Why Do You Like Sirius?

[Lyrade]

No: HPFGUIDX 122298



--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Casey" <caseylane at w...> wrote:
I'm new here, so pardon me for butting into the conversation:)

> Casey:
> I never got that. I saw a Black that encouraged James' worst 
traits, 
> not one that tried to improve himself for him. Is there a scene I 
> missed that showed Black trying to make himself better for James?

The way I read it, James didn't need any encouragement to behave 
badly. Even his closest friends admit that he had a 'talent for 
trouble' so I don't think Sirius encouraged James to be bad, I think 
they were merely the kind of personalitiies who feed off each other. 
You see it all the time in groups of young boys.

> Casey:
> Trivial? He tried to murder a classmate and used a friend as the 
> weapon of death. That doesn't sound, to me, like he knew right from 
> wrong. Or didn't care if he did. 

But it does sound like a very typical adolescent boy thing to do. I 
work with teenage boys, and some of the things they consider 'a bit 
of a laugh' would make your hair stand on end, but they don't do them 
through malice, it's purely lack of experience and common sense. I do 
believe that a recent study in a science journal proved that 
adolescent males have a different brain chemistry to that of males 
who have reached maturity, and that's why thay are often so erratic 
in their behaviour.
Yes, of course, Sirius knew that sending Snape in their with Remus at 
full mooon was dangerous and stupid, and I'm sure that had it worked, 
he'd have been tortured with guilt afterwards, but his deep loathing 
of Snape overwhelmed his common sense that day. 
It's unfair to judge Sirius the man on the exploits of Sirius the 
spoilt brat teenager at school.

> I'm just trying to understand why people actually like him and want 
> him to come back. I just don't understand the attraction.

Probably because he is so complex, and he had to overcome his 
upbringing to make the right choices. It's a very difficult thing to 
do, to outgrow the prejudices that you've been indoctrinated with 
since birth and rise above them.

The thing I don't understand is why James has become a paragon of 
virtue to some, and yet Sirius is reviled by the same people?

Michelle