![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieI found the coolest Harry Potter art site. It's at here. I love her art, and have the Harry in Lupin's office pic as my wallpaper.
I do want to talk about Lupin in this book. He really is a wonderful character and I am glad that it looks like he will be allowed to live and live happily at the end (he is not close to Harry and he has a significant other). I am so glad he and Tonks got together, not out of any particular passion for the ship (I never thought about it one way or another before this book), but because the man deserves a bit of happiness. He's had a very hard life: bitten as a child for no fault of his own, he's lost his three friends and now is completely alone, unemployable, ostracised, and trying to be a werewolf mole on DD's orders. His life sucks. When he refers to those outcast murdrerer werewolves as his "fellows" and "equals," no no no! Because that is SO wrong.
I am so struck by the fact that when Remus tells Harry about Fenrir, he says that for years, before he found out who bit him and why (child-preying psycho looking for revenge on Lupin's father), he felt sorry for the werewolf that bit him, knowing by then how painful it was to transform. That just made me stop and stare at the book. The person who bit him is the one whose fault it is that he can never have a normal life, that he experiences horrid pain every month, on the clock. He is the reason his whole life is wrecked. And Lupin was able to feel sorry for him. Now that is incredible. And makes me love Lupin almost as much as I loved Sirius (who still wins in the "my life is hell" sweepstakes.)
And I wonder how devastated, what a fool he felt, when he learned who it was that bit him, and how horribly hard it was for him to go back and pretend to be a good little henchman to Fenrir. Dumbledore does have a knack of asking others to do the most psychically damaging things (stick Sirius in that house, which is almost Azkaban redux for him, make Lupin go and cozy up to the man who ruined his life and do werevolfish things, if theories are correct make Snape kill him). Dumbledore is a hard taskmaster.
I do love that Lupin loses it as the death of Dumbledore. He doesn't have to be the strong adult there, the way he did with Sirius' death, but it's really the last of his supports cut off. Except for Tonks. I think that is another reason he gives in to her. He is dreadfully emotionally vulnerable at that point, and it makes him realize (probably) that he cannot be all alone, and he needs love.
The way he reacts to when Harry tells him that the reason DD trusted Snape was because Snape told him he was sorry he betrayed James ("Snape hated James")...once again. Poor poor Lupin. Those he trusts tend to betray him or die on him, don't they?
Also, learning more about werewolves, how they are considered Voldie supporters, how there are sociopaths among them that go and bite little kids for the heck of it, made me realize all the more what an amazing, true-spirited thing it was for the MWPP to stay friends with Lupin even after they find out. Especially James with his hatred of the Dark Arts, and Sirius with his horrible background and his rebellion against it.
Yet despite it all, the MWPP are friends with Lupin, they become animagi for his sake! That is why it always surprises me when some Snape fans see the MWPP as the popular kids picking on poor Snapey because he isn't cool. Just look at them! Leaving aside James who seems fairly normal in every respect (loving, well-off, pure-blood family), we have Peter who seems hardly like the "cool crowd" type, instead someone who normally would be bullied, we have Remus the bookish werewolf, and we have Sirius who comes from a nasty, abusive, pureblood family and rebels against everything they stand for. Hardly the Freddie Prinze Jr types, are they? (Actually, of all of them, it makes sense that Sirius is the one that loathes Snape the most, what with his background).
And now this is a complete tangent from what I've started out as writing, but does anyone know of a good Sirius meets James fic? Because they are closer than brothers and all, but when they first met (I doubt muggle-loving Potters and Pure Pride Blacks hung in the same circles), we had James the Dark Arts hater and Sirius, the eldest son of one of the oldest and Darkest families around. He must have felt pretty odd in Gryffindor the first few days. Forget all those Harry and Draco stories. James and Sirius is the one relationship (and I don't mean that in the slash sense) that really interests me.
I do want to talk about Lupin in this book. He really is a wonderful character and I am glad that it looks like he will be allowed to live and live happily at the end (he is not close to Harry and he has a significant other). I am so glad he and Tonks got together, not out of any particular passion for the ship (I never thought about it one way or another before this book), but because the man deserves a bit of happiness. He's had a very hard life: bitten as a child for no fault of his own, he's lost his three friends and now is completely alone, unemployable, ostracised, and trying to be a werewolf mole on DD's orders. His life sucks. When he refers to those outcast murdrerer werewolves as his "fellows" and "equals," no no no! Because that is SO wrong.
