#otf: fulfilling my duty as godfather

[amorremanet]

ahhhh gimme more about "sirius with hufflepuff traits" because i just started roleplaying him and !!!

OKAY SO. This will probably be a disorganized mess, and I apologize for that in advance.

The big three traits/values here are Sirius’s loyalty, his hard work and dedication, and valuing of community.

To get this out in the open: Sirius’s loyalty is the biggest reason why Sirius could’ve been a Hufflepuff, to me, so I’ll probably harp on it a lot. I mean, his Animagus form is a DOG, and not one of the ones that JKR treats really unfairly in the text (like bulldogs, which she has Aunt Marge breed based on the fact that they look grumpy, even though irl they’re actually sweethearts), but a shaggy black dog that gets mistaken for the unfairly maligned Grim but doesn’t challenge the association of dogs with loyalty.

But loyalty is not the only reason why Sirius could be a Hufflepuff. For example, despite what a lot of the bullshit fanon ideas about him hold, Sirius isn’t averse to hard work. The sole basis for this in canon is that Sirius has a cavalier attitude about a lot of things (one that’s often demonstrably based in caring so much it scares him, so he tries to make it all a joke, but hey)

…and that during his DADA OWL in “Snape’s Worst Memory,” we see him leaning his chair back and being an inattentive weirdo who isn’t working on his exam or noticing some girl behind him who’s all like, “wow what a hottie” (……which, because of reasons I guess, obviously means he doesn’t give a crap about working hard, and can’t possibly mean that he already finished the exam because he’s one of the most brilliant students Hogwarts has ever seen)

Never mind how the underlying logic of that argument is, “if Sirius doesn’t work hard at school, then he must not value any kind of hard work at all ever” and if I may? what in the fuck even is that. Apart from, “a really bad argument.”

Not caring that much about school only means Sirius doesn’t care that much about school, and given that an education from Hogwarts is one where you get a new DADA prof every year, professors bully and play favorites with their students with total impunity, Dumbledore does fuck-all to make sure the profs are actually doing their jobs, and a lot of the problems that you find in non-magical educations (prioritizing rote memorization over actual learning, favoring certain kinds of intelligences and very specific displays of those intelligences, etc.) can still be seen in Hogwarts?

Yeah, no, I can’t blame Sirius for hypothetically not giving much of a fuck about that, especially when he’s gifted-and-talented levels of brilliant, so he’s probably bored most of the time if he’s not being actively challenged by the material.

If someone wants to argue against Hufflepuff with this point, it’s actually embarrassingly easy to joss them: true, Sirius doesn’t care that much about school, but he doesn’t respect a system that is, at its core, unfair — and not valuing an unfair system can easily be read as a sign that Sirius values fairness, which is a very Hufflepuff thing to do.

Yeah, it’s reaching a bit, but no more than most of the canon-twisting that fans do in order to argue theories/interpretations like, “Draco is a secret werewolf in HBP,” “Ron is time-traveling Dumbledore,” and, “Draco actually learned anything about why Blood Purism and fantasy-fascist domestic terrorism are flat out inherently wrong by the end of DH, rather than learning that siding with Voldemort will screw him over personally, also his Mummy, and regretting that but otherwise missing every single point where he could’ve undergone any form of positive growth and character development,” so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But I digress.

The most obvious point about hard work for Sirius is that he did all the work to become an Animagus at age 15. Even if we don’t accept the full monty of JKR’s version as canon, it’s still established as being really difficult and time-consuming, something that Sirius could not have managed solely on natural brilliance and/or talent. He would’ve needed to actually put in the work here, and he did. Not only that, but he also helped Peter with the work, and did all of this why, exactly?

Well, because real Marauders don’t leave each other behind, and on one hand, Sirius wanted to be there for Remus. On the other, he was not about to go do that without both James and Peter, because his bestest best friend might’ve been James, but Sirius genuinely cared about and valued both Remus and Peter — which you can tell, even through his attitudes toward Peter, because he is so outraged over Peter’s betrayal that, as soon as he gets a hint of where Peter might be, he breaks out of Azkaban and spends several months working on murdering him.

When Sirius genuinely doesn’t give a crap about something — which happens very rarely because he is theatre kid levels of Extra about most of the things we ever see him dealing with — then he’s flippant and dismissive and brushes it off and just doesn’t give it any thought whatsoever.

Even when the something is like, “Harry trying to go, ‘Hey, maybe this idea is questionable and could get a lot of us killed or expelled or tortured by this evil domineering pink toad-woman who’s teaching DADA this year’” — which would, under most normal circumstances where he’s not basically under house arrest in the mausoleum of his abusive shit-show blood family’s home, arouse Sirius‘s protective godfatherly instincts — if Sirius doesn’t care about something (in this case, “things that get in the way of him being able to live vicariously through Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the DA”), then he ignores it.

Not always a good behavior to fall into, as seen here, but it does help make the point that Sirius isn’t blowing smoke during the whole Shrieking Shack sequence of POA, and that, despite what he says about, “I can’t believe I didn’t suspect you from the start, Peter, you were always looking at friends as ways to protect yourself,” Sirius DID trust Peter, DID genuinely think of him as a friend, and DID feel genuinely betrayed by how Peter played him and Remus to make both of them suspect each other of being the traitorous spy and, as they hurt themselves in their confusion, sold James, Lily, and Harry out to Voldemort

Because if Sirius were telling the truth about not having had any kind of respect or affection for Peter…… yeah, he’d still be pretty pissed off in that moment — after all, he just spent twelve years wrongfully imprisoned in a psychological torture Hellhole for a crime he didn’t commit, probably spent at least some of the time in proximity to one of his abusive cousins who also happens to be a Death Eater and has a personal vendetta against him (just… based on how Sirius and Barty Crouch Jr. apparently got put in cells close to each other until Blondie got broken out, it’s plausible that Bellatrix and her two loser boyfriends were near them too), and is finally staring down the little shit of a rat who got James killed (and also Lily, but lbr, Sirius cares more about James)

(not that he doesn’t care about Lily, but… he consistently talks about James more than Lily, and several other characters tell or show us how tightly bonded he and James were, so yes, Sirius cared about Lily but he DID love James more)

