Remus Lupin Had The Worst Dad: an Introductory Look at Chronic Illness, Poverty, Abuse and Homelessness in Wizarding Britain
What do we know about Remus Lupin, really? One of the first things we learn about Lupin is that he’s chronically unemployed/underemployed and frequently lives in poverty, and that his health is apparently extremely poor. When we first meet him on the train to Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Remus Lupin is described as wearing “an extremely shabby set of wizard’s robes that had been darned in several places” (PoA 74). He looks exhausted and emaciated, and as he sleeps against the window, the thirteen-year-old protagonists wonder if he is dead. His position as Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts is apparently the first job he has had in a long time; later, we learn that not many wizards hire werewolves, and that it is difficult for Remus to keep a job. It’s interesting to think about the parallels between Lupin’s poverty/unemployment and the poverty/unemployment of other people within the Harry Potter universe.
It is worth noting that, even in a world where job prospects seem limited to work in Gringotts, the Ministry, schools and retail (or enslavement until death, if you’re a house elf), unemployment seems rare. It also seems to primarily affect people classed by wizards as “nonhuman” magical beings or Squibs. Dobby the elf, Filch the Squib, and Rubeus Hagrid the half-giant are prime examples of this. Though all are employed by Hogwarts, it is common knowledge that none of them would be able to find job prospects elsewhere in the Wizarding world. Dobby’s demand for living wages seems preposterous to wizards used to the chattel slavery system by which elves are forced to work for free; Hagrid, meanwhile, would face unemployment outside of Hogwarts because of prejudice against giants and the stereotypes of giants or half-giants as “savage”(SS 78, statement made by Draco Malfoy). Neither Hagrid or Dobby would be able to find work in the Muggle world, as neither pass for Muggles. Dobby’s large ears, small stature, and huge eyes are weird and do not look human; Hagrid, meanwhile, is five times as wide as the average man and about ten to twelve feet tall (SS 65). Their prospects for survival are thus limited to whatever they can find among the prejudiced wizards who are encouraged to regard them as second-class beings. Filch the Squib is another matter altogether. He is non-magical, though born to wizards, and would have no problem living in the Muggle world. The fact that Squibs can live as and pass as Muggles is proved by Harry’s neighbor, Mrs. Figg, who is regarded by the Dursleys as suitably normal to be entrusted to watching Harry (SS 22). It may be that many Squibs decide to pass as Muggles, and that Filch is an odd exception.
Initially, one might wonder why Lupin does not seek employment in the Muggle world too, especially if he cannot find it in the Wizarding world. After all, there are a lot more jobs in the Muggle world, and Lupin can pass as a nonmagical human as well as any wizard, except on nights where there is a full moon. The answer to this question lies in the fact that the barrier to Lupin’s employment does not just exist because of Wizarding prejudice. It is also because of medical reasons. Lycanthropy, within the Harry Potter canon, is a serious condition. Within J.K Rowling’s Wizarding universe, being a werewolf has inconveniences which are more debilitating than simply shifting from one shape to another (this separates it significantly from other animal/human shape-shifting activities, like Hermione’s Polyjuice Potion misadventures or Animagi). For instance, a werewolf does not transform for just one night a month, as werewolves in legends do, but seems to also transform on nights adjacent to the full moon and generally suffer for a period of perhaps up to six days every month. In The Prisoner of Azkaban, Lupin misses about a week of classes because of the oncoming full moon the first month he is at Hogwarts. Upon returning to classes after this first full moon of the academic year, he is described as having dark circles under his eyes and as having lost a significant amount of weight—weight he had just gained as a result of eating rich Hogwarts food for a few weeks after a period of implied malnutrition (PoA 185). It may be that this weight loss and lack of sleep happens on a regular basis at full moons, even if it is not always this extreme: after the second full moon of his teaching career (near Christmas Day, 1993, according to the text), Ron Weasley comments that Lupin “still looks ill” (PoA 235). It is to be imagined that transforming into a werewolf affects Lupin’s eating habits in some way, or that transformation consumes a large number of calories which is impossible to make up. In turn, it’s reasonable to assume that Lupin gets functionally no sleep during the full moon as a result of staying awake in lupine form every night. Sleep disorders among Muggles are associated with increased risk of heart disease, depression, premature aging and anxiety. A week of little to no sleep every month is bad for any human, probably even if they are a wizard. Remus Lupin seems dedicated to his job as a teacher, and yet he misses several days a month of work because of his condition. This is even with the help of the Wolfsbane Potion, which Severus Snape prepares for Lupin to ease the pain of transformation and help him stay sane once transformed. Lupin tells Harry in Prisoner of Azkaban that he has “never been much of a potion brewer” (PoA 157). If Lupin were to try and live in the Muggle world, therefore, he would not have access to this potion. The practical meaning of all this is that Remus’s job prospects are limited on all sides, and that even if he found a job in the Muggle world, where nobody knows about werewolves, his monthly sickness would make it impossible for him to keep it long-term.
