Wizard talent in Muggle families

[brooksindy]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C6956
From: brooksindy
Subject: Wizard talent in Muggle families
Date: 8/15/00 11:44 pm  (ET)

Continuing my earlier postulate - Wizards can see through anti-muggle
cover and concealment spells, probably just as a natural consequence of
the 'wizarding gene'.

And we know from a JKR interview about the 'magic feather at Hogwarts
that records the names of all wizard children when they are born' so
they can get their letters later. (Unofficial Harry Potter Fan Club site
has this note). (Gee this reminds me of Professor Xavier's computer that
could detect mutants so he could invite them to his school).

What about parents like the Dursely's who do NOT want their kid going
to such a school? Does enough happen to them, like Harry's Multiplying
Letters, to more or less force them to let the kid go? Then there is
what we hypothesized, the more detailed letter which tells Mugle-born
kids about getting supplies at Diagon Alley. But what if any parents
actually DO resist and the kids are sent to Smeltings or Eton or
wherever. Presumably up to a point the kids still can see the Leaky
Cauldron if they should happen to go by there..... but suppose they
grow up untrained? And become in their own hearts muggles? Is the force
of magic so strong in most such cases that the universe will re-arrange
itself so they *do* wind learning things eventually? OR can they grow up
and lose the ability, if unexercized - to quote from Diane Duane's _So You
Want to Be a Wizard_ series, "Magic does not live in the unwilling heart".

I speculate as above because it occurs to me that such a case might
be a good fanfic starting point, or even a subplot gimmick for a new
character in the JKR's HP Canon itself.