Was Sirius railroaded? And what was his view?

Mon Nov 17 02:08:34 UTC 2014

No: HPFGUIDX 192721

---In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, <foxmoth at qnet.com> wrote :

 Sherry now:

I would add also to the evidence, that Dumbledore *assumed* Sirius was the secret Keeper and presumably he told the then minister of magic and the head of magical law enforcement so. 

In POA Sirius's imprisonment could have seemed logical or understandable, except for my outrage over anyone not receiving a fair trial and the right to defend himself. But by the end of the series, I found the fate of Sirius to be an even greater travesty. By then, we knew about the spell to check the last spells performed by a wand. We knew about Truth serum, and we knew about legilimency. A combination of these things would surely have proven his innocence. <snip>

 Pippin:
 Unfortunately, when evidence conflicts with established beliefs, people are more inclined to find ways to discount the evidence than to change  their beliefs. Fudge, for example,  refused to believe that Voldemort had returned, despite the evidence of veritaserum. As far as he was concerned, Barty Jr was delusional. Legilimency would be suspect for the same reasons, plus, how can you be sure that the legilimens himself is not lying? Or deceived by occlumency?

 One could prove by examining Sirius's wand that he hadn't used the Avada Kedavra spell, but so what? There are other spells,  some known only to dark wizardry. 

 Alla:

 Sorry, but when it took half an hour for Dumbledore to be convinced in Sirius' innocence after that talk in his office (was it half an hour or was it less?), nothing would convince me that it was any kind of hardship for Dumbledore to do a quick sweep and spare half an hour to check whether Sirius was guilty or not. The only thing that in my mind absolves Dumbledore a little is possible sloppiness of his creator - Sirius needed to be in jail for thirteen years for PoA, so hey there is really nothing Dumbledore could have done. Oh wait, it takes half an hour thirteen years later.

 Here is an idea, how about instead of sending Hagrid Dumbledore goes there himself to take Harry, or maybe cast Legilimency on Sirius? Problem solved.

 Pippin:

 I don't doubt that Dumbledore was too ready to believe that Sirius was guilty of betraying the secret and committing the murders, since he already suspected Sirius of being the spy. And he had reasons for not wanting a traitorous Order member put on trial, lest even more of its secrets be revealed in the process. But it was also not unusual for Crouch to deny people trials, and he  had enough influence to overrule Dumbledore, especially when popular sentiment was on his side. Sirius was not a well-loved figure like Harry or Ludo Bagman, he had nothing to bargain with, unlike Karkaroff, nor did Crouch himself have something to prove, as he did with Barty Jr. Crouch had long ceased to be interested in justice, if he ever was. He was only interested in putting as many Death Eaters as he could in Azkaban.

 Alla:

 Yes, he was ready and willing to believe that, but once again I am not convinced that Dumbledore who was so influential as to be offered the position would not have enough influence as to say, yes, I checked he is innocent and you must believe me.

 Alla:

 Eh I had not posted for a long time, so adding the thought. Let's not forget that Dumbledore could not give evidence that Sirius was the secret Keeper, any evidence which he gave was a false evidence because Sirius as we all know was not a Secret Keeper. So what Dumbledore actually did was to give a false testimony. I wonder if WW has a punishment for perjury. And I really need to reread PoA .

 Pippin:
 Welcome back! 
 Perhaps you mean that Dumbledore could not give *proof* that Sirius was the secret-keeper? . Sirius's intention to mislead people into thinking that he was the secret keeper is canon: "I thought it was the perfect plan...a bluff....Voldemort would be sure to come after me, would never dream they'd use a weak, talentless thing like you...."PoA ch 19.   

 "James Potter told Dumbledore that Black would die rather than tell where they were, that Black was planning to go into hiding himself" -Professor McGonnagall, PoA ch 10.  That may be the evidence that Dumbledore offered. Now, maybe it never happened, but maybe it was James who lied. He had deceived Dumbledore before. 

 A bluff can't be secret. For Sirius's plan to work, someone had to tell Voldemort that Sirius was the secret-keeper. An obvious person to do that would be the spy, but of course Sirius couldn't be sure who the spy was, so he had mislead everyone in the Order. And according to McGonnagall, James helped. He didn't think there was a spy in the Order, according to Lupin, but there would be no harm done if there wasn't. It would just mean that Voldemort wouldn't hear that Sirius was the secret-keeper and wouldn't go after him. 

 Alla:

 Thanks :). Of course I could not stay away from this topic. No, what I meant is that he could not give a real evidence, only a false one. The fact that what he knew was a bluff does not mean that the bluff becomes a real evidence. If during the course of the trial a lie is offered as evidence, judge and/or jury can be sometimes convinced of that, it however does not become a truth even if deemed as such. 

 Pippin:

 I'm intrigued with the notion that there wasn't a spy at all, that it was Dumbledore's bluff to explain how information passed through Snape was reaching Voldemort. I once argued fiercely for Peter's innocence myself.  Snape  at that time wouldn't have minded  Order members being killed, as long as they weren't Lily.  Chess master Dumbledore would have eased his conscience by telling himself it was for the greater good. 

 Trouble is,  the Order was losing.  Dumbledore would have been behaving, not like a chess master sacrificing his pieces for competitive advantage, but  like a compulsive gambler, sacrificing one Order member after another in the useless hope that Snape's next revelation would be the one that turned the tide. 

 It also wouldn't explain this: " [Dumbledore] was sure that somebody close to the Potters had been keeping You-Know-Who informed of their movements." -McGonnagall POA ch 10. 

 Snape would never have done that. And if Snape had suspected *Dumbledore* of giving Voldemort information about  Lily --well, Dumbledore would have died by Snape's hand a good 16 years earlier, LOL!

 Alla:

 Sorry, whose notion is that? I am not arguing that Peter was not a spy, so I do not quite understand.

 Pippin:

 Can we agree that Sirius *did* allow Harry to go live with the Dursleys, not just once but several times?  He didn't like the idea, who would, but he could hardly have been confident in his own ability to protect Harry from Voldemort when he had failed so spectacularly to protect Lily and James.

 Nor, IMO,  would Dumbledore have expected Sirius to object to The Plan. People in the WW grow up playing wizard chess. Far from being horrified by the idea that good leaders must inspire their followers to  sacrifice for the greater good, they're indoctrinated with it from childhood. Where Dumbledore  went astray with Grindelwald was not in getting  people to sacrifice their lives, but in suggesting that they  sacrifice their principles. 

 Alla:

 Of course we cannot agree on that! I do not consider being cornered by Hagrid as any kind of real choice. 

 Pippin:

 And indeed, the revenant Sirius accompanies Harry in the forest and is proud of what he's about to do. Perhaps this wasn't Sirius returned, but only an apparition conjured by the Stone from the part of Harry that was willing to die. But it doesn't strike Harry as out of character. 

 Alla:

 I never doubted that real Sirius would have supported Harry in any kind of decision that he would have reached. I just think that Sirius tried to love him and Dumbledore took away from traumatized Harry even the chance to talk to Sirius and Lupin. I tend to make up my own endings of my favorite books if I am partially unhappy with the books, like in my ending of "Illiad" (sorry first thing to came to mind :)) Achilles and Hector are alive :).

 In my ending to Harry Potter everything is the same as in a real book , but Dumbledore is rotting in whatever version of Potterverse hell, together with Voldemort.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://archive.hpfgu.org/pipermail/hpforgrownups/attachments/20141116/da7383ce/attachment.html>