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snufflesmajor · 7 years

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@extremelyxshabby replied to your post “what is your character’s ideology? what beliefs and values are most...”

i want to hear your thoughts on the prank

right, well, the first thing anyone needs to know about my Thoughts on The Prank is that i absolutely, 100% believe that sirius is to blame. i don’t think he was provoked any more than usual by snape, and i don’t think there was any grand plan. in fact, i don’t even believe there to have been a prank initially involved—i believe that came later, in an effort to sort of lessen the blow of what sirius had done.

also, more importantly, i don’t think sirius understood the gravity of what he’d done until moonrise, and i wholeheartedly believe he told james in a fit of panic (read: laughing about it because sirius does not react normally to panic, fear, or worry).

[sneaky edit: this is a very, very long post]

to explain this, i suppose we have to go all the way back to the beginning. i’m also going to explain why i think this, which involves a bit of history on myself and my family as well. If you’d like to skip this, go to where it says but i digress in bold below.

Right, so first, a very brief and not at all comprehensive history on me. I was raised in a household very similar to the Black household, only we didn’t have very much money. My grandparents were (and still are) quite famous in some circles for their beliefs, and they’re incredibly bigoted. This spread throughout that half of the family, so all in all, you could sum them up by saying they’re exceedingly racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, and all sorts of other -ists and -ics.

This would be easy to cope with, but there was also all sorts of… other things occurring because of their aforementioned beliefs. As the eldest of my father’s children, I was expected to toe the line, recite what was told to me, and be everything The Family™ wanted me to be. It wasn’t anything like being heir apparent (we truly didn’t have enough money for any of that), but there was a great deal of emphasis placed on Family, Loyalty, and Honour. When I was around 12, my father actually tried to have me promise to never marry someone who isn’t white, lest their impurity blind me and prevent me from stopping them kidnap my future children. It’s almost comical, actually.

In any case, I bailed out as often as I could until it finally stuck (when i was 15/16), fled the state, then fled the next state. Eventually, I went to a new school in a new place where no one knew me or recognised my surname, and i became absorbed into a very unique group of friends. Unfortunately, they weren’t the loveliest of people, but it certainly was an experience.

So, there’s the quick recap. For the sake of it, I’ll also throw out that I have a younger brother (two years younger) who stayed and dealt with the family nonsense, as he felt Family was more important and he wanted to protect them.

To be honest, it isn’t almost comical; it is comical.

But I digress.

So, in a nutshell (and you’ll have to take my word for it), there are some parallels between my own life and that of the life of Sirius Black. I don’t presume to say they’re the same (they aren’t—it isn’t even close), but I always found a lot of comfort when reading the books because of it (often in bathrooms after smuggling them home under my shirt, as Harry Potter was the devil trying to trick me). I also feel as though I can almost understand some things that might be overlooked by people who come from healthy (or at least happy) homes, simply by virtue of mine being absolutely awful.

So, one thing to remember when looking at characters who come from (at minimum) emotionally abusive homes is that their entire perception is skewed. They see things at an angle, because their whole lives have been at an angle. They make decisions based on things that aren’t necessarily logical to others, but seem totally fine to them. It’s also important to note that these characters do not realise their perception is skewed, and for a long time, they believe their treatment at home to be somewhat normal. Even at times when they see some behaviour as abnormal and awful (when compared to the treatment of another person, for instance), there’s still this baseline of terrible that they believe to be normal.

Unless, of course, they’re removed from the situation totally and plonked down in, say, a boarding school, where they’re accepted by their peers for themselves and not for their name or their family values. While that sounds fantastic (and it is), it’s also terrible. Suddenly, their entire world is off-centre. The realisation that your own family is awful, that you aren’t the problem, and that they’re the problem—it sends you off balance. You have nothing to cling to, and you begin to act out.

Why? Because you get that sweet, sweet validation.

“You’re better than this,” is a good example, but so is “What are you doing?!” Someone suddenly cares enough to call you out, explain where you fucked up, and—most importantly—forgive you.

It’s addictive. You start to seek out that validation in everything. The constant reassurance that no matter what you do, you’ll be accepted. Now, if you’re unlucky enough to fall into a friend group like the one I did, this leads to a lot of underage drinking and generally reckless (and, frankly, life threatening) behaviour. If, by some chance, you fall into a group of mischievous friends who are more interested in not-being-bored than dulling-all-the-pain, then… well, you get Sirius Black.

This might be a good place for me to mention that I don’t believe he was hugely into drinking, smoking, or anything like that. Wizarding culture is different to muggle culture after all, and he was dangerously clever. He was (in my opinion) more interested in flexing his magical muscles than dulling his senses. For the first time in his life, he was able to express himself and not be chastised for it. He could set someone on fire, or he could grow flowers, and it would all be the same. He could explore himself, and magic, without being told it was silly or not the right kind of magic.

For a long time, Sirius was truly free.

But freedom and acceptance are terribly scary things when you aren’t used to them. You start to push and pull at boundaries, trying to see whether the love you’re feeling is as unconditional as people say it is. It’s a bad joke at a friend’s expense, or giving your best friend warts when he tries for the eighteenth time to ask out the girl he has a thing for. Little things for the most part, but when they’re forgiven, they begin to escalate.

Which is how we get to The Prank, which wasn’t a prank at all.

