in defense of sirius black (Long, Rambly)

[heidi.h.tandy.c92 at alumni.upenn.edu]

No: HPFGUIDX 14406

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Monika Huebner" <monika at d...> wrote:
> If you say that Sirius is violent and ruthless, you should consider
> where he has spent the last twelve years and extrapolate to the
> "real" world. Think about what happens to people who are
> wrongly imprisoned and tortured, and I don't speak of prisons
> in the so-called "civilized" world. Azkaban isn't a normal prison,
> most people go mad in there because dementors cause clinical
> depression, that is sheer psychological torture. You cannot
> spend 12 years in such a place and get away unscarred

You can't even spend 12 years in such a place, starting when you're 
21, and end up unscarred and permanently changed. 
I don't know if any of you have ever spoken to someone who was sent 
to prison at 21 (which is, as we extrapolate now, the age Sirius was 
when we went to Azkaban). I have, when I was in law school. 
Even muggle jails do more than cut you off from the day to day world -
 you lose the connection to stupid things like fashion and television 
shows and movies and sometimes music (although most prisons in the US 
allow at least some tv & music, so that's not an absolute). You lose 
the ability to age and grow - or at least, it becomes completely 
twisted onto itself. 
And so it is in the books. In so many ways, even apart from the 
psychological (and likely physical (how thin was sirius when he 
escaped? how malnourished?)) trauma of being in Azkaban, Sirius 
really hasn't grown up since he was 21 in any of the ordinary ways. 
If you're over 22, just think about all the silly little day to day 
things you've done since  you were 21 - in our Muggle world, it's 
things like living on your own, going on bad dates (although I doubt 
that sirius would've had such things (at least from his perspective) 
if he'd had a normal life), going to weddings and baby namings and on 
vacations with your friends and your lover, getting involved with 
politics or causes or beliefs, trying and testing life and learning 
who you are, as a grownup you.
Over the past few weeks, since a certain column on fanfiction.net, 
some people have discussed whether the Harry & Hermione in Paradigm 
of Uncertainty were out of character, given how they behaved in 
Canon. I gave, as an example, myself. The Me I was when I was 21 or 
28 is the same as the Me at 14 in terms of my principles (i.e. books 
are good, honesty is important) but a character sketch of me at 21 or 
28 would not resemble me at 14 in any but the most superficial ways 
(and even that wouldn't match, given that I had short straight brown 
hair at 14 and long blondish curls at 21). 
But what if that whole Change In Character period of one's life is 
somehow put into a box, and you never get to experience it? I'm not 
saying it makes a person bad or dangerous or untrustworthy. I am 
saying, though, that it must be understood in context.