So where did Remus Lupin work or do before Hogwarts? We’re never given much information on this front. Remus’s father, Lyall Lupin, has been revealed outside of the canon to work in the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and his mother, a Muggle, though dead by 1981, worked for an insurance agency and presumably left some insurance money behind after her death (Potter Wiki page: Lyall Lupin; sourced from Pottermore). Why does the thirty-three-year-old Lupin still seem to be living in desperate poverty? It’s good to first recognize that any money left by his mother is effectively useless to Lupin (though he still might use it to buy an apartment or food) because it would be in Muggle currency, and that it’s also a possibility that Hope ceased to work after marrying Lyall and that Lyall and Remus, both wizards, did not really understand life insurance and could not make use of it if it existed. However, this leaves the larger question of Lyall’s failure to support his unemployed and possibly starving son. Even the lower-paying Ministry jobs, such as Arthur Weasley’s, pay more or less a living wage, even for a large family. Why does Lyall Lupin not support his son? J.K Rowling’s answer to this is unsatisfying: she says that Remus did not want to disturb his father’s “peaceful” life (presumably meaning a life untroubled by the life-or-death struggles of his son) . At this point, I suggest looking within the supplied facts for another rationale for Remus’s avoidance of his father. What facts can we use to try and explain the odd dynamic between father and son?
The first thing that really jumps out about Lyall’s sparse biography is the story of how he met Hope Lupin: he was seeking out a boggart to study as part of his documentation of Non-Human Spirituous Apparitions when Hope Howell stumbled across the boggart. Boggarts transform into whatever one fears most, and Hope did not understand she was not actually threatened by the fierce man the boggart turned into for her. Lyall “saved” her by turning the boggart into a mushroom. For months, Hope was under the impression she owed her life to Lyall; he made no effort to correct her until after they had been seeing each other for some time (Potter Wiki page on Lyall Lupin: sourced from Pottermore). This demonstrates that Lyall is an emotionally manipulative person. Within a relationship in which a power imbalance exists to begin with (Hope has no magical powers while Lyall does), emotional manipulation may create an unsafe or traumatic dynamic. Lyall also holds institutional power over his son—not only as an adult but as a person without lycanthropy, and it is clear that he did not use this power to protect Remus: J.K Rowling says that in the first years of Remus’s lycanthropy, Lyall would lock Remus in a room and put Silencing Charms on the door while the child inside hurt himself (Potter Wiki page on Lyall Lupin: sourced from Pottermore).
Even ignoring the pain Remus would have inflicted on himself in wolf form, this is child abuse and negligent parenting by any standards, and it casts J.K Rowling’s assertions that Lyall did his best to educate Remus and protect him in a suspicious light. Remus’s refusal to return home may reflect a history of being abused. In this way, his life parallels the lives of many homeless youth, who frequently leave their homes because of abuse. According to The Runaway and Homeless Youth and Relationship Violence Toolkit, “Current studies suggest that the primary cause of youth homelessness is family dysfunction in the form of parental neglect, physical or sexual abuse, family substance abuse and family violence” (The Runaway and Homeless Youth and Relationship Violence Toolkit ). It is worth mentioning that, if Remus Lupin is read as queer, his abandonment, abuse and refusal to return home despite poverty would also reflect statistics in the Muggle world, which suggest that about 40% of homeless youth are queer or transgender (Safe Horizon 2013 ).
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