurd.  

Pippin