12 Grimmauld Place

Sketch dump because why not

this can never be a home, you're home, so stay

This scene in Deathly Hallows is one of my favorite!🥺❤️ - - I’ve made also a full process video of coloring a full page of this comic and a process video of coloring the marauders’ photo! You can find it on my patreon page with the Onigiri Tier! 🍙 If you like what i do and would like to see this kind of content before anyone else, please consider to support me on patreon! (https://www.patreon.com/alessiatrunfio ) In any case, thank you so much!❤️

((I’ve just had a thought…

(Dangerous, I know).

BUT (and I’m sure someone somewhere has probably pointed this out before) I AM STRUGGLING to believe that the home of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black….is just…chilling in a muggle neighborhood.

So, I just hp wiki’d it and I’m supposed to believe that some Black ancestor just happened to be wandering around in muggle London, and decided to convince a muggle to sell them a house that they liked the look of?? And it’s not even like, a rarely used townhouse, it’s literally the FAMILY HOME.

A TERRACED MUGGLE HOUSE.

Like, I’m meant to believe that Walburga “Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks” Black would accept sharing walls with the muggles at numbers 11 and 13 Grimmauld Place? Really?!

JKR I AM CONFUSION.))

The Most Acient and Noble House of Black was probably built sometime in the mid 1800s which is only ancient by American standards

Not to mention that it’s a terraced muggle house (albeit a big terraced house in what would have originally been a very affluent area) in Islington, which—by the time Sirius was born—was not a fancy part of London.

They weren’t living in the midst of a load of wealthy muggles—the houses in that square at that time would almost certainly all have been subdivided into flats with multiple working class families in each property. If you look into the history of Islington on Wikipedia (not the most reliable source I know but) it says that “by the mid-20th century, it was largely run-down and a byword for urban poverty.”.

A byword for urban poverty.

12 Grimmauld Place wasn’t just in a muggle area, it was in an area that would have been nationally associated with desperately poor muggles.

If the Blacks stole the place when it was first built then it would have been well-to-do then, sure, but really looking into this now, something really doesn’t add up for me (which I’m just gonna assume is one of JKR’s ‘I didn’t think this through’ moments we know and love and sometimes hate, but it does raise some interesting theories if we choose to run with the weird).

As far as I can see there’s no mention of the architectural period of the house when we’re first introduced to it in OOTP, so going off the cinematic adaptation: the house in the films is Georgian, which means it was built somewhere between 1714 and 1830. Again according to Wikipedia the biggest period of residential growth in the area occurred in the 19th century, so let’s say the house is later Georgian, built towards the beginning of the 1800s.

We’re told that an “early member of the wizarding House of Black… managed to persuade the original muggle occupant to leave” (from HP Wiki), which again would likely have occurred around the beginning of the 1800s. Which would imply that the Black family is only around 200 years old. When they’re supposedly one of the oldest families in wizarding Britain.

By the pompous, lineage-loving standards of English aristocracy, 200 years is nothing. That’s not an old family. We’re told in other places that the Blacks can trace their name back to the Middle Ages, which is the 15th century AT THE VERY LATEST, could be as early as the 5th. Which is far more realistic for a family with the kind of historical self-importance and aristocratic wealth that the Blacks present in every aspect of their presentation, both explicitly and coded.

So the most logical thing is to assume the authorial error here was in suggesting it was an early member of the family who took on Grimmauld Place—in fact in the grand scheme of things it would have been a relatively recent ancestor.

Which means—and this is where fun opportunities for us fanfic writers begin—there’s no fucking way Grimmauld is the original Black ancestral home.

Which is really the only thing that makes sense: I mean look at the Malfoys. They live in a fucking enormous great manor in the Wiltshire countryside. THAT is in keeping with the wealth and excesses of the upper echelons of British aristocracy. 12 Grimmauld Place seems like the kind of place a spoiled son might have fancied and procured for himself whilst bored on a day trip to London so that he could have a city pad.

So. So. What happened to the original home? Why did the family pack up and move to what would to them have been tantamount to an urban dive (a muggle urban dive) and then not only that, but stay there even when the area fell into economic decay around them? When they couldn’t even say they lived surrounded by rich muggles anymore? Why wouldn’t they just move back to whatever castle, mansion, manor or whathaveyou they MUST have come from?

What happened to it?

Dude I’m fucking INTO this now I feel like a PI I’m gonna have to write something about this at some point but IN CONCLUSION: disregarding any possibility that Sirius just never set foot outside his front door his whole childhood (which seems ludicrous even by the Black family standards, not to mention he’s the kind of kid who definitely snuck out), he (and Regulus) grew up surrounded by poor, working class muggles. Could that have been the origin of his and his family’s daggerheads conflict? Did Sirius try to befriend neighbours and reject his parents’ rejection of people who were almost certainly kinder and warmer to him?

