Phineas Black II

## Phineas Nigellus Black II

**Phineas Nigellus Black II** (2 November, 1883 - 23 December, 1944) was an English-turned-French pure-blood wizard and Socialist who was best known in life in his campaigns for squib and muggle rights, beliefs which he was disowned for at the young age of twenty-six. He was among the original three wizarding founders of the Association for the Advancement of Squib's Rights in 1908. Black, being from a traditionalist, dark, and old wizarding family, was instrumental in the group's beginnings and hoped to spread their work in mainland Europe.

Phineas and his branch of the Black family unfortunately reached the most prominence post-humously, during the height of the Global Wizarding War, in 1944. In December of that year, Phineas, with his wife, son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren, were massacred by followers of Grindelwald in Paris.

## Biography

### Early life (1883-1895)

He was the third of four sons belonging to Headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black I and Ursula Black (née Flint), and the third of their five children. Despite being named for his father, Phineas would later be disowned from the family in 1909 for supporting muggle and squib rights.

#### Earliest years (1883-1889)

Phineas Nigellus Black II was born on 2 November, 1883, into the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, an old wizarding family, who looked down on any except other "respectable" pure-blood wizards and believed in pure-blood supremacy. He was the second son of Phineas Nigellus Black and his wife Ursula Black (née Flint), and was four years younger than his older brother, Cygnus Black III, and six years younger than his oldest brother, Sirius Black II.

His father, Phineas Nigellus I, was Head of the House of Black, and his oldest brother, Sirius, was heir to the house, making the infant Phineas II third in line for the headship at the time of his birth. When Phineas was a little less than a year old, his mother, Ursula, gave birth to his younger brother, Arcturus. And when Phineas was three, he gained a little sister, Belvina.

Apart from his father's duties as head, Phineas Nigellus Black also held the position of Headmaster of Hogwarts, and as a consequence had very little time for children.

Phineas's mother, Ursula, stayed at home and was instrumental in the running of the Black household. During this time, the Black family had only a handful of human servants staffed at Grimmauld Place, and they used house elves mainly as cooks. It was Ursula who was notorious for her preferences to be waited on by "clean" individuals, and not such "dirty" house elves as the Black family traditionally relied on.

But after the birth of Phineas's younger sister, Belvina (his mother's fifth child overall), Ursula became very ill. Immediately after the birth of Belvina, Ursula was confined to her bed. Phineas was only three years old. For the next three years she would linger, until she finally passed away on 27 October, 1889, when Phineas was six years old, nearly seven.

#### Aunt Elladora (1889-1895)

His father, Phineas the Elder, then already Headmaster, as well as the six year old Phineas's older brother, Sirius Black II, then a first-year student at Hogwarts, briefly returned to Grimmauld Place during the autumn of 1889 to bury Ursula, but afterwards they both returned to Hogwarts. Phineas's father hired additional servants to take care of the younger children, including Phineas, aged six, Arcturus, aged five, and Belvina, aged three, and Cygnus- aged ten. Their spinster aunt, Elladora Black, 39, who Belvina supposedly loathed, began living at Grimmauld Place as well, in order to keep an eye on things.

Elladora Black, according to one of the servants living in Grimmauld Place during this time, was not "benignly maternal." Elladora was the one who began to institute the policy of cutting off the heads of the family house-elves and mounting them on the wall once they became too old to carry a tea tray. She effectively ran her brother's household after the death of her sister-in-law.

As a consequence of Aunt Elladora's policies at Grimmauld Place, the young Phineas came to know his governess, Amelia Pettigrew, and nursery maid, Delia Goshawk, better than he knew his own parents. Even still, his aunt Elladora was an ever-looming presence in his life, and instilled fear in the minds of Phineas, Arcturus, and the little Belvina.

#### Hogwarts years (1895-1902)

"*I do not like how my third boy has turned out… perhaps his brother may be more of use to me. Sirius and Cygnus are clever, well-educated chaps, and will restore our House to prominence in the courts. I do not understand these progressive ideas filling my younger’s head; perhaps I will terminate Miss Shacklebolt’s employment… must make house visit…*"
—Phineas Nigellus Black I's remarks on his namesake, then aged 11
Phineas Black the younger began attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the school of which his own father was Headmaster of, in September of 1895. He was sorted into Slytherin House on 1 September of that year. He was four years behind his older brother, Cygnus, who was a fourth year when he started. His older brother, Sirius Black II, and heir to the house, was in his seventh and final year of school.

