Sirius' motivation for breaking with his family

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 154142

Gerry wrote:
> Interesting theory, but I go for the simpler one. Sirius favourite
cousin was Tonks, or the other way round I forget. Anyways, they liked
each other a lot. Quite probably he liked his Uncle Ted and his aunt
Andromeda as well, despite his mother telling him how inferior they
were. These things give children an incentive to start thinking for
themselves rather early. The Black family strikes me as not the most
affectionate, whereas Tonks seems to come from a loving home. Sirius
quite probably saw the difference and decided which part of the family
he liked best and wanted to be associated with. 

Carol responds:
Forgive me for correcting the canon here (I'm not going into the
theory of what motivated Sirius Black to hate his family).

Sirius's favorite cousin was Andromeda, as he tells Harry in "The Most
Noble and Ancient House of Black" in OoP. Andromeda, the sister of
Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy, is Sirius Black's first
cousin, not his aunt. Nymphadora Tonks is Sirius's first cousin once
removed (if it matters)--one generation apart from him on the
genealogical charts. She is also considerably younger than he is, only
about six or seven years older than Harry, IIRC, and only a child of
seven or eight when Sirius was sent to prison. I see no evidence of
any close relationship between them--note that she still has her pink
hair and cheerful attitude when we last see her in OoP despite her own
serious injury in the MoM battle and Sirius's death. It's only in HBP
that we see her losing her Metamorphmagus abilities and casting a
changed Patronus that turns out to represent Lupin, not first-cousin-
once-removed Sirius.

At any rate, he does seem to have liked his cousin Andromeda, but I
don't think we can theorize about his relationship with his Muggleborn
cousin-in-law Ted Tonks as there's no evidence one way or the other.
All we know about him is that he's "a right old slob," according to
his daughter. (Odd, since her mother is good at "householdy spells"
and can fold socks with a flick of her wand--maybe another instance of
opposites attracting in the HP books.) But he would have seen little
of Tonks as a child, considering that she was about fourteen years
younger than he was (I'd consult the Lexicon, but the approximate
dates here are close enough for my purposes in this post). He would
not have made his decision to leave home based on Andromeda's marriage
to Ted, much less on her treatment of Tonks, who would have been about
two years old when he moved out at age sixteen.

Carol, who agrees with Gerry that we don't need to resort to an
invented house elf to explain Sirius Black's intense dislike of his
family, given jars of blood and other unpleasant artifacts throughout
the house