But if Sirius were telling the TRUTH about never actually having any affection or regard or respect for Peter? He would’ve been colder and a lot more dismissive, rather than as easily wound up and ready to fight the sun as he spends the entire Shrieking Shack being

That is, barring a few moments where Remus basically goes, “Padfoot, sit. Stay. Good boy” and gets him to quiet down for a minute

…or wherein he defers to Harry because as much as he wants to kill Peter right the fuck now and get it over with for James and Lily’s vengeance? he also wants Harry to understand (especially after Remus correctly points out that Harry, above everyone else in that assembled party, has a right to know the truth)

……or wherein Snape shows up like a bat out of Purgatory and starts making threats like, “Oh, I’m gonna hand your ass over to the Dementors, I hope they let me watch when you get the Kiss — or hey, give me a reason and I’ll kill you myself, I’ll get a fucking Order of Merlin for it probably because this would be a public service killing, also it would so very thoroughly satisfy me :|” and manages to make Sirius either calm down or shut up by virtue of being a big bag of dicks who Sirius is ostensibly trying to reason with for the sake of some kind of greater good

(just…… he’s doing it while also being a big bag of dicks right back to Snape because that’s how they are with each other)

So, yeah. Sirius did the hard work of becoming an Animagus, and he helped Peter to do the hard work of becoming an Animagus too, and in one of his many shows of a more Hufflepuff than not approach to loyalty, Sirius expected Peter to display the same attitude toward the Marauders’ friendship that Sirius feels that he put into it, remembers James as putting into it, and clearly doesn’t hold a grudge against Remus over any time he could’ve been said to NOT be putting that same amount of loyalty and friendship into anything, because Sirius knows that one of those big moments involved him nearly getting Remus sent to prison if not executed, and the other was when both of them got played and thought each other was the spy, so both of them did wrong by each other

An even better point about Sirius’s approach to hard work, though? Is how he progressively falls apart throughout OOTP.

Granted, yes. Part of that is definitely and pretty explicitly on the fact that Sirius is essentially on house arrest, trapped in the mausoleum of No. 12 Grimmauld Place with Kreacher and his Mother’s screaming portrait and Buckbeak (who is better than Kreacher and Walburga but still regrettably stuck in the attic, which?? Is just a really shitty place to put a Hippogriff?? and it probably does not make for a Hippogriff who is very good company???)

Sure, sometimes Remus is around because he’s staying there with Sirius, but he has to leave pretty regularly on ~mysterious Order business~ (which may or may not be going underground with the werewolves or at the very least liaising with them, but no one told Harry, so JKR didn’t see fit to tell us)

Then, other Order members come and go — but Moody is sort of an acquired taste (and oddly enough? Barty Crouch Jr. had just spent over a decade locked up in the psychological torture prison of constantly fighting his Father’s Imperius Curse — and he did that after spending a year in Azkaban and nearly dying from it — and only having interpersonal contact with Winky and Crouch Sr. and maybe whatever talking portraits the Crouches might’ve had in their home…… and he was STILL way better at dealing with people than Moody, who apparently thinks that a super-cool treat for Harry is letting him see an old photo of the First War Order and telling him how almost everyone in the shot died horrifically)

Tonks is family (nominally good family but still… family with the Blacks is complicated), and also sort of an acquired taste, though to be fair, Sirius does seem to enjoy her more than any of the other people in the Order (though I doubt he enjoys how he looks at her sometimes and, through no fault of Tonks’s, sees the living reminder that Andromeda and Ted probably still think he’s a Blood Purist mass-murder who betrayed his friends and pretty much everyone who ever genuinely loved him, and went bad in the same way as Bellatrix after all)

Molly and Arthur are genuinely horrible people, and Sirius doesn’t really seem to like them much. I mean, he’s concerned when Arthur gets attacked by Nagini, but it’s more about the kids and a bit of jealousy because he’d love to go down to St. Mungo’s, even in the present circumstances, because it would mean he got out of the fucking house.

Otherwise, though, he doesn’t seem to have much regard for Arthur and pretty openly dislikes Molly, and with good freaking reason, considering she’s an abusive and emotionally manipulative buttisnki who thinks she has any right to tell Sirius how he does or doesn’t feel about Harry, and to all but outright tell him that he doesn’t love Harry and never can for real because he’s mentally ill and traumatized, what the fuck, Molly, how about you shut up and mind your own fucking business for once

(*generally aggrieved, angry noises because skdjdfhs Molly Weasley is a character who exists and does what she does and is still seen as being a character we should look up to and revere and try to emulate in anything ever*)

^ it me when I am expected to respect either of the Weasley parents

it also Sirius when he’s expected to play nicely with them, especially with Molly, who openly disrespects his status as Harry’s godfather and tries to dismiss the importance of their relationship to both of them, because apparently, Sirius being mentally ill and traumatized means that he can’t love his godson OR know for himself that he loves his godson

I’m done now, I’m sorry, Molly and Arthur just make me SO ANGRY

and in general…… yeah. Sirius gets on with some of the Order members who are not Remus.

He gets on BEST with Remus, for fairly obvious reasons — like, to the point that Remus can actually tell him what kind of amounts to, “Sit, stay, don’t bite Molly’s head off, sit, stay, good boy” and Sirius listens to him and apparently doesn’t feel condescended to by this (or if he does feel like that, then he acquiesces anyway because he trusts Remus) — but it’s not as though Sirius only gets on with Remus and wishes the rest of them would fuck off forever

But it’s still not really the same as having a decent support network, and yes, that takes a toll on him throughout OOTP, I’m not saying that it doesn’t

But Sirius also repeatedly says and shows us that he would do a little bit better if Dumbledore were letting him do fucking ANYTHING. It’s bad enough that he’s trapped in Grimmauld Place, but he’s not even allowed to really do that much, apart from keeping Walburga’s portrait muzzled and occasionally, like? Spraying doxies or something.

True, Gryffindors don’t deal well with being cooped up without it being any kind of related to any Hufflepuff tendencies…… but the fact that Sirius specifically hates being cooped up because he can’t be helpful to the Order while trapped in his late abusive parents’ home? The fact that Snape most easily riles him up by implying that he’s not doing anything of value to the Order, just sitting around and milking his status as a falsely convicted and escaped mass murderer who’s desperately wanted by the Ministry?

