Sirius's Betrayal (long) - (was: CHAP DISC: Chapter 5: The Dementor)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 189529


> Mike:
> Maybe I'm remembering the chronology incorrectly. I thought Grindelwald had already been kicked out of Durmstrang when he came to visit his Aunt Bathilda. If that is so, then someone expelled from Durmstrang, of all places, for dark magic, well,... they can't have had much of a sunny reputation now could they? That is to say, what Dumbledore sensed in Grindelwald might have had a basis in the known facts about who Grindelwald was and what he was capable of. Like I said, that's if I have the chronology correct.

Pippin:
Your chronology is correct, but many  young wizards get in trouble for "twisted experiments" -- whether it's keeping an acromantula as a pet or practicing unnatural charms on a goat. As Rowling shows us, such  "known facts" do not make much of a basis for distinguishing between a teenager who is testing his limits and one for whom limits have no meaning. 

It was possible for Bathilda to think, and Dumbledore to pretend, that Grindelwald was  the former and not the latter. And whatever he thought about Grindelwald's motives, Dumbledore never suspected his own -- he didn't think *he* was becoming corrupt until Arianna lay dead. 

Dumbledore was young, and naive at the time, and the fact is, he did trust Grindelwald,  despite his misgivings about him.  "Well, Grindelwald fled, as anyone but I could have predicted." Dumbledore expected Grindelwald to stand by him and he didn't.

> > Pippin:
> > I think Dumbledore  believed that he sensed a similar darkness in
> > Sirius, to which James was closing his eyes. It was an illusion, 
> >   <snip>

> 
> Mike:
> Rather a *delusion* than an illusion, I would say. To out of the blue conjure up dark intentions for Sirius, based on what had happened with himself 80 years previous,... I never sensed that Dumbledore was capable of this kind of self deceit. 
> 

Pippin:
But it wasn't "out of the blue." Sirius had been involved in the near-murder of a fellow student only a few years earlier, a fellow student who was now Dumbledore's ally. And Snape for one *did* think that Sirius was capable of anything, so it's simply not true that no one who knew Sirius could have thought he would betray James. 

  I'm not saying that Dumbledore said to himself, "the spy has to be Sirius because he reminds me of Grindelwald." But I think the resemblance pre-disposed Dumbledore to distrust. As canon shows us, *everyone* is capable of that kind of self-deceit, because it comes from the unconscious mind and even if we're aware of it, it isn't under our control.  And the distrust lingered. Even when Dumbledore knew that Sirius was an innocent man, he found other reasons to think that Sirius couldn't keep himself out of trouble. 
 
> Mike:
> 
> That leaves only the night in the Shack as a wasted opportunity, and Dumbledore doesn't know that story until he talks to Sirius. So just as Alla said, one conversation was supposedly all it took to change Dumbledore's mind about Sirius's guilt, if you believe Dumbledore. I don't!


Pippin:
But the night in the Shack was compelling.  Harry  and Snape were still alive, despite having been in Sirius's power for hours while Snape was unconscious.  Snape found himself and Ron on the path to the castle, and Harry, Sirius and Hermione on the shores of the lake -- not the places they would have been taken if Sirius was trying to get them off the grounds. 

That's the sort of mystery that would attract Dumbledore's attention, and as you say, he would have persisted in trying to get an explanation for it. 

> Mike:
> Alla was right, Dumbledore said he "gave evidence to the Ministry that Sirius had been the Potter's Secret-Keeper."(PoA, p.392, US) Hearing, administrative proceding, kangaroo court, it doesn't matter. The salient point was that Dumbledore gave evidence of something that he *did not know to be fact*. 

Pippin:

"Evidence that Black had been the Potters' Secret-keeper" doesn't tell us what that evidence was, only the conclusion that was inferred from it.  What Fudge says is that Dumbledore told James that the Secret-keeper spell was his best chance, that he, Dumbledore, had offered to be the secret-keeper himself, and that James had refused him and insisted on using Black.  The source of that information had to be Dumbledore's evidence -- how else would Fudge know? There was nothing in it that Dumbledore did not know of his own knowledge.  As far as we know, he didn't claim any further proof. It still meant that  the only way someone else could have been the Secret-keeper is if James had misled Dumbledore about his intentions -- which is what happened, but who knew?

Everyone, including Lupin, thought that Sirius  was the Secret-keeper, just as James and Sirius had intended. That was the  point of the switch -- not just to pick an unlikely person as the Secret-keeper but to protect  him by providing a decoy. 

The evidence that Sirius had been the Secret-keeper explained why Peter would have gone after him. The Ministry was already hunting Sirius themselves for the same reason, I don't deny it. But plenty of suspected Death Eaters managed to talk themselves out of Azkaban with or without help from Albus Dumbledore. It was the supposed murder of Peter and all those Muggles which ensured that Sirius never got the chance. 

Mike
Why does Dumbledore bring this up in the conversation with H & H if it wasn't to affirm that his evidence was part of the reason for Sirius's incarceration? 

Pippin:
He brings it up in the course of explaining why the Ministry won't believe him if he tries to tell them that Sirius wasn't the Potter's secret-keeper after all. Without proof that Peter is alive, there is unfortunately not a single fact that DD can cite to refute his earlier testimony. It's the   word of James, now martyred, heroic and in the eyes of most of the WW practically a saint, against the word of three wayward teenagers, a convicted murderer, and a werewolf.

Dumbledore chooses to believe them. But the Ministry will not.  

> > Pippin:
> > It all fit together, or seemed to. Sirius was the spy, he had betrayed the Potters, and then he had gone berserk and murdered thirteen people. There really was not, at the time, any other credible explanation for how those people had died.
> 
> Mike:
> And now we come to the critical point of the saga. What would have ever foreshadowed this supposed change in Sirius? Taking the whole story into context, where is the sense in believing that Sirius was the spy that came in from the cold? I read nothing of those critical years leading up to Voldemort's attack of the Potters that gives the slightest inclination that Sirius would be the logical suspect. We need "someone close to the Potters" to be the spy. If that leaves only Black, Lupin, and Pettigrew, which of those seemed more likely to fit the bill? I submit that Pettigrew, followed by Lupin, were more likely than Sirius.

Pippin:

Fudge's story is that Sirius was Voldemort's second in command. We don't know how that got started, but it would be perfectly in character for Voldemort to remark that his most trusted servant is his spy in the Order, who will one day take his rightful place, favored above all the rest. And Dumbledore, thanks to his own weaknesses, would believe that anyone would do anything to get that kind of power, which meant that no one could be eliminated on those grounds. 

In any case, canon shows  that  motive is a poor clue to who serves the Dark Lord -- there are too many secrets, too many seemingly harmless people with hidden weaknesses for Voldemort to exploit, and too many nasty people who nevertheless have nothing to do with him. And if Dumbledore is wise, he knows it. 

So that leaves method. Dumbledore would have asked which of the three was clever enough to deceive him. By that ranking Sirius was first and Pettigrew was out of  the running. He shouldn't have been, of course,  but Dumbledore didn't know that little Peter, with the help of his three more obviously brilliant  friends, had managed to deceive him for years. 

Dumbledore didn't contest every Ministry conviction, only those in which there was obvious sloppiness  or prejudice had played a role. But in this case the investigation of the Muggle deaths was carried out conscientiously,  there didn't seem to be any mystery about who had killed them,  the inferences drawn from the known facts were logical, and Sirius was a pureblood, independently wealthy wizard, not poor or downtrodden by any means. The only prejudice involved, alas, was Dumbledore's.

Pippin