HBP post DH look chapter 5

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184332

Alla quoting:
> "She can't change her appearance like she used to," explained 
Hermione. "I think her powers must have been affected by shock, or
something" - p.95
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Wait, we know now that Tonks was really depressed over Lupin, was
she ever in shock over Sirius or not? And if she was, and her powers
were affected, why Harry's were not?

Carol responds:

I think this is one of many instances of Hermione or another character
being partially right. Clearly, Tonks' powers *have* been affected by
"shock *or something.*" But Hermione suggests (psychoanalyzing a
character she doesn't know particularly well somewhat less accurately,
IMO, than she similarly analyzes Cho Chang and Sirius Black), that
Tonks is suffering from survivor's guilt and somehow feels that it's
her fault that Sirius died. That suggestion is a red herring (and a
rather weak one since it isn't reinforced by any evidence). Later,
Harry thinks that she's mourning for her cousin (first cousin once
removed) Sirius, and her reaction is confusion. She's left her post to
ask Dumbledore about Lupin's safety because she's heard that someone
has been killed by a werewolf. Someone (Hermione?) points out that
Tonks didn't know Sirius all that well. He was some fifteen years
older than she was, closer to Andromeda's age than Nymphadora's, and
he was in prison for twelve years when she was a child and adolescent,
and in hiding for two years after that (PoA and GoF). She may have
seen him occasionally when she was a small child, but she essentially
met him for the first time when she joined the Order between the end
of GoF and the beginning of PoA. She would have met Lupin at the same
time, but it was the kindly, low-key werewolf and not the rash and
sometimes surly ex-prisoner that she fell in love with. 

Tonks's hair does not change color immediately after Sirius Black's
death. She's her normal self at the end of OoP, having recovered from
whatever green-lit spell nearly killed her. She talks and acts in her
usual way as the guard of Order members confronts the Dursleys, and
her hair is "bubble-gum pink." Only in HBP do we see it brown. We
first see the brown-haired Tonks acting depressed at the Weasleys
where Mrs. Weasley invites Tonks to a dinner that Mad-eye and Lupin
will attend and Tonks turns it down. Later, Harry thinks that Mrs.
Weasley is trying to interest Bill in Tonks, not realizing that it's
Lupin she's focusing on. We get some rather clever misdirection from
Harry's pov: "She [Mrs. Weasley] gave Lupin an annoyed look as if it
was all his fault that she was getting Fleur for a daughter-in-law
instead of Tonks" (HBP Am. ed. 340). In hindsight, it's clear that
Mrs. Weasley knows exactly what's wrong with Tonks and *does* blame
Lupin for not returning her love or trying to suppress his own
feelings for Tonks. (We never quite know how he feels about her,but
it's perhaps significant that of all the reasons he gives for not
marrying her--he's too old, too poor, and too dangerous--he never says
that he doesn't love her.)

If I were writing a fanfic, I'd have Lupin sitting by her bedside as
she recovers, holding her hand and gradually realizing that he loves
her and the recovering Tonks becoming more and more infatuated with
the older man she had developed a secret crush on very soon after
meeting him. Her happiness at the end of OoP would be based on the
realization that he loved her, too, and on the hugs or even kisses
that he gave her in celebration of her recovery and to comfort her for
whatever grief she felt for Sirius. At some point before HBP, she
would hopefully mention marriage, and then the blow would fall. He
loves her but he can't marry her for the reasons he states in the
hospital wing near the end of the book. The talks between them that
Hermione thinks are intended to comfort her and persuade her that
she's not responsible for Sirius's death would be those same
explanations given over and over. ("It can't be. I love you too much
to expose you to such danger. I'm not good enough for you. Find a
young and whole man who can give you the life you deserve," ad nauseum.)

At any rate, we have only hints of their conversations, but the
evidence throughout the book, as well as her happiness and recovery
after her marriage and her panic when she finds that he's fighting
Dolohov at Hogwarts (she's left her baby with her mother to join him
in the fight) indicates to me that her near-obsessive love for Lupin
(requited or not) and her depression when he refuses to marry her is
the cause of her lost powers, just as unrequited love for a Muggle
caused Merope to lose (or forgo) her powers.

