[HPforGrownups] Re: Sirius Black, God father

[Muridae]

No: HPFGUIDX 32558

dmsreg wrote:

>The role of legal guardian is something rather different, in that
>Sirius clearly takes this responsibility and his friendship of the
>Potters very seriously, to the point of risking a horrible un-death
>to fulfil his obligations.
>
>For Sirius to have legal Guardian status, effectively adopting Harry,
>James and Lily surely would have had to have signed something
>specific to that effect. Since Sirius says that his parents appointed
>him legal guardian if something should happen to them, can we assume
>that they went through whatever official process was necessary to
>make it bona fide? Since all the teachers knew that Sirius was
>Harry's Godfather, obviously someone other than himself and J&L knew
>about it.

I've always thought that the two jobs - godfather and legal guardian - 
were entirely separate in this case, even though they were 
coincidentally embodied in the same person. Sirius was James's closest 
friend, which made him the person he thought of to ask to be his best 
man, and later the godfather of his firstborn. (To those concerned that 
this leaves Remus Lupin out of the loop, may I suggest that it's 
entirely possible that if James and Lily had lived long enough to have 
more children, they might well have asked *him* to play godparent to one 
of them?)

But they lived in dangerous times. With Voldemort after the Potters to 
the extent that they were obliged to go into hiding, they were probably 
also forced to face the possibility that they might not survive long 
enough to bring up their child to adulthood, long before possibility 
became reality. It's entirely likely that the process of going into 
hiding was accompanied by a tidying up of their affairs "just in case" - 
making their wills, putting their finances in good order (and giving 
Dumbledore custody of the key to their Gringotts vault), and appointing 
a guardian for Harry. And if Sirius was around at the time and already 
had an interest in Harry's future and upbringing in his role of 
godparent, he would have been the obvious person to ask to take on the 
second job as well. Godparent and guardian are complimentary roles in 
this context, but they're not actually the same thing.

What Sirius says in POA backs that up. Broaching the subject, he first 
tells Harry that he is his godfather, and *then* tells him that his 
parents appointed him Harry's guardian in case something ever happened 
to him. Harry has known about the godfather aspect for some time, and it 
seems to have been used to explain away part of the reason why Sirius 
the dangerous escaped convict felt so obsessive about getting to him. 
The mention of guardianship has entirely different connotations, those 
of laying legal claim to him. It's an entirely new idea to him, although 
it probably helps that he's now convinced enough of Sirius's innocence 
for it to be a welcome one!

I'm sure that James and Lily would have hoped that none of those 
precautions were necessary. Had they anticipated betrayal and death, 
they might have sent Harry away from them to safety elsewhere - assuming 
that he wasn't as much a target as they were. They undoubtedly hoped to 
survive, but they lived in a time of such horrors that it makes a 
certain amount of sense that they would have hedged their bets and made 
arrangements for their son in the event that they didn't.

-- 
Muridae