The terrifying story of Remus Lupin, cannibal and pedophile, and matricidal werewolf fetus
Snapefen at Snapedom are engaging in their favorite pastime - abusing everybody who isn't Snape or at least a Slytherin. This time their designated target is Remus Lupin. Note that this wank started 21 day ago and is still going on.

It all began when terri_testing posted an essay Remus (and other Lycanthropes) as Parents, where she depicts Remus as bad and irresponsible teacher, husband and father. Some excerpts:

First, I’m with 00sevvie and Oryx on Remus’s behavior in PoA; the werewolf put maintaining Dumbledore’s (mistaken) good opinion of him ahead of the LIVES of children in his care. Remus allowed someone he truly thought to be a psychotic mass murderer free access to Hogwarts to keep from facing Dumbledore’s disappointment if Remus admitted his past transgressions.

Moreover, Remus endangered everyone in the school by playing little passive-aggressive games with Severus over taking his Wolfsbane (I think it was Jodel who pointed this out). It was Remus’s responsibility to ensure he took the medication that kept him sane in a timely manner. And at least twice we see him requiring Severus to track him down with the dose. That, indeed, is how Severus got in on the excitement in the Shack: “You forgot to take your potion tonight, so I took a gobletful along.”

And then in the Shack itself, Remus allowed Sirius to unbind him from Snape’s spell, when it was his duty to remember that the full moon was about to rise and he had to be confined for others’ safety.

I’m sorry, but I have friends infected with HIV. And they’ve explained a few ground rules to me. If one has an incurable, communicable, fatal* disease, one does not “forget” the precautions needed to keep others safe. Not if one is a decent person (as opposed to wanting others to mistake one for a decent person).
***
But whether or not you accept my argument that Remus married Tonks without loving her, it is, in fact, canon that marrying her was ‘against my better judgment’. He called involvement with him ‘too dangerous,’ and we saw in the opening chapter of DH that the marriage did make Tonks more of a target than she would have been otherwise.

So on the best possible interpretation, Remus allowed his desire to avoid someone’s disappointment to override his best judgment in a matter involving another person’s safety. On the worst interpretation, he married a woman to whom he was indifferent because he caved in to his friends’ pressure.
***
So, sorry, the argument that Remus ever grew up in any significant way fails.

His fatal flaw was his emotional cowardice, and canon indicates that he retained that to the end.

Had Remus survived to rear Teddy, I imagine that Teddy would have learned by age three, max, that Daddy would give in on anything whatsoever if Teddy threw a tantrum and threatened to withdraw his affection. So Remus would have been a worse disciplinarian than Petunia with Dudley, and Teddy (even though not a werewolf) would have grown into a spoiled and manipulative monster of selfishness.

The essay ends with a horror-novel scenario:

But if my reasoning is correct, human mothers, in general, can only carry a human child to term. So Remus should have been angsting over the possibility that Tonks would miscarry her much-wanted child, not that it would be born a lycanthrope. But he wasn’t.

Unless the only precedents Remus knew of involved werewolf mothers, who must always produce werewolf children if any. In which case Remus got Tonks pregnant while believing that any child he fathered MUST be born a lycanthrope.

*

But there’s a wrinkle thrown into all this by the fact that Tonks is a Metamorphmagus.

She can alter her body—including, we have seen, taking on superficial bestial characteristics (a pig’s snout). Can she alter other organs to be bestial? Specifically, can she alter her uterus and the mother’s portion of the placenta, perhaps subconsciously, to be more lupine to save her changing child?

If she can, that opens a truly chilling possibility. The metamorphmagus alters her uterus at the first full moon after conception, and manages to carry her lycanthrope fetus past the first full moon. And past the second, and the third….

Over time her fetus’s nervous system develops, and with it its normal instincts. Human, for almost all of the month. Except for those few hours when the full moon is above the horizon.

Her fetus will have no teeth, not before birth, unless that might be another point in which werewolves are unlike other canids, but it will eventually grow claws.

