Other LV relatives; Belletrix, Narcissa & Sirius (was: Wizarding Relations)

[psychic_serpent]

No: HPFGUIDX 66514

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jsmithqwert" 
<jsmithqwert at h...> wrote:
> I don't think that Voldemort is related to either Sirius or 
> Harry.  For that matter, we know from CoS that he is the last 
> remaining descendent of Salazar Slytherine and, therefore, cannot 
> be related to any other extent person. If he truly is the _last_, 
> than no one else who is related to him can be alive because they 
> too, would be descendents of Salazar.

That isn't quite true.  Let's say that it is on his mother's 
father's side that he is related to Slytherin (since his mum was 
said to have given him the middle name "Marvolo" after her father).  
There's still his mother's mother's family.  He could have a whole 
slew of relatives through that relationship, and while they wouldn't 
also be related to Slytherin, like him, they WOULD be related to Tom 
Riddle/Voldemort.  So there's no reason to believe that Voldemort 
couldn't have distant cousins and great aunts/uncles through the non-
Slytherin-related relatives.  I still don't think that Harry is 
related to him, nor Sirius, though.  I'm not sure what purpose this 
would serve.

For that matter, I felt rather like Narcissa Malfoy being born 
Narcissa Black was just conceived of for this book, purely for the 
purpose of Kreacher considering her to be family, so he could go off 
and use the excuse that he was still with a family member to whom he 
was supposed to be loyal.  After all, Harry gives fairly good 
descriptions of both Bellatrix Lestrange (nee Black) and of Narcissa 
Malfoy (nee Black) in GoF, and they don't seem like they could 
genetically be full sisters.  Belletrix is described as having very 
dark coloring, whereas Narcissa has very fair hair (and, I think, 
light eyes, but I'd have to check GoF again--if she doesn't have 
light eyes, it would be against the odds for her son to have 
inherited his father's light eye color).  I think putting all of 
these people into the same family was probably a last-minute affair, 
and something I found to be a little irksome (although not as much 
as using the tapestry to communicate the info about the family tree).

Another thing, from PoA, which makes it seem that JKR hadn't thought 
all along of Narcissa being Sirius' cousin, is the way Draco Malfoy 
talks about Sirius, especially when he's suggesting to Harry that HE 
would go and hunt down Sirius himself if he were in Harry's shoes.  
In light of OotP it just doesn't ring true.  If Draco Malfoy were 
related to Sirius Black, he'd probably be gloating to Harry about 
how his cousin had fooled Harry's stupid parents into thinking he 
was their friend, before handing them over to Voldemort, and that he 
hoped Sirius, his cousin, got away scot-free.  

It's all very well and good to introduce new ideas, and even for her 
to have had brainstorms that didn't occur until the writing of a 
subsequent book (I'm sure there's plenty of things she might have 
first thought of that will never make it into the books, and I'm 
glad she went with Rita Skeeter instead of the Weasley cousin in 
GoF), but with this one it just doesn't seem that she thought about 
whether it was plausible in light of what went before.  Another 
purpose of it could be, in general, to make it seem that pureblooded 
wizards are very inbred, but I don't think that we needed the 
tapestry to come to that conclusion. ;)

--Barb

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