Yeah, that, to me, is a little more Hufflepuffian than, say, Fred and George being like, “man, we haven’t made any terrible decisions lately, we’re bored, let’s go turn Neville into a giant bird to taste-test a new Weasley’s Wizard Wheeze”

Back on the subject of Sirius loving James more than Lily, though? He is a gr10 foil to Snape — a Slytherin primary, Gryffindor secondary, Ravenclaw tertiary, and never getting in the vicinity of a Hufflepuff Sorting ever, not in anyone’s wildest dreams, whoops — in this way

Because Severus only cared about Lily [and worse, cared more about his IDEAL HEADCANON LILY than Lily Evans: An Actual Person In Her Own Right] and he openly didn’t give a fuck about her husband or child, even while begging Dumbledore to get off his ass and save Lily

He only went, “ugh fine, save them too, as long as she’s alive” after he got verbally smacked upside the head and shamed over how he wasn’t thinking about Lily’s actual desires here at all, which did fuck-all to actually make him CARE about James or Harry, even in a vague, theoretical context like, “something something sanctity of human life” or, “well, Lily cares about them, so even if I hate her husband, I respect her choices in a more active way than simply not bothering her to her face”

And, of course, he got Lily put on the potential chopping block in the first place because he thought the prophecy would only make Voldemort go after Harry or Neville, not their parents, and hey, it’s not like he cares about a baby and if Voldemort kills James too, so much the better for Severus

Sirius, on the other hand — Gryffindor primary, Hufflepuff secondary, Slytherin tertiary, and “would literally only ever get into the Ravenclaw Common Room, as a Ravenclaw-Sorted student, if the Sorting Hat worked like that annoying trend in fanon of sending anyone who does well in school to Ravenclaw regardless of how this is absolutely baseless bunk” — yeah, he loves James and Harry more than he loves Lily

But rather than prioritizing his own desires and his own ego, in the matter of the Secret-Keeper thing, he tells them to switch to Peter, at the last minute.

Like, if Sirius’s ego had its own way, that probably never would have happened because he probably would’ve gone, “yeah, lol, I’d like to see the Death Eaters TRY and torture the secret out of me, I’ll fight anybody, I’ll punch Voldemort right in his stupid face because I need to defend James and Lily personally and I don’t give a shit about my own survival lmao”

But instead, he thought about what would be best for James and Lily and Harry — together, as a family, not just as, “James, plus those other two people I guess” — and went, “No, man, I’m not invincible and the Death Eaters will totally suspect me because everyone knows that James and I have been basically married since before Lily ever even considered dating him, and it will get all three of you killed, if you pick me”

Obviously, Peter wasn’t the right choice either, but Sirius had no way of knowing that because Peter out-gamed everybody in that whole debacle, including Dumbledore, who ALSO apparently bought the whole shebang about Sirius betraying James and Lily to Voldemort, right up until he heard Sirius’s version and went, “Heeeeeey there, Harry and Hermione, you two should go play with time travel for me and also for Sirius, okay. Cool, have fun kids, Dumbledore out.”

(which? Dumbledore is actually way more questionable here and you could totally make a case that he knew the truth and let Sirius just rot in Azkaban because getting him out would’ve been like super-inconvenient and tedious and ugggggh why are you questioning him and his interpretation of The Greater Good — but for all intents and purposes right now? Okay, fine, Albus Dumbledore got out-gamed by Peter, too.)

[insert here a snide remark about how idk about you, Albus, but if I dated someone who broke my heart and then grew up to be some kind of fantasy-fascist would-be despot, and put my old, “For The Greater Good” line on the gated outside of his blatant Auschwitz-Birkenau stand-in, I would probably stop saying that and also question my basic assumptions about whether or not, “For the Greater Good” is an even remotely defensible position to assume in anything, ever — but hey, that’s just me.]

Back to the actual point: Sirius is loyal to James and Lily as people, not because he has some cocked up headcanon ideas about them being even vaguely perfect (like, he falls victim to thinking so during the series…… but that’s after twelve years in Azkaban and under a lot of pretty extenuating circumstances, and I’d probably idealize my hypothetical James and Lily analogues like that, too), and he doesn’t show them this loyalty BECAUSE it’s The Right Thing (does he think it’s The Right Thing? Yeah. But that’s not the driving force behind his actions and choices here)

Rather, he shows James and Lily this kind of self-sacrificing loyalty, where he gives up the opportunity to even talk to them while they’re in hiding much less actively protect them, because he is convinced that it is what’s going to be best for them and Harry, and he cares about what is best for them on their own terms and based on their own needs, more than he cares about what he wants

Which is a pretty, “Hufflepuff while retaining obvious signs of being such a Gryffindor” way of handling things

As opposed to Severus over there with his, “Slytherin in a lot of our worst ways, but with a glimmer of that hidden Gryffindor streak that comes out when Albus Dumbledore shames him for caring more about his own desires than about Lily, not in a way that goes, ‘if you were really loyal to her as a person in her own right, you would do this that and the other’ but in a way that goes, ‘Your life choices are Bad And Wrong, you should feel Bad And Wrong, I’d be ashamed of you if I were your mother, you’re disgusting, what what WHAT the fuck are you doing, you motherfucker, that’s a BAD DAMN SNAPE’”

(and in fairness? trying to guilt-trip Severus in a more Hufflepuff sort of way would be completely pointless NOT because he doesn’t have a Hufflepuff bone in his entire body, but because, when it comes to certain matters, he has the self-awareness of a particularly obtuse hunk of moldy processed cheese, so like?

Sure, go ahead, try to guilt-trip him with, “if you’re REALLY loyal to Lily Evans Potter: Actual Person, blah blah blah blah blah blah.”

You won’t get anywhere because, as far as he’s concerned, he DOES genuinely love the real Lily Evans, and he *IS* genuinely loyal to the real Lily Evans, and the likelihood of him ever being self-aware or emotionally healthy enough to understand that he is completely wrong? Is basically nonexistent, given the utter Hellhole he was raised in and his consistent lack of an actual reliable support network.