Remus was, as a student, very quiet and accepting. He didn’t rock the boat too much (lest his friend’s decide he was too much trouble), and often let them away with things he wouldn’t usually (see: Snape’s memory, wherein Remus feigns reading a book instead of joining in or stopping the bullying).

It isn’t that Remus was more accepting (though I do believe he tried to be) or unnaturally kind, but that he forgave more easily out of his own fears. I truly believe he was more willing to look the other way, and to only call Sirius on his shit when he needed to do so.

Because of this, Sirius likely felt quite safe with Remus, but he would have also felt quite uneasy. He would have (again, this is just my opinion) pushed and pulled at those boundaries, testing them to see when they’d break. It’s important to mention that Sirius wouldn’t have even realised he was doing this; it would have been totally subconscious. He likely did the same with the other Marauders, but neither James nor Peter were quite as… well, Remus as Remus was.

By the time the Prank came to be, Sirius would have pushed and pulled and pushed and pulled, always being scolded and ultimately forgiven, until he did the one thing he couldn’t undo to test the boundaries: He told Snape.

Now, there likely was a catalyst to this. I don’t imagine he simply walked over to Snape and said Remus was a werewolf. It wouldn’t have been planned at all, but it wouldn’t have been totally sporadic, either.

Snape had been watching the Marauders, constantly on their collective tail, trying to catch up and get enough evidence to have them expelled. This by itself would have threatened the freedom Sirius felt, and he likely would have been the most affected by it. It would have annoyed him more, frustrated him more, and simply angered him more. He would have wanted nothing more than to be left in peace with his found family, but this kid just would not let up.

So, I imagine he caught him one day, on the Full Moon, and simply let it slip. Snape would have slunk off, as Snape did, and Sirius would have spent the rest of the afternoon trying to justify it. He’d come up with a thousand justifications, each more ridiculous than the last, until he finally realised what he’d done and what it meant, and done the only thing he could think to do:

Tell James Potter, who wouldn’t find it funny at all, and who would find a way to stop it. Because to Sirius, that’s what James was: a beacon, a problem solver, and everything he wanted to be. He was brave, loved, together, and not nearly as impulsive. James would fix things, and Sirius would save face.

And so, James would rush off to save Snape, and Sirius would tell himself everything was fine, everything was as it was meant to be, and he’d hear his mother’s voice telling him how useless he is.

And he’d reach the turning point, realise how much he had to lose, and hate himself for it. He’d never say he’d done the wrong thing, would offer no real explanation, and when he was forgiven… instead of feeling validated as he used to, he’d feel dirty, unworthy, and disgusting. Undeserving.

Which leads us to our next (unplanned) stop: Why Sirius Thought Remus Was The Spy.

It was because Remus forgave him for something Sirius himself couldn’t forgive. How could anyone be so wonderful and understanding? How could anyone set aside their life (because that’s what was at risk, should Remus have attacked Snape) for their friend? Their friend who had hurt them, had risked everything they’d worked so hard for, and had done it for no discernible reason?

While Sirius is incredibly loyal, he couldn’t truly look at Remus the same way. He could, but… if they’d had more time, then it wouldn’t have been an issue. If they’d talked to each other properly, they could have worked around it.

But Sirius, I think, found his own life to mean very little. He didn’t see himself as being very much, and he literally lived for his friends. He wasn’t as confident as he seemed when it came to the finer things, and couldn’t reconcile the idea that he was worth enough to have something so heinous easily (in his opinion) forgiven.

So when they learn there’s a spy, and that the spy is one of them… it doesn’t take much for Sirius to point the finger at Remus. Remus, who forgives too easily and who must absolutely still be angry with Sirius. Remus, who couldn’t possibly care for him enough to simply forget. Remus who was spending a lot of time with awful people, being secretive, and who had kept a secret his entire life.

Remus, who was just far too good to be true, and therefore mustn’t be very genuine at all.

Sirius projected his own insecurities and fears onto Remus (with some help from Peter), and as he could never forgive himself (as he had no reason, in his opinion, to betray Remus initially), couldn’t see a better reason for Remus wanting to betray them.

Because no one other than Remus Lupin would forgive Sirius for that, which meant Remus must be the spy.

It’s all a bit convoluted really, and I feel I haven’t really expressed My Thoughts™ as clearly as I really could have. I have so many of them that it’s hard to keep up lmao. Anyway, I hope this makes at least a little sense!

(oh, but if you’re wondering why Sirius thought Peter was trustworthy: It’s because Sirius was willing to die for his friends. He couldn’t envision Peter being anything less than willing to do the same, because Sirius couldn’t not want to. He totally projected, again, and it led to, well, we all know what happened. I should actually write a proper post on this sometime because I have the distinct feeling this doesn’t make sense)

TL;DR: Sirius gets forgiven and likes it, so he continues to act out because he likes the validation of being scolded and forgiven. Then, whoops, he goes too far. It wasn’t a prank at all, but the Marauders called it that because it was the nice way of saying Sirius was an arsehole for absolutely no visible reason.

#extremelyxshabby #long post #you'll give yourself wrinkles (meta)#poppycock (hc)#this is so long i'm sorry #and this is just #me trying to be brief #one of these days i'll really get into it BUT UNTIL THEN #pull the trigger padfoot (ooc)#i haven't the faintest on where fanon lines up to this and tbh i don't really pay much attention to fanon #so if i step on toes pls know it absolutely isn't my intention at all #and this is #overall #not a fantastic explanation

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