Sirius and those bikini posters
For a long time, I saw Sirius’s posters of Muggle women in bathing suits as a typical teen thing, with irritating his parents by sticking the posters on permanently (permanently for wizards with no imagination, anyway) as a bonus. But I wasn’t giving him enough credit. The girlie posters are direct threat the to entire value system and prestige of the House of Black.
They aren’t just Muggle posters. If that was all, the motorcycle posters alone would have sufficed. They aren’t just posters of half-naked women. Witches wearing little more than pointed hats would have sent the same message and been easier to obtain. No, it’s the combination: they’re half-naked Muggle women. That is, Sirius is taunting his parents with the idea that he might find Muggle women sexually attractive-and more importantly, he’s declaring that he’s not ashamed of the desire and wouldn’t keep it quiet.
Suppose he had a child with a Muggle and told everyone? Maybe even married the Muggle? Seven hundred years of tradition destroyed in an instant! The family’s reputation as one of the foremost pureblood families in Britain, so unquestionably pure that their children are automatically considered acceptable marriage partners, would be irrevocably shattered. And what would that mean for Regulus’s prospects?
The permanent sticking charm on those posters is more than annoying: it’s a permanent injury to the very fabric of the house, both literally and symbolically.
Sirius might not actually plan to follow through, or even want to. But he sure knows how to hit his family where it hurts.
We might despise their values, but the family truly believes that their definition of “purity” is important. More important than any individual family member’s happiness or even life. They have to make sure his actions can’t taint the rest of them. The only thing to do-for the survival of the entire family, as they see it-is to disown Sirius before he can make good on the threat.
They aren’t just Muggle posters. If that was all, the motorcycle posters alone would have sufficed. They aren’t just posters of half-naked women. Witches wearing little more than pointed hats would have sent the same message and been easier to obtain. No, it’s the combination: they’re half-naked Muggle women. That is, Sirius is taunting his parents with the idea that he might find Muggle women sexually attractive-and more importantly, he’s declaring that he’s not ashamed of the desire and wouldn’t keep it quiet.
Suppose he had a child with a Muggle and told everyone? Maybe even married the Muggle? Seven hundred years of tradition destroyed in an instant! The family’s reputation as one of the foremost pureblood families in Britain, so unquestionably pure that their children are automatically considered acceptable marriage partners, would be irrevocably shattered. And what would that mean for Regulus’s prospects?
The permanent sticking charm on those posters is more than annoying: it’s a permanent injury to the very fabric of the house, both literally and symbolically.
Sirius might not actually plan to follow through, or even want to. But he sure knows how to hit his family where it hurts.
We might despise their values, but the family truly believes that their definition of “purity” is important. More important than any individual family member’s happiness or even life. They have to make sure his actions can’t taint the rest of them. The only thing to do-for the survival of the entire family, as they see it-is to disown Sirius before he can make good on the threat.