Sirius - who is right?

[Wanda Sherratt]

No: HPFGUIDX 73613

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "marinafrants" <rusalka at i...> 
wrote:
> Sirius offering the house for the Order's use is one thing.  
Sirius 
> being forced to stay in that house with nothing useful to do and 
> nowhere to go is another thing.  The first does not require the 
> second.  The Order could've used the house even if Sirius was 
> staying somewhere else, or coming and going on missions, or, at 
the 
> very least, doing something more constructive than house 
cleaning.  
> Dumbledore had managed to find appropriate work for everyone else 
in 
> the order, including the unreliable and barely-competent 
Mundungus, 
> but it apparently never occured to him to bother with Sirius' 
case.  
> I don't think Dumbledore was being intentionally cruel to Sirius, 
> any more than he was being intentionally cruel to Harry by holding 
> himself at a distance all year.  It seems to me that he was so 
> caught up in his abstract schemes and stratagems that he lost 
sight 
> of the fact that the pieces he was moving around on his mental 
> chessboard were actual human beings.
> 
I think that Dumbledore is getting a bad rap here.  Everyone 
complains that he bungled as far as Sirius goes, that he should have 
known better, done things differently, etc.  I have to ask, just 
WHAT was Dumbledore supposed to do?  He states plainly the reason he 
did what he did: to keep Sirius alive.  And Harry's response, and 
that of a lot of Sirius fans is basically 'Thanks for nothing.'  
What would have been the better solution?  Give Sirius more 
interesting things to do at GP?  It didn't matter WHAT he was asked 
to do there, Sirius wanted *out*, and nothing less.  So if he'd been 
given his way, he could have died in August, before Harry even got 
to GP - would that have made everyone happy?  Let's face it, some 
situations, just like some people (Snape, for instance), can't be 
fixed.  If the point of the books is about making choices, what 
happens when the choice isn't between good and bad, but between bad 
and worse?

Wanda