Re: Rowling’s Debunking of the Marauders

[Lisa]

No: HPFGUIDX 172812

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "leslie41" <leslie41 at ...> wrote:
>
Some of what we know about the Marauders is revealed by the pensieve,
and often the pensieve itself is a topic of debate, since some might
suggest that the memories in the pensieve are subjective. That's
another argument, but I think the pensieve is rather more objective
than subjective, since from what I understand nothing ever shown in
the pensieve is contradicted.

Lisa:

Actually, there's no argument here.  JKR answered this very question 
in her interview with Emerson & Melissa of Mugglenet & The Leaky 
Cauldron.  The pensieve memories are completely objective -- we see 
what really happened, not the individual's possibly skewed version of 
what s/he remembers.  That's what makes a pensieve such a valuable 
instrument.

Leslie:

Sirius is more difficult. Harry certainly never stops loving him or
admiring him. But, er
his personality is also debunked beginning in
PoA Prank, anyone? Using a friend to lure an enemy into his possible
death is...er...not very nice, no matter how curious your enemy is
about your doings. And as long as he lives, he is never shown to
repent of that, ever. He does go to Azkaban for the crime of another,
but then he escapes and pretty much scares the snot out of everyone
(mostly kids, btw) before he's found in the Shrieking Shack. But even
after that, though Sirius most obviously loves Harry and Harry does
likewise, we are still shown the deeply limiting aspects of Sirius'
personality. A case in point there is Kreacher. Until DH, though
Dumbledore tells Harry that Sirius treated Kreacher badly, we were
tempted to sympathize with Sirius. Kreacher is, well, loathsome.
And though Sirius cannot see him as a being worthy of any care or
decent treatment, it's hard for us to see that either.

Lisa:

I've never understood anyone's sentimentality toward Sirius.  If 
anyone deserved Snape's (and anyone else's) contempt, it was Sirius.  
So he was sorted into Gryffindor rather than Slytherin?  So was 
Peter.  So he disliked his family's involvement with the Dark Arts?  
Really?  But what did he do, when faced presented with the 
opportunity to harm someone he found annoying?  He attempted murder-
by-Lupin.  Not only was he willing to facilitate a murder, but he was 
willing to set up one of his alleged best friends to unwittingly 
commit said murder and pay the consequences and live with that 
knowledge for the rest of his life.  Even if Lupin-as-werewolf didn't 
kill teen-Snape, at the very least, he'd've bitten him, and the 
outcome would've been the same:  Sirius would've been "innocent" of 
actually doing anything; Snape would've been dead or a werewolf; and 
Lupin would've had to live with the consequences of his own actions, 
even though they were committed unknowingly.  Boy, with friends like 
Sirius ...

I'm not sure Sirius "loved" Harry, either.  He certainly loved the 
IDEA of Harry, of having James back in some kind of way.  But Harry 
himself?  Well, he didn't really KNOW Harry himself, did he?