Did Sirius Black fail as a guardian? ❝ AGAINST ❜❜ !

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• • • ҂ 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 ‹ 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗱𝗮𝘆 ╮

:bomb: 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 ≡ 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 ❍ 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 ; ╯

⸀ 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 ҂ 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀 ៹

[머나먼] ≡ 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 ⋮ 𝗻𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 :dash:

━─━─━─━─━─━

❝ :rotating_light: 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐬𝐢𝐠:𝐧𝐚𝐥 ꜛ 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐢𝐭

⎘ 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𖣃 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐨 --- 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐝 ✘ ✘ ] ]

≡ 약숙의 - 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝 - 🖇 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞

𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐞 : introduction :telescope: 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰❞

Annyeonghaseyo fellow of HPA!

My name is Taehyung and today, I am going to be posting my response to the current debate club prompt. All throughout the Harry Potter movies and books we see Sirius Black in different lightings, mainly saying that because the books are nothing like the movies, which was disappointing at first but now I’m bias towards the movies.

The prompt was “did sirius black fail as a guardian for harry” this prompt was a little hard to pick a side for because there’s many compelling arguments to make for both sides of this debate. Ultimately, I have decided that for the sake of today’s debate, I will be against the claim of Sirius Black failing Harry as his guardian and I will explain why as well.

I can’t wait to see the other sides to this debate, everyone is always so creative when it comes to the HPA debate club. Without any further delay, let’s get into this debate club post!

#PadfootDebator

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   In Defense of Sirius Black

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⎋   , 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜﹁ 𝙬˽𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙𝙨   ❟

≡ 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩 ◌₊˚⋆ 𝙞𝙩 𝙛𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙧𝙨

￫   𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡 𝙞𝙩 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚 ♡ Argument One and Two ! ❞

ꜜ﹝𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙠𝙚𝙙   · · ⬮ 𝙩𝙤𝙜𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧⬮ · ·

✦ ⊹ ━━━━━━━━⊱༻༺⊰━━━━━━━ ⊹ ✦

    Unconditional Love

✦ ⊹ ━━━━━━━━⊱༻༺⊰━━━━━━━ ⊹ ✦

Sirius Black wasn’t a failure when it came to being a guardian for Harry and the first reason I have for this is that Sirius loved Harry unconditionally. This is particularly shown in the way Sirius acts towards Harry. Unlike Severus, Sirius’s first priority was always Harry. When Black escaped Azkaban in chapter 18 of Prisoner of Azkaban the first thing he did was protect him, by him I mean Harry, from what he believed to be dangerous and threatening against his life. (PoA, chapter 18)

Sirius even offered to take Harry in and raise him himself as apart of his family, which contrary to popular belief would have been an upgrade from how the Dursley’s had been treating him. This exact moment is seen in Chapter 20 of Prisoner of Azkaban with the line “You’d have come and lived with me?” (PoA chapter 20) This alone shows his desire to want to care for Harry permanently, and it’s not just because Harry’s parents were his friends but because he loves him and wants to see him grow up and be just like who he saw in his parents. He didn’t want to just take care of him out of a duty, which is what we learned later on was supposed to happen with Severus, whom was watching over Harry, in a different way mainly being a little bit harsher on him than everyone else, but he was watching over Harry out of duty as he was asked to do so by Professor Dumbledore given his ties to Lily.

Sirius showed in both the books and the movies that he was watching Harry out of pure genuine love and not because he was asked to watch over him and that by itself is enough to say that Sirius Black wasn’t a failure as a guardian for Young Harry Potter at all.

✦ ⊹ ━━━━━━━━⊱༻༺⊰━━━━━━━ ⊹ ✦

    Respect and

✦ ⊹ ━━━━━━━━⊱༻༺⊰━━━━━━━ ⊹ ✦

Another way that I am arguing against this idea of Sirius being a bad guardian for Harry is by using the fact that Sirius respected and ed Harry both emotionally and physically. This is one thing that makes him a far better guardian than the people who ended up with him under their watch making him sleep under the stairs for half his life and treating him like he was a servant instead of a member of their family by blood.

Unlike the Dursley family who were his blood relatives that ended up watching over him, Sirius throughout the books and movies is seen treating Harry like he’s an actual human being and not a pawn for them to use. Taking into his feelings and not forcing him to do things he doesn’t want to do. One notable moment that this could be seen in was in Order of the Phoenix, Sirius is seen telling Harry “You’re not a child. I don’t want to treat you like one.” (Ootp chapter 23)

Sirius is always making sure to validate Harry and his feelings, even when the people around him are putting him down for having the exact same feelings that Sirius is validating him for having. After the Triwizard Tournament, which Harry was forced to participate in after Barty Crouch Jr. who had disguised himself as Alastor Moody put Harry’s name in the Goblet. Sirius afterwards helped Harry after he had all of his Traumatic Experiences, including the death of Cedric Diggory who was murdered by Peter Pettigrew in the Little Hangleton Graveyard (GoF chapter 37)

Love, Respect and like what he got from Sirius was rare in Harry’s life, having grown up in a physically and mentally abusive family being lied to the entire time about his parents and their death. This was essential to how Harry grew up, and if it wasn’t for his Godfather showing him how a family was supposed to act with each other Harry himself would not have grown up knowing what to do with his own family. Sirius Black played a huge roll in his growth as not only a wizard but as a man in general. He wasn’t alone in this process at all, he had the help of Molly and Arthur Weasley, Hagrid, Dumbledore, Ron and Hermione, and even for the most part Severus Snape.

