There are enough odd points connected to the extended family of the Blacks that it seems worthwhile to set one article aside to collect most of those points into one place.

All the more so in the wake of DHs.

In February of 2006 JK Rowling took part in a charity auction for a group by the name of Book Aid. As her contribution for this event she donated a sketch which purports to be a portion of the Black family’s genealogical tapestry. As you might expect there was a great deal of interest generated across the fandom in this item. Partial shots of the page were published in a couple of magazines, in one the page was artfully masked by other items, in the other it was carefully greyed out except for a section along one side. These partial views were tantalizing.

And illuminating.

And as frustrating as all get-out.

Which, rather circuitously, brings us to:

A funny thing happened on the road to enlightenment. We seem to have hit a number of potholes concerning the reliability of any information which we have ever been given by Sirius Black.

We already knew that his judgement of character was faulty.

We were provisionally willing to believe that his grasp of the actual facts is still to be accepted. But post-DHs it is clear that he was a bit of a fantasist. And he convinces other people that his stories are true.

Some of these “facts” were that; he was the elder of two brothers, and that he and his younger brother had three female cousins. All older than they. This has proven to be the case.

We were led to believe that his parents were both still alive when he was sentenced to Azkaban. And they allegedly died some “ten years ago” from the vantage point of the summer of ’95. After their deaths, the last of family’s House Elves was left alone in the otherwise empty house.

It has now turned out that although his mother had, indeed, died some 10 years earlier, Sirius Black’s father died in 1979, as did Sirius’s younger brother, Regulus, and that these events took place two years before Sirius was sentenced to Azkaban. Also that their grandfather was still alive at that time, and outlived both of Sirius’s parents, only dying the year that Harry Potter started Hogwarts. This is no longer to be trusted.

He also claims that his brother was murdered, and that was not the case.

We do not know for certain whether or not Regulus survived his father, but we at first assumed that this was most probably true from Sirius’s comment that their father had put every knut he could spare into security spells upon the house. Presumably due to the belated discovery that the Dark Lord was quite as willing to prey upon purebloods as anyone else, and that being a Black was absolutely no protection.

And it really is difficult to accept that Grandfather Arcturus was not a member of the household at #12 Grimmauld Place, for it is obvious that — if only due to the presence of the Family tapestry in it — the house is the “offical residence” of the Head of the Black Family, which he was.

And yet Sirius Black says nothing of any of this. Until the tapestry sketch was made public, in February 2006 we hadn’t a hint.

Well, it belatedly occured to me that although Arcturus was the Head of the family, and #12 had almost certainly been the house in which he raised his own children, if his wife, Melania, had already passed on, Arcturus might not have choosen to continue to live with his son — and his son’s shrieking wife and their squalling infants.

He might choose to live with his (childless) daughter, Lucretia, instead.

Indeed, it is not impossible that Lucretia might have been widowed at some point as well. Her husband was one of the Prewett family. We do not know whether it was only the brothers Gideon and Fabian who were targeted by DEs, or if her husband Ignatius might have been as well. Or, Ignatius may simply have gotten along very well with his father-in-law.

We’ve other problems with the tapestry, however: in GoF Sirius had also claimed that, while still at Hogwarts, Severus Snape had been part of a “gang of Slytherins”, who had nearly all gone on to become Death Eaters. He listed among them “the Lestranges”, and identified them as a married couple, now in Azkaban. Interestingly, he did not name Lucius Malfoy as being a part of this group. (Nor his cousin Narcissia, nor his own younger brother Regulus, nor nor Barty Crouch Jr, etc. etc.)

It is possible that Black was not listing all the members of that particular group, but only that group’s members who had later turned out to be convicted as Death Eaters (although he did mention Avery, and did not mention Mulciber — who was convicted, unless that was Mulciber’s father). Snape may not be the only one of that “gang” who had never come under official suspicion and remained unmentioned.

And yet Sirius did not include Malfoy.

Given the revelations made since that statement was made, even the statement in itself now seems somewhat off-kilter.