Just reread my entry from three this morning and hell, I was writing out of shock, anger and grief. I hope that this afternoon I can be a little more coherent and reasoned. And do the book justice.
Which I don’t really feel like doing because for a book that was 17 years in the making I thought it was very weak. It felt like it had been written to get things over with as quickly as possible, with only the thought of the money and the film franchise. Seriously, the book felt like it was written solely to make a good film.
I am disappointed to say the least.
And I really can’t get my head around the whole Remus Tonks thing.
Any of it.
I don’t think that them getting married so quickly is OOC for either of them. Tonks obviously wanted some form of commitment from him, and if he was really serious about making a go of it then marriage is the perfect way to it prove once and for all. But that still does not mean that he is not still battling doubts; he is just more determined to overcome them if he can.
Tonks is quite obviously proud that she is married to Remus; she has fought so hard for him that she understandably wants to show him off now she has him.
And nobody said that they had a magically-binding wizarding wedding did they? Could just have been a small muggle ceremony.
The bit that still gets me is the Grimmauld place scene. Remus just felt so OOC to me. It has been postulated that his behaviour shows that he didn’t really love Tonks, but given the recurring theme of the importance of love in these books, I just don’t buy that. Remus is a very conflicted character, even if we don’t see it that much. He is obviously shit scared of becoming a father, for more than one reason. He is afraid of what he has done to Tonks and what he has condemned his child to. He is torn between his loyalty to his wife and unborn child, and the loyalty to the Marauders, whom he perceives would want him to stick with Harry. We forget that Lupin lost everybody who had ever accepted and loved him for who and what he was in one fell swoop; he lost the Marauders and Lily to murder and betrayal at a very young age, and no one seems to consider what that could have done to him. This explains his anger; he has reached breaking point, and when you consider all he has been through over the years, I think he did very well not to be deranged all the time.
I believe that when he offered to go with Harry he had not actually ‘left’ Tonks. I feel that given her reaction the year before (and considering she was pregnant) he would simply have slipped off with Harry and left a note saying he had a mission. I wholeheartedly believe that he went crawling back to Tonks after Harry knocked some sense into him and he had had a good think.
The one thing that does annoy me is that even though he ‘regretted very much’ marrying Tonks it doesn’t seem to have kept him out of her bed does it?
Their relationship obviously goes from strength to strength though the rest of the book; Ron says they’re living together again and Remus is back to himself when he is on Potterwatch. Everything is alright when Teddy is born, even if Remus is a little OOC in his method of announcing he is a father. Everything has to be okay if he's now a proud and ecstactic father.
How wrong.
Despite the fact I’m in denial and do not see at all why Remus and Tonks had to die, I do like the fact they appeared to die together. I like to think that they went out in a blaze of glory, with no doubts in either one’s minds about their feelings for each other, no doubts about whether what they were doing was right. I still hate that they had to die though.
And as for why Tonks wasn’t with Remus when the Marauders reappeared, Harry summoned them. He summoned his parents and their closest friends. He didn’t summon Tonks, which is why she wasn’t their.
And after all that and another huge rant, I’m still not convinced there is a single shred of sense in any of it.
