it always makes me cringe when people talk about sirius being an irresponsible adult in the hp series or that he's too harsh and should know at this point in this life how to treat house elves and the people around him, and i just...no?
i mean, think about it. sirius grew up with walburga and orion as parents. he probably didn't learn anything about compassionate/kind/gentle human interaction until he started at hogwarts (except maybe trying to figure out how to be a good brother to regulus), and he was still just a kid, trying to survive in a death eater household.
and while he may have figured out how to treat house elves at hogwarts, there is no reason he would realize he was supposed to apply that to kreacher. honestly, why would he even want to? kreacher was desperately devoted to walburga. he spouted all the same shit she did, and he probably helped walburga hurt sirius. so even if sirius knew better about house elves, the way he treated kreacher was probably a defense mechanism (don't get me wrong, i'm not excusing it. i'm just saying there's something deeper going on.)
as for the bullying, there's really no excuse for that. i will never support it, but snape gave as good as he got. and i have other thoughts on that, but i'll save that for another post.
and back to him being irresponsible - he went into azkaban at 22. he lost his entire life at 22. he was completely removed from society at 22. how the hell would he have figured out adulting by the time he was out of azkaban? plus, after azkaban, he spent two years on the run, again, away from society (15 years now), and then another year stuck in grimmauld place (16 years now), literally the house of his nightmares, with his dead mother even screaming at him occasionally, with the house elf that may have had a hand in his abuse that also served as a constant reminder of his dead brother whose death he still feels guilt over, unable to help his godson, who also serves as a constant reminder of his friends he was unable to save. plus - remus. literally a living symbol of all the years he missed, all the moons he was away, all the time they could have had together, but remus was forced to move on, and sirius hadn't even had the chance to realize the people who were his peers, had to move on (while he was sitting in a torture chamber). all this while peter is running free, the man responsible for most, if not all, of his misery the last 16 years. beyond that, in azkaban, all he did was relive his worst memories, most of which would be from his teenage years. looking at it that way, when he got out of azkaban, his mind was nowhere near mid 30s. at most, he had the mindset of early 20s. he never even had the opportunity to grow up, let alone be responsible for himself and his godson.
in my opinion, he was doing very well for what he went through. he was definitely doing his absolute best, and that's all we can ask of him.
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