And then will come another full moon, the last one, and the werewolf-fetus’s instincts will urge it overwhelmingly to rend, to tear, the nearest human.

The one surrounding it.

terri_testing also posted a drabble Teddy’s Sister to go with her essay. I guess the name of Teddy's sister is Renesmee Lupin.

sailorlum, a sane Snape fan and Lupin fan, decided to argue, that Remus didn't completely suck. That caused a huge wankfest, where terri_testing, oryx_leucoryx, 00sevvie, duj and oneandthetruth argued that Remus was a bad guy, that it was cruel of him to make Snape!boggart look funny and not to drink Wolfsbane Snape brought immediately ("HOW ON EARTH is that scene supposed to be FUNNY to anyone in a way that does not deny the validity of Severus' pain? HOW?", wondered terri_testing), that Remus was hunting human prey with his friends the animals, that terri_testing is Lizzie Bennett and Lupin is Wickham, that Remus was only kind to Molly because she cooked for the Order and that werewolf!Lupin was probably more aggressive than werewolf!Greyback. Several Snapefen were also pretty rude to sailorlum. My favorite exchange is this one:

oneandthetruth

This is a brilliant and concise assessment of the situation. It's also very funny. I hadn't thought about it until you put it in such stark terms, but the conclusion of PoA definitely falls into the category of "and after this, we'll take a look at the nice bridges I have for sale." IOW, it's both preposterous and preposterously contrived, what movie critic Roger Ebert calls an "idiot plot." That is, it only works as long as everybody involved acts like an idiot.

You've also indirectly hit on some major reasons Severus stands out in these books, is so popular with some people, and so hated by others.: He's the only character who consistently displays logic and common sense. He sees subtleties in people's words and actions that other characters miss. He's also more mentally, if not emotionally, independent than most of the other characters. IOW, he's not an idiot.

I'd noticed before this that Snape fans tend to be very logical and analytical in interpreting the books. They read a lot between the lines of the text and care little or nothing about what the author says the reader should think or believe.

By contrast, Snape haters are more inclined to act like other Potterverse characters, particularly Harry himself: They skim the surface of character words, actions, and interactions, missing clues to unspoken subtleties. They believe the author knows more about her universe than anyone else, so if she says something, it must be the truth, no matter what the textual evidence says to the contrary. Their attitudes are like the one expressed on a bumper sticker I've seen: "The Bible says it./God said it. I believe it. That settles it." IOW, "don't confuse me with the facts. My mind is already made up."

That's not to say there isn't some tortured logic among Snape fans sometimes. There is. But it seems to be more prevalent among the Snape haters. That's not surprising, given their liking for unrepentant violent criminals (MWPP, Dumbledore). For example, it takes mental gymnastics of Olympic gold medal-winning quality to convince yourself that someone who could unapologetically send other people into suicidal situations without their knowledge or consent is still a good guy anyway (Sirius, Dumbledore).

night_train_fm

'Snape fans tend to be very logical and analytical in interpreting the books'

...Have you read any of marionros' posts, by any chance?

'consistently displays logic and common sense'

You mean like the time he joined the wizard version of the KKK? Or the years he spent venting a grudge against a dead man on a kid less than half his age?

'given their liking for unrepentant violent criminals'

If the Marauders are 'unrepentant violent criminals', what does that make Snape? Y'know, the guy who joined a racist terrorist group and only left because they targeted the woman he was obsessed with, not because he disagreed with their beliefs?

oneandthetruth

>>'Snape fans tend to be very logical and analytical in interpreting the books'

...Have you read any of marionros' posts, by any chance?<<

I said, "tend to be," not "they invariably are." The dictionary in my computer defines "tend" as meaning, "regularly or frequently behave in a particular way or have a certain characteristic." At least marionros attempts to bring logic and evidence to bear in her arguments, even if she doesn't always succeed. That still makes her vastly superior logically to your friends at HMS_STFU or Fandom_Wank, who usually just insult people and spew their opinions without even trying to back up their diatribes with evidence.

