[HPforGrownups] Purity of Bloodline

[Sister Mary Lunatic]

No: HPFGUIDX 2359

Alix wrote:
>>>>if Harry was not considered to have sufficient wizarding ancestors to
make himself a pure-blood, surely that would put Voldemort on shaky ground
with his own policies of purity of the gene pool?<<<<<<

AHA!  Perhaps this is the source of Dumbledore's "look of triumph" in GoF.
I would say that since Harry has SOME muggle blood from his maternal
grandparents, then the blood of muggles now flows through Voldemort's veins
as a result of his use of Harry's blood during the "re-birth" ceremony.
Voldemort may have unwittingly made himself part-muggle.  Good joke on him,
if so.

 We know from Hagrid that Lily was muggle-born.  He makes a point of saying
so when the whole "mudblood" prejudice concept was first introduced.  So we
can't argue that Lily & Petunia's parents were magic, and that Petunia is
just a squib, unless we learn sometime in the future that Lily and/or
Petunia were secretly adopted by muggles when they were children.  I don't
see this happening, because it would negate the whole effect that JKR seems
to be presenting, about the mistaken belief that purebloods are the only
"right" sort of magical folk.  We're harking back to parallels with Nazi
Germany and Hitler's pure Aryan blood policy, which of course proved utterly
wrong about the superiority of pure breeding.  Although selective breeding
seems to work for improvement in other animal species, in humans it seems to
have the wrong effect more often than an improvement.  Two brilliant
scientists are just as likely to produce a numbskull or a psychopath, as
they are to produce brilliant functional offspring.  And those two original
brilliant scientists are just as likely to have come from ordinary
parents -- the genius factor in humans is a very strange and random thing.
(whew!  sorry for rambling).

Of course, Harry's blood may NOT be flowing thru V's veins after all.  It
could be that the blood was simply an ingredient to be applied to the
external bath in the cauldron, and that the "thing" that was the embryonic
Lord V did not actually INGEST any of the cauldron's contents.  {{{sigh}}}}

As far as your last question goes, Alix (about how far back Muggle blood is
traced) -- bigotry varies according to region and upbringing.  There are
some areas of the USA where you are considered to be of the Negro race if
even ONE of your great-grandparents had Negro blood.  This is not considered
a good thing in those areas of the country.  Bigotry, pure and simple and
wrong.  On the other hand, many people BRAG about being 1/16th American
Indian ancestry.  Why it is considered intriguing to have a tiny bit of
Native American blood and NOT intriguing to have a tiny bit of
African-American blood is one of the great puzzles of the untutored brain.