Remus Lupin and why I don't think he was with the werewolves in the First Wizarding War
So I wrote in reply to a post on Reddit that I could write an essay on this, and as @livelaughlovetoread asked why I believed this, I decided to indeed write that essay.
Partly because we do not know, and for me it's all these small pieces that marginally land on the side of Remus not being with the werewolves, more than one statement that explicitly tells us this. My so-called "essay" will be based on both the books (the ultimate canon), and the wizarding world article about Remus, which is one of the articles I do set some store by.
What we learn from the Wizarding World Article about Remus in the two wars:
By the time the four friends left school, Lord Voldemort’s ascendancy was almost complete. True resistance to him was concentrated in the underground organisation called the Order of the Phoenix, which all four young men joined.
The death of James Potter, along with his wife Lily, at the hands of Lord Voldemort, was one of the most traumatic events of Remus’s already troubled life. His friends meant even more to him than to other people, because he had long since accepted the fact that most people would treat him as untouchable, and that there could be no possibility of marrying and having children. Even worse, within twenty-four hours he had also lost his two other best friends. Remus was in the north of the country on Order of the Phoenix business when he heard the horrible news that one of them had murdered the other, and was now in Azkaban, a traitor to the Order and to Lily and James themselves.
As Lord Voldemort once again gained ascendancy, the old resistance regrouped and Remus found himself once more part of the Order of the Phoenix.
(...)
Remus’s immediate response was a happiness he had never experienced in his life, but this was extinguished almost at once by a sense of crushing duty. He had always known that he could not marry and run the risk of passing on his painful, shameful condition. He therefore pretended not to understand Tonks, which did not fool her at all. Wiser than Remus, she was sure that he loved her, but that he was refusing to admit it out of mistaken nobility. However, he avoided any further excursions with her, barely talked to her, and started volunteering for the most dangerous missions. Tonks became desperately unhappy, convinced not only that the man she loved would never willingly spend time with her again, but also that he might walk to his death rather than admit his feelings.
Remus and Tonks both fought Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries, a battle that resulted in the public exposure of Voldemort’s return. The loss of the last of his school friends during this battle did nothing to soften Remus’s increasingly self-destructive attitude. Tonks could only watch in despair as he volunteered to spy for the Order, leaving to live among fellow werewolves to try to persuade them to Dumbledore’s side. In doing this, he was exposing himself to the possible reprisals of the werewolf who had changed his life forever, Fenrir Greyback.
From this we learn that in the FWW, Remus was up North on Order business. Precision matters in writing, and to me the first suggestion that he might not with the werewolves lies here: we might have been told he was spying for the Order/living amongst the werewolves, if that was indeed what he was doing. Instead, we're not told that. It's vague: Remus was up North on Order business.
But the more impactful "evidence" to me comes in the description of the SWW. Remus is spiralling in the SWW. First, he takes greater and greater risks because he does not want to admit he's in love with Tonks (because she deserves better in his view), and then it gets worse, far worse, when Sirius, his last school friend, is murdered. What does Remus do? He throws away his life and volunteers to spy on the werewolves. This neither read to me like something he would have done when his friends were still alive (it is written in the text as if Sirius' death is the trigger), nor does it read as something he has done before. Why are we only told about it here and not in the first war? Why is he suddenly at risk of facing Fenrir? Because in the first war, Remus wasn't working with the werewolves.
How this is supported in the books:
Admittedly, there's less to go on in the books, but there's not nothing. Take this:
“What have you been up to lately?” Harry asked Lupin, as Mr. Weasley bustled off to fetch the eggnog, and everybody else stretched and broke into conversation.
“Oh, I’ve been underground,” said Lupin. “Almost literally. That’s why I haven’t been able to write, Harry; sending letters to you would have been something of a giveaway.”
“I’ve been living among my fellows, my equals,” said Lupin. “Werewolves,” he added, at Harry’s look of incomprehension. “Nearly all of them are on Voldemort’s side. Dumbledore wanted a spy and here I was ... ready-made.”
He sounded a little bitter, and perhaps realized it, for he smiled more warmly as he went on, “I am not complaining; it is necessary work and who can do it better than I? However, it has been difficult gaining their trust. I bear the unmistakable signs of having tried to live among wizards, you see, whereas they have shunned normal society and live on the margins, stealing — and sometimes killing — to eat.”
The two things we learn here of interest are that:
- this is a new development. Remus did not live with the werewolves/live underground in Order of the Phoenix. Now, if he was resuming his old role, why wait? Why not go underground in OOTP? We know Dumbeldore sends Hagrid to speak with the giants.
- Remus doesn't mention that he's done this before. When he speaks of the challenges to gain their trust, he doesn't say: "oh and I did this before so now they don't trust me", or "it's difficult to regain their trust". No, it's difficult to gain (not regain) their trust because Remus has lived with wizards his whole life.
Now for 1) I hear you suggest Remus couldn't go up before they knew Voldemort used werewolves because Remus is acting as spy, and does not have the same role as Hagrid with the giants. But no, his job as a spy isn't that different from Hagrid's job in OOTP:
“...And this is the man Voldemort is using to marshal the werewolves. I cannot pretend that my particular brand of reasoned argument is making much headway against Greyback’s insistence that we werewolves deserve blood, that we ought to revenge ourselves on normal people.”
Remus is trying to convince people that Greyback is wrong, and that joining Voldemort's side probably isn't the best thing. (Also stated in the Wizarding World article - “leaving to live among fellow werewolves to try to persuade them to Dumbledore’s side”) There is no reason for Dumbledore to wait with sending Remus, just like he sends Hagrid, other than the fact that Remus hasn't volunteered before.
Also, there is one other thing, and that Remus' role would likely have been different in the first war in any case. We are looking not just at two different wars, but two different stages of the two wars. When Remus joins the Order, "Lord Voldemort’s ascendancy was almost complete." The war started around 1970 (there, or thereabout). Remus leaves school in 1978.
During the second war, there was still hope in the Order that they could recruit people and beings before Voldemort got to them all (such as Hagrid going to the giants, Dumbledore speaking openly that Voldemort has returned, secret and selective recruitment by the Order to the best of their ability, and as it turns out, Remus with his "particular brand of reasoned argument"). In the first war, Remus would have joined too late to be of use in this regard.
So what?
Firstly, let me be clear: I love the idea of exploring Remus with the werewolves in the FWW, but I also love the idea of exploring Remus NOT being with the werewolves. This is not meant as a criticism towards anyone who wants to look at the werewolf storyline, or me trying to assert that we know for a fact Remus wasn't with the werewolves.
Here comes probably the most controversial bit to this post: I suspect that part of the reason why Remus being with the werewolves is considered a fact, is because it suits the Wolfstar in canon narrative. How else do you explain that Sirius and Remus drifted enough apart for Sirius to believe Remus was the spy? But say for a moment that you believe, as I do, that Remus wasn't away up North permanently, but rather on a short trip, then the question immediately becomes: what happened? What happened to have Remus stand apart from Peter, Sirius, James and Lily in the Order photo? What happened to have Lily describe a visit from Peter in a letter to Sirius but fail to mention Remus?
There is an uncomfortable truth in this scenario that Remus had drifted apart from the other marauders (likely less so with James, who helped him financially), probably due to a combination of external circumstances, internal conflict and suspicion, and probably also Remus' own self-hatred / tendency to keep others at an armslenght. And I'd love to read various authors grapple with the possibilities here, whether that is with Wolfstar or without.
