Hello, here's some endless pontifcating on HP canon and (who else?) Sirius Black!
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First, a caveat - one of the challenges of being a fan who favors writing and thinking about any of JKR's second and third tier characters is that the author did not really fully develop them or their stories, and concentrated instead on her primary characters and plotlines. You have to really stretch the canon material to try to complete Sirius' story and make everyone in it behave like three-dimensional human beings, and you sometimes have to ascribe motives and development to the characters that, IMO, Rowling never intended or even considered. And that's the "game" or "puzzle" aspect of fanfiction or fan-analysis, finding ways to fill in the holes in the backstory and fit your own ideas into the larger source story as seamlessly as possible. This is no reflection on Rowling OR on fans; tinkering with the source material is one of the things that make fanworks and story-analysis fun.
So are some of my theories about Sirius' imprisonment and so on really there in the text? Are some of the characters I'm going to mention really to blame for actions and motivations that might more accurately by blamed on their creator and the requirements of her plot? Probably not, but I think the roots are there at least, I don't think my ideas are that implausible, and I don't think it matters anyway, to be quite honest. It's just fun to analyze the characters as though we were discussing real people, to play pretend, in effect. It's a just a fun game, and we all know how important play can be, even if we also know that deconstructing HP in excruciating detail may not be all that important in the larger scheme of things. That being said, shall we go on, then? Together? :)
So, how did Sirius Black, dedicated soldier for the original OotP, close personal friend of James and Lily Potter, well-known "blood-traitor" to the pro-LV Black family and highly vocal opponent of Voldemort, wind up dumped in prison for life w/o trial as a mass murderer, "known" high-ranking DE, and "LV's right-hand man"? One obvious reason, Peter Pettigrew's frame-up. And three less obvious reasons - The MoM, Barty Crouch Sr., and Albus Dumbledore.
The MoM and Crouch's motivations were political and careerist. Sirius was arrested immediately after Halloween '85 - that is, arrested when the entire WW was celebrating the fall of LV and an end to the long nightmare that was the First War. The MoM wanted people to feel safe at last, to believe that now that LV was gone, the remnants of his organization could be swept away in an easy, painless clean-up operation. The public confrontation between Peter and Sirius, with the mass death and big explosion, was very, very scary and was a potential public relations disaster for the MoM - it could have put some major holes in the comfy (and patently untrue) public perception that the DEs would just conveniently evaporate w/o their leader.
Crouch, who wanted to boost his own public approval rating by appearing to be the man to perform the clean-up, understood that with a little "spin", Sirius could be transformed from public embarrassment to perfect fall-guy. The horrific violence of the confrontation itself, along w/ the lack of reliable witnesses despite the public setting, as well as Sirius' status as a son of a very old pureblood "Dark" family, could be used to paint him as this terrifying figure - a vicious, murdering psycho DE, second only to LV himself - whom the MoM had just put safely in the slammer for good.
Why no trial? Because the official story of what happened on that Muggle street that day, and Sirius' new public image as LV's right-hand man, really would not have stood up to rational examination. If there had been a trial, it might have been remembered that the only living witnesses to what happened were all Muggles, notoriously inaccurate observers of magical events (who'd all been Obliviated immediately anyway). It might have come out that even people who knew Sirius only casually were aware of his long-term opposition to Voldemort and very close ties to James Potter and Peter Pettigrew. Sirius' bad old Black blood might have had a lot less scare-appeal once it was recalled that his own brother was believed to have been murdered by Voldemort and that the Black family had disowned him as a blood-traitor years back. These are just some of the logical weaknesses in the MoM's shaky story, too - over and above all the magical means of determining the real truth. But the MoM and Crouch had decided in advance what the Truth needed to be, and deliberately avoided anything at all that could have cast some doubt on it.
Did they really believe Sirius was innocent, and then just railroaded him into Azkaban anyway? Well, one might also ask if anyone at the MoM honestly believed Stan Shunpike was actually a dangerous DE. One might ask if anyone at the MoM truly believed the half-giant Hagrid could actually have been the Heir of Slytherin. Sirius certainly looked guilty enough, and for the MoM, justice has never been the issue, public perception has. Sirius' guilt or innocence was immaterial.