>>'consistently displays logic and common sense'

You mean like the time he joined the wizard version of the KKK? Or the years he spent venting a grudge against a dead man on a kid less than half his age?<<

He was a teenager when he joined the Death Eaters. It's a well-known fact of human biology that the brain doesn't stop developing until the age of 25, with the frontal lobes being the last part to mature. The frontal lobes are where the ability to reason analytically and anticipate the consequences of one's actions reside.

Furthermore, there's no canonical evidence it was widely known what Voldemort's ultimate goal was, or what DE recruits would be getting into when they joined. Voldemort was running a cult; one of the characteristics of cults is that they have two faces: a benign one they show the world at large, and a malign one only initiates get to see. (For details, read chapter 2 of Releasing the Bonds, by Steven Hassan.) It's highly likely Snape didn't know what he was getting into until it was too late to back out. Before you say he was friends with Lucius Malfoy, so he had an inside source of information, remember what I said about the two faces of cults. Lucius wouldn't have given Severus any info that would have discouraged him from joining. His job as a member was to entice new recruits, not scare them away. Besides, he believed in Voldemort's pureblood supremacist BS, thus giving him an additional reason to keep quiet.

As for Snape's treatment of Harry, I've already conceded elsewhere that he sometimes treated his students badly, specifically to you on terri_testing's LJ back in October 2009. Why are you wasting time trying to convince me of something I've already made clear I agree with you about? This is clearly irrational, which just proves my original point. It's also stereotyping, which is a form of bigotry, to assume every Snape fan believes exactly the same thing, despite clear evidence to the contrary. Those are precisely the things you repeatedly castigate Snape for doing. So much for your right to judge him.

>>given their liking for unrepentant violent criminals'

If the Marauders are 'unrepentant violent criminals', what does that make Snape? Y'know, the guy who joined a racist terrorist group and only left because they targeted the woman he was obsessed with, not because he disagreed with their beliefs?<<

For starters, see my paragraphs replying to your second quotation. Furthermore, cults involve brainwashing, which breaks down the will of members and causes their individual personalities to merge with that of the cult leader. (See Hassan, above.) That's even easier with a young person whose personality is still not completely formed, particularly with one who's been beaten down by neglect at home and abuse at school.

By the time Severus defected, he'd been in the DEs long enough to know he was risking death by attempting to leave them. Only a motivation strong enough to overcome his survival instinct could have driven him to take such a risk. That's just human nature.

It's also canon that, unlike your favorite characters, he did repent. He devoted his entire adult life to making up for his youthful mistake. He even developed enough positive feelings for Harry to be appalled at Dumbledore's plan to send the boy on a suicide mission. By contrast, to the end of their days, Sirius and Remus apparently felt no guilt or shame whatsoever about their attacks on Snape and other students, nor did Albus feel bad about covering up those attacks, repeatedly risking the lives of thousands of students as Headmaster, or sending Severus and Harry to die without their knowledge or consent. IOW, I'm comparing adults in their thirties and older with other adults, while you're comparing a teenage Severus with adult Remus, Sirius, and Albus. Such invalid and dishonest tactics just prove how weak your argument is.

oryx_leucoryx

If the Marauders are 'unrepentant violent criminals', what does that make Snape?

A repentant member of a criminal organization, whose other members either can't remember any specific crime he may have committed since joining (Igor Karkaroff) or are very displeased of his low performance (Bellatrix).

After all that 00sevvie made a new Snapedom post, where she bemoaned supposed whitewashing of Lupin's flaws and lack of validation of Snape's pain and trauma from other HP characters, JKR and sailorlum. marionros/smallpotato appeared in the comments to this post and proved how logical and reasonable she is by claiming that lycanthropy symbolizes pedophilia and that Remus metaphorically almost raped Snape while at school:

I've always been annoyed with the fact that so many people think that Lupin's lycantropy is somehow a metafore for AIDS while it is so clearly not.
Werewolves turn into slavering, murderous MONSTERS that actively seek victims to rip apart. AIDS patients do not. Werewolves (at least Fenrir, the most werewolfy of them all) seem to target children to pass their 'disease' onto, AIDS patients do not, and especially not on purpose.

