Suspicious!Remus

[sistermagpie]

I've been trying to think of something to post for a few days, and every time I start something it ceases to amuse and I delete it. Which is why I'm late with HAPPY BIRTHDAY conniemarie and nmalfoy I notice. Hope you guys both had great days!

One thing that did come up in a sub-thread of the PS/SS re-read was Remus,

I tend to see things a lot about how Remus was desperate to keep his friends, implying he was a pushover etc. I know JKR has said his greatest weakness is he wants to be liked, but I don't think that always translates into what people think of when they hear that term. One way to interpret that sentence is that Remus was the kind of kid who did stuff because he wanted friends. The kind of kid who had a lot of people coming to the party he threw while his parents were away not because he was popular but because he supplied a lot of alcohol and offered his house for people to party in. This is not the way I imagine this phrase applying to Remus. I think it applies to Remus in a subtler way that puts Remus a little more in control.

If you look at how MWPP seemed to interact it seems Remus was a little different from James and Sirius. He wasn’t the same kind of aggressive bully—nor did he fret over bullying while being too scared to say anything, imo. Dumbledore puts him in a position where he's supposed to stop them from what they're doing and he rejects that position--frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if he never wanted to be prefect, period.

But James and Sirius don't seem to treat Remus as a second-class friend. It’s Peter who’s teased as the junior member who looks up to J&S. If Remus was really desperate for friends he'd have a more vulnerable feeling to him, but he doesn't seem to have that to me. To me it seems like they were friends with Remus because they thought he was cool in a different way than they were. Quiet, but not timid. I don't think they sought him out because they felt sorry for him; I imagine they noticed him being funny or doing stuff they approved of in class. The brief interactions we see between Remus and the other members of MWPP seem to fit that more than the idea of Doormat!Remus to me.

The other thing besides the Pensieve incident that often gets interpreted as Remus getting walked over is the Prank. Had he killed or infected Snape that would have been terrible for Remus. So he must have been just so desperate for friendship he'd put aside his anger and hurt. The thing is, we don't know whether Remus views it this way--remember, this is a man who even as an adult forgets to take his Wolfsbane, and he doesn't seem horrified at the risk MWPP put people in when they went running around with him. Iirc, even when he's saying he was wrong to do this he doesn't say anything about endangering others, nor does he speak for the other Marauders by saying they were ALL wrong in doing what they did. He just speaks for himself. I believe he tells Harry he should have listened to Dumbledore since the restrictions were there "for his own good." (Sorry if I'm getting that wrong.) Fandom may take Remus' contagious situation more seriously than he does...and that sort of makes sense to me.

Remus makes the decision to not tell Dumbledore about Sirius being an animagus in PoA. The reason he gives is, iirc, that he didn't want Dumbledore to know he'd abused his trust. Maybe that's supposed to be accurate but it doesn't fit to me. First because Remus just seems too grown-up to care about letting Dumbledore down that much as a kid. If Remus is driven to endear himself, why not share this information with Dumbledore while simply leaving himself out of the story? He wouldn't have to say when or why Sirius became an animagus--he could pretend he did it after Hogwarts. I doubt Dumbledore would have pressed him that much beyond that. To me it reads more like yes, he doesn't want to tell Dumbledore the truth, but he also just wants to keep his own secrets. Based on the Remus we see it's just easier for me to imagine him somehow wanting to protect Sirius' secret, even thinking he's a murderer, then it is to imagine him fretting over getting in trouble for Dumbledore for breaking the rules at 15. Especially since Dumbledore hardly has a history of caring about that, particularly when James was involved, and Remus doesn't seem ashamed of what he did anyway.

I should admit here, too, that I find the idea of tension between Remus and Harry interesting. It's not something I'm always very aware of, but I think it’s part of why I'm resistant to Perfect!Dad or Mommy!Remus who's the best adult in Harry's life and wuvs him so much and is the only person who puts Harry's best interest first. Yes, Remus seems to be the only adult who doesn't have an *agenda* when it comes to Harry, but that's slightly different than saying Harry's best interest is the thing around which Remus' life revolves. Harry loving Remus best of all the adults because of how good he was to him is, of course, un-canonical. It's Sirius Harry thinks of as family, and then the Weasleys. Hagrid and Dumbledore both come before Remus, as do Harry's friends. When Harry imagines Christmas with the Weasleys in OotP he's disappointed Sirius can't come along and worries about him spending Xmas alone with Kreacher--Remus doesn't even come into Harry's head.

In the PS re-read people were discussing the way characters made Harry=James a lot in the text, and someone pointed out that Remus is one of the few that doesn't. I wondered if part of the reason for that is that Remus' relationship with Harry in PoA, despite being one of the most positive and helpful ones Harry's ever has, is still marked by distance (which is a relief given all the adults who desperately NEED something from Harry or want to claim him in some way). Remus is keeping secrets during the year-that he's a werewolf, yes, but also the whole MWPP backstory. In protecting Sirius' secret for his own reasons Remus is working *against* Harry by helping his alleged would-be murderer stay hidden. I think there's a lot of good reasons for Remus, unlike Sirius or even Peter, to be all too aware that this *isn't* James he's dealing with, but a child he doesn't know very well, even if he's related to his old friends.