Not that emotional stability is actually required of anyone to be a Hufflepuff — I mean, Ernie and Zacharias are a pretty good argument against that idea [if we ignore Tonks on the grounds that her behavior in HBP was OOC garbage and influenced by Molly Weasley being an emotionally manipulative buttinski who literally was not asked, at least not to the degree that she gets her hands messed up in relationships that have nothing to do with her and that she has no right to meddle in, period], and I have headcanons about several Hufflepuffs that would also disagree, never mind that I’m currently arguing for Hufflpuff secondary!Sirius, and even before Azkaban, he was not exactly a stunning picture of mental or emotional health

—but the way in which Severus Snape is emotionally unhealthy is one where his values and behaviors end up contradicting pretty much everything about Hufflepuff House, in ways that, to me, suggest that even if he’d been taken out of his parents’ custody at any point and raised by a supportive, loving family who got him therapy and everything and somehow created an AU version of him who isn’t massively unhealthy in every single possible way?

He still wouldn’t be a Hufflepuff, because there’s got to be something that goes even deeper than all the ways in which he is massively unwell, and that something might’ve been brought out more by his exceptionally shitty life circumstances, but just taking those away wouldn’t magically make Severus Hufflepuff material.

Conversely: yes, some of Sirius’s traits and values that line up with Hufflepuff were exacerbated by his exceptionally shitty life circumstances and come out even more visibly because of the various ways in which he is emotionally unhealthy — c.f., sure, it sounds really devoted, in POA, for Sirius to say he would’ve rather died than betrayed Lily and James, and for him to have expected the same out of Peter because he was a Marauder… but then in GOF and OOTP, we progressively come to see that, uh? Sirius means it, like???

No, that is NOT a moment of, “Sirius Black being Extra about something and engaging in hyperbole because he’s just Sirius Black and Drama should be his middle name.”

Nooo, he means it VERY seriously and all of the evidence we have suggests that he is being literal about even implying that he valued James’s life above his own, and now values Harry’s life above his own, to such a point that either/both of these loves could have easily become self-harming for him, because he doesn’t really give a fuck about his own life based on its own value.

Which is, y’know, not an uncommon way for someone who has parents like Sirius did to end up feeling about themself.

It’s no less loyal, and no less grounded in the Hufflepuff kind of loyalty where you love others as they are and value them above what you want for yourself

—but much like how Snape shows unhealthy manifestations of the, “Slytherins look out for our own, whoever we decide that to be” approach to loyalty, enough that he’s not really in love with Lily so much as his inaccurate Dulcinea Beatrice “Peeta about Katniss until it literally gets tortured and brainwashed out of him” idealized headcanon Lily and refuses to deal with the reality of Lily or anything about her because it might challenge her status as His Only Real Friend?

Sirius shows an unhealthy manifestation of Hufflepuff loyalty, in which he places basically no actual value on himself and only acts like he does in order to keep people from getting that…… no, no, he means it very literally, because he probably correctly concludes that they would be concerned about him feeling this way, if they knew about it, and he doesn’t want them to worry like that about him, especially if it’s at their own expense

Not that there aren’t other reasons going on here, too, but…… these two are pretty clearly, “abuse survivors who feel like they are probably the absolute worst and try to hide it but still act it out and make it kinda obvious in very different ways”

oh my god i’m sorry, i lost control of this because i got…… uh, distracted by loving them both so much? oops?)

Another point where Sirius and Severus foil each other here, and in so doing, show off the values that make them a Gryffindor-Hufflepuff and a Slytherin-Gryffindor respectively? Is in how they both handle their feelings of guilt after the events of Halloween 1981 and how the both of them handle their related suicidal ideation

Disclaimer: I am not saying that I *AGREE* with how JKR handles this in either case, because I don’t.

Like, JKR gave us a scene where Snape flat-out says, “I wish I were dead” and Albus “alleged bastion of compassion and goodness and all that shit” Dumbledore basically goes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and tells him, “Well, that would be about the most useless thing you’ve done this week, wouldn’t it, Severus, but hey, by all means, go jump off the Astronomy Tower if you want to be a whiner about it. Whenever you want to shut up and take it like an adult, though, I’m waiting, lmao” — and we are supposed to feel sympathy for Snape but intellectually AGREE with Dumbledore, in this scene.

So, suffice it to say, JKR handles suicidal ideation Very Fucking Badly

And I’m not saying that I agree with any of how she handles the juxtaposition between the way that Sirius is all but outright and explicitly suicidal after James and Lily die, and the way that Severus *is* explicitly suicidal after that

(and hey, now that I think about it? It’s pretty shitty that the fuck-up antihero who’s more on the side of good is very obviously suicidal but doesn’t outright say it, while the fuck-up antihero less obviously on the side of good or the side of anything in particular…… is the one to flat out say that he wants to die? Like, way to attach a moral valence to suicidal ideation, Jo. Thanks for that.)

All I’m about to do is lay it out how canon presents the facts about this, and how canon treats them, and how it factors into the idea of Hufflepuff or Hufflepuff secondary!Sirius

So, Snape says that he wishes he were dead after he hears that Lily is dead, James is dead, and Harry’s off with Lily’s garbage sister and her atrocious husband, and this expression of suicidal ideation is all but outright implied to, in that moment, mostly be due to:

1. Lily is dead because he was a dumbass and told Voldemort about the prophecy and actually thought that she might be spared just because he begged (which…… she might’ve been, if she’d taken the out Voldemort offered her and just stand by and let him kill her baby, but… he also might’ve then just killed her too, so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

2. Lily is dead and she died still thinking that Severus hated her and he could now literally never change her mind about any of that because she is, as mentioned, dead (which…… yeah, it’s sad that you could never try to apologize to her, Severus, but? Uh. You’re supposed to apologize out of genuine contrition, not just to manipulate how someone else feels about you and get them to forgive you, and I don’t believe that, at this point in the story, you actually felt that genuine contrition.)

