Sirius - who is right?

[mkaliz]

No: HPFGUIDX 73514

Marina said:

> Yes, the sensible thing would've been for Sirius to accept his lot, 
> be patient and wait it out.  But I think it's a little much to take 
> somebody as damaged as Sirius has been and expect him to just be 
> sensible.  Sirius was not a bad soldier, but a shell-shocked one, 
> and Dumbledore's attitude to him seems to be similar to the attitude 
> a lot of commanders took toward shell-shocked soldiers in the early 
> days of WWI: that there was nothing really wrong with them, they 
> were just too weak/cowardly/irresponsible to do their duty.  So 
> Dubledore shuts Sirius up in a place guaranteed to exacerbate his 
> symptoms and basically says, "Tough luck, deal with it."  And when 
> Sirius is unable to deal, Dumbledore says, "Gosh, how immature."  
> For somebody who's supposed to be wise and insightful, I think 
> Dumbledore slipped up badly in this case.

I agree with you completely. This seems to be one of Dumbledore's
major blind-spots--that he frequently underestimates his "soldier's"
emotional vulnerabilities. He does the same thing with Snape, re. the
occlumency lessons. In both cases, there are disasterous consequences.

How difficult could it have been for Dumbledore to give Sirius some
kind of important, yet house-bound, Order-related task to help him
feel like he was contributing materially to "the cause"? Map-making,
research, intelligence analysis, *something* that would help him feel
useful and take his mind off the fact that he was stuck in a house
that he hated. 

By the same token, Dumbledore said that the Order had more reliable
means of communicating with one another than via Umbridge's fire. Why
didn't he find some means to allow Harry and Sirius to communicate
regularly? Have McGonagall give Harry "extra lessons" or something and
allow him to contact Sirius then. I think that would have gone a
*long* way to making Sirius (and Harry) feel "in the loop" and
valuable and possibly taken the edge off of Sirius' frustration.

Like Harry, I suppose that I have a bit of a bone to pick with
Dumbledore! ::g::

--kai