But Albus Dumbledore's part in the story is where the question of belief becomes most material. Dumbledore's reputation as a leading Voldemort opponent of the era was so powerful, and his influence was so great, that he could actually function as a belief-maker. He could vouch for someone like Snape, someone who actually was a DE and who really was guilty-as-accused, and get him off. As founder and leader of the OotP, Dumbledore was also Sirius' de facto commander in the Order's wartime fight against Voldemort; who would know more of Sirius' history as a fighter against LV than the very "general" who devised the Order's war efforts himself? Dumbledore also must have known the minute details of Sirius' history as a person; DD had known him since Sirius was eleven years old. DD must have been aware of Sirius' disassociation from his family, his vehement rejection of the pureblood party line, his very close relationship to James Potter, his from-childhood hostility toward the Dark Arts and those who used them, etc. DD had ample reason to have serious (heh) questions about Sirius' guilt, and he had the power and influence to make sure those questions were fully examined, even if he didn't have enough doubts to just railroad Sirius right back out of trouble, the way he'd done for Severus.
What did Dumbledore do instead? He went right along with the MoM's decision to condemn Sirius w/o trial with no objection (like he objected when Harry was on trial). He did not make any effort to communicate w/ Sirius at all, though he was one of the few people who had the juice to insist on questioning Sirius in prison (like he insisted on questioning Morphin Gaunt). He revealed enough information about the Fidelius Charm to the MoM to damage Sirius, while withholding information that would have weakened the case against him. In short, Dumbledore behaved as if he had no doubt whatsoever that Sirius was guilty, even though, at that time, there was probably no one left alive who had more reasonable cause to doubt. And if the influential and highly regarded Dumbledore believed Sirius to be guilty, wouldn't that be enough to make Sirius' remaining friends, like Lupin, begin to put their own doubts aside?
Why would Dumbledore do this? Did he honestly believe Sirius had somehow turned into a raving, mass-murdering maniac overnight and absolutely no one, not even Sirius' most intimate, lifelong friends, had ever had the slightest warning or clue? That Sirius had been lying in every word and deed, possibly for years, and that he'd successfully deceived everyone he knew, including Dumbledore himself, one of the most proficient Legilimens in the world? That Lord Voldemort's highest-ranking lieutenant and second-in-command had infiltrated the Order from its inception and yet the members of that Order were still, for the most part, alive? If all that sounds a bit incredible, it's because it is.
My theory is Dumbledore probably did have a pretty good idea that there were holes in the story big enough to drive a Buick through, and may even have realized that regardless of how things looked, Sirius Black really was highly unlikely DE material, and was probably the last person on earth who would have betrayed James Potter. But Dumbledore also had a secret agenda of his own; an agenda that he considered to be the only way there was to stop Voldemort, the primary threat to the entire WW and a wizard whom DD already suspected had made himself functionally immortal. DD was willing to sacrifice the welfare of others to the greater good.
Remember, Dumbledore's plans for Harry were not, ultimately, beneficial to Harry at all; on the contrary, Harry was slated to be another of DD's sacrifices to the greater good. Dumbledore needed to make sure Sirius would not take up his appointed role as Harry's legal guardian, because he wanted Harry to be raised to school age outside the WW entirely and under blood protection. He also needed Sirius out of the way for a good long time, because he believed that if Sirius had ever gotten the slightest inkling that DD's plan for Harry would culminate in Harry's death, Sirius would have done absolutely everything in his power to prevent it. And DD believed that Sirius might well have tipped - he knew the plan would take years, years in which Sirius could think and think and think about things, he knew Sirius had a good bit of information about the prophecy already, and he saw Sirius as "a clever, energetic man". DD was committed to the greater good, but he knew that if it came to it, Sirius Black would be much more likely to fight tooth and nail for Harry's good instead. So the MoM's accusations against Sirius, however false, and the life sentence, however unwarranted, dovetailed w/ DD's plans perfectly, and he seized that opportunity to remove an individual he thought could be a considerable threat to his plan. Again, and probably to DD's great regret, Sirius' guilt or innocence was immaterial
Dumbledore's behavior after Sirius escaped seems pretty suspect to me too, and it's easy to interpret his actions as continuing efforts to keep Sirius from interfering and/or taking custody of Harry. The escape itself could have looked decidedly inconvenient to DD, who might well have expected someone who'd been locked up for life in an "inescapable" prison to stay put. But Sirius did escape, and in spite of all the security precautions against it that were put into effect, before DD was even aware of what was happening, Sirius had already made contact w/ Harry, convinced him (plus Hermione, Ron, and Lupin) of the truth, and bonded so strongly w/ the boy that the two of them had firmly agreed that Sirius was going to take up his role as godfather immediately and Harry was going to come and live with him.