(Also, y’know, you could have tried actually apologizing to her and backing it up with actions that SHOW that you’re sorry for hurting her before and getting her put up on the chopping block now, rather than working in the shadows and hoping she’d learn the truth and “come around on her own” someday, but hey, that’s just my opinion, hon)

 and 3. Lily is dead. Which, yeah, is part of the other two points — but the text really tries to drive home the idea that Severus is devastated by losing Lily, but that at the moment of his, “I wish I were dead” declaration, he’s more upset about what all of this means for him outside of, “Lily is dead and that’s terrible”

Like, the biggest way that the text drives this idea home? is in how Dumbledore talks Severus into not going and jumping off the top of the Astronomy Tower

Regardless of the situation and the fact that it worked out not-quite-as-badly-as-it-could-have-done in this case, telling someone who’s just expressed suicidal ideation, “And what use would that [your death] be to anyone?” is still an astonishingly shitty thing to do, and I cannot stress enough how shitty that is to say to someone who is suicidal

Moreover, JKR is pretty shitty about how she uses it in the scene, as she’s not only going, “Dumbledore is an emotionally manipulative bastard but he’s Right so it’s okay,” but she’s also doing it in a way where it kind of comes off like Albus implying that Severus’s suicidal ideation isn’t genuine and doesn’t deserve to be acknowledged as what it is, much less treated with the bare minimum of all that Albus Dumbledore compassion he’s supposed to have, simply because of how Severus has been and will continue to be a pretty shitty person about several other aspects of the situation

And the big reason why I’m pretty sure Dumbledore was totally flat-out wrong in his conclusions here, about Severus Snape specifically, not about the general principles at work here?

Is that Severus Snape died in DH, and more specifically, the fact that he didn’t even TRY to fight it, like

He fought to stay alive just long enough to put his memories in a phial for Harry to take to the Pensieve so he could fulfill the last important part of his assignment from Dumbledore and get Harry to the Forbidden Forest, and then look at Harry’s eyes and have Feelings about Lily

In grabbing onto Harry like he did, Severus actively prevented him from trying to put together any way of saving Severus’s life — which we KNOW DAMN WELL is possible because Nagini attacked Arthur in OOTP, and much to my chagrin, Arthur lived through it just fine, so the healing process might not have been especially pleasant, but Snape could’ve lived through that

But he didn’t want to, and his refusal to let any of the Trio try to help him is ultimately why he died from a wound that otherwise would have been dangerous but could have been non-fatal

By that point, yeah, his suicidal ideation was compounded by how he didn’t know the whole story and thought that he’d just spent the best part of his adult life letting Dumbledore jerk him by the chain into a cornucopia of shit that Albus refused to take care of himself for various inscrutable Dumble-reasons, and it was all going to add up to betraying Lily again, and irreparably so, because he aided and abetted in Dumbledore raising Harry “like a pig for slaughter” (DH 687)

But, I mean? In POA, he was totally willing to risk getting sent to Azkaban for murdering Remus and Sirius, actually being held accountable for being a shit-bag to his students by doing actual physical harm to three of them (one of whom — Ron — was already injured), and letting the actual traitorous sell-out spy (Peter) go free because he was so thoroughly convinced of Sirius’s guilt and didn’t give a fuck what happened to himself or anyone else (even KNOWING, as he would have by that point, that his job security came down to Dumbledore needing him for some unspecified Big Deal Things that might possibly start happening with Voldemort and Harry)

—all of which completely ceased to matter, even the very real possibility of his own imprisonment and/or Dementor’s Kiss, as long as he got to take Sirius out for allegedly selling Lily out to Voldemort

So, yeah, um.

Severus might be a shit-bag, but that’s not mutually exclusive with being suicidal, which a lot of his behavior throughout the series indicates that he is, so Dumbledore acting like, “ugggh, whatever, Severus. Quit whining and grow the fuck up, you big baby” about it just because Severus is still a shit-bag?

Thaaat’s pretty Not Okay, and Dumbledore was not only wrong in principle, he was also specifically wrong about whether or not Severus’s suicidal ideation was genuine

But this all adds up to a Slytherin-Gryffindor perspective because for all Dumbledore does play the, “If you really loved her” card this time — which gets at the sense of Right vs. Wrong that Severus definitely has, no matter how much he tries to act like he doesn’t — he’s more insistent on, “Oh don’t be useless, what the fuck even is this shit you are on about, Severus, I need you to help me make sure that Lily’s sacrifice actually ends up meaning anything”

Like, the Hufflepuff take on this would be that Lily’s sacrifice has inherent value and meaning because she gave up her own life to try and save her child, and any act of love and loyalty like that doesn’t need to do anything more than be what it is

Dumbledore’s go-to Gryffindor rationale throughout the series for why Lily didn’t die in vain? is always that her sacrifice was so noble, it literally created magical protection for Harry out of nothing but love (and oh yeah, it’s gonna help take down that fucker, Tom, for good, but in a convoluted and roundabout fashion that’s gonna take us like 17 years to really actualize, lmao greater good tho right)

A potential Ravenclaw approach to finding the value in Lily’s death would be like, “so what can we learn from this”

Dumbledore plays the Slytherin card with Severus by telling him, “Make sure [Lily’s death] was not in vain. Help me protect Lily’s son” (DH 679) — or in other words, “Severus Tobias Snape, if you want to sit around and feel sorry for yourself, then fine, that’s your own damn business, but Lily’s death will have no practical, pragmatic value or meaning to anyone unless you quit whinging about how you want to die, grow the fuck up, and help me protect her son, thereby doing something of demonstrable value outside the realm of ideals, which is by the way probably what Lily would’ve wanted, considering she died to save the boy.”

Sirius, on the other hand, is a different story and, once again, he and Severus are each other’s flip-side. This time, it’s because while we see Severus expressing suicidal ideation and being dragged out of it by Dumbledore emotionally manipulating him into agreeing to stay alive for a reason (namely, protecting Harry)……?

Based on what we can construct of the timeline of events covering October 31st and November 2nd, 1981, Sirius was feeling suicidal after finding James and Lily dead and Harry orphaned, but he was planning not to act on it and planning to stay alive without going and doing anything dangerous to himself or anyone else — until Hagrid took Harry away from him on Dumbledore’s orders

(which I am still pretty sure is legally kidnapping but okay??

we get it, Albus, you dumble-don’t give a fuck, but come on, Prof, this is pretty bullshit???)