Also, 12 Grimmauld Place is not in fact the true ancestral home of the family, but a relatively recent acquisition into which they seem to have spilled, and I can only imagine under duress following the loss of the original property. Was it damaged? Were the Blacks, perhaps, a figure of faded grandeur long before we might have suspected? Did they lose the house for financial reasons?

Who knows. Writers, go wild.

@lizziebennetnotinjapan don’t make proposals you’re not willing to honour I have a fragile heart

@lizziebennetnotinjapan (can’t reply, secondary blog) I would never lay a hand on TT ever they seem to have a very large family not to mention many, many online followers some of whom could probably find out where I live. I shall retire in anguish (but like… noble anguish…) and wish the both of you well from a distance at which no-one can hit me. Unless the whole ‘fight for your hand’ thing involved swords, in which case I’d absolutely do it. I’d still lose, so so badly, but it’d be worth it for swords…

@hogwartsheadcanon I am stealing literally everything you just said about 12 Grimmauld Place please and thank you.

How about I offer up something for you guys to gnaw on for the weekend.

The Noble and Ancient House of Black was traced from the Middle Ages - but the country cottage (chortle) would rival anything by the Malfoys.

But where the Black family lost ground to the nouveau riche Malfoy family was that a predecessor of the Malfoys had the business acumen to invest in the early days of the Muggle Industrial Revolution.  Where the Black family relied on their estates for wealth but not necessarily income, the Malfoy investor threw their galleons into banking and international trade (and if you think of the Desi!Pudder family which eventually resettled back in Cornwall) they would have made bundles. They grew wealthy but also had various legitimate income streams outside of the Wizarding world. A capitalist has no qualms exploiting any situation to make money. A Malfoy wouldn’t have the ethics to turn down such an opportunity, either, even if it was from those dirty Muggles.

The Black family? To keep up their appearances would have to take out loans on their properties, for upkeep and other sordid sundries. The Malfoys? Building their wealth and income to obscene levels, and thus banking the bulk of it in Gringott’s.

The thing about loans is…. they eventually come due.

And while one of their land holdings was a city residence in London, “Ghastly, living that close to Muggles and their stench,” it was a place where if they had to conduct affairs, they could do so, comfortably.

So when the loans on the Black estate finally came due, the house was in disrepair and the lands only worth sickles on the galleon in value to the loan holder.

(Without infusions of new investment streams, the money will eventually run out, especially if you have someone who is a spendthrift.)

The Malfoy family capitalized on the backs of Muggles - and the Blacks, too haughty in their pride to interact with them, slowly went bankrupt.

So all that was eventually left was Grimmauld Place, in Islington, and in a rubbish part of town, then. Their family wealth? Slowly eroded over the course of 200 years, due to poor fiduciary management.

Yes, I realize there is a huge loophole in my thinking: The Black family vault, hidden deep inside Gringott’s, protected by an Opaleye***

Maybe… Maybe that particular branch of the Black family withered away, cut off from the Original ancestral line. While the wealth stayed concentrated in the main family, the outliers went bankrupt and slowly died out.

(Thinking of the Rothchilds for inspiration and how obscene their family wealth value is.)

(**** inspired by my family history on one particular branch that was owners for a time of Kenure House, in Rush, County Dublin, Ireland.)

I’ve read this series since the age of fifteen, and I’ve only just realised that Grimmauld Place is in Islington. Hard to believe that The Black Family lived in the same area as Jeremy Corbyn. 

Now, THAT would be a crossover I’d like to see. 

The house was bought by Cedrella Black. 

She was involved with Septimus Weasley a well knows blood traitor and someone she knew her family wouldn’t approve of. What better place to hide an affair from your pureblood supremacist family then Muggle London?

When she was disowned for marrying him the house was confiscated because it was bought with Black money, therefore belongs to the Black family and later gifted to Sirus’s mother as a wedding present.

So Ron is distantly related to Draco Malfoy. Yeesh. 

3rd cousins once removied.

Septimus Weasley is Ron’s grandfather. 

Sirius and Ron are second cousins twice removed.

Phineas Nigellus Black is Ron’s great great Grandfather.

I devoured the Black Family Tree when JKR first posted it on her website.

The speculation that Charlus Potter is Harry’s grandfather turned out to be wrong when JKR reviled Fleamont Potter was Harry’s grandfather.

That speculation would explain why JK Rowling had to make it clear who Harry’s grandfather was. Otherwise, Harry x Ginny could be considered incestuous. Ew.