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I’m going to make honoring one of my OTPs a Valentine’s Day tradition (Link: last year's post). True, my personal love life SUCKS, but reading about love and watching movies about love is encouraging. Love still has a purpose in existence. And it is an integral part of my fandoms and my favorite stories. Because sometimes love is what makes all the difference.
Fair warning, I am going to get extremely personal with this post. But the themes in this story are tied to issues that have been on my mind recently. (If you’re my future husband, however, I think you need to read this.)
This year’s OTP is Lupin and Tonks from the Harry Potter series. This couple is special to me for a number of reasons so allow me to elaborate. This might end up being more of a tribute to Lupin than to Tonks or the both of them, but as they say, there’s method to my madness.
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As some of you may or may not know, I am a sucker for backstories and subplots. One of my absolute favorite things about the Potter saga is the Marauders backstory. Imagine this: listening to the Jim Dale audio performance of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban while driving through the Colorado rockies to drop off dad at a Boy Scout high adventure, and after dark while you’re trying to fall asleep before Mom gets to the hotel you’re at the part where Harry, Ron and Hermione are in the Shrieking Shack with Sirius, Lupin, and Pettigrew. It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard. You already read it a month ago, but this time the story has meaning.
Then a few months later your family rents the movie on VHS over Thanksgiving (yes, it actually came out on VHS). Your mom is explaining the backstory of the Mauraders to your best friend’s mom who only speaks Spanish. You understand enough Spanish in context of the situation that you know what she’s saying. It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard in Spanish.
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Remus Lupin, at a young age, was bitten by Fenrir Greyback and made a werewolf. Once a month, he becomes a mindless monster. Other werewolves have rejected mainstream wizardry. Lupin’s parents want him to have as normal a life as possible. Arrangements are made for him to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And when he’s at Hogwarts, he comes across three young boys his age who instantly become his best friends. Their antics and hijinks become the stuff of school legend. When they discover their friend is a werewolf, they don’t reject him. Instead they stand by him and do their best to make life more bearable for him.
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Tragedy strikes after they leave school. Wormtail betrays them and goes on the run. James is murdered by Voldemort. Sirius Black is framed for selling him out and sent to Azkaban. Remus Lupin does his best to live a normal life in the Wizarding World, but it’s difficult. And lonely.
Enter Nymphadora Tonks at the start of the Second Wizarding War. Recent Hogwarts graduate, Hufflepuff, recruited to the Order of the Phoenix. I don’t pretend to know how Tonks and Lupin were introduced. Or what it was about him that got her to like him. To be honest, I have a hard time understanding women who go after older men period. And I don’t get why Tonks would suddenly have an interest in a guy who is poor, older, and not guaranteed to be able to take care of her. She’s a young, attractive Auror with everything going for her. What is she thinking?
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And yet for some reason, right before Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out, thirteen-year-old me starts having fantasies that Lupin and Tonks would get married. I don’t recall the reason why. But I did think that Tonks having a good job as an Auror would be able to get him wolfsbane potion once a month, so that would sweeten the deal. If she’s an Auror she has to be good at potions, right? And plus, she’s the one with a good job, so Remus wouldn’t have to worry, right? (For the record, my mom has been the breadwinner in my family since I was a preteen so I don’t see anything wrong with working moms). So in other words, I shipped them before I knew shipping was a thing.
So you can imagine my surprise and delight with the hospital scene after Dumbledore’s death. Due to this and several other weird predictions/premonitions during my youth, I conclude that I had ESP when I was younger.
I have to assume, as with most things in fandom, that Tonks fell for him behind the scenes. During their work together for the Order of the Phoenix they spent time together, got to know each other. And somehow, there was chemistry. And then, Tonks opened up to him about her feelings. He was scared. He wasn’t ready for someone to accept him. So he backed out. Hence, mousy-haired, moody Tonks all of Harry’s sixth year.
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This is the part where I’m really grateful for Fleur Delacour. Any other witch could have rejected Bill Weasley after being injured by Greyback. Any other witch might not have risked the side effects of Bill being poisoned and having his face scarred. But to Fleur Delacour, there is more to being in love with someone than their being young and whole. And this is the affirmation that Tonks needs to voice her true feelings. I think it’s the Hufflepuff in her: she loves Remus and she refuses to give up on him, no matter what.
