Warnings: Not for Sirius Black fans.

[menolike]

Part (3)
Title: How innocent was Sirius Black?
Spoilers: Prisoner of Azkaban (PoA), The Order of the Phoenix (OotP)
Summary: This is a multi part (3) piece.
Beta by my ever wonderful "cho_sa" 
A/N: I would very much appreciate it if you do not go after my blood/head/or any other part of my physiology. A/N2: I would like to thank

Comments

Re: This is going to be ridiculously long, and so it's coming in pieces.

[nicccc]

Oh yes. Great offences indeed. This, ‘Sneaking around’ and ‘Trying to find out what we where up to’, sounds very dangerous to their well being.
[[I honestly think he didn’t reckon Snape stupid enough to do what he said. Why would you follow the exact advice of your enemy? You’re asking to be set up for a trick doing such a thing. As for the lack of remorse, it’s the same thing as with Regulus from Sirius’s POV: If he (Snape) hadn’t been so stupid as to have done that, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place. And Snape’s trying to find out what they were doing was dangerous to their well-being in regards to expulsion]]

and a dog (inferior to a werewolf when it comes to physical strength, and can still get infected if bitten)
[[It says right in canon that were a werewolf to bite someone whilst that someone was in their animagus form, it would have no effect - hence why WPP became animagi in the first place]],

Using James (indirectly) when he was bored to find entertainment. [[Right, I’d forgotten the part where Sirius threatened to hex the crap out of James and lay waste to his entire family if James didn’t harass Snape. James made his own decision in that. Sirius hadn’t even noticed Snape was nearby till James called his attention to it]]

IT WAS a murder attempt. If it happened in our world, Black would be in police custody for it and most definitely expelled.
[[If he had been expelled, all eyes would be holding on Lupin, not Sirius, because Lupin in fact was the dangerous element in all this, though not intentionally, of course. You can’t very well expel a kid and then give the reason for his expulsion as being ‘Er, he told some other kid to go by a dangerous tree.’ It’s only a murder attempt if Snape’s demise was the core motivation for such a thing. You’ve interpreted it as being that way, but I don’t. Canon can go either way on it, so I think it’s quite presumptuous of you to categorically state that it was a murder attempt. Idiotic scare tactic gone horribly awry is my interpretation, and Dumbledore, he who gives the benefit of the doubt, who wants to see the best in people might see it the same way.]]

But Dumbledore must have thought that an expulsion or involvement of authority will cause much harm.
[[Or that it would draw unwanted attention to Remus Lupin, who didn’t deserve any of it]]
And he still believed in the goodness of the playful, handsome, prankster, Gryffindor- Sirius Black.
[[Please refer to statements above. The fact that Sirius actively rejected his ZOMG!EVIL family probably garnered a point in his favour in Dumbledore’s book.]]

This probably got Dumbledore to think more cautiously about Black’s actions and true motives. It must have been a shock for him to discover that quite a number of them were not simply ‘children’s pranks’ but malice intent. [[If he had done, and had made such a discovery about Sirius’s character, why would he then allow Sirius to join the Order?]]

Re: This is going to be ridiculously long, and so it's coming in pieces.

[nicccc]

Black was a coward who did not want to be caught.
[[Who’d want to be caught? Not wanting to be caught does not equal cowardice. It’s just proof that he’s human. He didn’t run from it; he basically offered himself up as bait, which is far from being cowardly. Could he have cracked and revealed Pettigrew’s location? Sure, he could have done, but I’m much more willing to put my money on the fact that he’d die before doing such a thing (especially since JKR even said he really would have died for his friends as he has got a perverse sense of honour to them, and to what he feels is right and wrong).]]

His plan: switch with Pettigrew and flee.
[[Yeah, the part where he fled, only to check up on Pettigrew and make sure he was all right]]

None. Except perhaps he didn’t feel the need to, till he discovered Pettigrew was still alive. He escaped to kill him, even though Peter lived with Harry and co. for years without causing them any harm.
[[You do recall in POA when they said Pettigrew wasn’t about to act right under Dumbledore’s nose without making sure that there was someone out there that could protect him, don’t you?]]
And why he chose to remain in Azkaban? Because he was a coward; he was afraid of being hunted down by Death Eaters and Aurors alike.
[[Which explains why he was so anxious to be near Harry and Hogwarts during the Triwizard tournament despite Harry’s protests, why he would gladly face dementors over sitting in #12, why he went to the DoM where he knew there were Death Eaters and right in the heart of the Ministry - yeah, real frightened of being captured, Sirius.]]

Dumbledore never allowed him out of Grimmauld Place, claiming that it was too dangerous, even though he could have used a disguise like Crouch junior with the polyjouice incident (if Crouch JR can make it, so can clever Sirius).
[[It's not an issue of Sirius being clever or not; it was too dangerous. Sirius would be risking his very soul every moment he spent out of #12. If his disguise were to fail somehow, if it were discovered he was Sirius Black, he’d get the kiss, no questions asked, as I don’t believe the authorisation to use the kiss on him issued in POA was ever repealed.]]

(His hysterical cries when he thought he killed Pettigrew must be signs of a mental break down.)
[[I’d like to see the part in the DSM-IV that lists ‘hysterical cries’ as symptomatic of a mental breakdown. Even if he had an emotional1 breakdown, he’d be entitled to it after his life had basically fallen apart in the span of a day. 1I say emotional because I believe that to be likely, whereas I do not think he suffered a mental breakdown, as he had wits enough about him even after his little sojourn to Azkaban. Not to a person's full capacity, mind, but certainly enough to be going on with. I further think that being relegated to playing Mary Housekeeper for the Order in his childhood home drove him a bit mad (seeing as how his behaviour in OotP does not entirely match up with his behaviour in PoA and GoF).]]

Re: This is going to be ridiculously long, and so it's coming in pieces.

[menolike]

I don't believe you actually wrote all of this.

It's absolutely amazing!

I have to applaud you for the effort and time you put into your comment, though I'm curious as why divide it (no need to answer that if you don't like).

SO, thank you for commenting, even though it was on a 2 week-old essay.

Always welcome.

Re: This is going to be ridiculously long, and so it's coming in pieces.

[nicccc]

I only discovered it recently, which is why it took me so long to comment.

As to why I divided it, LJ limits comments to 4600 characters (or something like that). My comment ended up being nigh on 17,000, so it was necessary to divide it.