Black was sprawled at the bottom of the wall. His thin chest rose and fell rapidly as he watched Harry walking slowly nearer, his wand pointing straight at Black's heart.I swear, I fell in love with Sirius from his very first page and I have loved him ever since. Warner Bros did such a good job of casting him in the movies because he looks just like Gary Oldman in my head.
"Going to kill me, Harry?" he whispered.Harry stopped right above him, his wand still pointing at Black's chest, looking down at him. A livid bruise was rising around Black's left eye and his nose was bleeding."You killed my parents," said Harry, his voice shaking slightly but his wand quite steady.
Black stared up at him out of those sunken eyes.
"I don’t deny it," he said very quietly. "But if you knew the whole story..”
I love how JK Rowling managed to develop Sirius's character in so few words - if you think about it, comparatively, he doesn't get much page time but still he makes such an impact and his story; Remus's story; the whole back story surrounding Remus and Sirius and The Marauders drew me in as much (if not more) as Harry, Ron and Hermione did. When a book had finished I could pretty much leave Harry and co where they'd left off, until next time. I could never do that with Sirius. I was always wondering what went on behind the scenes, after PoA, betweeen GoF and OotP? What was it like when he was at Hogwarts, or after he'd left? How was it really, in the first war? The little bit of story that JKR let me have of Sirius left me hungry for more. I loved Sirius and his story from the very beginning and I love it just as much now. I love him because he's gorgeous and clever and wise and funny and a little bit rebellious and never afraid to take a risk; in fact, Sirius lives for the risk – the first person to escape Azkaban, people, but let’s be honest here: he’s also arrogant (I’ve always found arrogant men attractive) and a little prone to making rash and careless decisions. It’s a very good job he had Remus around to prevent him from going completely off the rails. Sending him to Lupin’s was one of the best decisions Dumbledore made, but that’s a story for another day....
He’s fiercely loyal – to a fault, actually – and maybe naively he expects the same level of loyalty from everybody else:
"You don't understand!" whined Pettigrew, "He would have killed me, Sirius!"
"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roared Black. "DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!”
And he’s brave. Stupidly brave. So brave that it cost him his life:
Only one couple were still battling, apparently unaware of the new arrival. Harry saw Sirius duck Bellatrix's jet of red light: He was laughing at her. "Come on, you can do better than that!" he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room. The second jet of light hit him squarely on the chest. The laughter had not quite died from his face, but his eyes widened in shock.He's pretty much everything he should be: he's just what the Harry Potter series needed, just what Harry needed, just what I needed.
[....]
It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall. His body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backward through the ragged veil hanging from the arch.... And Harry saw the look of mingled fear and surprise on his godfather's wasted, once-handsome face as he fell through the ancient doorway and disappeared behind the veil, which fluttered for a moment as though a high wind and then fell back into place.