What lycanthropy most resembles, to me, is pedofilia. Yes. I know this will make people scream. How dare I liken dear, gentle Remus Lupin with a childdiddler?! Well, face it, most pedophiles are perfectly friendly, dealing out the charm and chocolates, especially to that one lone child from the neglected home. Taking him apart, being all sympathetic like, building up a trust.. only to turn into a slavering monster when the moon rises... um, well.
People refer to pedophilia as a disease as well, and there are medicines to suppress libido.

So, in that light, lets review those chapters in PoA again.

Remus Lupin was the one who groomed and then assaulted young Sev when he was at school. His clothes were ripped off, he was pinned down, and nearly got raped, feeling Lupin's hot breath in his face.
The matter was hushed up, because the headmaster knew of Lupin's 'condition' and his and his protoge's reputation was more important to him than the ragamuffin from the neglected home. Snape should just forget about it, there's a good boy.
Years later, when Snape is a teacher, Lupin comes to teach as well. He objects. A pedo teaching in a boarding school?! That's tying the cat onto the bacon! But no, the Headmaster essures him he has medicine which will curb Lupin's libido and make him harmless. Snape himself is charged to dole out the meds to his one-time-near-rapist every moth.
Lupin soon makes himself friendly with the children, doling out chocolate, lampooning authority figures such as Snape himself and insists on addressing Snape with his Christian name, as if they are old school friends, which they are certainly not. When Snape snarls at him to keep him at a distance, butter wouldn't melt in Lupins mouth. Oh, some people are just *so* snarky. *sigh* Snape keeps an eye on him, though, because he doesn't trust Lupin to take his medicine, and he *is* in a school full of young children.
One time, when Snape comes to Lupin's rooms to give him his medicine, he finds him in the company of another dark-haired young boy from a neglecful family, but Lupin just smiles at him ("just showing him my grindylow, Severus") and waves him away, telling him that he *will* take his medicine, just not *now*, thank you very much.

There's an escaped prisoner on the loose, one of Lupin's old cronies, with whom he used to maraude the countryside with (things which were all hushed-up again, since these boys were 'of good family' and they wouldn't do such things, surely?) Snape suspects that Lupin is in cahoots with this escaped murderer (which he is in a way, since Lupin knows how his old friend enters the premises and refuses to tell anyone about it) and, when he notices that Lupin has yet *again* 'forgotten' his medicine, and that the boy *and* Lupin are heading towards the old shed where he himself was once assaulted by Lupin, he rushes in to save the boy. Only to have the boy throw in his face that he is 'pathetic' and to have Lupin sneer at him that he should 'get over' his near rape which was hushed up.

Yes, I know that a lot of you will scream, "no, no! Lupin is not a kiddie-winkler! He isn't a rapist! He's a very nice man!", but I just want you to remind you of the lesson Red Riding Hood learned. As she sang in 'Into the Woods', "nice is different from good".

Yes, Lupin is a 'victim' of his own condition as well, but the same can be said for pedofiles. Most pedo's will manfully fight their predeliction and never harm a child, since they know their urges to be wrong. Lupin always struck me as someone who didn't want to acknowledge the danger he presented, and this is exactly which makes him so dangerous. "Oh, poor me", he exhumes, "I'm such a victim of all this prejudice, and what did I do to deserve it, I ask you? Well, yes, I have a 'furry problem' (doesn't that sound cutesy?) and there were all those near-misses where I nearly gruesomely ripped people up in shivering little bits, but those were just larks! Pranks, nothing more! And yes, I once nearly ripped old Snape a new hole, but hey, he was just this grotty, neglected weirdo, and he was one of, you know, *those* people, so he doesn't count."

Nice? 'Very human'? Lupin? *brrrr...*

ETA: Harry has no ability to love and Ginny reminds him of Bellatrix.

ETA 2: farmercuerden summarized the Snapewank in a song.