R.A.B. - Sirius's dear old mum?

[Goddlefrood]

No: HPFGUIDX 142202

It may be possible that someone has speculated as to Mrs. Black 
being R.A.B. before, but possibly only as a name without any real 
exposition.

Here is my spin on R.A.B.

As readers of this piece you will be asked to make some leaps.

I first began pondering on who R.A.B., as we all probably did, 
immediately after reading HBP. Like many others, and without first 
trawling the net, I came up with Regulus Black. Then, having read a 
few theories and pondered some more I came up with Mrs. Black. What 
follows is some reasoning behind this conclusion.

My first reason is that based on all we know regarding JKR she loves 
to mislead we readers. That the answer would be so obvious I find 
unlikely. Regulus, I believe was involved and this should become 
clear in this post.

Mrs. Black makes her first appearance in Chapter Four of OotP and is 
described:

"The moth-eaten velvet curtains Harry had passed earlier had flown 
apart, but there was no door behind them. For a split second, Harry 
thought he was looking through a window, a window behind which an 
old woman in a black cap was screaming and screaming as though she 
were being tortured - then he realised it was simply a life-size 
portrait, but the most realistic, and the most unpleasant, he had 
ever seen in his life. 

The old woman was drooling, her eyes were rolling, the yellowing 
skin of her face stretched taut as she screamed; and all along the 
hall behind them, the other portraits awoke and began to yell, too, 
so that Harry actually screwed up his eyes at the noise and clapped 
his hands over his ears."

This set some alarm bells ringing when I recently reread OotP. Why 
would the portrait be done in such a horrendous manner? Surely the 
subject of the portrait would want to be seen in a better light than 
she actually is. Then it occurred to me that Dumbledore's portrait 
appeared on the wall of his former office shortly after his death 
and without too much of a stretch I concluded that perhaps Mrs. 
Black's portrait appeared on the wall in the hall shortly after her 
death. The permanent sticking charm could easily have been placed on 
the spot prior to death, but it is important to this theory that the 
actual portrait appeared after death.

The description of rolling eyes, yellowing skin and the matter of 
torture being mentioned suggested to me a more advanced state of 
poisoning than the point Dumbledore had reached atop the tower. It 
sounds to me like the condition somebody would be in at death if 
that death were caused by slow poisoning from the potion in the 
cave. (A leap). It would also account for the apparent vast 
difference in age between Sirius and his mother in that the potion 
has the effect of making the person drinking it look older than they 
are over time.

My calculation is that Regulus died around 1980 and his mother in 
1985 based on Sirius telling us she had died some 10 years prior to 
the events in OotP, that is if my memory serves.

We are never told exactly how much younger than Sirius his brother 
Regulus is. What we do know, at least from Sirius, is that Regulus 
became a Death Eater and that Sirius was approximately 22 when he 
was sent to Azkaban. This would mean that at the time Regulus died 
Sirius was 21. Regulus was younger so we should ask: how much 
younger?

I do not find it unrealistic to propose that Regulus had not reached 
the age of majority in the wizarding world. The precedent for a 
Death Eater being less than 17 has been set in canon by Draco. 
Before anyone disputes whether Draco was a Death Eater consider this 
from the Mugglenet / Leaky Cauldron Combined Interview of 16th July 
2005, where JKR said:

"But I thought of Draco as someone who is very capable of 
compartmentalizing his life and his emotions, and always has done. 
So he's shut down his pity, enabling him to bully effectively. He's 
shut down compassion — how else would you become a Death Eater?"

Piecing it together I propose that Regulus was asked to do a job 
that was equaly irksome as Draco's in HBP but in Regulus's case he 
decided to back out rather than proceed. While he was a DE he came 
to know of LV's steps to secure him from death. Mrs. Black from this 
snippet of information garnered from her favourite boy, and possibly 
because she was at Hogwarts at the same time as LV, deduced that LV 
had made a Horcrux (note singular). She would have known of his 
roots and could have found out about the cave from inquiries with 
the orphanage. She then took Regulus with her to the cave and 
retrieved the heavy locket come across by Harry and co. in Chapter 
Six of OotP.

Alternatively she took Kreacher with her some time after Regulus's 
death and died a lingering death by poison. Regulus is a favoured 
son as indicated by the Black family tapestry. Mrs. Black, despite 
her alleged approval of the Dark Arts, would want some form of 
vengeance for her only loyal boy.

There is some evidence in canon that Mrs. Black was a gifted 
potioneer. Firstly is the permanent sticking charm that no-one in 
the Order seems able to remove, so it must be some strong glue! 
There is also mention of other potions and ingredients for the same 
around in Number Twelve Grimmaud Place. Two examples are the "ornate 
crystal bottle with a large opal set into the stopper, full of what 
Harry was quite sure was blood" (page 99, Bloomsbury hardback) 
and "a musical box that emitted a faintly sinister, tinkling tune 
when wound, and they all found themselves becoming curiously weak 
and sleepy" (page 108). Both suggest to this author potion activity.

Mrs. Black would have been well able, if my suppositions are correct 
to replace the potion in the bowl at the cave. She then deteriorated 
into the woman pictured in the portrait and died alone and forgotten.

Sirius misjudges another character, as he has been prone to do.

R.I.P. Romula Andromeda Black?

Goddlefrood