Here's the other thing about "desperate to be liked" Remus--as a character he's quite solitary. He handles social situations well--he's quite smooth, in fact, and is more often shown to be the person in control of a scene than the one reacting to outside force. He needles Snape, he tells Sirius to sit down, he calms Neville, he hands out chocolate, he teaches Harry. This is not a guy constantly on the lookout for ways to ingratiate himself. He's one of the more detached characters in terms of needing connections as well. Sirius seems to have far more feeling about wanting to be with Harry than Remus does. He reacts to losing his job far more calmly than Hagrid. Let's face it--the fact that Remus has to leave at all implies Dumbledore didn't step in to help, possibly because Remus clearly isn't loyal enough to make the effort for. He doesn't seem devastated at losing Sirius. He appears to spend long chunks of time by himself, and he doesn't seem like somebody who fears time spent alone. I think Remus would have done far better stuck in a house than Sirius did.

I mean, think of the phrase, "He wants people to like him." Like is a pretty casual word. He doesn't want to be loved--that's somebody else. He just wants people to like him, to not dislike him. There's something more potentially sinister in wanting people to like you, perhaps because it lacks the implied need of wanting love. (Not that wanting to be loved can't actually produce a far scarier person.) This ultimately seems to be the skill that Remus has, too. He doesn't make himself loved the way Sirius (James and Harry's favorite) does, he makes himself *liked.* Everybody's happy to see him, but there's no gaping hole when he's not there. His leaving school is a shame, but it’s not like Hagrid got fired. After a year of regular contact with Remus and a couple of brief meetings with Sirius, which one does Harry consider family and which one is greeted with a pleasant, "Professor Lupin, is that you?" after no contact for over a year?

Any ideas about Remus have to include the fact that when his friends knew there was a traitor, they thought of him--ironically, James trusts Sirius as Secret Keeper and Sirius trusts Peter, despite the fact that Remus is probably the one most used to keeping secrets--or perhaps BECAUSE he's the one most used to keeping secrets. I don't think people mistrusted Remus because he'd shown signs of anything really evil, so much that he stood a little apart, and so was never entirely trustworthy.

That's, I guess, where the whole loyalty issue comes in. He will keep secrets from Dumbledore--but somehow not in the same way Sirius, James or Harry do. I think that's why I don't buy Grown!Adult!Remus being too ashamed to tell Dumbledore he'd abused his trust in school, since it's very hard for me to imagine Remus hanging too much on anyone's opinion of him. If Dumbledore's opinion really meant that much to Remus I suspect he would have become one of Dumbledore's protected group instead of a Field Agent on his own. Dumbledore loves forgiving stuff like that.

All this makes sense given Remus' condition, imo. What's the main thing Remus can't be trusted to do but be 100% responsible about his illness? We're told about werewolf prejudice a lot, so that makes him an outsider. It's also a painful disease that probably governs his whole life. Even his family might have shied away from him. It's him and the wolf and everybody else is outside. At the same time--and I really like this about Remus--he really doesn't seem to have the relationship to his condition some fans assume he would. He has a history of carelessness with it! Here he gets a chance to come to school and be "normal," and he's running off with his friends in wolf form. Are we supposed to think the other boys forced him into it, that Remus pathetically offered his "freakish" nature as something for them to gawk at and play around with? That's hard to believe. Personally, I think he just loved doing it. Many people are shocked at Remus' forgetting to take his Potion in PoA--it's so important, after all, and he's so mature and responsible at other times, how could he forget? But why not instead assume it’s not just forgetfulness at work? Perhaps it's significant that when Snape brings his Potion and wants him to take it RIGHT NOW Remus tells him to put it down and he'll take it later.

Now, I really dislike it when people make Remus' lycanthropy an analogy for some real life condition (especially homosexuality or AIDS) but there are obviously some general parallels to some real life situations. And I just sort of like the idea that Remus is not entirely compliant when it comes to his meds, as real people sometimes aren't. Rather than Remus being ultra-responsible about his illness and horrified at the idea of infecting someone, perhaps he doesn't identify himself as a big danger, and isn't horrified at what he could do to non-werewolves. Perhaps he even harbors even darker impulses about them.

Not that I'm saying he secretly wants to infect everyone--Remus is reasonable and unlike Snape, Harry and Sirius he isn't a hot head--all the more interesting since he's the one who really does periodically lose control and become violent if not medicated. But still, you can't ignore this is a character who is more in control than most, in a precarious position, with an important responsibility, and when he blows it it's just because...he forgot. It’s not like the author couldn’t have made an effort to come up with some other reason Remus hadn’t taken his Potion instead of “he forgot.”

Did he forget after refusing once again to take the Potion the minute Snape brought it? I have a friend who's bipolar who once told me she hated the taste of her pills, and realized it was because she just literally hated having to take her pills on many levels. I love the idea of Remus having a similarly complicated relationship with his Wolfsbane. Plus it's also just nice to think of a "half-breed" who's slightly ambivalent about being a normal wizard by any means necessary.

This doesn't add up to Remus really "being evil" or whatever. It just seems like yeah, if you were going to suspect one of the Marauders, Remus has the kind of personality that would make you wonder if you could completely trust him--probably because, to put it simply, I don't think he trusts anyone else completely. He can't, really. He's got to look after himself.

It would be interesting to know a bit about how Remus interacted with his wolf-self, in fact. Are there good points to being a wolf--apart from the physical drain on your human self? Is it unpleasant being a Wolfsbane!Werewolf? I guess it's just always seemed to me that the thing about any condition that effects your personality is it's difficult to just draw a line and say "This is me" and "This is the illness." Of course there are some ways you can do that and should, just as Remus=!Wolf-Remus. But still it seems like any chronic, serious condition like that is always part of who you are, and while the WPP therefore probably got closer to Remus than anyone else by becoming animagi they still may have always been aware of there was a part of this friend they couldn't ever know.