I am so struck by the fact that when Remus tells Harry about Fenrir, he says that for years, before he found out who bit him and why (child-preying psycho looking for revenge on Lupin's father), he felt sorry for the werewolf that bit him, knowing by then how painful it was to transform. That just made me stop and stare at the book. The person who bit him is the one whose fault it is that he can never have a normal life, that he experiences horrid pain every month, on the clock. He is the reason his whole life is wrecked. And Lupin was able to feel sorry for him. Now that is incredible. And makes me love Lupin almost as much as I loved Sirius (who still wins in the "my life is hell" sweepstakes.)
And I wonder how devastated, what a fool he felt, when he learned who it was that bit him, and how horribly hard it was for him to go back and pretend to be a good little henchman to Fenrir. Dumbledore does have a knack of asking others to do the most psychically damaging things (stick Sirius in that house, which is almost Azkaban redux for him, make Lupin go and cozy up to the man who ruined his life and do werevolfish things, if theories are correct make Snape kill him). Dumbledore is a hard taskmaster.
I do love that Lupin loses it as the death of Dumbledore. He doesn't have to be the strong adult there, the way he did with Sirius' death, but it's really the last of his supports cut off. Except for Tonks. I think that is another reason he gives in to her. He is dreadfully emotionally vulnerable at that point, and it makes him realize (probably) that he cannot be all alone, and he needs love.
The way he reacts to when Harry tells him that the reason DD trusted Snape was because Snape told him he was sorry he betrayed James ("Snape hated James")...once again. Poor poor Lupin. Those he trusts tend to betray him or die on him, don't they?
Also, learning more about werewolves, how they are considered Voldie supporters, how there are sociopaths among them that go and bite little kids for the heck of it, made me realize all the more what an amazing, true-spirited thing it was for the MWPP to stay friends with Lupin even after they find out. Especially James with his hatred of the Dark Arts, and Sirius with his horrible background and his rebellion against it.
Yet despite it all, the MWPP are friends with Lupin, they become animagi for his sake! That is why it always surprises me when some Snape fans see the MWPP as the popular kids picking on poor Snapey because he isn't cool. Just look at them! Leaving aside James who seems fairly normal in every respect (loving, well-off, pure-blood family), we have Peter who seems hardly like the "cool crowd" type, instead someone who normally would be bullied, we have Remus the bookish werewolf, and we have Sirius who comes from a nasty, abusive, pureblood family and rebels against everything they stand for. Hardly the Freddie Prinze Jr types, are they? (Actually, of all of them, it makes sense that Sirius is the one that loathes Snape the most, what with his background).
And now this is a complete tangent from what I've started out as writing, but does anyone know of a good Sirius meets James fic? Because they are closer than brothers and all, but when they first met (I doubt muggle-loving Potters and Pure Pride Blacks hung in the same circles), we had James the Dark Arts hater and Sirius, the eldest son of one of the oldest and Darkest families around. He must have felt pretty odd in Gryffindor the first few days. Forget all those Harry and Draco stories. James and Sirius is the one relationship (and I don't mean that in the slash sense) that really interests me.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-07-21 11:32 pm (UTC)Except for the problem of them being in different houses. If Snape wanted to hang around with Gryffindors, he would not have been in Slytherin (and apparently proud of it, if you consider he is now Head of House). Considering Voldie was already operating, I don't think the hanging-out would have worked on either part.
I'm sure they felt Snape deserved it just as much as Harry and Co felt Draco deserved to be turned into a ferret and bounced around as one.
Yes. Indeed.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-22 01:00 am (UTC)James wouldn't have minded if Snape stuck around him.
Except for the problem of them being in different houses. If Snape wanted to hang around with Gryffindors, he would not have been in Slytherin (and apparently proud of it, if you consider he is now Head of House). Considering Voldie was already operating, I don't think the hanging-out would have worked on either part.
I'm not of the belief that the house divisions went as deep as protrayed by Harry's POV. There are undoubtedly divisions, but it makes little sense how a thirty second decision by the sorting hat would mean rigid divisions for the next seven years. I think it's Harry's rivalery with Malfroy which leads to this anti-Slytherin bent in the books, that doesn't mean no one crossed over from their houses, even in Slytherin and Gryffindor. So yes, I can see, had Snape and James gotten along better, Snape might or might not have socialized with James, and James may have accepted Snape as a fellow student/friend. It was their personality, not their house divisions, which made them enemies.
Notice no mention was made that Slughorn being from Slytherin should put him under suspicion of illicit activities ("he's a Slytherin, so blah blah"), and Harry thought favorably of Slughorn b/c Slughorn wasn't nasty to Harry....the Slytherin epithet they sprew has more to do with hatred of certain people in Slytherin, not the House as a whole methinks.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-22 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-22 02:12 pm (UTC)