Snape, Sirius, and 'moral codes'

[curly_of_oster]

No: HPFGUIDX 74242

Hello again from the clarification lady. <g>

In response to an earlier post of mine, Random said:
You've completely skipped that the Prank also puts Lupin in danger

And I responded:
Of course I have, as it has nothing to do with the subject I'm 
addressing. <g>  Someone else took Sirius' line in PoA, "It served 
him right" (re: Snape and the prank) and concluded that for Sirius, 
if he doesn't like you, you don't have any rights at all.  The 
point of my response was that 1) even given what we see with Snape 
and Sirius, I'm not sure that one can conclude that Sirius thinks 
this about Snape, and 2) even if he *does* think this about Snape, 
the relationship between Sirius and Snape is a pretty special case, 
and I wouldn't want to generalize about either one of them based on 
it.  

Mim chimes in with:
So, we judge Snape from everything we've seen about him in the books 
(which is a lot) but with Sirius it's all about how he treats his 
enemies? Or those he doesn't like?
 
How about those he does like? He was petty enough to hold a grudge 
against Harry and push him to the point where Harry was worrying 
about his welfare on top of everything else! He was frankly creepy 
in the way he confused Harry with James 

[snip]

As for the Prank, why only view it in terms of what it meant for 
Snape and Sirius? Since we are discussing Sirius' moral character 
here, there is no canon information that we can simply dismiss as 
irrelevant. What the prank meant for Remus is very much relevant 
imho. We're judging Sirius here on how he treated his enemies 
(bullying Snape at 15, attempting to kill him at 16 and saying he 
deserved it at 35) how about how he treated his friends?

[massive snippage]

Back to me:
You are of course correct that a full assessment of either 
character's 'moral character' should be based on all the available 
evidence.  I did not mean to suggest otherwise.  To be fair to 
myself, I didn't actually discuss *either* Snape or Sirius in the 
context of 'everything we've seen' about them.  I was responding to 
a very specific set of conclusions that it seemed had been drawn 
about the two characters, based primarily on a very specific subset 
of the information we have (i.e. that Snape tried to save Harry and 
that Sirius says 'It served him right' about Snape vis a vis the 
prank).  My main point was simply that because we have such a 
limited amount of information, and because we have only second-hand 
information about what is/was going on in any character's head other 
than Harry, it is unreasonable to generalize from a couple of 
very particular cases to a general statement of either 
character's 'moral code.'  As I said in my original post:

"While I agree that the conclusions drawn are not *inconsistent* 
with the evidence given, I would take issue with making such broad 
statements about either character, both because I think the evidence 
we have is simply insufficient to do so and also because I think the 
cases we do have to look at are likely to be particularly 
specialized, and therefore do not lend themselves to making such 
general conclusions."

As I was trying to address a specific, and rather narrow, point, I 
tried to keep the extraneous stuff out.  I did this with Snape as 
well, in fact (which was why I didn't go into a discussion of 
whether or not he really treats everyone equally in my original 
post).  

Now, if one *wants* to discuss Sirius' morals in more detail, the 
way he treats people he does like, etc., that's fine too.  As to the 
points you raise in your post, I think, as with so much to do with 
the 'side characters' in the HP books, there is more than one way to 
look at the situation (and, as usual, a lot seems to be left to 
interpretation).


Mim:
He was petty enough to hold a grudge against Harry and push him to 
the point where Harry was worrying about his welfare on top of 
everything else! He was frankly creepy in the way he confused Harry 
with James

Lisa:
I'm not sure what 'grudge' Sirius was holding against Harry, so I 
don't know how to respond to that.  I agree that a lot of his 
behavior in OOP was disconcerting, and even sometimes disturbing.  
However, if we're going to use *all* of the evidence available to 
judge him, I think it's fair to look not only at what we see in OOP, 
but also what we saw in GoF.  In that book, Sirius seemed lucid, 
rational, and caring.  He consistently advised Harry to be careful, 
and was even quite even-handed when he talked to the trio about 
Snape.  In GoF, I got the impression that Sirius was making progress 
in recovering from the past 13 years.  *Something* seems to have 
changed between the end of that book and OOP.  One possible 
explanation is that GoF was just some sort of anomaly, but that 
isn't, to me at least, very satisfying.  Maybe when stressed, Sirius 
reverts to his natural, petty, creepy self. <g>  Or maybe, after 12 
years in Azkaban and a year on the run, being stuck in what was in 
some ways just another prison, complete with his mother's portrait 
to take over the Dementor's job, was just the proverbial straw on 
the proverbial camel's back.  Frankly, given his situation, I'm not 
terribly surprised that Sirius' mental state was less than optimal.