IMO, it has nothing to do with grief for sirius at all. That's a red
herring. We don't see excessive grief (which Harry suffers more than
once, and Snape suffers before the books begin) affect anyone's
powers. Only unrequited love (or a refusal to marry the girl you love
for her own good, which amounts to the same thing) has that effect.
(Unrequited love has altogether different but equally exaggerated
effects in Snape's case, but I don't want to go OT.)

> Alla:
> 
> Is it just me or is Harry overreacting here just a tiny bit? I mean,
of course being friends with Harry was always dangerous and I love how
they stick by him, etc. When I say overreaction, I am wondering why
exactly knowing the prophecy would make Ron and Hermione leave him?
> 
> I am just saying that it is not like anything drastically changed
for them, IMO.

Carol:

Oops. I accidentally snipped the quote you're reacting to. Sorry.
Anyway, I think this reaction is in character for Harry, who expected
his friends to reject him when he thought he was possessed and was
also surprised and grateful when Ron didn't laugh at him at some point
(drawing a blank here, but it will pop into my mind the moment I hit
Send <smile>).

Also, in this instance, I understand why Harry would feel
contaminated. He's in a situation very similar to Snape's predicament
later on, knowing that he must kill or be killed. Of course, he won't
be considered a murdering traitor and suffer the vilification that
Snape endures, but he feels that killing another person, even one as
depraved and removed from humanity as Voldemort, is murder, and the
choice is to commit murder or be murdered. (I suspect that young
soldiers in their first battle feel exactly the same way, and some
never recover.) But also, and I don't know that anyone else will agree
with me, I think there's a human tendency to shun the dying or the
condemned. (I recall my then-husband years and years ago revealing to
some so-called friends that he'd been diagnosed with Hodgkins disease
and would have to take chemotherapy treatments. You could almost see
them backing away in horror. He might as well have told them that he
had leprosy. They shunned us from that point forward. People are
afraid of death and their own mortality. My ex is still alive and has
been in remission for decades, BTW.) Maybe Harry knew or sensed that
people view the condemned or the dying and thought that he might lose
his friends if they knew it was likely that he would die. Or maybe he
thought that he would have to face death alone, that they wouldn't
endanger themselves if they knew the inevitable outcome. He does
almost the same thing at the end of HBP, expecting to face Voldemort
alone. He consistently underestimates the strength of his friends'
love for and loyalty to him (and I say that even knowing that Ron
almost fails Harry, Hermione, and himself in DH; he comes through and
destroys his own fears and insecurities through the symbolic act of
destroying the Horcrux).

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, we're seeing a reaction from Harry
that's perfectly consistent with his reactions in other books.

Philip wrote:
<snip> In the immediacy after his death Harry was also affected
somewhat. The use of an Unforgivable and the vengeance we saw was
never before seen (I know he didn't know them before, but acting out
of vengeance, was, up until then, not in Harry's persona).

Carol responds:
In PoA, he wants to kill Sirius Black for supposedly betraying his
parents. The narrator states that he had never felt such hatred
before. It's very similar to his reaction to Bellatrix for murdering
Sirius in OoP. The difference is that he's older and more powerful and
he knows the Unforgiveable Curses now. It's interesting, however, that
he uses Crucio and not Avada Kedavra not only here but against Snape
(who easily defletdts it) and against Amycus Carrow in DH. Setting
aside his actual ability to use the curse, it's interesting that once
he knows about the Unforgiveables, his choice is always to torture, to
punish, not to kill. Whether that's admirable or not, we can all
decide for ourselves. At any rate, the desire for vengeance, which we
first see in PoA, is, IMO, one of the demons that Harry conquers in
DH, thanks to Snape's memories and Harry's own decision to sacrifice
himself.

Carol, off to make lunch now