Everything, in fact, that DD had wanted to prevent. Sirius had, unknowingly, made himself one giant headache for DD. He couldn't be allowed to be exonerated; Harry would have left the Dursleys and gone to live with Sirius, thus losing the blood protection DD had engineered and giving Sirius several years of very close contact w/ Harry - ample time for Sirius to start making educated guesses about LV, the prophecy, and DD's plans, and to just naturally to start replacing DD's influence on Harry with his own. But he couldn't just be dumped back in prison or Kissed either; the Trio and Lupin would have publicly screamed their heads off about what they knew, and though DD claimed that their word would have little weight against the MoM and public opinion, he "forgot" to mention that their word plus Albus Dumbledore's would have had a great deal of weight.
Nor would Harry have ever really trusted DD again if he came to believe that DD hadn't done all he could to rescue Sirius, an innocent man whom Harry had pretty much fallen in love with at first sight, from the dementors. And Harry was only thirteen, his trust and regard were still essential to DD's plans.
So DD, in a tight spot, chose a middle road that would keep any blame in Harry's mind off him and yet still keep Harry and Sirius effectively separated - he claimed he believed Sirius' story, but he left Sirius' rescue up to Harry himself. That way, if the rescue failed, Harry would only blame himself, and if it succeeded, Sirius would have to flee - he'd be too busy being an international fugitive to start asking sticky questions about the prophecy or provide a home to Harry.
In GoF, Sirius unwittingly made himself a pain in the arse to DD again. Instead of staying safely out of the picture where he was at the end of PoA, he refused to stay put again and came back to the UK, took up residence right outside Hogwarts, and stubbornly refused to be budged, regardless of all arguments about his own safety. Regardless too, of the total lack of basic support he was getting from DD, who knew that Sirius was right nearby, hiding in a cave and eating rats to stay alive, yet couldn't seem to spare a few minutes to, say, at least send him a ham sandwich or something. That alone almost looks as if DD might have been trying to discourage Sirius from staying on, doesn't it? Not that it did anything at all to persuade Sirius to leave; it was the wrong approach to take w/ a man like Sirius. Really, this is DD's nature, to manipulate people, always with the best of motives - to move them around like chess pieces, according to logic and reason. But Sirius' nature makes him a terrible choice of chess piece - he's much more a wild card whose stubbornness and reckless ways screwed up DD's logical plans again and again. Did Dumbledore begin to be angry with him at last for being such a recurring irritant?
Well, at the end of GoF, DD reforms the Order in response to LV's return, and, also, it must be noted, gives Sirius a mission as an Order member - to go "lie low at Lupin's" and from there to start traveling around, spreading the word to reactivate all the former Order members - to, in effect, get the fuck AWAY from Hogwarts and Harry. After, of course, first ordering Sirius to reveal Padfoot to Severus Snape, a man whom DD knew very well hated Sirius like poison and who also would be spending half his time in LV's breast pocket henceforth, acting as a double agent. Why would DD insist Sirius must reveal a secret magical disguise that would have been ideally suited for the mission DD had just given him - to the one person who posed the greatest possible security risk of blowing that disguise? Because DD thought it was time for Severus and Sirius to "bury the hatchet"? But the burying-the-hatchet session DD forced on them was not exactly equitable, was it? DD insisted Sirius must to give up his secrets and make himself vulnerable to Snape, while Snape was not asked to give up his secrets at all. And did they really need to resolve their issues just then anyway? Severus and Sirius weren't going to be working together or even seeing each other at all for the foreseeable future - Sirius' mission was basically to get the hell out and STAY out, while Snape had to stay right where he was to perform his mission.
Later, in OotP, the secret of Padfoot being known was given as a primary reason Sirius must not move from 12G, and Pettigrew was said to have been the one who'd blabbed (though, strangely, it apparently took him two years at LV's side to do it). But an alternate explanation is also possible and it's being set up right here: If DD decided that Snape needed a relatively insignificant secret to divulge to LV if needed - blowing Sirius' cover as Padfoot would be a credible gesture of loyalty that could strengthen Snape the spy's position w/o really weakening DD's - and would also have the incidental benefit of helping to keep that pesky Black, who simply would not stay where Dumbledore had put him, pinned down. Snape did claim to have been instrumental in getting rid of the Animagus Black later on in the story, and he wasn't lying, or not completely. In any case, I doubt Dumbledore consciously hoped Sirius might get killed while performing the mission DD had given him, but I do think it looks very much like he was stacking the odds against Sirius by a considerable margin. Perhaps he did feel some unconscious exasperation? Sirius had, after all, been making himself a colossal nuisance to DD for a long time.
Dumbledore's policy of keeping Sirius pinned down and away from Harry as much as humanly possible stayed consistent in OotP as well; and in fact contributed, according to DD himself, to Sirius' eventual death. I myself am not sure how much being locked up at 12G really contributed to Sirius' death at the MoM, but I do think it's crystal clear how much it contributed to making Sirius' last year on earth as wretched as humanly possible.
