Can Sirius Apparate? (was Who can apparate?)

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 27869

Cindy wrote:

>Wasn't there the occasional Sirius Black 
> sighting in PoA? If he is living only as a dog, then these 
sightings 
> wouldn't happen, and it would be curious for MoM to put dementors 
in 
> Hogsmeade and Hogwarts.  I mean, how would they know where to focus 
> their search? 

They focus on Hogwarts even before he's seen near there, the reason 
being that he's been muttering about Hogwarts in his sleep and they 
think he's after Harry.

He switches back out of dog form at least a few times before the 
Shrieking Shack scene:  the times he tries to get past the Fat Lady 
and Sir Cadogan and the time he's sighted by a Muggle near Hogwarts.  
None of them have to have anything to do with Apparating.  He's a man 
in the castle because he needs to be able to (a) talk and (b) stab 
Scabbers (maybe he'd have done better to return to dog form once in 
the dorm--dogs catch rats much more easily than humans do . . . 
hmm).  The time a Muggle spots him, he probably has something similar 
he needs to do for which he has to be in human form.

> I don't think Sirius would have apparated to Bali or wherever he 
> decided to hide because he needed to keep Buckbeak safe, and it's 
> clear that Sirius still has Buckbeak by the time of GoF.

Jo has said somewhere that you can't Apparate very long distances, or 
was it even in GoF?  I think the context was overseas--so 3000 miles 
is too far, but what the outer limit is, we don't know.

How would we know if he *could* Apparate?  We never have occasion to 
see him hurry from one place to another.  It sure would've been handy 
in the confrontation with Snape at the end of PoA, but <everyone 
chant in unison> "you can't Apparate on the Hogwarts grounds!"

Amy Z