This old post from last year is a little all over the place, arguable more so than this one because I at least kind of tried to rein this one in and that one…… not so much — but it has my longer, fuller, and more in depth proof of Why Sirius Black Was DEFINITELY Suicidal When He Went After Peter With A Mind To Kill Him

That said, the high points of the argument are:

1. James and Lily were dead.

If only Lily had died, yes, Sirius would’ve been devastated because she was his friend, too, and he did love her, and it would’ve sucked…… but not as much as losing James sucked for him. With James still alive, Sirius would have been a lot less fucked up and motivated to fight off any of his own suicidal impulses in the name of helping James.

Conversely, if only James had died, Sirius would have been more of a human disaster than usual, but given his behavior in canon, he probably would have tried really hard to resist his own suicidal ideation because he knew how much James loved Lily, and he would’ve known that James would’ve wanted his best friend/surrogate brother/“third greatest love in the universe after Harry and Lily” to stay alive to help Lily and Harry as much as possible.

But in canon, both of the Potters are gone, leaving Sirius devastated and without a Potter to cling to in the name of talking himself down from anything. Except for……

2. Harry. Harry, his godson. Harry, his godson whom he is now supposed to be raising, and explicitly wants to raise because that is what James and Lily wanted — which we KNOW Sirius tried to make happen because he told Hagrid, “Give Harry to me, I’m his godfather, I’ve got to raise him now.”

Harry, his godson who was just kidnapped from him by executive order of Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Order of Merlin First Class, etc. etc. and so on — whom Sirius has no reason to believe he can win against in the ensuing custody battle.

I mean? I love, “Sirius stuns Hagrid, takes Harry and runs to Remus, and they proceed to raise Harry, fuck that DE’s and the dumble-haters, lmao” AUs as much as the next Wolfstar shipper, buuuuuut here’s the thing

Dumbledore is Dumbledore, and although Sirius has the legal authority in this situation, being Harry’s godfather and presumably listed as his legal guardian in the event of anything happening to James and Lily, Dumbledore being Dumbledore counts for a LOT.

Like, you know the one Douglas Adams quote from the Hitchhiker’s Guide books about how space is big, really really big, there are no words for just how unfathomably big it really?

Yeah, that’s kind of the scale canon!Dumbledore is usually working on, relative to everyone else, when he just does whatever he feels like doing and goes, “greater good lol” and nobody does shit about anything to stop him

Even in a case like this where the Ministry is nominally on Sirius’s side because he has legal custody of Harry, uhhh. Dumbledore has a lot of people who owe him favors, and a lot of strings that he can pull when he wants to do so, and I don’t believe for a second that he’s above trying to publicly discredit Sirius through any means necessary

—Like, I don’t even think he’s above trying things like, “oh Sirius Black has sex with men and is a member of a family known for their ties to the Dark Arts, never mind that they disowned him and he was a member of the Order, he’s a sexual deviant from an abusive Blood Purist shit-show of a family, therefore he is unfit to be this child’s godfather, I’m right and he’s wrong, vote for me,” even as a gay man who, strictly speaking, has way worse taste than Sirius, since last time I checked? Sirius Black hasn’t fucked any would-be magical-fascist despots recently, Albus.

Even if Albus wouldn’t necessarily resort to that right off the bat, if at all, though? Sirius knows that most people who go up against Dumbledore about anything, ever, do not come out ahead. Mostly, they get their asses handed to them, so Sirius has valid reason to think that he’s never going to see his godson, much less raise Harry like James and Lily wanted, ever again

Which takes away the, “Raising Harry is what James and Lily wanted, fuck your own feelings and your suicidal ideation, you have to stay alive for the sake of raising your godson and doing right by those two people you loved, who trusted you with the tiny human who was the single most important thing in the world to both of them and whom they both died to protect” reason that Sirius had to live

Basically, if only one of Harry’s parents had died, Sirius would’ve tried to fight his own suicidal ideation and stay alive because it would’ve been what James either needed or would’ve wanted.

With both of them dead, he wanted to fight his own mind and his own impulses and stay alive for Harry in the name of honoring their wishes and their sacrifice, living as they would have wanted and trying to best actualize what they would have wanted for their son (and kinda for himself but mostly for their son)

He gets that desire back after a certain point in POA, and the big thing that keeps Sirius relatively on the rails — as much as he can manage, given the circumstances — in GOF and OOTP? Is having the ability to “fulfill his duty as godfather” and be there for Harry as much as he can.

Like, while he’s otherwise falling apart in OOTP, for very understandable reasons? “I need to be there for Harry, he needs me and it’s what James and Lily would’ve wanted, I can’t honor what they wanted for their son if I do anything to screw up by Harry” is the one damn thing that keeps him from completely going into a tailspin

And it might be helping himself through the desire to help someone else, because unfortunately, Sirius Black does not love himself as much as he deserves and that’s one of the only ways that he feels like his life has any value at all — thanks for that, Walburga, Orion, Bellatrix, and possibly also Regulus and Narcissa — but still?

If being willing to live for someone, while acknowledging that dying is remarkably easy and living can be really damn difficult (especially in a case like Sirius’s), and being willing to fight your own mind to live for someone else’s benefit

Just

If that’s not loyalty, then I don’t know what is.

And if it’s not loyalty that Helga “loyalty, assholes, it’s our thing” Hufflepuff wouldn’t have been damn proud of, then I would really like to know what her actual standards are, because I don’t understand them

But as I was saying

3. The whole way that he goes after Peter doesn’t make any freaking sense if Sirius intended to walk out of it alive

Like, first of all, let’s flash-forward to POA: Sirius knows damn well that murdering Peter is going to get him sent back to Azkaban OR straight-up Dementor-Kissed.

He knows that letting Remus help will almost definitely get REMUS Dementor-Kissed because not only will Remus be a murderer, he’ll be a murderer who is also a werewolf, and magical Britain’s institutionalized anti-werewolf prejudices all but guarantee that Remus won’t be allowed to live after committing a murder.

