Almost every wizarding family in J.K. Rowling's novels runs through the Blacks. Under the long-standing motto Toujours Pur, Pollux Black (1912-1990) and Irma Crabbe married pure-blood to pure-blood, and Orion Black (1929-1979) took his own second cousin Walburga (1925-1985) as his wife. What makes the tree worth reading is not the purity but the damage: the family kept a tapestry to record its ancestry, and burned disfavoured relatives out of it. Many old pure-blood houses — Potters, Tonkses, Lupins, Weasleys, Malfoys — end up interconnected with the Blacks through differing combinations of blood, marriage and godparenthood.
The fractures repeat like a pattern in fabric. Cedrella Black was blasted off the tapestry for marrying Septimus Weasley, making the 'blood traitor' Weasleys blood relatives of the house that despised them. A generation on, Cygnus Black III (1938-1992) and Druella Rosier disowned their middle daughter Andromeda (b. 1953) for marrying the Muggle-born Ted Tonks (d. 1998), while Bellatrix (1951-1998) married Rodolphus Lestrange and Narcissa (b. 1955) married Lucius Malfoy. Walburga's own sons split the same way: Sirius (1959-1996) ran at sixteen and was erased; Regulus (1961-1979) was groomed as the heir, joined the Death Eaters, and died turning against them without his brother ever knowing.
Sirius found his family elsewhere. Fleamont and Euphemia Potter took him in beside their late-born only son James (1960-1981), whose marriage to the Muggle-born Lily (1960-1981) produced Harry (b. 1980) — orphaned at fifteen months and handed to Lily's estranged sister Petunia Dursley, her husband Vernon and their son Dudley. Harry's real inheritance came from Arthur and Molly Weasley, whose seven children include Bill (with Fleur Delacour), Charlie, Percy, the twins Fred and George, Ron and Ginny. The war then thinned every branch at once: Fred at twenty, Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin weeks after Teddy's birth, Ted Tonks killed by Snatchers on the run, Bellatrix killed by Molly, Sirius by Bellatrix.
The tree resolves in the next generation, which the epilogue of Deathly Hallows and the 2016 play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child carry forward. Harry and Ginny's children James Sirius, Albus Severus and Lily Luna carry names chiefly honouring dead family and mentors, though Lily Luna's middle name honours the living Luna Lovegood. Ron and Hermione Granger have Rose and Hugo; Draco Malfoy and Astoria Greengrass have Scorpius, whose closest friend is Albus. Teddy Lupin, raised by his grandmother Andromeda, is involved with Bill and Fleur's daughter Victoire. The Black tapestry's burnt holes are exactly where this family reconnected.
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