Why did Harry get such a liking of Sirius...

[A Featheringstonehaugh]

No: HPFGUIDX 74451

It's understandable, given Harry's age and life experiences, that he would over-respond to his  father's best friend. Harry was a very needy child, and his sudden attachment to Sirius is child-like. As I wrote earlier, he projected onto Sirius attributes that he WANTED in an adult; it doesn't necessarily follow that Sirius really HAD those attributes.  We see Sirius through Harry's hopeful eyes, not as he is but as Harry (and we) want him to be. The same holds true for James.  Harry idolozed the man he imagined James to be, and was troubled to learn that James had a side that he (Harry) didn't like.  When we later see Sirius being not quite so noble as we'd assumed he was, it's not because we're seeing a CHANGED Sirius, but the REAL one.  The real Sirius is the one we saw in the pensive and the one Lupin and others have long tried to "rein in.",  just as the real James was different than we'd imagined. This needn't be taken as criticism of either of them because it's OUR problem that
 we've idolized them, not theirs; we've made these men out to be people they really aren't.  I suspect that had Sirius lived, Harry, in time, would have become disappointed in him as a hero.  Sirius had no official standing with respect to Harry, the position of Godfather being purely honorary, with no legal authority and Harry would have come to accept Sirius as being able to offer nothing more than the special friendship that the role of Godparent is intended to provide. All in all, not a bad thing.  Harry would have been allowed to relate honestly to an adult and a father figure.  Instead, Sirius' death ended the opportunity for their relationship to grow naturally; Harry is once again emotionally robbed and denied normalcy. The real tragedy here is not that Sirius died but that Harry is once again saddened in a way that no child deserves. His suffering seems endless.
AF


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