Sirius (Was Re: good and bad slytherins/Disappointment and Responsibility)

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 175183

va32h:

> If anything, Sirius' bitterness when talking about 
> his family to Harry shows me that Sirius came to Hogwarts 
> ready and willing to reject anything his much-hated 
> family stood for.

houyhnhnm:

The Sirius of OotP is in his thirties, has spent seven 
years at Hogwarts, lived through all of VWI, endured twelve
years in Azkzban falsely accused of betraying one friend 
to his death and murdering another, and he is back in the 
house he hated, a virtual prisoner again.

I'm not sure his words at that age tell us very much about 
his attitudes at the age of eleven or twelve.  

We see Sirius's room in the house at 12 GP as it must 
have appeared in his later teenage years.  There are 
several large Gryffindor banners, many pictures of Muggle 
motorcycles, several pictures of bikini-clad Muggle girls.  
The only Wizarding photograph on the walls is a picture 
of the four Marauders.  All of these artifacts date from 
after his entering Hogwarts, probably from the last year 
or two before he left home, as evidenced by the bikini-clad 
Muggle girls. (Wizards seem to have a long latency period, 
especially the boys if Harry and Ron are anything to go by.)  
There is nothing in the room to give a clue to what the 
child Sirius was like before he went to school. 

We don't know what Sirius's relationship with Regulus 
was like while he still lived at home.  He says, "I bet 
my parents thought Regulus was a right little hero for 
joining up at first."  Regulus joined up after Sirius 
severed ties with his family.  Regulus's room, with its 
emerald and silver drapings, family crest and newspaper 
clippings about Voldemort likewise gives us little insight 
into Regulus as a little boy.  The decorations in his room
may possibly date from his later years at Hogwarts as well.  
Both of the Black boys made pivotal, fateful decisions in 
their sixteenth year it seems.  Sirius left home; Regulus 
became a Death Eater.

Thirty-something Sirius gives us a lot of condemnatory 
information about his family, but that doesn't show us 
anything about what he felt towards them at age eleven. 
Yes, we know they are horrible.  We also know that Regulus 
was kind to Kreacher and Sirius wasn't.

The only information we have about eleven-year-old Sirius 
come from Snape's memory of the first trip to Hogwarts.  
Sirius bristles slighty at James's put-down of Slytherin.  
"Who wants to be in Slytherin?" James asks.  "I think I'd 
leave, wouldn't you?"  *Sirius did not smile*  "*Maybe*, 
I'll break the tradition," he says. [emphasis added]

I would not go so far as to claim that Sirius's sole 
reason for choosing (if the Hat really does base its 
decision on the studen't choice, spoken or unspoken) 
Gryffindor is his wish to be friends with "cool" James 
and avoid the little oddball Severus.  What the scene 
does show is an ambivalent Sirius. He's a little ruffled 
at James's dig at his family's House.  He doesn't defend 
it, though.  He even goes so far as to suggest that he 
may break with tradition.  But he doesn't condemn Slytherin, either.

It seems quite possible to me, even likely, that Sirius 
already felt himself to be different from his family in 
an unthoughtout sort of way by the time he took his first 
ride on the Hogwart's Express. Perhaps meeting James was 
not the reason he was sorted into Gryffindor, but rather 
the catalyst.  He might even have been sorted into 
Gryffindor if he had never met James.  What he doesn't do 
in this scene is condemn Slytherin House on any kind of 
ideological basis or show that he has thought about either 
his family or the Houses of Hogwarts in these terms. 

Therefore, I have to agree with Carol that the enmity 
between Severus and Sirius did not arise out of a 
difference in ideology, but only out of simple childish 
antagonism.  The adult Sirius's justification for his 
hatred of Snape based on Snape's supposed love of Dark 
Arts was something applied in retrospect, IMO.  We have 
no evidence to the contrary.