FANFICTION (Harry Potter) - Fifteen Facts - Sirius Black

[whitechapel]

Title: Fifteen Facts about Sirius Black
Fandom: Harry Potter
Genre/Characters: Gen (Sirius Black and assorted contemporaries)
Warnings: dark themes
Word Count: 1,315

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1. When he was in his first year he got a black eye from Lily Evans for referring to her casually as a Mudblood. He had been unaware that there were any other ways to refer to Muggle-borns, or that Lily would even know what he meant when he said it. Once they were forced to interact frequently thanks to their mutual connection to James, Sirius was perhaps overly nice to Lily in an attempt to make up for the incident. They did eventually become friends, but neither of them ever forgot it. (Sirius still had to check himself, years later, to avoid thinking of her as a Mudblood when he was angry with her, and having to do this horrified him.)
   


2. He was younger than all of his friends. In fact, as Sirius’s birthday was on the 29th of August, he was the youngest person in his year. This arguably accounts for some of his behaviour as a student.
   


3. Muggle Studies was probably his favorite elective; considering the fact that he picked it mostly to irritate his parents, he was pleasantly surprised by how much he enjoyed it. He was the only student for several years in either direction to manage an Outstanding O.W.L., and was one of only five in his year to pursue it at the N.E.W.T. level (he got an Outstanding on that exam too). Sirius found the subject genuinely interesting, enough that his papers were well-researched and accurate, and he wrote a seventh-year thesis on the history and mechanics of the internal combustion engine. The professor—apparently stunned by Sirius’s ability to cross-reference and spell Muggle terms correctly—was never sure what to make of him.
   


4. James and Sirius together came up with the idea to become Animagi for Remus’s sake, but Sirius insisted that it be a surprise. Though he would never have admitted it, this was in part because he didn’t want Remus to be disappointed if they couldn’t pull it off after all.
   


5. He didn’t get along all that well with Ted Tonks, largely because he thought Ted wasn’t good enough for Andromeda. Sirius had an entire list of reasons he felt were valid—Ted was loud and rather uncultured and not as clever as Andromeda, and expected his wife to pick up after him. But Sirius also never quite managed to suppress his visceral reaction: that Andromeda had married far below her station. However reasonable his other criticisms of Ted might have been, Sirius always second-guessed them because he worried that he was just trying to rationalize his vestigial discomfort with Muggle-borns.
   


6. Sirius liked to draw. He cemented James’s approval by drawing unflattering caricatures of teachers and students—his favorite subject was Snape, which didn’t do much to improve their relationship—and he was responsible for all the miniature statue drawings and artistic flourishes in the Marauder’s Map. After leaving school he regularly created editorial cartoons for the Daily Prophet, until the situation grew so grim that even he couldn’t make jokes about it any longer.
   


7. He wanted desperately to be an Auror, especially after he formally broke ties with his family; it was part and parcel in Sirius’s lifelong attempt to atone for ever having believed what his parents told him as a child. Sirius worked hard toward this goal in his last two years at school and aced all the prerequisites for entrance into the Academy, but he was rejected in the final round of interviews because Crouch thought that hiring anyone named “Black” as an Auror would be too great a security risk. Sirius never forgave Crouch for this, though of course later on this was eclipsed by a far greater offence.
   


8. He never felt the need to date as a young man, though he affected an interest in Muggle girls to horrify his mother. The great love of Sirius’s life was his best friend, and the fact that this was an entirely platonic love story never bothered him—he had James and his place in James’s family, and that was enough.
   


9. During Harry’s infancy, Sirius was a very proud and attentive godparent. He took most of Harry’s baby pictures and supplied him with a steady stream of toys and picture books, and whenever he babysat Harry he took him to the park to show everyone how cute his godson was. Had he been given the opportunity to act as Harry’s guardian, Sirius would probably have spoiled him silly.
   


10. He never learned to Apparate—he tried taking lessons, but he splinched himself badly enough on his first try that he never worked up the stomach to try again. (The memory of this lesson, especially Sirius’s reaction, remained one of Snape’s fondest memories for years afterward.) The flying motorcycle came about through a fortuitous combination of Sirius simply needing a way to get around, and his having both a fondness for experimental magic and a healthy disrespect for laws regarding misuse of Muggle artefacts.
    


11. He was actually quite attached to Peter, and considered him a surrogate little-brother figure to replace the one he felt had abandoned him. Sirius cared very much about both Peter and his brother, but he considered both of them soft and weak and consequently treated both with near-identical affectionate condescension even when he was feeling kindly toward them. But when Sirius said he would have died for Peter, he meant it—though he didn’t think of Peter as his equal, he was very protective of him, and (in true older-brother fashion) was determined that only he and James should be allowed to pick on him. If James’s death hadn’t entirely destroyed Sirius’s emotional stability, Peter’s betrayal would nearly have done the trick all on its own.
    


12. Before he went to Azkaban, his Patronus took the form of the stag. He was never able to conjure a corporeal one afterward.
    


13. When he got a flat of his own, he made sure it was the opposite of his childhood home. Sirius amassed a collection of strange knick-knacks and brightly-coloured mismatched furniture, and kept a tank full of tropical fish in the living room. Every window-box was full of magical plants, every wall plastered with posters and paintings and photographs. It was much like Sirius himself—colourful and extroverted and a bit overwhelming. (After he was arrested, his landlord asked his only surviving reference to come over and take away all his things; Remus, given this excuse, spent a week meticulously dismantling the flat and destroying every single thing Sirius had left behind.)
    


14. Sirius wasn’t deluded, exactly, that Harry was his opportunity to get his best friend back—but he was still very hung up on Harry’s identity as James Potter’s son. On some level he always thought of Harry as James’s baby boy, important less for his own sake than for the fact that James had loved him more than anything. He still thought of Harry as a blank slate who just needed love and encouragement in order to thrive, rather than a nearly-fully-grown human being with a personality of his own. Had Sirius ever been called out on his treatment of Harry he would have felt horrible, knowing as well as he did how much it hurts to have a parental figure try to override your identity. (He did feel horrible after snapping at Harry for not living up to his father’s standards, something he recognized immediately as a cheap shot and regretted saying for the rest of his life.)
    


15. Aside from the fact that it meant leaving Harry behind, Sirius was almost relieved to die when he did. By the end of his life he was living entirely for other people rather than out of any real motivation to stay alive; he died believing that, despite these efforts, he had never been any use to anyone.

Comments

[feverbeats]

THESE ARE ALL SO GODDAMN TRUE. I especially like the first and the fifth, because that seems to be a side of Sirius that almost all of fandom ignores. I also really believe the eighth and twelfth ones and would read a hundred stories about them. Revelation: apparently sketchy semi-Sirius/James is something I am fond of.

[whitechapel]

Ahahaha, the Sirius/James bromance is my forever girl. ♥ They are totally those two guys who are constantly manhandling each other and sitting on each other's laps and being wholly unable to hide their epic guylove despite the occasional "no homo, bro" or manful fist-bump.

I wish more fanfic addressed Sirius's racist-ideology-brainwashing childhood baggage! Most of the time folks seem to just assume he just magically knew his parents' ideas were wrong before he was ever exposed to other ones, which eliminates so much potential for interesting conflict. :(

Thank you!!