Sirius without trial - a perspective

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 158833

Carol earlier:
> (After Harry starts talking and Black sees how much he resembles
James, the concern for Harry becomes more important, maybe even taking
precedence in his own mind, but how could he "love" a  boy he hasn't
seen since he was an infant and doesn't even know? 
> 
> Alla responded:
> 
> He knows him, he spent the first year of his life with him and to me 
> that seems enough to love grown up Harry. He does not **know** grown 
> up Harry of course, but the basis for the love seems to me the time 
> he spent with infant Harry. <snip>

Caarol responded:
A twenty-two or twenty-three-year-old man cannot "know" an infant.
Even the child's mother only "knows" the child's needs and
personality. Maybe she can tell a hunger cry from a "wet" cry, and she
may interact with the baby playing patty cake and similar games. That
isn't the same as "knowing" an older child, nor do I think it likely
that Sirius (or even James) knew Baby!Harry on this level. 

As for "the time he spent with infant Harry, can you provide canon for
that, please? He was certainly present for the baptism when he was
made godfather, but do you think that Harry was with Black and the
Potters when they were doing whatever they did as Order members? We
know that he didn't live with them in Godric's Hollow or the house
James presumably inherited from his parents. He had his own house,
courtesy of Uncle Alphard. I see evidence of his presence with Harry
for one ceremony, which may have lasted half an hour, and even then,
someone else was probably holding the infant and there would be no
interaction, only the godfather speaking words in the name of the
child (if the WW ceremony resembles that of RL). And Harry was
probably a newborn, not a toddler, at the time (again, if the WW is
like the RW).

> Alla:
> 
> Um but we were talking about his love for Harry as primary motive
for his escape, what does Shrieking Shack has to do with it? ,snip>

Carol:
What does the Shrieking Shack have to do with it???? Everything! It's
the place where we finally see Black as a character and where he
reveals his motives. (I could add, of course, the slashed portrait and
slashed bedcurtains, which reveal fierce anger and frustration, acts
of violence committed with a twelve-inch instrument of death. I don't
see any love of Harry here, only desire to commit murder for
vengeance.) His words and actions in the Shrieking Shack reveal that
he escaped from Azkaban "to commit the murder I was arrested for."

>  
> > Carol, who is not calling Black a liar but thinks he may see
events a bit differently after actually encountering the teenage Harry
(and witnessing his relationship with his own old enemy, Severus Snape)

> Alla:
> 
> A bit differently meaning that he was not really worried about Harry 
> or did you mean something else here? And what relevance Harry's 
> relationship to Snape has to the argument whether Sirius loves
Harry? <snip>

Carol:
"A bit differently" meaning that actually seeing Harry (and being
reminded of James) shifted his focus from vengeance on Peter to
Harry's safety (which really wasn't in question, at least from lazy
Peter). As for Snape, I mentioned him because Black's focus becomes
more Harry-centered after Snape's entrance and it occurred to me
(perhaps wrongly) that having a common adversary may have strengthened
Black's feelings for Harry (again because Harry reminded him of James
in that respect). It's just a thought and not central to my argument.

I notice that you didn't respond to Black's attempting to choke Harry,
an odd action for a loving godfather motivated primarily by love for
Harry.

Carol, fearing that she's wasting her time presenting canon support
because it won't persuade those whose minds are already made up