Black Family

• Araminta Meliflua Black
• Licorus Black
  • Cygnus Black
    • Sirius Black
    • Phineus Nigellus Black
      • Sirius Black II
        • Arcturus Black III
          • Orion Black
            • Sirius Black III
            • Regulus Arcturus Black
          • Lucretia Black
        • Lycoris Black
        • Regulus Black
      • Cygnus Black II
        • Pollux Black
          • Walburga Black
          • Alphard Black
          • Cygnus Black III
            • Bellatrix Black
            • Andromeda Black
            • Narcissa Black
        • Cassiopeia Black
          • Araminta Meliflua Black
        • Dorea Black
        • Marius Black
      • Belvina Black
      • Arcturus Black II
        • Callidora Black
        • Charis Black
        • Cedrella Black
      • Phineus Black
    • Elladera Black
    • Iola Black
  • Misapinoa Black
  • Arcturus Black
• Eduardus Limette Black

Unlike the Longbottom family, we have at least one cannon reference for the blacks as a "noble" family. We do not know if that means they were in fact part of the peerage or not though. A significant part of a ton of existing fan fiction assumes there is a "family vault" that is controlled by a "Lord Black." It also seems to be a reasonable supposition based on what the books do state. Many such fan fiction works further speculate that the Malfoy family expects to inherit that control and that title. If you take Mrs. Rowling's Black family tree¹ as part of cannon, such speculation is baseless. You have to be careful because she does not clearly distinguish the male and female children, and because she does not put the children in birth order on any given line, but if you work your way through it, once Phineus Nigellus inherited, then the his son Sirius II was heir. Sirius III, Harry's Godfather, descends from that line. Assume that a godson cannot inherit - reasonable. Next in line would be Arcturus I, who had no male children, but decedents of Harfang Longbottom are unlisted, that might include Neville. Secondly, since we know that Sirius III was not properly disinherited because he does inherit Grimmauld Place, it is reasonable to suspect that Cedrella Black might not have been either, despite her marriage to Septimus Weasley. If so, then the Weasleys would be in line after the Longbottoms (assuming it is a different and now extinct branch of the Longbottom family that descends from Harfang. We know that Arthur Weasley, minimally, lives to inherit, so there would be no need to go to the third son of Phineus Nigellus - Cygnus I, from whom Draco is descended. Remember, even if girls cannot inherit, their sons can. If the Black family is following an absolute male only primogeniture, then Draco would still be unable to inherit as he is in line via his mother, who would be disqualified by gender. The dates for this line of speculation are in the History timeline.

On a side note, while it flies in the face of some of what I've written above, Tigerman has an interesting theory in his work RuneMaster. He suggests that it is very odd that the portrait of Walburga Black should be so hard to curtain and cover the way it is, and that more magic must be at work than just the sticking charm.² While his sense of story timeline is bizarre, I do like this theory. CmptrWz, in For Want of an Outfit used a different but equally magical mechanism to the same end in Chapter 28.³