Phineas was largely disconnected from his older two brothers. In fact, it could be argued that the only sibling that he was close to was his younger brother Arcturus, who was a little more than a year younger. At school, he likely came to know his father in private meetings in the Headmaster's Office. Unfortunately, his father did not like what Phineas had turned out to be, and details about the younger were penned in Phineas the Elder's personal diaries.

Phineas left his father's school at the age of eighteen upon the completion of his seventh year. All the while, he had become increasingly more vocal about the treatment of others. When he was twelve, his governess, Miss Cora Shacklebolt, was removed from the Black household and her employment terminated, to which Phineas protested.

In Phineas's sixth year of school, Angus Buchanan's *My Life as a Squib* was published, which instant became a worldwide bestseller, bringing the plight of the Squibs to the wizarding world's attention. Phineas made a visit to Buchanan's home after writing him several letters, where he was able to speak to the man in person. His father found out and threatened to make Buchanan's life incredibly difficult if Phineas did not visit. Then Phineas suggested that it should be him punished, not Buchanan, and Phineas the Elder wrote of a successful discipline in which his son admitted that he would no longer consort with such filth.

However, Phineas the Younger was becoming more and more determined to bring the plight of squibs to light. During the same time as Squibs were being disenfranchised, violence against them were increasing. Squibs sent to the muggle world wholly unprepared ended up as paupers, and plenty of them were being imprisoned by muggles and classified as mentally deficient or insane; Phineas hoped to enter politics to prevent Squib children from being cast out into the muggle world entirely. He began charitable work in a poor wizard's settlement house just after Hogwarts, where he met many squibs and muggle-borns, who lived and worked in crowded conditions.

#### Association for the Advancement of Squib's Rights (1908)

He was one of the three bright young scholars to form the Association for the Advancement of Squib's Rights in 1908, fresh out of school. Phineas was just twenty-five and formed the coalition with two other colleagues of his. Following a particularly gruesome Squib Riot in 1907, Phineas and the two others met to work on organizing for squib rights. They sent out solicitations for support to more than 60 prominent individuals involved with the movement in the south of England, and hoped to gain the support of squibs worldwide, their main source of concern. They set a meeting date for late 1908, where the group was officially formed.

His father, Phineas Nigellus Black I, violently disowned his son as a result of Phineas's involvement with the Association. Phineas then became victim to a blood malediction which caused him to lose his magic, slowly, until he would be nothing more than a muggle. Fearing that his father would murder him, and not thoroughly understanding what had happened to him at first, Phineas escaped to France, injured though wholly intact.

### Later life (1902-1944)

After his disownment at the age of twenty-six, Phineas fled to Paris, France, where he met and married Cléo Duval, a French muggle, who herself was a Socialist, and the daughter of a statesman who had been similarly disowned. Phineas found commonality in their respective situations and though they came from very different worlds (his being the Wizarding World and hers the Muggle), they wed in 1912. Together they had one son, Édouard Black, in 1913. Phineas enlisted the help of several Squib and French socialists in the wizarding spectre that found the family a place to live.

For the rest of Phineas's life he lay low in exile with his family, slowly losing his magic. He at one time hoped that his son, Édouard, would not inherit any magical ability whatsoever, but Phineas was forced to tell Cléo about their son's abilities when Édouard became accepted to Beauxbatons Académie de Magie. His son, Édouard, began attending Beauxbatons in 1921 at the age of eight.

Phineas was the grandfather of his son's two children, Thérèse and Amélie, and the father-in-law of Elena Black (née Bonaparte). He continued the work for the advancement of squib's rights from his home in Paris, where the family lived with several others in a shared apartment.

#### Global Wizarding War

Phineas and his branch of the Black family unfortunately reached the most prominence post-humously, during the height of the Global Wizarding War, in 1944. In December of that year, Phineas, with his wife, son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren, were massacred by followers of Grindelwald in Paris.

## Etymology

The name Phineas most likely means "Nubian" from the Egyptian name *Panhsj*, though some believe it means "serpent's mouth" in Hebrew. In the Old Testament, Phinehas was the grandson of Aaron in the Bible. He stopped a plague by killing two of the sinners who caused it. Also in the Bible Phinehas is the son of Eli, killed in battle with the Philistines.