Weighing In Very Late on the House of Black

[Eileen Rebstock]

I am, as one might suspect, quite taken with the Ancient and Most Noble
House of Black's family tree. Even with the mistakes, which put the lid
on the "JKR's math isn't wrong! It all makes sense if you stand on your
head and squint" school of theorizing. Some people enjoyed that, but it
was beginning to dizzy me. Now that it's wide open that some of her
dates are wrong, I feel gloriously free again to think along sensible
lines. 

If I were writing a fanfic - which I'm not - I'd write Snape as three
years younger than Bellatrix, on the very canon basis that it feels
good.

The other reason I love the family tree is that everyone is related. I
used to dream they were related like that. Now it's fact. I couldn't be
happier. Barty Crouch Sr. being Arthur Weasley's first cousin, I didn't
dream of *that*. So was Percy's appointment nepotism? 

Frank Longbottom's relationship to both Barty Jr. and Bellatrix is also
pretty twisted. Particularly the closer one to Barty Jr. since I gather
the answer to the perennial question, "How did Barty Jr. get past the
Longbottoms' guard?" could be summed up with "Barty Jr. was *family*."
After all, both the Longbottoms and Crouches were on the same side of
the war.

Eileen