It seems incredible that someone as perceptive as DD could fail to realize that effectively imprisoning the emotionally fragile survivor of a long and unjust imprisonment in the one place he hated most in the world might conceivably do a little psychological damage to such a survivor. And, incidentally, might also keep him too busy trying to stay halfway sane to, say, up and move into a cave outside Hogwarts again and rove up and down the surrounding countryside as a dog, or to start examining the peculiar circumstances of Harry's mental connection to Voldemort too closely, or to spend time w/ the young and impressionable godson who loved him and was already strongly influenced by him too often, or to offer his house and himself to Harry as a permanent home again, etc.
DD said he was trying to keep Sirius alive by insisting he hide out at 12G, and that's probably true as far as it goes, but we might also ask why, two years out of prison, Sirius' name was still not cleared and thus he was still in danger, and we also might ask again how it happened that he could no longer use his cover as Padfoot DD just needed Sirius to stay the hell put for once in his goddamned life, and he'd already tried various methods of making that happen w/o any success at all. Did he regretfully decide the issues were important enough to warrant more devious, more harmful methods?
If Dumbledore's primary motivation for keeping Sirius locked up and inactive was to keep him safe, and he somehow really didn't anticipate how badly being stuck in 12G would shake him, why then, once Sirius' condition was visibly deteriorating at 12G, didn't DD have Sirius moved out of the situation that was clearly cracking him up at once? Surely a man who'd seen (and caused) as much human tragedy as DD must have known that there's more then one kind of danger in the world and some of the worst dangers lurk in the mind and the heart?
Why not insist that Sirius must immediately train every single Order member plus all the kids to become Animagi - bury him in a difficult but not-too-dangerous mission? Why not spirit Sirius off to Las Vegas or the Bahamas or the Gobi Desert temporarily so he could clear his head? Better yet, why not hide him at Hogwarts - surely that could have been done - LV himself had once hidden at Hogwarts, while Hagrid had hidden a baby dragon, a colony of huge super-intelligent spiders, and a giant there - and Hagrid can't keep his mouth shut to save his life. The problem is that any of these things would have improved Sirius' situation and kept him safe at the same time, but none of them would have accomplished what Dumbledore needed. He needed to keep Harry out of Sirius' custody and out of Sirius' influence and out of Sirius' thoughts as much as could be managed without pissing Harry off by looking like he was doing it, and to manage that, Sirius had to be under DD's control and securely pinned down, because Sirius had already shown himself to be far too loose a cannon to be left to his own devices. Every time DD had let him run around loose, he'd made a beeline for Harry and immediately set about doing everything DD wanted to prevent most.
Yet I don't think DD ever really disliked Sirius, on the contrary, I think it's clear that in many ways, he admired Sirius and deeply regretted all the awful things Sirius had been put through. It's clearer still that Dumbledore truly did love Harry, so he might well have been tortured by the knowledge that he'd helped to cheat Harry out of his rightful time with the closest thing to family the boy had left. But Dumbledore does have a very, very dark side, at least in my understanding of the story, and I find his relentless commitment to the greater good, no matter what it costs or how much evil must be done to achieve those ends, to be both chilling and a consistent characterization. Now that we've all seen DH, we know that Dumbledore believed that terrible sacrifices must be made to achieve the greater good when he was a teenager flirting w/ the idea of world domination, and that he still believed the exact same thing as an adult when he forced a grief-maddened and repentant Severus Snape into becoming another cog in his anti-Voldemort machine - and blighted the man's life in the process. He still believed it as an old man when he put the final touches on his heartless arrangements for Harry to volunteer to die in order to finish Voldemort. He still believed it beyond the grave after he and Harry were both dead and he confessed to Harry all that he'd done to make that happen. DD's definition of what the "greater good" really was may have changed much over a long lifetime, but his chosen means of effecting the greater good never changed at all.
It's sad that Sirius probably never realized at all how much he and DD were working at cross-purposes when they were both so deeply committed to so many of the same goals, and both loved Harry so much. It's even more an ironic tragedy, IMO, that Dumbledore didn't dare just tell Sirius the truth and beg him to lay off and step back and get the hell out of the way. Dumbledore knew that Sirius was not built to be able to do any of that; the better part of Sirius' nature would never have permitted it. Perhaps that can be read as another fearful aspect of Voldemort's legacy; that one of his most dedicated adversaries felt forced to all but destroy another to protect the effort to bring LV down - and that it was both the best and the worst parts of both men's natures that were at the root of it all.
