Hurray Sirius

hurray Sirius <3

Sirius and Bertha Jorkins

One of the most underrated moments of Sirius’s emotional intelligence in Goblet of Fire is him clocking that Bertha Jorkins’ supposed forgetfulness is completely out of character. In The Daily Prophet, Bagman brushes her off as scatterbrained, but Sirius (who hasn’t seen her in over a decade) immediately recognises that something isn’t right. And he doesn’t just vaguely remember her; he remembers her vividly, enough to say outright, “She was a bit dim, but she had an excellent memory for gossip.”

What makes this so striking is that Sirius is the only person who actually notices something’s off. The people she works with every day don’t question it. Bagman dismisses it entirely. But Sirius, who hasn’t interacted with her in years, immediately knows that her behaviour is fundamentally wrong.

This moment is interesting on multiple levels. First, it speaks to Sirius’s perceptiveness—he instinctively recognises that someone’s fundamental cognitive traits don’t just shift without cause. And of course, he’s right: Bertha’s behaviour is the result of a memory charm placed on her by Barty Crouch Sr. But more than that, it highlights the way he pays attention to people. He doesn’t just remember her vaguely—he remembers who she was.

Also, As an aside he really doesn’t hold back on calling her an idiot (go off pookie).

“She was an idiot. Very nosy, but no brains, none at all. It’s not a good combination, Harry. I’d say she’d be very easy to lure into a trap.”

So in this scene, he’s not just recognising the memory charm, he’s also very accurately predicting what happened to her. Bertha is lured straight into Voldemort’s hands, because she’s silly enough to go off with a man she thought was dead (girl be serious- why are you going off with a man in the middle of a forest- haven’t you heard any of the podcasts?)