Andromeda Black-Tonks
It may have been nothing more than blind chance or dirty cheating that brought the Black family to the pinnacle of the wizard world in the poorly-documented days of the Dark Ages. The family legend may be nothing more than propaganda. The House may have been Most Ancient indeed before it was at all Noble. But as a code of conduct it lived in the last generation of Blacks to carry the name, the generation which was so intimately involved in the rise and fall and resurrection and second fall, of the Dark Lord Voldomort. And Andromeda Black-Tonks, as her name implied, had never stopped being a Black.
She had been officially disowned. If she happened across her sisters in public, they ignored her very existence. In private, they told the children that, yes, there once had been an Andromeda Black, the second of the three Black sisters; but she had died. And her child was an abomination. The children were left to piece together for themselves how a dead woman could bear a cross-blooded abomination. Her name had been blasted off of the family tree. But it is not in the nature of a Black to accept defeat. A Black does not merely have an uncanny disregard for other people's rules. A true Black has an uncanny disregard for other people's realities; even, sometimes, for other Blacks' realities, if she regards those Blacks as heretical. And Andromeda Black-Tonks, to the venemous rage of her beloved blood-kin, had never stopped being a Black.
The old Black trademarks--the fierce passion and only slightly fiercer dignity, the stubborn loyalty and obstinate enmity, the compulsive elegance, the sharp cunning, the reverance for the old family legend, and above all the steadfast adherence to the family code and uncanny disregard for other people's rules, which we have previously remarked on--never disappeared. Andromeda merely redirected the force and fire of her heritage from its usual aims of high culture, blood purity, and world conquest, into the sometimes less-appreciated field of housekeeping. She conducted her war against the hunger, clutter, and (in the case of her daughter) ignorance that threatened her household with a determination equal to that of the outstanding members of her line in their war against the muggle culture and muggle blood that threatened their world. She who had been born to conquer and rule reveled in her domesticity. She who had been raised to despise those of muggle descent reveled even more in her love for her muggle-born husband and their half-blood daughter. This revelry was most unbecoming of a member in good standing of the Noble and Most Ancient House. But Andromeda Black-Tonks, though in very poor standing indeed, had never stopped being a Black.