Neither of these things matters to him at all — or to Remus, for that matter — until Harry goes, “No, wait, we need to hand Pettigrew over to the authorities and this can get Sirius exonerated, what the fuck, my dad didn’t die for you two to become vengeance-murderers, that’s not what he would’ve wanted” and Remus and Sirius are both like, “well shit, that literally never occurred to me”

Both of them were totally willing to sign themselves up for an almost certain fate worse than death in the name of getting vengeance for James, because James would’ve died for his friends, so the fair thing to repay that with, for Sirius and Remus, is to kill Peter for his betrayal and very likely get themselves worse than killed as a result

But back to November 1981: Sirius goes after Peter with no ostensible plan beyond, “Find bastard, kill bastard, the end, whatever happens next is up to Merlin or whoever”

There’s no thought of, “Maybe it’s not hopeless to fight this blatant kidnapping of my godson by Dumbledore and get Harry away from Lily’s horrible sister and her garbage husband”

There’s no thought of, “Maybe I should go tell Remus the fuck what happened and beg his forgiveness for thinking he was the spy and get him to help me with this somehow — I don’t even know how, but fuck it, Moony’s the smart AND responsible one, maybe he’ll have an idea how the fuck to handle this”

There’s no thought of, “Maybe someone else in the Order will object to Dumbledore kidnapping Harry and help me, somehow, I don’t even know how, but we have at least three Big Deal Aurors in the Order, and Moody, Frank, and Alice might have some kind of idea of what the fuck I can do — Hell, maybe Frank and Alice will even offer to take Harry in some capacity until I can somehow prove that I’m not a total fuck-up who’s unfit to raise my godson, they’re already parents and their son is Harry’s age, maybe this’ll work”

It’s just, “James and Lily are dead, my godson has been taken from me, Remus will probably never forgive me for this one — I already screwed him over bad enough when I didn’t think about what might’ve happened to him if he’d actually killed Snape that night, and this time, I didn’t trust him and it got James and Lily killed, and Harry kidnapped to live with his Muggle aunt and uncle, who hated both of his parents and have shown no one any reason to trust them with Harry, ever, and I’m pretty sure that’s Remus’s limit, it HAS TO BE his limit — there is no hope to do what James (and Lily) would have REALLY wanted, the best I can do is get justice/vengeance for them, even at the cost of my own life if need be. Where the fucking fuck is Peter, I am going to fucking kill him.”

The complete lack of planning and commitment to doing this at any possible expense to himself, even his own death, is really evident in how Sirius started going after Peter in the middle of a crowded street

Like, that’s part of how Peter played him — because he made noise first and went SIRIUS HOW COULD YOU BETRAY JAMES AND LILY!!! before Sirius ever had a wand on him, and people heard him shouting that, they told the people who eventually showed up from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes that Peter shouted that, and Cornelius Fudge remembers it so vividly that he brings it up in the Three Broomsticks with Minerva, Hagrid, Rosmerta, and Flitwick

But Sirius wasn’t thinking about anything that could’ve been part of the future, just about killing Peter and doing the only thing he thought he could still do for James and Lily and what they would’ve wanted

Only for it to spectacularly backfire and Peter to slip away as Wormtail/Scabbers, and leave Sirius to face the music for a fate worse than death — since…… even if it’s not a Dementor’s Kiss, uh. Going to Azkaban?

If it’s a choice between that and dying, I personally might just pick death but I guess I’d need to know if I gain any form of hella Dementor resistance by virtue of already being clinically depressed for as long as I can remember, like? Does it make me more vulnerable to them, or does it mean that I can go like, “yeah whatever, Brenda, joke’s on you because I can do ten times worse to myself without any help from you :)” at Brenda The Dementor Apparently, or is there some other outcome here?

—but that being said.

Sirius wanted to die when he went to hunt down Peter, and his behaviors generally seem to suggest that, had everything gone to his plan (as far as he actually planned, uh, anything?), then it would’ve been a murder-suicide, possibly through suicide by Auror or something but that’s kinda asking a lot from Sirius in the planning department, more than he was probably capable of at the moment

4. Sirius says that he would’ve died rather than betray James and Lily. He also says, “Harry … I as good as killed them… I persuaded Lily and James to change to Peter at the last moment, persuaded them to use him as the Secret-Keeper instead of me… I’m to blame, I know it…” (POA 365). So it’s really not a huge logical leap, even without the above three points and the next one below this, to think that Sirius might feel suicidal, and might feel like he deserves to die for his role in the events surrounding James and Lily’s deaths.

and 5. He gave Hagrid his flying motorbike — which he pretty definitely would’ve made work by himself, rather than buying it off of someone as a flying motorbike, because flying carpets, flying Ford Anglias, and flying motorbikes are illegal and if he’d bought it off of someone and it was already capable of flying, both of them would’ve been due for a visit from the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts inquisitors — and specifically said that he wouldn’t need it anymore

The original proof has a lot of thought on the motorbike issue that can also be evidence in the, “Sirius is actually a hard worker, he’s probably just not motivated at SCHOOL, and honestly, I’m not sure I blame him, considering how Hogwarts is kind of an educational shit-show” argument

But this point is part of the, “Sirius was suicidal” proof because giving Hagrid one of his most treasured earthly possessions and saying that he wouldn’t need it anymore? Is freaking TEXTBOOK suicidal behavior

Like, some variation on, “giving away prized possessions and favorite things” is in every “how to recognize suicidal behavior” pamphlet, on every “how to help someone who is suicidal” website, in every textbook I’ve ever seen that has anything to do with suicide at any point

It’s one of the best known hallmark signs of someone who is not well and probably needs help, like, NOW

So, no, Sirius might not say, “I wish I were dead” like Severus does…… but even without saying those words exactly or even a variation on them, JKR makes it pretty clear that Sirius was fixing to die when he went looking for Peter

All of which goes back to Hufflepuff or Hufflepuff secondary!Sirius because, as I harped on through that whole spiel, everything about this entire situation came back to loyalty, for him

He wanted to keep living, initially, because it was what James and Lily wanted for their son, because it was what Harry needed from his godfather, and they were Sirius’s family whom he loved more than his own life and valued more than any of his own desires, and would have fought his own mind to live for even when he otherwise wanted to die

