OVERANALYZING THE TEXT

Dicentra wrote:

Furthermore, the full moon represents a relationship between the earth, sun, and moon. The boggart moon can't replicate this. So that's why the boggart moon doesn't effect a transformation.

Besides, what Lupin fears the most isn't the moon itself. The moon is just a hunk of rock. That's really not what scares him.

What Lupin fears is his own lycanthropy, which is represented to him by the sight of the full moon. Boggarts are obviously capable of a rather sophisticated symbolic version of "taking the form of ones worst fear." They can, for example, represent Hermione's fear of failure and of disappointing those who have placed both their trust and some very high expectations on her by taking the form of McGonagall -- who is certainly not herself all that frightening to Hermione. (Nor, for that matter, do I really think that what scares Neville the most about Snape is really Snape as a person at all.) Lupin himself identifies Harry's dementor boggart as the "fear of fear."

I don't really believe that the boggarts can simulate the abilities or powers of the forms that they take. If such were the case, then I find it very difficult to believe that anyone would consider it appropriate to teach children how to banish them in a classroom setting, particularly only one year after a basilisk had been preying on students in that same school. What if a basilisk had turned out to be some kid's personal bogey? Not at all unlikely, only one year after _CoS._ And that would have been good, wouldn't it? Half of the class would have been dead before anyone could manage to stammer out a "Riddikulus."

Nope. No, I don't believe that the boggarts work that way at all. If they did, then the idea of leaving one hanging around in a wardrobe for students to "practice" on would be absolutely insane.

That the boggart Dementor can do dementor things is what seems weird to me.

I don't think that it can, really. I think that it's all psychosomatic. If Harry hadn't already known from his experience on the train what the dementors could do to him, then the boggart wouldn't have had at all the same effect.

Hmmm? What's that you say? You want to know about the dimming of the lights?

Er. Yes. Well. I think that is probably a ::coughFLINTcough:: manifestation of Harry's spontaneous magic. He's dimming the lights himself through unconscious magic, in precisely the same way that Neville is always melting all of those cauldron bottoms in Snape's Potions Class.

—Elkins (who must regretfully agree with the Pipsqueak that Lupin does indeed have a few, um, issues which make him less than an ideal choice as a person to keep around in school full of children, but who also feels convinced that after the "forgetting to take his potion" incident, Lupin would have resigned on his own accord, even if Snape hadn't outed him.)