Hi! I’ve been reading some “Sirius Lives” AUs lately and they got me thinking about how his response to trauma is characterized in canon/fanon.
From what I’ve seen, Sirius in fanon is generally portrayed as someone who finds it very difficult to recover from trauma and who takes a long time to adjust to life post-Azkaban or post-OotP (in AUs where he survives the book). A lot of it is based off his behaviour in OotP, where his depression persists across the year and includes “fits of sullens”, retreats to Buckbeak’s room, etc.
But I find it pretty ridiculous (not to mention unfair) when Sirius’s depression in OotP is used to generalize his “typical” behaviour + coping methods. Sirius can’t recover in Grimmauld Place, because being stuck in Grimmauld Place is exactly the source of his trauma in the first place – it’s the house itself which is a living trigger for him (literally, given his mother’s portrait and Kreacher). It’s like asking him to heal from Azkaban while still being imprisoned in Azkaban, or asking Harry to heal from his experience with the Dursleys while being actively stuck with the Dursleys at Privet Drive.
I think a better example of how Sirius copes with trauma is his state after PoA. He was in a human rights violation prison for twelve years after losing his best friends and being wrongly framed for murder. After he escaped, his year-long murder plot culminated in an explosive night where he was severely injured, nearly got the Dementor’s Kiss twice, had multiple emotionally charged interactions, and was then forced to flee for his life after losing his shot at freedom. That’s…terrifying to even think about, tbh.
And yet, in less than a month’s time, we see that Sirius had not only managed to successfully go into hiding with Buckbeak, he had also staged a sighting to draw security away from Hogwarts, updated himself on the wizarding world, and begun a “cheerful” correspondence with his godson. It’s also implied that he was enjoying himself in tropical paradise.
A few more months after that, this is how Harry describes him:
“Sirius looked different from Harry’s memory of him. When they had said good-bye, Sirius’s face had been gaunt and sunken, surrounded by a quantity of long, black, matted hair — but the hair was short and clean now, Sirius’s face was fuller, and he looked younger, much more like the only photograph Harry had of him, which had been taken at the Potters’ wedding.”
He seems to have been doing really well? It seems that Sirius was able to move on with his life very quickly and with relative ease. And this is despite the fact that he was a hunted fugitive who had to cope with the knowledge that almost the entire wizarding community hated him. He didn’t even seem to have had a wand.
Later on in the book, when Sirius comes back to Hogsmeade, he lives in a cave and has barely any human-to-human interactions (apart from the trio) for months. But again, he seems extraordinarily well-adjusted. He converses with the trio, sends Harry regular letters, gives him advice and comfort, etc.
I think fanon wants Sirius to be, or assume that he was, a lot more affected by Azkaban than he seems to have been in canon. He is absolutely haunted and embittered by it, anyone would be, but a major plot point in PoA that he is astonishingly functional despite it. (Even in prison, he’s described as “rational”, “bored”, “cool as you please”). So if he’d lived past OotP, I don’t think it would have taken Sirius much time at all to adjust to exoneration and a life outside Grimmauld Place – I actually think it would have been a pretty swift and smooth process for him. It's like how people assume he automatically wouldn't have been equipped to be a godfather to Harry because of trauma from Azkaban ... except we see in Goblet of Fire, despite being on the run and living in caves, he actually IS perfectly equipped for the role. It’s circumstances in OotP that are the main problem, not Sirius’s own personality/capabilities (and even then, he is the adult Harry trusts the most and goes to first).
The impression I get is that Sirius has an exceptional and almost surreal level of endurance (I mean, this is explicitly canon), as well as the ability to bounce back from trauma remarkably quickly. And if he’s like this after Azkaban of all places, I think his composure would have been even better as a teenager. I often see him characterized as acting/lashing out at Hogwarts or to his friends as a response to family issues, but I really don’t think he’d do that at all. Even in Azkaban, he appears bored and unaffected by his predicament; in OotP, he retreats to the room with Buckbeak. Which doesn’t mean that people around him would be unaware of what he was going on (the wizarding community was clearly well-informed about each other, and the way Slughorn spoke of the Black family indicates that they were very well-known – I think their heir running away would been a major source of scandal/gossip), but I don’t think Sirius would seem outwardly affected by it. I see him acting cavalier/dismissive, maybe joking about it, either dealing with it privately and/or properly discussing it with only James, Remus, Peter, and later Lily. I also feel like sometimes there’s too much focus on Angst™ after his break from his family, but I mean…Sirius ran away from his abusive, prejudiced home, I think he would have felt a significant degree of relief/freedom/happiness as well, akin to Harry after he left the Dursleys.
Sorry, ik this got way too long, but what do you think??
thank you for the ask and for taking the time to write all this! no need to apologize :)
I think I at least partially agree with you in identifying the main source of Sirius's troubles in OOTP as being trapped in one of the main sources of his trauma, and in seeing him as someone who has a lot of endurance and resilience. And I think the idea that he's too affected by Azkaban to raise Harry is wrong-headed. Like, come on, he's clearly the best person for the job. I also think he can sometimes be shown as too outwardly affected by running away or whatever in marauders era fics--I think he tends to bottle things up, so I can see him lashing out when it finally gets too much. And he deflects a lot and acts like he's fine. He's not going to be having deep emotional heart to hearts, I don't think. Also you didn't mention this but one thing that stands out is that he's really not super angry about his wrongful imprisonment, and doesn't blame Remus or Dumbledore or anyone who might have prevented it, though I think he would bring up the 'remus you left me in azkaban' card when trying to wound him in an argument, but doesn't actually believe that. I think Sirius doesn't get too upset at injustices done to himself in general, he gets upset at wrongs done to other people. I do think that he would be--and is--affected by Azkaban, he just doesn't show it in 'obvious' ways. I think Sirius copes best when he has a goal to focus on. in fact, that's how he copes: finding something to focus on--he'd probably do this after running away, too, for instance maybe it's fixing up the motorbike. So in POA his goal is to capture Peter. And he's extremely single-minded in that to the point where his judgement isn't great, which is where I see Azkaban shining through--the knife incident wasn't a great idea and ended up counterproductive, or injuring Ron to get to Peter. I also think that at this point Sirius didn't have much to live for, thinking Harry hated him, and so didn't care what risks he had to take to get the task done.A and then the Srieing Shack happens, and now he has a new goal and hope for the future which he didn't have before, and so he focuses on raising Harry and avoiding arrest and he's doing a lot better with a purpose that doesn't end with someone (and probably himself too) dead. And then OOTP comes and he loses his purpose because he feels like he can't do anything for Harry and he can't do anything for the war, and also he's stuck in Grimmauld, and everything he's been pushing down comes back with a vengeance since his coping mechanism of focusing on something concrete he can do and staying active is no longer possible, and so he turns to other coping mechanisms (like alcohol).