And that's it! Anyone have anything they'd like to add or rebutt or discuss at more length?
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First, a caveat - one of the challenges of being a fan who favors writing and thinking about any of JKR's second and third tier characters is that the author did not really fully develop them or their stories, and concentrated instead on her primary characters and plotlines. You have to really stretch the canon material to try to complete Sirius' story and make everyone in it behave like three-dimensional human beings, and you sometimes have to ascribe motives and development to the characters that, IMO, Rowling never intended or even considered. And that's the "game" or "puzzle" aspect of fanfiction or fan-analysis, finding ways to fill in the holes in the backstory and fit your own ideas into the larger source story as seamlessly as possible. This is no reflection on Rowling OR on fans; tinkering with the source material is one of the things that make fanworks and story-analysis fun.
So are some of my theories about Sirius' imprisonment and so on really there in the text? Are some of the characters I'm going to mention really to blame for actions and motivations that might more accurately by blamed on their creator and the requirements of her plot? Probably not, but I think the roots are there at least, I don't think my ideas are that implausible, and I don't think it matters anyway, to be quite honest. It's just fun to analyze the characters as though we were discussing real people, to play pretend, in effect. It's a just a fun game, and we all know how important play can be, even if we also know that deconstructing HP in excruciating detail may not be all that important in the larger scheme of things. That being said, shall we go on, then? Together? :)
So, how did Sirius Black, dedicated soldier for the original OotP, close personal friend of James and Lily Potter, well-known "blood-traitor" to the pro-LV Black family and highly vocal opponent of Voldemort, wind up dumped in prison for life w/o trial as a mass murderer, "known" high-ranking DE, and "LV's right-hand man"? One obvious reason, Peter Pettigrew's frame-up. And three less obvious reasons - The MoM, Barty Crouch Sr., and Albus Dumbledore.
The MoM and Crouch's motivations were political and careerist. Sirius was arrested immediately after Halloween '85 - that is, arrested when the entire WW was celebrating the fall of LV and an end to the long nightmare that was the First War. The MoM wanted people to feel safe at last, to believe that now that LV was gone, the remnants of his organization could be swept away in an easy, painless clean-up operation. The public confrontation between Peter and Sirius, with the mass death and big explosion, was very, very scary and was a potential public relations disaster for the MoM - it could have put some major holes in the comfy (and patently untrue) public perception that the DEs would just conveniently evaporate w/o their leader.
Crouch, who wanted to boost his own public approval rating by appearing to be the man to perform the clean-up, understood that with a little "spin", Sirius could be transformed from public embarrassment to perfect fall-guy. The horrific violence of the confrontation itself, along w/ the lack of reliable witnesses despite the public setting, as well as Sirius' status as a son of a very old pureblood "Dark" family, could be used to paint him as this terrifying figure - a vicious, murdering psycho DE, second only to LV himself - whom the MoM had just put safely in the slammer for good.
Why no trial? Because the official story of what happened on that Muggle street that day, and Sirius' new public image as LV's right-hand man, really would not have stood up to rational examination. If there had been a trial, it might have been remembered that the only living witnesses to what happened were all Muggles, notoriously inaccurate observers of magical events (who'd all been Obliviated immediately anyway). It might have come out that even people who knew Sirius only casually were aware of his long-term opposition to Voldemort and very close ties to James Potter and Peter Pettigrew. Sirius' bad old Black blood might have had a lot less scare-appeal once it was recalled that his own brother was believed to have been murdered by Voldemort and that the Black family had disowned him as a blood-traitor years back. These are just some of the logical weaknesses in the MoM's shaky story, too - over and above all the magical means of determining the real truth. But the MoM and Crouch had decided in advance what the Truth needed to be, and deliberately avoided anything at all that could have cast some doubt on it.
Did they really believe Sirius was innocent, and then just railroaded him into Azkaban anyway? Well, one might also ask if anyone at the MoM honestly believed Stan Shunpike was actually a dangerous DE. One might ask if anyone at the MoM truly believed the half-giant Hagrid could actually have been the Heir of Slytherin. Sirius certainly looked guilty enough, and for the MoM, justice has never been the issue, public perception has. Sirius' guilt or innocence was immaterial.
