Sirius as Father Figure (was:Re: How Sirius' death suits Dumbledore?...)

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 130641

> Betsy Hp:
> I'd agree with Sirius being a good father figure in GoF.  Maybe 
even 
> in the beginning of OotP.  But by the end of OotP Sirius shows 
> himself to be horribly lacking.

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> The downward spiral of Sirius is strange to me.  Yes, the house 
> holds bad memories, but why does he seem to get worse as time goes 
> by?  There were hints of darkness in GoF (his advice to maim the 
> dragon for example) but Sirius seems to be retrograding back to 
> Shrieking Shack!Sirius instead of slowly getting better.  And 
> unfortunantely Harry seems to bare the brunt of Sirius' emotional 
> breakdown.

Alla:

It is clear that we are on the diametrally opposed side of the 
spectrum on this topic, but I just want to make couple  brief 
comments.

I am not arguing that Sirius was exemplary Godfather, but I am saying 
that he had  a potential, which as you said he shows in GoF to be a 
really good one.

Yes, I DO blame a lot of his mistakes in OOP on his depression. I am 
not sure why it is so strange for you. IMO this house holds not only  
bad memories, but horrible memories for Sirius, since he run away 
from home and never looked back.

I found his spiral to be perfectly logical and understandable without 
drugs or alcoholism ( I really would like to see more canon evidence 
on this one, actually. NO, not the sign of Sirius being drunk once,  
but the signs of him being an alcoholic).

And, yes, I cannot help but going back to Dumbledore absolute 
inability of deal with  the psychological issues of the people he 
deals with.

I cannot stand Puppetmaster!Dumbledore. I don't think that Dumbledore 
is a puppetmaster, but I do think that he is in bad need of taking 
psychology 101 course or something like that.

To put the man who craves action in that house, was , IMO, very 
stupid thing to do.
Yes, he probably wanted to save Sirius' life, but I really think that 
he had more chances of helping him to stay alive if he would find 
something to do for him.

Again, as we saw in GoF, Sirius was perfectly capable of staying safe 
and not visible to authorities when he was needed by Harry.
 
Oh, and I also do not think that Sirius "confused" Harry and James 
that much. Sure he was looking for  some James in Harry. I think it 
is perfectly understandable to  try and look for some qualities of 
the parent in the child, especially when parent was your best friend 
and was cruelly taken away from you.

But I think that Sirius loved Harry as Harry too.

As JKR said "Sirius loved James like brother and transferred that 
affection to his son" (paraphrase), which she also calls Sirius' 
greatest redeeming quality.


I don't think Harry has nearly enough of that in his life and would a 
have benefitted greatly from it.

Just my opinion,

Alla.