Pretty Much Every Potterhead Was Wrong About the Black Family, Here's Why
We just found out that most Harry Potter fans fell victim to one weird misconception when it comes to the Black sisters. Don’t worry, though: we were wrong just the same.
In the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, some families just live their lives — and others bask in the riches and glory of their ancestors to the point of forgetting they are humans, too. Among all the British noble wizards, the Blacks have always been the most recognizable and notorious…but as we know, they were not all the same.
Following the plot of the Harry Potter books and movies, we get to know three out of five kids from this family. We get pretty close to Sirius Black and also get quite a few peeks at Bellatrix and Narcissa, Harry’s Godfather’s cousins. However, Regulus and Andromeda are completely off our radars, and we only learn a little about them.
This, coupled with the distinct features of the Blacks we know, led to a surprisingly common misconception among the fans. Pretty much all Potterheads intuitively think that out of the three Black sisters, Narcissa was the oldest, Andromeda was the youngest, and Bellatrix was the middle child. But this is wrong on every single step!
One tiny detail reveals the truth as Albus Dumbledore tells Harry about the rules of inheritance after his Godfather’s death. The Headmaster mentions that if not for Sirius’s will, the Grimmauld Place apartment would’ve been inherited by Sirius’s eldest living blood relative, and that would’ve been Bellatrix Lestrange, his cousin.
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This makes Bellatrix the eldest of the Black sisters; but what about the others? Well, based on the Black Family Tree J.K. Rowling wrote, Andromeda is actually the middle daughter, and Narcissa is the youngest. So the order goes: Bellatrix, then Andromeda, then Narcissa. Completely different from what we all thought, right?
This revelation goes pretty well with the three sisters’ characters, too: Bellatrix, the eldest sister, is willing to do crazy things for attention; Andromeda, the middle sister, is more rebellious; and Narcissa, the youngest sister, is the most tame and reasonable. As an afterthought, it really works — but we were clueless before.
Source: The Harry Potter Lexicon