For months after Half-blood Prince came out, I would go back and re-read this part over and over again.
Lupin doesn’t reject her because he doesn’t want her. He rejects Tonks because he hates himself. He’s anything but the ideal Wizard that Tonks should be seeking after.
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There are very few fictional characters that I identify with as much as Remus Lupin. And I would be hesitant--am hesitant--to get into a committed relationship with someone for those same reasons. I’m poor. I can’t keep a job. I’m mentally imbalanced. I’m autistic. I have moments of OCD-induced terror or rage that make me feel exactly like a werewolf. I could never be a perfect wife to the perfect guy I’m going to fall in love with someday. Much less a perfect mom to the kids of that perfect guy. My anxiety over failing in these important, God-given roles is almost paranoia. It’s probably worse for Lupin because he’s been rejected over and over again in public: my worst critic is my own self.
In book seven, when Lupin abandons Tonks, the fear that motivates him to do so is frighteningly real to me. But not so much that I am afraid of what my children will become. I’m afraid of them having a monster for a mother. A mother who can’t take care of them.
For the record, I have not seen the film adaptations of Deathly Hallows, parts one or two, because of how they treated the Lupin/Tonks story in the sixth film with them already dating. That was just cheesy. And I knew that they weren’t going to get right any of the other parts that mattered for Deathly Hallows, much less Lupin and Tonks. I suppose someday I’ll swallow my pride. But for the record, it goes to show how much their story means to me. Even the actors who played Lupin and Tonks agreed that they wanted to see more of their story on screen.
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| BOOM. (Pinerest) |
Getting back from that tangent: I guess sometime before Dumbledore’s funeral, Lupin and Tonks had a talk. Lupin must have figured out that he actually loved her in return and he was talked into courting her. By the beginning of book seven, they’ve eloped. Reading that part for the first time after the book came out was sheer joy. For someone who was such a huge fan of Lupin, his relationship with Tonks was a miracle.
I just kind of dealt with Lupin leaving Tonks during her pregnancy--I read Deathly Hallows for the first time in most of one day. That was resolved soon enough. And it turned out Lupin’s fears about a monstrous child were ill-founded: Teddy turns out to be a metamorphmagus like his mom and he’s absolutely suave when he grows up. But Remus and Tonks dying in the Battle of Hogwarts when Teddy is just days old? That hurt. That hurt a lot.
I mostly feel bad for Lupin because, after all of the crap that he’d put up with in his life, he deserved, he NEEDED, to be happy. Finally with Tonks and Teddy, he had everything going for him. ALL OF THE OTHER MARAUDERS WERE DEAD. AT LEAST ONE OF THEM SHOULD HAVE LIVED.
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But Remus Lupin died at the battle of Hogwarts so that Voldemort’s reign of terror would end. And Nymphadora Tonks died alongside him because she didn’t want to be without him. Her son was safe at home with her mother. Tonks wanted to be with the man he loved.
“He will know why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life.”
I can be okay with that. That’s as much as any true hero dies for, isn’t it?
But last year, keeping with her annual tradition of expressing remorse for the death of a character, J.K. Rowling had a few words to say about Remus Lupin.
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Remus Lupin is one of my favorite Harry Potter characters because, yes, like me, he had a hard life, but in spite of that he was able to experience the true magic of friendship and love.
Lupin and Tonks are a reminder that to be truly in love with someone--to be in a true, committed relationship with them--means that our flaws, our imperfections, our weaknesses don’t matter. When two people in love get together, they promise to do their best to support each other and rear the next generation in spite of everything that could go wrong. True love keeps going. I hope that when I find my true love, I can find the same courage.
If you like the pins/pictures I had in this post, follow my Pinterest board harry potter and the pinterest of erised
I totally ship Remadora too. They're my favorite ship in the series, no contest. I was so sad when they died. But I do think that Rowling did the right thing to kill Tonks too, because nobody wants Tonks to suffer without her husband.
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