As to confusing Harry with James, I don't know that I entirely buy 
that.  I think his telling Harry that maybe he's not so much like 
James and turning away was a terrible thing.  No doubt.  Perhaps 
sometimes Sirius wishes Harry were James.  But I'm not so convinced 
that the evidence we have shows that he thinks Harry *is* James.  
And again, Sirius didn't seem to be having these issues in earlier 
books.  In PoA, he tells Harry that he is 'his father's son,' but 
this seems to be a combination of praise for his bravery in saving 
Sirius and thanks for said saving.  I don't recall any evidence of 
any sort of James/Harry confusion in GoF (thought it's been a while 
since I've read it, so I could be forgetting something).


Back to Mim:
And when it comes to Harry knowing the real James... isn't it 
interesting that Harry had to go as far as plunging right in Snape's 
Pensieve to find a little more about his Dad? Couldn't Sirius fill 
the time in Grimmault with some nice James stories? I don't even 
know whether I can call this a character failing, perhaps Sirius 
couldn't think of anything to say about James that would be fitting 
for Harry to hear or he was simply missing his friend too badly. Or 
it's a great gaping plot hole from JKR, wouldn't be the first.

Me:
I think this is one of those things that falls into pure 
speculation.  The books are largely from Harry's POV, so why didn't 
we either see him *ask* Sirius about his father or hear him thinking 
it was strange that Sirius wasn't telling him anything?  Why doesn't 
*Remus* tell him anything?  Frankly, I think this is just something 
that didn't fit into the plot as JKR wanted to tell it, but honestly 
there's no way to know.


Back to Mim:
Revealing Remus' secret to Snape can only mean that Sirius didn't 
expect Snape to survive the encounter. Which means that he was 
perfectly fine with the thought of his friend eating a classmate and 
quite possibly being put to death. 

As for the Prank, why only view it in terms of what it meant for 
Snape and Sirius? Since we are discussing Sirius' moral character 
here, there is no canon information that we can simply dismiss as 
irrelevant. What the prank meant for Remus is very much relevant 
imho.

[snip]

Lisa:
And again, I honestly don't think we have enough information to 
conclude this.  Telling Snape how to get past the Willow (given what 
little information we have) strikes me as a monumentally BAD IDEA.  
It seems extremely reckless and thoughtless.  It is not at all clear 
to me, though, whether it was something that Sirius thought out at 
all.  Your assessment above assumes both pre-meditation and a 
rational exploration of the possible consequences, neither of which 
are 'proven' in my mind.  

The fact that Lupin says that Sirius thought it would be funny to 
send Snape to the Shack might be evidence that it wasn't done in a 
fit of anger and/or retaliation, but I'd like to know more about the 
whole thing before I make a firm conclusion.  

And on what grounds do you conclude that Sirius must have expected 
Snape to be killed?  He *might* have assumed that Snape would be 
killed and didn't care, but it seems to me he might just as well have
not thought that far ahead at all, or thought that Snape would just 
get a good scare and stop following them around and trying to figure 
out what Remus was doing on those nights when he went off with 
Pompfrey.  Granted, this still makes Sirius a sometimes thoughtless 
and reckless teenager who acts without thinking, but until we have 
more detailed information about the Prank, I don't think we can say 
one way or the other.  Despite Lupin's desire to have friends and 
his willingness to cut them a lot of slack, I find it hard to 
believe that he would be embracing Sirius 'like a brother' in PoA if 
he believed that Sirius had truly been 'fine' with the idea of Remus 
being put to death back in school.


More Mim:
And did Remus, or Dumbledore or anyone who could have been willing 
to listen to Sirius' side of things bother to visit him in Azkaban 
and find out? Doesn't look like it.

They knew Sirius and thought the worst of him. How can we think any 
differently?

Me:
Again, this is something that we simply know so little about as to 
make any number of interpretations possible.  Dumbledore was 
obviously informed that Sirius was to be the secret keeper, and not 
told of the change.  And if Sirius could be shipped off to Azkaban 
without a trial, who's to say that anyone was even *allowed* to 
visit him?  Sure, one possibility is that no one tried to find out.  
Another is that no one was allowed to find out.  A third is 
somewhere in between.  Plus there's the whole issue of Sirius' 
family and their views on muggles and muggle-borns.  I have to 
wonder if the fact that he came from such a family, that he had a 
brother who was a Death Eater, didn't play into people's willingness 
to believe that he was the bad guy.

And on the subject of believing the worst, Dumbledore was clearly 
willing to listen to Sirius in PoA, and Sirius was able to convince 
him of the truth.  Why didn't Dumbledore assume that, as Snape says, 
the children were confunded?  I don't have my books with me at the 
moment, but didn't at least one of the people in the conversation 
that Harry overhears in the Three Broomsticks say something about 
being surprised that Sirius had been the traitor?

Mim, one more time <g>:
And with Sirius back, Dumbledore had absolutely no use for him.

Lisa:
Wasn't the point supposed to be that he had a 10000-galleon price on 
his head and that the Death Eaters now knew about Padfoot?  I agree 
that Dumbledore ought to have been able to find *something* more 
useful for Sirius to do while he was stuck at 12 Grimmauld Place, 
but I'm not so sure whether this problem is due to a character flaw 
in Sirius or in Dumbledore.

Lisa