But Albus Dumbledore's part in the story is where the question of belief becomes most material. Dumbledore's reputation as a leading Voldemort opponent of the era was so powerful, and his influence was so great, that he could actually function as a belief-maker. He could vouch for someone like Snape, someone who actually was a DE and who really was guilty-as-accused, and get him off. As founder and leader of the OotP, Dumbledore was also Sirius' de facto commander in the Order's wartime fight against Voldemort; who would know more of Sirius' history as a fighter against LV than the very "general" who devised the Order's war efforts himself? Dumbledore also must have known the minute details of Sirius' history as a person; DD had known him since Sirius was eleven years old. DD must have been aware of Sirius' disassociation from his family, his vehement rejection of the pureblood party line, his very close relationship to James Potter, his from-childhood hostility toward the Dark Arts and those who used them, etc. DD had ample reason to have serious (heh) questions about Sirius' guilt, and he had the power and influence to make sure those questions were fully examined, even if he didn't have enough doubts to just railroad Sirius right back out of trouble, the way he'd done for Severus.
What did Dumbledore do instead? He went right along with the MoM's decision to condemn Sirius w/o trial with no objection (like he objected when Harry was on trial). He did not make any effort to communicate w/ Sirius at all, though he was one of the few people who had the juice to insist on questioning Sirius in prison (like he insisted on questioning Morphin Gaunt). He revealed enough information about the Fidelius Charm to the MoM to damage Sirius, while withholding information that would have weakened the case against him. In short, Dumbledore behaved as if he had no doubt whatsoever that Sirius was guilty, even though, at that time, there was probably no one left alive who had more reasonable cause to doubt. And if the influential and highly regarded Dumbledore believed Sirius to be guilty, wouldn't that be enough to make Sirius' remaining friends, like Lupin, begin to put their own doubts aside?
Why would Dumbledore do this? Did he honestly believe Sirius had somehow turned into a raving, mass-murdering maniac overnight and absolutely no one, not even Sirius' most intimate, lifelong friends, had ever had the slightest warning or clue? That Sirius had been lying in every word and deed, possibly for years, and that he'd successfully deceived everyone he knew, including Dumbledore himself, one of the most proficient Legilimens in the world? That Lord Voldemort's highest-ranking lieutenant and second-in-command had infiltrated the Order from its inception and yet the members of that Order were still, for the most part, alive? If all that sounds a bit incredible, it's because it is.
My theory is Dumbledore probably did have a pretty good idea that there were holes in the story big enough to drive a Buick through, and may even have realized that regardless of how things looked, Sirius Black really was highly unlikely DE material, and was probably the last person on earth who would have betrayed James Potter. But Dumbledore also had a secret agenda of his own; an agenda that he considered to be the only way there was to stop Voldemort, the primary threat to the entire WW and a wizard whom DD already suspected had made himself functionally immortal. DD was willing to sacrifice the welfare of others to the greater good.
Remember, Dumbledore's plans for Harry were not, ultimately, beneficial to Harry at all; on the contrary, Harry was slated to be another of DD's sacrifices to the greater good. Dumbledore needed to make sure Sirius would not take up his appointed role as Harry's legal guardian, because he wanted Harry to be raised to school age outside the WW entirely and under blood protection. He also needed Sirius out of the way for a good long time, because he believed that if Sirius had ever gotten the slightest inkling that DD's plan for Harry would culminate in Harry's death, Sirius would have done absolutely everything in his power to prevent it. And DD believed that Sirius might well have tipped - he knew the plan would take years, years in which Sirius could think and think and think about things, he knew Sirius had a good bit of information about the prophecy already, and he saw Sirius as "a clever, energetic man". DD was committed to the greater good, but he knew that if it came to it, Sirius Black would be much more likely to fight tooth and nail for Harry's good instead. So the MoM's accusations against Sirius, however false, and the life sentence, however unwarranted, dovetailed w/ DD's plans perfectly, and he seized that opportunity to remove an individual he thought could be a considerable threat to his plan. Again, and probably to DD's great regret, Sirius' guilt or innocence was immaterial
Dumbledore's behavior after Sirius escaped seems pretty suspect to me too, and it's easy to interpret his actions as continuing efforts to keep Sirius from interfering and/or taking custody of Harry. The escape itself could have looked decidedly inconvenient to DD, who might well have expected someone who'd been locked up for life in an "inescapable" prison to stay put. But Sirius did escape, and in spite of all the security precautions against it that were put into effect, before DD was even aware of what was happening, Sirius had already made contact w/ Harry, convinced him (plus Hermione, Ron, and Lupin) of the truth, and bonded so strongly w/ the boy that the two of them had firmly agreed that Sirius was going to take up his role as godfather immediately and Harry was going to come and live with him.
