"Remus obviously didn't love Tonks, that relationship was so forced."
Shall we examine the things we know about Remus for a second?Ā
1. Heās incredibly self-sacrificing. He doesnāt wait for Dumbledore to receive the hate-filled letters from parents after Snape exposes his secret, he resigns, because he doesnāt want Dumbledore to go through any more grief for his sake.Ā
2. The first person he blames for anything going wrong around him is himself, no matter how many degrees of separation there are between him and the incident. He even blame himself for Lily and Jamesās death and Siriusās imprisonment as he says in PoA: āNone of this would have happened if I hadnāt been bitten, and if I hadnāt been so foolhardyā.
3. Despite this, he can be weak when it involves the people he loves and things he wants to do. He talks (again in PoA) about the reservations he has regarding his moonlit adventures with Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, but he canāt resist the temptation āwhen we sat down to plan our next monthās adventureā.Ā
4. Heās more afraid of himself than he is of anything else. His Boggart is the moon. The above information leads us to believe it is not the pain of transformation that Remus fears when he sees that full moon, but the idea that he could hurt someone, even someone he loves.Ā
āRemus resisted Tonksās advances for so long - he canāt really love her.āĀ
The fact that he continued to resist is more a mark of his love than anything else. He couldnāt bear the idea that he might hurt her, heās terrified of that. And heās willing to sacrifice his happiness to stop that happening.Ā
"He was forced to marry her by others putting pressure on him."Ā
This one just gets right under my skin. Are you honestly telling me that Remus Lupin, who lived as a werewolf all his life, shunned by society and cat out, though still refusing to live as so many others of his kind have done. He has such a strong sense of morality, are you honestly telling me heād lie to a young woman and have her marry someone he sees as a monster, purely because of pressure from those around him. Give him a little credit, please. He does at one point say he never should have married her, but we know that every month he wanted to put a stop to the full-moon outings, but lapsed because underneath all the guilt and the worry it wasĀ what he wanted.Ā
"They werenāt happy together."Ā
Please tell me where Rowling says that. Remus has a metric fuckton of issues, in case you hadnāt noticed, of course there are going to be stumbling blocks, of course heās going to be reluctant. What I recall is Remus bursting into Shell Cottage with a picture of his newborn baby and saying "I think he is like Dora but she says he is like meā. She and their child have made him so happy that he completely forgets that he is a werewolf, that a war is raging. If that isnāt happiness then tell me what is.Ā
If people insist on saying things like this, I suggest they seriously revisit their understanding of Remus Lupinās character. Because it needs revision.Ā
