So I just posted this wildly long Sirius Black appreciation thread on twitter and thought here seemed like a pretty appropriate place to share it too — can we just take a moment to acknowledge just how heartbreakingly, guttingly tragic this man’s life was?? It is prettyyyy long, apols! I’m rereading POA and deep in my feelings. I’d say trigger warnings for PTSD, trauma, and lots and lots of sadness.
1. Born into a family who’s every principle he disagreed with, surrounded as a child by only the darkest witches and wizards and yet somehow uncorrupted, unwavering in his beliefs at only ELEVEN, despite the ostracisation he must’ve suffered at home by not conforming to the will of his family.
2. So this good-hearted boy spends a brief childhood at Hogwarts, looking over his shoulder and defending himself again and again, aware of raised eyebrows and judgement because everyone knows about the Blacks and their history with the Dark Arts.
3. Despite this though, he’s happy here. He finds acceptance and joy and people, laughter, spirit. Lily, James, Remus, Peter. It’s manageable, but these happy years are punctuated by summers at Grimmauld Place, where I’m sure after spending time with his contemporaries, the grievousness of his family’s beliefs must’ve become only more clear.
4. Voldemort’s steady ascension to power. Lily, James, Remus, Peter, the Order rallying round. The fear that must’ve penetrated every part of their lives, but the knowledge that they had each other. In the face of the impending war, at only 18, they know they would die for each other.
5. After Hogwarts, no part of Sirius’s adult life takes place in a world without the threat of Voldemort, spies, and dark magic. Still looking over his shoulder, plagued by the ever impending thought that those closest to him are the most at risk, and the thought as well he can trust absolutely no one - even eventually suspecting Remus might be a spy. The darkest of times.
6. Made Secret-Keeper at TWENTY ONE (HE IS SUCH A CHILD STILL, PART OF A REBELLION AGAINST MASS TERROR, WHICH HIS FAMILY STILL ALIGN THEMSELVES WITH I MEAN THIS GUY JESUS) and with no one to talk to, he makes what he thinks is a decision that will protect his friends - never mind that, his family; because what were the marauders, Lily, the order, if not the best and kindest family he had ever known?
7. And that decision, that decision made by him and him alone, no way to assuage this guilt, annihilates the lives of those people he loved the most.
8. And then in the aftermath of this, left reeling, probably suffering PTSD from being confronted with scene of Lily and James’s murder and their little boy, crying in the rubble of their house - a house he likely had memories in, a safe, happy place, cooking dinner with Lily and James, playing wine tinged games of Exploding Snap, laughing and playing with baby Harry - he discovers that one of his longest, oldest friends has betrayed them absolutely. Has been lying to them for at least a year.
9. And then before even processing this - he is condemned. Falsely imprisoned SO YOUNG in the most hellish place imaginable. Imagine trying to process that trauma in Azkaban. For twelve years, from 21 to 33, Sirius is utterly, utterly alone. Drained of hope, joy, peace, and with only the knowledge that the decision he made led to the death of his best and most wonderful friends. Knowing that everyone who loved him has turned their backs. Will think, forever, that he’s a traitor.
10. I mean let’s just take a minute here because surely his development is arrested here, at 21 years old, because how much can you mature and grow in Azkaban? It makes so much sense because later he is still so youthful and so reckless; he is 21 still, this poor poor ruined man.
11. He escapes. Barely clinging to his sanity but still with that tiny kernel of good, because he breaks out, don’t forget, not to save himself or clear his name, but because he is worried that Pettigrew will hurt Harry.
12. And then he’s forced to skulk around his old school, the one place he felt loved and accepted, forced to break into the common room he must have so many memories of. The descriptions of him in POA are so heartbreaking; he is shrunken, skeletal, gaunt, sunken, he speaks as though he hasn’t in years
13. WHICH HE PROBABLY HADNT can you imagine being ALONE for TWELVE YEARS?? And to be in the Shrieking Shack with Lupin and Snape and Pettigrew again - this is literally the first time he’s interacted with people in over a decade and it’s the same people and the same place he knew as a boy; how this man remained so sane is incredible.
14. And then there’s a glimmer of hope! Redemption! For all of about an hour, in the school that holds the happiest memories of his life, the only place really he has ever spent any time apart from Azkaban - the life he should always have had is a real possibility. He could be a free man. An innocent man.
15. But no, fuck that. After almost LOSING HIS SOUL and being held for execution in the only real home he’s ever known, he’s forced to flee again. To live alone, without company or distraction or joy, love or friends or warmth or food or magic. An outcast, still looking over his shoulder. For such an exuberant, brilliant, personable man - now in full possession of the mental faculties Azkaban strips you of - how lonely, and acutely aware of his loneliness, all he has lost, he must be.
16. Any chance of it getting better? NOPE. After being confined to Azkaban, then to random, lonely, isolated caves, he has to return to the childhood home he loathed so much, to be locked up there not only with all the memories that it must evoke, but the living wandering embodiment of his dead family’s ideals in Kreacher, breathing down his neck. Never allowed out.
17. Sirius had so much energy, and he’d been trapped for so, so long, and now he knows everyone else is out there, contributing, working, living, fighting - it must be maddening. To him it must’ve seemed like the world was on pause. When he went in, he was working with the Order, and Voldemort was at the height of his power. When he comes out, Voldemort’s building it right back up and the Order are back in business.
18. Maybe he thinks he’s gonna be a part of that rebellion again - finally, he can flex his muscles be part of something, do something, let out some of this pent up energy that’s been building for over a decade - but no. Trapped again. And if he does sneak out, it’s not as a man, how long since he stretched his legs? Wasn’t afraid of being seen?
19. But then the chance comes - Harry in danger - and with the spirit of a 21 year old, goddamn it if he’s going to sit idly by whilst everyone he knows risks their lives to save the last surviving remnant of Lily and James, the two people who’s deaths must still haunt him every.single.day.
20. And then in this moment - perhaps the only time he’s been out and surrounded by people, life, magic, something actually //happening//, because although it’s awful, terrible, it must be exhilarating, the first real thing to happen to him in fifteen years, he is OUT and RUNNING and FUCKING DOING SOMETHING, FIGHTING - he dies. At 36. He never lived without fear or persecution.
21. And that’s it. From one prison to another, for the entirety of his brief and tragic adulthood. Trapped by walls or circumstance, frozen at 21 and never able to live any sort of life that wasn’t governed by fear and by looking over his shoulder. Sirius Black was never free.
WELL I’m just gonna go weep for a bit. Anyone made it to the end of this, you’re a trooper and do feel free to come join me in my marauder tinged tears.
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