\ \ 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 = 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 ▭▭▬▭ + . . . 𝗼𝗻𝗲

𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧⬮⬯⬮ [ :cd: ] 𝐰𝐞'𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭

Arguments » Three and Four! 𖤐 𝙥𝙖𝙞𝙧 𝙤𝙛 𝙦𝙪𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙪𝙢   ❛

𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒍𝒆𝒔 𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒆𝒅 :: 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒂 𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆

✦ ⊹ ━━━━━━━━⊱༻༺⊰━━━━━━━ ⊹ ✦

    Trapped but Still Trying

✦ ⊹ ━━━━━━━━⊱༻༺⊰━━━━━━━ ⊹ ✦

Sirius Black was wrongfully imprisoned for 12 years (PoA chapter 19) and then turned around and was later sent to be held at Grimmauld Place by the ministry of magic and the order of phoenix (OotP chapter 5). Therefore saying that Sirius was unable to be present in Harry’s life as much as he would’ve been if he hadn’t been imprisoned and then held captive at Grimmauld Palace.

His inability to be a present aspect in Harry’s life is frequently brought up when talking about Sirius Black and his guardian ship over Harry. However his inability to be in Harry’s life physically was ultimately due to the circumstances that he was faced with during this time and not solely based on neglect, it was because he was being restrained and held back from being there for Harry while he was growing up and the argument in general is invalid. This is because he didn’t neglect Harry and had made it clear that he would never neglect him, he was physically kept from checking up with him in person.

✦ ⊹ ━━━━━━━━⊱༻༺⊰━━━━━━━ ⊹ ✦

    The last living link to James and Lily Potter

✦ ⊹ ━━━━━━━━⊱༻༺⊰━━━━━━━ ⊹ ✦

My last argument for Sirius being an amazing guardian for Harry is that Sirius was able to give Harry something even more priceless than anyone else… he’s the last living memory of Harry’s parents. He was sharing stories about James and Lily that no one else that he knew was able to give to him. Stories from their teenage years, their times at Hogwarts themselves. From bullying Severus to James falling head over heels for Lily but Lily not being interested in him at first. Sirius was able to give these stories to Harry. (OotP, chapter 29)

Sirius was also able to show Harry his parents place in the Order of Phoenix which helped untimely give Harry that sense of identity that I spoke about earlier. Helped him find himself, grow into something that his parents would’ve wanted him to be and not something that Mr. and Mrs. Dursley wanted.

Sirius Black may have not been what we would call a flawless guardian but he most definitely was the guardian that Harry needed the most. He also showed up when Harry needed him the most. He never as the prompt says “failed” Harry when it came to his guardianship over him throughout his time being able to be with him physically but also while he wasn’t able to be there while he was trapped.

Sirius was able to give Harry the love, , protection, and belonging that he needed to grow into the man he became in the end. All this while dealing with the limits that were placed on him by the ministry of magic and wizarding world all together. When you say that he “failed” or to call him a failure in general when talking about his guardianship over Harry, you are ignoring the heart and courage it took for Sirius to show up for Harry when he was broken, it is extremely hard to do that is the setting of showing up for someone who needs you more than anything else in the world

Sirius not only showed up for Harry when he was broken himself— over years of imprisonment, and even the loss of his best friends. Imagine losing your best friends, being blamed for their deaths, and then coming face to face with the child of your friends and he bares a striking resemblance? That would destroy you most likely. Imagine how Sirius must’ve felt but instead of running, he loved Harry as if he was his own.

꒷꒥ 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍 ⇙ 𝒊𝒕 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 !! :: 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍 𝒊𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖ゝ

• 𝒕𝒉𝒆 : : 𝑚𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 ✘ 𝒊𝒕 𝑭𝑳𝑰𝑪𝑲𝑬𝑹𝑺 𖤐𖤐

╭━   𝒐𝒖𝒕𝒓𝒐 ━━━╯𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒃𝒚𝒆 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚𝒐𝒏𝒆 ! !

. . . 𝒀𝑶𝑼 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑰 𝑳𝑰𝑵𝑲𝑬𝑫   ⬮⬯⬮ :hocho:

Annyeonghi Gaseyo fellow HPA friends!

This was fun to write about, like I said in my introduction, I can’t wait to see what everyone else thinks about this topic especially knowing that there are many compelling arguments that can lead to both believing that Sirius Black was a bad guardian but there’s also many that lead to show that Sirius wasn’t as bad as everyone thought he was.

That’s all for this blog! See you next time

Works Cited:

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Bloomsbury, 1999.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Bloomsbury, 2000.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Bloomsbury, 2003.

edit proof attached in the comments

filter proof here for both blog cover and gifs