sirius black is so easy to love when you first meet him when you’re just seeing the joyous bright brilliant boy with his mischief and his pranks and his marauding, he’s all charm and smooth wit and he loves so much and so deeply and once he loves you he will do anything for you, he would without hesitation die for anything and anyone he loves. he loves hard and fierce and he doesn’t know how to stop himself. he thrives on attention and laughter and he’s very good at coaxing both of those things out of people so sirius is very easy to like at first glance.
but the ugly side to sirius is that he hates just as intensely as he loves and there’s nothing beautiful about it. he can be merciless and sharp and needlessly cruel, and he doesn’t always need a good reason. he’s easily bored and not particularly bothered by tormenting people for his own amusement. he thrives on attention. he gets swallowed by darkness and restlessness and he doesn’t know how to hide it, doesn’t know or try to avoid making everyone else feel the same way. he’s reckless, and immature, and he can’t — doesn’t want to — control himself.
sirius can be awful and it takes a while to understand that, the duality of intense affection and intense cruelty within him, but once you do he’s hard to love. it’s hard to love somebody like that. but his great redeeming quality is the flipside to the worst parts of him: as consumed as he can be by hatred, he’s affected equally by love. he’s brave and determined and he will do anything for people he loves.
sirius doesn’t know how to exist in shades of grey so maybe he’s hard to love but ultimately loving him is worth it because as awful as he can be, he can be just as good. and i think, more often than not, he wants to be good.