Sirius Black's family seems to be very strong on the idea of "bloody purity".
Is there any reason given to explain why he had such different views to his relatives?
asked Jul 27, 2014 at 16:00
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Related, not duplicate : scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/49164/…– ValorumJul 27, 2014 at 16:06
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6Is this a "serious" question, or a "Sirius" question? :-)– beichstJul 27, 2014 at 16:06
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1Sorry! My bad everyone! That was siriusly bad from me. Truly 'Riddle'culous– liam tomkinsJul 27, 2014 at 16:13
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3I think you meant to say "Riddikulus!" ;)– SlytherincessJul 27, 2014 at 17:33
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4Why all the downvotes? It's a perfectly good question, with a non-obvious answer.– DVK-on-Ahch-ToJul 27, 2014 at 19:38
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2 Answers
Why does any child end up with different views than their parents? You might very well ask why Ronald Reagan Jr. is a staunch liberal while his adopted brother Michael is a conservative. These things are complicated, with no easy answer.
What we do know is that Sirius was rebellious from a young age. Even at the age of 11 on the train to Hogwarts, he smiles when James disses Slytherin to his face, and aims to "break tradition." I daresay that if he had been born to a family of Muggle lovers, he might have ended up a bigot.
He also mentions that Andromeda was his favorite cousin, who ended up marrying a Muggle-born. She's much older than Sirius, and might have influenced his views growing up.
answered Jul 27, 2014 at 16:57
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1Dates of birth for Sirius and Andromeda? How much older was she exactly? Jul 27, 2014 at 17:35
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3Sirius would be born in 1959 or 1960 to be the same age as James Potter. Andromeda isn't on the Black family tree released by JK Rowling, since she was blasted off. But given her position on the tree and the dates of her sisters, she would be born between 1951 and 1955. Jul 27, 2014 at 17:55
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1Nice answer. Family views doesn't mean a thing. You can get inspiration from books and even from stars. All you need is mental freedom and IQ to explore different possibilities.– user931May 6, 2017 at 18:05
And maybe some of it was Lupin's friendship as well - knowing someone who had this reason to feel isolated/different, yet befriending him, not accepting his evasions (why do you have to leave every full moon? etc), and eventually becoming close friends.
Plus he was in Gryffindor, surrounded by other Gryffindors (such as harry's dad), who tended to be further from a more Slytherin-esque view of things....
I don't know that I see him as potentially holding those views. It just doesn't seem like it would be part of his personality somehow.
That said, maybe his outlook is more influenced by a certain kind of difficult-to-unlearn snobbishness, anyway? He is pretty awful to Kreacher, as Dumbledore and Hermione note; and perhaps there is an element of classism in his attitude towards Snape? I kind of got the feeling he and James saw Snape as the 'annoying, awkward poor kid/misfit' - a sort of typical but unspoken nastiness. ('It's more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean...)
He did come from an 'old money' kind of family, no? And this is Britain, remember; where even the accents tell you about status and class.
