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jodel_from_aol April 17 2011, 09:44:46 UTC
Very nice. I've often thought that a suspiciously small amount of attention was being drawn to the fact that, even diminished, the Black estate was a property of considerable note. Apart from the real estate, and the money in Gringotts, there were also all the nasty knick-nacks in the house itself ( ... )

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danajsparks April 17 2011, 17:22:08 UTC
I'm pretty sure that Arcturus was part of the Order of Merlin, but not the Order of the Phoenix.

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jodel_from_aol April 17 2011, 18:53:22 UTC
Oh, we know he was Order of Merlin. Sirius sneered at his medal and threw it out. Sorry, I misread the original post. Yes, they were both in the Order of Merlin. Had been for yonks ( ... )

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danajsparks April 17 2011, 21:09:20 UTC
It must have really been a wrench to designate a kid who was by his accounts a halfblood. You'd think that he'd have opted for Tonks who had *exactly* the same blood status as Harry, and was a Metamorphamagus to boot. But selecting Tonks would have meant having to admit that he'd been wrong in allowing Andromeda to be disinherited, and of course being a wizard means never having to admit you're wrong about anything.

It doesn't quite make sense to me that Andromeda would be disinherited for marrying Ted, but James wouldn't be disinherited for marrying Lily, which leads me to question whether Andromeda ever truly was disinherited.

Sirius says that it was Walburga who blasted him off the tapestry, but Arcturus was still head of the family when she did so. I think it's therefore a possibility that, while Walburga, or maybe Cygnus, had "disinherited" Andromeda, Arcturus still considered her to be a part of the family ( ... )

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eri1980b April 26 2011, 17:26:54 UTC
Sorry, meant to also say thanks for directing me to this. I would certainly run with this theory.
There are many reasons why Arcturus didn't leave the estate to Draco. I like the theory that Lucius had recently been implicated, therefore had effectively ruled himself out of the running in Arcturus' eyes. Or it could just be that he considered the Malfoys upstarts, whereas the Potters may have been more of an established wizarding family. Who knows?

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danajsparks April 26 2011, 19:16:33 UTC
Agreed. While we'll never know exactly what Arcturus was thinking, we can think of several plausible reasons for why he didn't give the money to Draco.

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slytherinlinzy April 26 2011, 18:28:50 UTC
Okay so, you now have me studying the Black Family Tree and I just thought I'd mention the hp-lexicon site is down. It expired yesterday, so if you haven't downloaded the Tree, you may want to...

And thanks for pointing out Harry's Grandmother was a Black. I thought this wasn't confirmed, although it is on the wiki site, with Harry added in...

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danajsparks April 26 2011, 19:12:17 UTC
Wow thanks for the heads up about the hp lexicon. I really really hope it isn't gone for good. I use it all the time.

As Jodel said somewhere further up, we don't know for absolutely certain that Harry's grandmother was a Black. But Dorea Black and Charlus Potter are shown as having one son fairly late in life, and we know James was an only child with older parents. We don't know about Charlus, but we know that Dorea died in 1977, which matches with Harry's grandmother already being dead in 1981. And there's no evidence in canon that there were any other recent male Potters besides Harry, James, and Charlus. So it seems very likely that Harry's grandparents were Dorea and Charlus.

It's less certain, though, that Calidora Black and Harfang Longbottom were Neville's great-grandparents, or that Barty Crouch Sr. was the son of Charis Black and Caspar Crouch. I think that's more open to interpretation.

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jodel_from_aol April 26 2011, 21:01:56 UTC
True. Even given that the wizarding population that Rowling insists on is too small for there to be a lot of different families with the same names unless they are related to some degree. But there are always cousins.

Actually, we don't know that Doria and Charlus had their son late in life from the tapestry, either. The tapestry doesn't give dates for descendants through the female line any more than it does names. Nor birth order. Just number of sons and daughters.

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danajsparks May 10 2011, 19:21:07 UTC
I missed this comment earlier, sorry. I'm not exactly sure what I was thinking about "late in life" comment since, you're right, the tapestry doesn't show the birth date of Dorea's son. I think I was trying to say that, if Dorea was James's mother, she would have had him fairly late in life, which lines up with what we've been told about the Potters.

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oryx_leucoryx May 10 2011, 18:56:34 UTC
If Sirius was not the property owner of the Black estate that would explain why the Ministry did not attempt to confiscate any of the Dark artifacts using the same law Scrimgeour mentioned in DH (chapter 8 or thereabouts). The last time the Ministry had access to the Black property was in 1991, and I bet Albus used Harry's BWL status to guilt the Ministry into leaving things untouched.

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danajsparks May 10 2011, 19:21:51 UTC
Yes! That would make a lot of sense.

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danajsparks May 10 2011, 19:28:29 UTC
I bet Albus used Harry's BWL status to guilt the Ministry into leaving things untouched.

Maybe this is why Albus spent so much time at the Ministry Harry's first year.

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