Sirius - Flying Motorbike - Snape/Amanda - Albus

[Catlady]

No: HPFGUIDX 13510

MC Crusty wrote:
> Sirius Black strikes me as a very good man, but a very irresponsible
> one. *dodges tomatoes* Face it. He was a Marauder. I don't think
> that James could have succeeded at single parenting.

I never want to sound sentimental; I always want to be a hardheaded
realist. But over time (I'm 43), I have discovered that some of the
things I used to believe were wrong. When I was 23, my friend Robyn, a
19 year old high school dropout and runaway, had a baby -- her boyfriend
broke up with her when she refused to have an abortion, so she went on
welfare. I felt sure that  irresponsible flakey Robyn who couldn't even
manage to keep a job (she always got fired, usually for excessive
absenteeism) would not be very good at raising her child. I was wrong.
Pregnancy somehow caused her to become friends with her parents about
whom she had said so many hostile things. Her parents let her live at
home and offered to babysit on evenings when she was in school, so she
passed her high school equivalency exam and went to college at night.
After a couple of years, she got a job that let her pay for her own home
AND daycare. She worked the way up the career ladder at that job and
bought a house. Her kid grew up just fine.

My point is, even tho' it sounds sentimental, sometimes it does happen
that when an irresponsible (but not drug addicted) person suddenly has
to take responsibility for a child, they somehow BECOME responsible. I'm
sure it would have worked that way for James, and maybe it would have
worked that way for Sirius if Azkaban hadn't interfered. Now Sirius has
to take responsibility for a premature adult, not a baby. More of an
older brother than a father. Does that mean I have to actually read
David Eggars's book?

Amanda wrote:
>  maybe I'm not attracted to Sirius at this point in time because I
> *don't* think he'd be a good parent, and that's my modus
> operandi at the moment.

If that were the reason, you WOULD fancy Remus. How does your hypothesis
sit with your fondness for Snape? He WOULD be a BAD parent, turning his
vicious tongue, perfection and endless anger against the children. But
he also would do EVERYTHING that he perceives to be his duty -- there
would be no falling asleep while supposed to be babysitting from
Severus.

Dave Hardenbrook wrote:
> I think [Sirius] also must have had genuine faith that someday he'd
get out,

But Dementors EAT faith.
Dementors are major depression (except that even major depression
doesn't cause victims to become eternally lost in psychotic
hallucinations, nor cause them to simply waste away to death -- those
are symptoms of magical mental illnesses). Both book learning and
personal experience teach me that depression destroys faith. Which is a
problem for people who are religiously inclined: if 'the dark night of
the soul' is supposed to be a test of faith, but whether one keeps faith
or gives in to despair depends on whether one take drugs to balance the
chemicals in your brain, how is that a fair test of your soul? It
appears that my conscience was raised to believe that a person should
have enough will power to overcome any mental illness by will power
alone.

Amanda wrote:
> However, when Dumbledore has Sirius reveal himself to Snape at
> the end of GoF, Snape's reaction is only one of loathing. He reacts
> to the old enemy, but not to an escaped, murdering Death Eater.

I HATE to disagree with someone who is agreeing with me, but Severus
himself is a murdering Death Eater who walked free -- a repentant one.
He need not believe Sirius innocent, merely repentant.

I'm torn between my belief that Dumbledore has told Snape about it
really being Peter who was the murderer (they're together at Hogwarts
all the time, Dumbledore wouldn't even need to send an owl) and my
feeling that Severus cannot believe that what he views as little wimp
Peter could have been such an effective murderer.

MC Crusty wrote:
> am I the only one who wonders why the collective fanfic populous
> hasn't given *Draco* the obligatory flying motorbike?

Draco is a different style of bad boy -- he's the money & high-class
one, not the r(u/a)ggedly independent one. He would be suited not by a
flying motorcycle but by a flying Lamborghini.

Margaret Dean wrote:
> =Albus= Dumbledore     =Rubeus= Hagrid      Sirius =Black=

I hadn't even noticed the triad of white, red, black, let alone
connected it to alchemy (my usual connection with white, red, black is
Robert Graves's Triple Goddess, clearly not relevant here). Thank you.

I noticed White and Red, but didn't have an interpretation for it. They
are on the same side, so it is not the colors of the two sides of Chess.
It might be the white skinned indoor person and red skinned outdoor
person (which Ancient Egyptian art used as a cliche to show women as
white and men as red). Speaking of Latinate color names, one of the
authors (he of the curse book) had the personal name Veridian, but we
have yet to see a Sapphirus.

As for Dumbledore's name in particular, I agree with what so many others
have said about 'albus' meaning 'white' having a secondary meaning of
'pure' and virtuous, and I also remain convinced that it has something
to do with Albion (a poetic name for the island of Britain that I
believe to be derived from the color of the White Clilffs of Dover).

Speaking of purity,
Dave Hardenbrook wrote:
> Does the above [Firenze quote in re killing Unicorns] apply to
Voldemort
> using Harry's blood?  Is he now cursed, as a result of slaying
something
> pure and defenseless (Lilly) and then taking blood through which
Lilly's
> love flows?

L-i-l-y like the flower.
Kimberly Moon (Hogwarts '98) already wrote her theory about Firenze's
unicorn quote applying to Voldemort  --  that V had tried to kill
something 'pure and defenseless' (Harry as an innocent baby -- altho' I
have my doubts how pure and how defenseless a baby is by age 1.5 years)
and he did it only "to save [him]self" -- he may have killed other
babies, but that was for fun not because of the prophecy. Moongirl
suggested that it was Lily's love that kept Harry from being killed by V
but it was the unicorn effect that caused V to lose his powers.

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