Everything, in fact, that DD had wanted to prevent. Sirius had, unknowingly, made himself one giant headache for DD. He couldn't be allowed to be exonerated; Harry would have left the Dursleys and gone to live with Sirius, thus losing the blood protection DD had engineered and giving Sirius several years of very close contact w/ Harry - ample time for Sirius to start making educated guesses about LV, the prophecy, and DD's plans, and to just naturally to start replacing DD's influence on Harry with his own. But he couldn't just be dumped back in prison or Kissed either; the Trio and Lupin would have publicly screamed their heads off about what they knew, and though DD claimed that their word would have little weight against the MoM and public opinion, he "forgot" to mention that their word plus Albus Dumbledore's would have had a great deal of weight.
Nor would Harry have ever really trusted DD again if he came to believe that DD hadn't done all he could to rescue Sirius, an innocent man whom Harry had pretty much fallen in love with at first sight, from the dementors. And Harry was only thirteen, his trust and regard were still essential to DD's plans.
So DD, in a tight spot, chose a middle road that would keep any blame in Harry's mind off him and yet still keep Harry and Sirius effectively separated - he claimed he believed Sirius' story, but he left Sirius' rescue up to Harry himself. That way, if the rescue failed, Harry would only blame himself, and if it succeeded, Sirius would have to flee - he'd be too busy being an international fugitive to start asking sticky questions about the prophecy or provide a home to Harry.
In GoF, Sirius unwittingly made himself a pain in the arse to DD again. Instead of staying safely out of the picture where he was at the end of PoA, he refused to stay put again and came back to the UK, took up residence right outside Hogwarts, and stubbornly refused to be budged, regardless of all arguments about his own safety. Regardless too, of the total lack of basic support he was getting from DD, who knew that Sirius was right nearby, hiding in a cave and eating rats to stay alive, yet couldn't seem to spare a few minutes to, say, at least send him a ham sandwich or something. That alone almost looks as if DD might have been trying to discourage Sirius from staying on, doesn't it? Not that it did anything at all to persuade Sirius to leave; it was the wrong approach to take w/ a man like Sirius. Really, this is DD's nature, to manipulate people, always with the best of motives - to move them around like chess pieces, according to logic and reason. But Sirius' nature makes him a terrible choice of chess piece - he's much more a wild card whose stubbornness and reckless ways screwed up DD's logical plans again and again. Did Dumbledore begin to be angry with him at last for being such a recurring irritant?
Well, at the end of GoF, DD reforms the Order in response to LV's return, and, also, it must be noted, gives Sirius a mission as an Order member - to go "lie low at Lupin's" and from there to start traveling around, spreading the word to reactivate all the former Order members - to, in effect, get the fuck AWAY from Hogwarts and Harry. After, of course, first ordering Sirius to reveal Padfoot to Severus Snape, a man whom DD knew very well hated Sirius like poison and who also would be spending half his time in LV's breast pocket henceforth, acting as a double agent. Why would DD insist Sirius must reveal a secret magical disguise that would have been ideally suited for the mission DD had just given him - to the one person who posed the greatest possible security risk of blowing that disguise? Because DD thought it was time for Severus and Sirius to "bury the hatchet"? But the burying-the-hatchet session DD forced on them was not exactly equitable, was it? DD insisted Sirius must to give up his secrets and make himself vulnerable to Snape, while Snape was not asked to give up his secrets at all. And did they really need to resolve their issues just then anyway? Severus and Sirius weren't going to be working together or even seeing each other at all for the foreseeable future - Sirius' mission was basically to get the hell out and STAY out, while Snape had to stay right where he was to perform his mission.
Later, in OotP, the secret of Padfoot being known was given as a primary reason Sirius must not move from 12G, and Pettigrew was said to have been the one who'd blabbed (though, strangely, it apparently took him two years at LV's side to do it). But an alternate explanation is also possible and it's being set up right here: If DD decided that Snape needed a relatively insignificant secret to divulge to LV if needed - blowing Sirius' cover as Padfoot would be a credible gesture of loyalty that could strengthen Snape the spy's position w/o really weakening DD's - and would also have the incidental benefit of helping to keep that pesky Black, who simply would not stay where Dumbledore had put him, pinned down. Snape did claim to have been instrumental in getting rid of the Animagus Black later on in the story, and he wasn't lying, or not completely. In any case, I doubt Dumbledore consciously hoped Sirius might get killed while performing the mission DD had given him, but I do think it looks very much like he was stacking the odds against Sirius by a considerable margin. Perhaps he did feel some unconscious exasperation? Sirius had, after all, been making himself a colossal nuisance to DD for a long time.
Dumbledore's policy of keeping Sirius pinned down and away from Harry as much as humanly possible stayed consistent in OotP as well; and in fact contributed, according to DD himself, to Sirius' eventual death. I myself am not sure how much being locked up at 12G really contributed to Sirius' death at the MoM, but I do think it's crystal clear how much it contributed to making Sirius' last year on earth as wretched as humanly possible.
