Why did Harry get such a liking of Sirius to start with ?

[annemehr]

No: HPFGUIDX 74585

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Doriane" <delwynmarch at y...> 
wrote:
<snip>
> So how come Harry took such a sudden liking to Sirius ? One moment 
he 
> hates him so much he wants to kill him, and the next he loves him. 
I 
> know that in the meantime Sirius has been cleared, but that's the 
> only time this has meant anything to Harry. Snape has repeatedly 
been 
> cleared of most of the suspicions Harry had about him, that 
doesn't 
> make Harry love him any more.
> 
> So can someone explain to me what happened in Harry's heart ? Is 
it 
> just that Sirius came at the right time in Harry's life, when 
Harry 
> desperately needed a father figure, so he just latched on to the 
> first man who let him do that ?
> 
> Del

I've read all the other replies so far, and while they make good 
points, I think there is something else that provides the very 
foundation for Harry's feelings.

Sirius' life was shattered by *the very same event* that had 
shattered Harry's family.  Sirius, James, Lily, and Harry were all 
betrayed by Peter Pettigrew and their lives destroyed or deeply 
damaged by Voldemort in the same action.  This forms a connection to 
Sirius for Harry.

I once posted about the fact that Harry can be deeply empathetic.  
Not always or about everything, to be sure, which is something I 
attribute to his upbringing with the Dursleys, but about things he 
can understand, he does empathise.  As and example, I cited his 
strong feelings while lying in bed the night after he had looked 
into Dumbledore's pensieve in GoF.  He felt absolutely horrible 
about Neville's family and felt that Neville deserved more sympathy 
than he did as an orphan.  He then empathised with the pensieve 
crowd for wanting the four torturers to go to Azkaban.  Suddenly, he 
remembered "the milk-white face of the screaming boy and realized 
with a jolt that he had died a year later...."  That was another 
jolt of empathy, since he didn't really know if Crouch Jr. was 
guilty or not.

Where am I going with this?  I think, by the end of that long 
conversation in the Shack, that Harry could identify with Sirius as 
having been betrayed right along with Harry and his family.  What 
had happened that night had happened to Sirius as much as to Harry. 
Add this to the fact that Lupin, while kind, always kept a bit 
distant, and the fact that Sirius was named Harry's godfather (thus 
Lily and James singled Sirius out whether or not the position was 
only a title), and I can believe that Harry would be very likely to 
have an "instant" attachment to Sirius.  After all, we are talking 
about a boy who never had any family to call his own that he can 
remember.

Annemehr

P.S. I think it's  a stretch to say, "one moment he hates him so 
much he wants to kill him, and the next he loves him."  That 
conversation in the Shrieking Shack took over an hour and was very 
conclusive.