Snapedom

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...*