Cousins by marriage ?

[delwynmarch]

No: HPFGUIDX 106528

I, Del, wrote :
> I disagree. The way Sirius said it, just after explaining that all 
> the pureblood families are inter-related and that this means that 
> the choice of partner is very limited if your kids are to be pure-
> bloods too, I take it to mean that *both* Molly and Arthur are blood 
> relatives to Sirius.

Bookworm answered :
> In theory, Molly and Sirius could be "cousins by marriage" if 
> Molly's cousin married Sirius' cousin. There would be no blood 
> relation between Molly and Sirius.  In practice, however, you may be 
> right.  

Del replies :
You could be right too, it would fit better with the text.
What I was disagreeing with was the idea that Molly was Sirius's
cousin by marriage because she had married Arthur, a blood relative of
Sirius (but now that I think of it in light of this post, I'm not even
sure that's what the poster I was answering to actually meant). But I
think now that I was probably half-wrong : from what Sirius said,
Molly was indeed a relative by marriage of Sirius before she married
Arthur, but it's not clear that she was blood-related to him. Though
that would contradict the statement that all the pureblood families
are inter-related. OI, my head hurts !!

Bookworm wrote :
> This could be an area JKR didn't think about in detail when she made 
> them cousins by marriage, but said someplace else that all the 
> families are related.  Or it may be the relationship is so far up 
> the family tree that it hardly matters.  (Do you think we will ever 
> fint out?)

Del replies :
I would think it's probably a case of one of two extremes : either JKR
did figure everything out in detail, and those things will play an
important role later. Or she didn't and we'll never hear about them again.

Del