That all came crashing down not because letting Peter get away with killing Lily and James was morally wrong, or even because Sirius couldn’t let that betrayal go unpunished, but specifically after and as a direct result of Dumbledore making Hagrid kidnap Harry, thereby:

1. taking away Sirius’s family

2. denying him the ability to see James and Lily’s wishes for their son actualized for real

3. sending Harry to the Dursleys, which Sirius probably had at least SOME idea wasn’t what James and Lily would’ve wanted (it’s safe to say that he didn’t know about the abuse, or else he never would’ve suggested that Harry might’ve wanted to go back to Privet Drive rather than living with him, and even with the low opinion he was likely to have had of the Dursleys, he might’ve had some reason to think that at the very least Petunia would possibly honor her late sister’s wishes and love for her son by, idk, NOT horrifically abusing Harry)

4. doing all of this in a way that gave Sirius pretty fair reason to feel like there was no hope for him to fight against Dumbledore on this one, even though he was Harry’s legal guardian now so the Ministry should have been on his side in the matter of, “so, who gets custody of this tragical Chosen orphan”

and 5. pushing Sirius against a wall in a way where he would’ve felt like, “well this life is garbage, what’s the best way to get any justice/vengeance/whatever for Lily and James because that is the only thing left for me anymore”

On one hand, the desperate, agonized laughter that Sirius had going when the Aurors brought him in? Was probably due in some part to how he’d tried to be loyal to James and Lily, even if it meant that he couldn’t see them or Harry while they were in hiding because of how the Fidelius Charm works, and it had gotten them killed… then he’d tried to be loyal by raising his godson as they’d intended and Harry had been kidnapped away on Dumbledore’s orders… then he’d tried to do the only thing he could to be loyal anymore, and not only did he fail to kill Peter, but it also got twelve innocent civilians killed and he didn’t even die properly himself…

I mean. That’s well past the point where I would’ve broken down into total, “what the fuck even is my life, why am I trying to do everything right and only getting it wrong and making everything even worse” desperate pained laughter at the absurdity and unfairness of it all — and I don’t even prize loyalty as highly or in the same way as Sirius

But on the other, loyalty then became one of the only things that kept him relatively sane throughout his time in Azkaban — because by his own standards for and definitions of loyalty, Sirius was equally guilty in James and Lily’s murders as Peter was, which made any of these thoughts easy for the Dementors to leave him at the mercy of.

His innocence of selling them out and murdering Peter and twelve Muggles wasn’t a happy thought even without the self-punishing sort of angle, because in getting to that point, he’d betrayed Remus (thinking he’d been the spy), unwittingly been party to betraying Lily and James, been unable to keep Harry from getting sent to live with the Dursleys, and Peter had betrayed all of them and gotten away with it — and all of this meant that his innocence was one of the only things the Dementors couldn’t take from him that wouldn’t be quite as horrible and possibly debilitating as memories of his abusive parents, the brother he’d failed to save, being involved in an active civil war……

And finally, he broke out to pursue the one goal that had sustained him for just over twelve miserable years of torture — killing Peter in vengeance/as justice for James and Lily, and getting whatever was coming to him after that, with him probably hoping it was death or a Dementor’s Kiss, because that would be a fitting punishment for a traitor, in his mind — because thanks to Peter-Scabbers being in the Weasleys’ picture in the Prophet, Sirius got the miracle clue that he needed and could finally do the only thing he thought he could still do right by James and Lily

What talked him down from that, in the end? Harry, on two counts:

1. Harry going, “what the shit, my dad didn’t die for this, he wouldn’t have wanted his best friends to become murderers, not even for his sake”

(which… is a remarkably chill thing for him to say, after he’s totally intended to kill Sirius, assumed with Hermione that Remus had been helping Sirius and flown off the handle at him, capslocked at Snape because he was being obtrusive and getting in the way of Harry learning the whole truth, cast Expelliarmus at Snape with Ron and Hermione and in so doing knocked him out cold for like 20+ minutes whoops, had his preconceived notions about everything completely rearranged, and been brought face to face with his parents’ actual betrayer, who proceeded to try and blame Sirius, then manipulate Harry for mercy.

just…… Harry James Potter, everybody. please give this boy some credit for having one of the most singularly un-chill nights that a person could ever possibly have, and still going, “dude, maybe we shouldn’t straight-up murder the guy who sold my parents out to Voldemort, maybe that isn’t cool and there’s a better way to handle this”

and then please give him a hug and a nap and therapy, jfc help him)

and 2. The eventual moment they have of going

“So btw, I’m your godfather”

“Yeah, I know, I eavesdrop in my dad’s Cloak a lot”

“If you don’t want me in your life once my name’s cleared, I totally get it tho”

“What, like? Come and live with you? Not have to go back to the Dursleys ever again?”

“Yeah, but I get it if you don’t want to, I mean you just met me and had to stop me and Remus from trying to straight up murder a dude right in front of—”

“NO WAY HELL WITH THAT WHERE DO I SIGN UP”

“Wait really”

“YES OH MY GOD PLEASE I WANT YOU IN MY LIFE I WANT TO COME LIVE WITH YOU PLEASE PLEASE CAN I REALLY”

“……………… :DDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!”

and then Remus forgot to take his potion and everything went a bit fuck-up but… y’know. it was really sweet until that interrupted things, and it did still give Sirius a reason to live and, like, NOT just straight up murder Peter.

I forget how I was going to wrap this up

I’m sorry it’s so long and messy

uh

also, I’m narratively at peace with Sirius’s death in a way that I never will be with Remus’s or Tonks’s

but holy shit, all three of them deserved so much better than this

what the fuck, Joanne

this wasn’t necessary

you made your point

Molly and Arthur would’ve actually deserved it because they are terrible, I’m just saying

You could’ve used their deaths to unfairly punish Percy for standing up for himself and leaving a shitty abusive family life, and I know you would’ve enjoyed it because you clearly loved forcing him to grovel and apologize to the people who hurt him just to be allowed to fight in the final battle with the Death Eaters

Why not commit to how much you despise my tall ginger son and kill his parents too, Mum, I’m just saying

Sirius, Remus, and Tonks all deserved better than that

Also, not a single goddamn one of them is straight

Because fuck you, Joanne, that’s why

The end, by me