Werewolves: Part One
I was reading a Werewolf!Harry fic and was reminded about my feelings on the matter, so here’s this rant…
WEREWOLVES IN HP SUCK
This is not an opinion, this is fact. In so many aspects, Joanne eviscerated werewolves in these books.
For one, the fundamental elements we think of when we think of werewolves. The shape that they take and how they are turned. With traditional werewolves, when they turn they take one of two shapes. A wolf-man hybrid (that usually just looks like a wolf head with a man’s chest and arms, and a wolf lower body) or a full on wolf. Joanne chose to bastardize the former and gave us the sickly greyhound-man hybrid. Do I think looking sickly is a metaphor for how poorly Remus treated his wolf? Possibly. Do I think JKR did that on purpose? Hell no. I believe she just made bad decisions and we made lemonade with them, like we do everything in this godforsaken fandom. Also, this is a smaller grievance but I have always disliked how easy it was to be turned into a werewolf. Typically, you have to be bitten to be turned. In HP, all it takes is a small scratch. I fully believe that this is the result of JKR wanting to more easily abuse the group she’s using werewolves as a metaphor for in her writing.
Speaking of! Let’s talk about how werewolves are treated in HP. Most media will not paint werewolves in a positive light. Especially not the ones from the 90s/early 00s (when HP was written). But the extreme governmental restrictions and prejudice shown against werewolves in HP is very interesting when looking at it through the lens of the metaphor that JKR is using werewolves for. I want to say a decent chunk of HP or Marauders fans are aware of the belief that Remus Lupin being a werewolf is a metaphor for a gay man having AIDS. If you weren’t, well now you are. By using this specific metaphor and then creating a world where there are laws saying that werewolves need to be tracked and monitored at all times and that the number one most known werewolf to the British Wizarding World is a sociopath who specifically preys on small children… We really should have seen her TERFness sooner.
My final thing is Dumbledore. Now, anyone who knows me irl knows that I HATE Dumbledore with a passion that rivals the fires of hell. I have many grievances with the man, but the one I’ll bring up today is Dumbledore’s treatment of Remus during his school years. From what we get from HP canon, Dumbledore is the main person who advocated for Remus to go to Hogwarts and is the one who set him up with accommodations for his ‘furry little problem’. Now, I can hear you already, “Child, he was helping out a kid who wanted an education, despite his issue, how could you have an issue with that?” WELL, I’LL TELL YOU HOW! Dumbledore did that to set himself up as the only trusted adult in Remus’ life. Similar to Harry, Dumbledore’s kindness to him was a way for him to assert control over Remus. By giving him this thing, a chance to be a normal kid while being abnormal as well as it being an education, Remus now feels indebted to Dumbledore. He can never repay him, everything he has done in life, all his accomplishments are because Dumbledore gave him this education. An opportunity that werewolves rarely get. So, once Dumbledore asks him to go and spy on the werewolf encampments, how could Remus say no? Surely this is such a small favor compared to everything Dumbledore has done for him. Nevermind, it takes away a trusted adult from Harry, who just learned of his existence and ties to his parents. Who could have influenced Harry to truly think about all this war entails and the good he could do after it. Dumbledore kept Remus away from Harry and deprived him of a person who could inspire him to want to have a life after Voldemort. So he could spy on the werewolf camps. And he wasn’t successful at it. None of the other werewolves liked him. Why? Because he wasn’t like them. None of the other werewolves were given an education like Hogwarts. Most of them don’t have jobs, or money. So when this well-dressed, well-educated guy starts poking around, clearly looking for evidence of your ‘being evil monsters’ they obviously shut down around him. So Remus didn’t even get any of the information he was sent there for. Dumbledore, in one fell swoop turned Remus not only into his personal hunting dog, he turned him against his own kind. He guaranteed that Remus would not have any access to werewolf culture and community and kept him in the wizarding world. This force fed him werewolf-hating propaganda everyday of his childhood and got him to agree with it. Remus hated his wolf. Fenrir Greyback (as horrible a person as he was, he is our only other resource for werewolves in HP) is a powerful wolf, because he embraced it.