Harry & Sirius - certain similarities (LONG)

[psychic_serpent]

No: HPFGUIDX 79051

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "lily_paige_delaney" 
<lily_paige_delaney at y...> wrote:
> I was thinking last night that there are an extraordinary number 
> of similarities between Harry and Sirius.  The ones that spring to 
> mind are:
> 
> - both grew up in families which are bigots (the Blacks against 
> anything not pureblood and the Dursleys against wizards or anyone 
> not 'normal')

<snip> 

> There are probably other similarites but this is all I can think 
> of for now.  The big question is will Harry, like Sirius, run away 
> from home when he is 16?  And we can only hope that he doesn't 
> follow the rest of Sirius' life pattern!

This is exactly why I brought up Harry's many doppelgangers in my 
OOtP review, posted on my LJ back in June. 
(http://www.livejournal.com/users/psychic_serpent/1099.html#cutid1 ) 
In the end, I think that while Sirius' death was quite literal (he 
really is dead--JKR said so <g>) it's also a symbolic death--the 
part of Harry that's so similar to Sirius HAS to die in order for 
him to be reborn from his ashes (like the phoenix) and shoulder his 
burden.  Sirius is the worst possible role model for Harry, and yet, 
because of their similarities, becoming like Sirius was a definite 
danger for him.  Something I didn't think of at the time I wrote the 
review was the way Harry immediately tried to get revenge on 
Bellatrix for Sirius' murder, just as Sirius went after Peter.  (And 
it is worth noting that, as a family member of Sirius', Bellatrix 
and Peter are both not merely enemies but TRAITORS.)  The more one 
looks, the more the similarities jump out of the text.

It is also significant, I think, that in CoS, Harry was very nervous 
about the similarities that Tom Riddle had pointed out between the 
two of them, as though that meant that Harry was destined to travel 
down the same path (the Sorting Hat's assertion about his doing well 
in Slytherin didn't help, of course).  However, although Tom Riddle 
was in fact another Harry doppelganger, he wasn't the doppelganger 
Harry should have been worried about becoming.  

And I think that one of the most prophetic things Dumbledore ever 
said was that it takes just as much nerve to stand up to our friends 
as to our enemies.  Neville Longbottom had that ability way back in 
his first year!  As I said in my LJ review, I think that Neville is 
being presented as a new and better role model for Harry, not least 
because of this particular ability, and not just because he was 
another possible candidate to fulfill the Prophecy.  (Although one 
has to wonder whether this is ominous--if Harry will eventually need 
to stand up to someone who's a friend, now that Sirius is gone, who 
might that turn out to be?) 

Lupin admitted that he didn't have the ability to stand up to his 
friends at all and we saw in OotP that Ron can't do this either (of 
course, Fred and George running amok was one of the most enjoyable 
things about the book <g>).  We saw the result of a "friend" 
(Marietta) betraying the DA in OotP.  Harry has waffled back and 
forth on this ability (although he has such strength of mind he was 
able to throw off Imperius, which I think is significant), and we 
get a glimpse of why Sirius was hard to keep in check when he tries 
to bully Harry into doing things he claims James would have done.  
Harry doesn't give in, even when Sirius is rather nasty.   

I wrote something about this recently on another group:

-------------------------------------

Now that I've read the fifth book, it's become clearer to me that 
Sirius had two personalities: his "free-Sirius" personality and 
his "imprisoned-Sirius" personality. His "free" personality was in 
evidence in his youth. He roamed the castle at will, ran around 
under the full moon with a werewolf and his other Animagus friends, 
and even left home at the age of sixteen. This personality is the 
one that makes him seem like so much fun--he's jovial, daring, and 
encourages others around him to take risks too. (Although the 
negative side to this personality actually makes him seem a bit like 
an alcoholic who encourages others to drink, so that his drinking 
is 'okay' in comparison, since others are doing it too. By 
encouraging others to take risks--his addiction, IMO--his own risk-
taking is considered to be okay. This is part of the conflict he 
has with Harry in OotP.) This personality is also seen in PoA and 
especially GoF, when he roams around Hogsmeade looking for 
newspapers, meets Harry in a mountainside cave, and breaks into a 
wizarding house to use the Floo network to talk to Harry. (A 
foreshadowing for Harry using Umbridge's office?) He is 
engaging in a lot of risky behavior, but it is also clear that he is 
happy, in his element, and doesn't care that he might be caught. 
The risk of being caught is part of the thrill--he clearly gets off 
on it. It gives him a rush like nothing else.

At the other end of the spectrum is the "imprisoned" Sirius, who 
hates being cooped up as much as "free" Sirius loves to run loose. 
This is who he was during all of his Azkaban years, and in part of 
PoA (when he thinks he might go back to Azkaban) and OotP. In the 
fifth book he is imprisoned again, he feels like a coward for not 
taking risks and running around loose (Snape "helps" him with this) 
and he's also subjected to dementors again, of a kind (his mother's 
screaming portrait and Kreacher). 
-------------------------------------------

We see glimpses of Harry displaying a similar kind of split 
personality--"free" Harry gets to play Quidditch and go to the 
Burrow in the summer.  "Imprisoned" Harry feels cooped up on Privet 
Drive and cannot say what he wants at Hogwarts about Voldemort 
having returned.  He's so much like Sirius sometimes in OotP that 
it's spooky.  (See LJ review, link above.)

I think that back in CoS when JKR even made readers fear that Harry 
might become evil because of his similarities to Riddle, it was a 
red herring; the real danger was that he would be tempted to become 
like someone he liked and admired, such as Sirius, but still someone 
who was a dreadful role model.  I don't think it's a coincidence 
that JKR calls "Unforgivable" a curse that takes away your will and 
makes you feel light and happy and willing to do whatever someone 
else tells you to do.  Giving up control in this way is truly awful, 
and yet plenty of people in this world do it without having a spell 
cast upon them.  Dumbledore did not give those ten points to Neville 
for nothing; they not only put Gryffindor over for the House Cup, 
IMO his words about what Neville did were meant to be a very real 
warning about hewing to your own principles and not being seduced by 
attractive words--even when they come from those we should be able 
to trust the most.   

--Barb

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