It seems incredible that someone as perceptive as DD could fail to realize that effectively imprisoning the emotionally fragile survivor of a long and unjust imprisonment in the one place he hated most in the world might conceivably do a little psychological damage to such a survivor. And, incidentally, might also keep him too busy trying to stay halfway sane to, say, up and move into a cave outside Hogwarts again and rove up and down the surrounding countryside as a dog, or to start examining the peculiar circumstances of Harry's mental connection to Voldemort too closely, or to spend time w/ the young and impressionable godson who loved him and was already strongly influenced by him too often, or to offer his house and himself to Harry as a permanent home again, etc.
DD said he was trying to keep Sirius alive by insisting he hide out at 12G, and that's probably true as far as it goes, but we might also ask why, two years out of prison, Sirius' name was still not cleared and thus he was still in danger, and we also might ask again how it happened that he could no longer use his cover as Padfoot DD just needed Sirius to stay the hell put for once in his goddamned life, and he'd already tried various methods of making that happen w/o any success at all. Did he regretfully decide the issues were important enough to warrant more devious, more harmful methods?
If Dumbledore's primary motivation for keeping Sirius locked up and inactive was to keep him safe, and he somehow really didn't anticipate how badly being stuck in 12G would shake him, why then, once Sirius' condition was visibly deteriorating at 12G, didn't DD have Sirius moved out of the situation that was clearly cracking him up at once? Surely a man who'd seen (and caused) as much human tragedy as DD must have known that there's more then one kind of danger in the world and some of the worst dangers lurk in the mind and the heart?
Why not insist that Sirius must immediately train every single Order member plus all the kids to become Animagi - bury him in a difficult but not-too-dangerous mission? Why not spirit Sirius off to Las Vegas or the Bahamas or the Gobi Desert temporarily so he could clear his head? Better yet, why not hide him at Hogwarts - surely that could have been done - LV himself had once hidden at Hogwarts, while Hagrid had hidden a baby dragon, a colony of huge super-intelligent spiders, and a giant there - and Hagrid can't keep his mouth shut to save his life. The problem is that any of these things would have improved Sirius' situation and kept him safe at the same time, but none of them would have accomplished what Dumbledore needed. He needed to keep Harry out of Sirius' custody and out of Sirius' influence and out of Sirius' thoughts as much as could be managed without pissing Harry off by looking like he was doing it, and to manage that, Sirius had to be under DD's control and securely pinned down, because Sirius had already shown himself to be far too loose a cannon to be left to his own devices. Every time DD had let him run around loose, he'd made a beeline for Harry and immediately set about doing everything DD wanted to prevent most.
Yet I don't think DD ever really disliked Sirius, on the contrary, I think it's clear that in many ways, he admired Sirius and deeply regretted all the awful things Sirius had been put through. It's clearer still that Dumbledore truly did love Harry, so he might well have been tortured by the knowledge that he'd helped to cheat Harry out of his rightful time with the closest thing to family the boy had left. But Dumbledore does have a very, very dark side, at least in my understanding of the story, and I find his relentless commitment to the greater good, no matter what it costs or how much evil must be done to achieve those ends, to be both chilling and a consistent characterization. Now that we've all seen DH, we know that Dumbledore believed that terrible sacrifices must be made to achieve the greater good when he was a teenager flirting w/ the idea of world domination, and that he still believed the exact same thing as an adult when he forced a grief-maddened and repentant Severus Snape into becoming another cog in his anti-Voldemort machine - and blighted the man's life in the process. He still believed it as an old man when he put the final touches on his heartless arrangements for Harry to volunteer to die in order to finish Voldemort. He still believed it beyond the grave after he and Harry were both dead and he confessed to Harry all that he'd done to make that happen. DD's definition of what the "greater good" really was may have changed much over a long lifetime, but his chosen means of effecting the greater good never changed at all.
It's sad that Sirius probably never realized at all how much he and DD were working at cross-purposes when they were both so deeply committed to so many of the same goals, and both loved Harry so much. It's even more an ironic tragedy, IMO, that Dumbledore didn't dare just tell Sirius the truth and beg him to lay off and step back and get the hell out of the way. Dumbledore knew that Sirius was not built to be able to do any of that; the better part of Sirius' nature would never have permitted it. Perhaps that can be read as another fearful aspect of Voldemort's legacy; that one of his most dedicated adversaries felt forced to all but destroy another to protect the effort to bring LV down - and that it was both the best and the worst parts of both men's natures that were at the root of it all.
And that's it! Anyone have anything they'd like to add or rebutt or discuss at more length?