[HPforGrownups] Ethnic stereotyping & hybrids

[Tandy, Heidi]

No: HPFGUIDX 20614

Tabouli wrote
> No rotten tomatoes from me for this: it makes extremely good 
> sense to me.  I suspect Fleur may have fallen to the 
> victimising beautiful women and surviving on constant male 
> attention syndrome I described.  As for Malfoy being 
> part-Veela, this would fit with his colouring, but not with 
> his loud proclamations about pure blood, which seem quite 
> cocky and genuine and not the protesting-too-much of someone 
> rejecting their own impurity.

It's been unclear in canon as to whether "pure blood" means purely "magical"
blood, in which case it would be possible to be a pure-blood and still have
veelas, trolls or hags in one's background, or whether it means one only has
witches & wizards in one's background. Also, Ernie MacMillan, in CoS, says
that he can trace his family back through nine generations of witches &
wizards. A muggle generation is approximately 15 years, and is based on
birth years, and since it seems that in canon, witches & wizards have babies
starting at approximately the same time muggles do, you really can't stretch
that to more than 20 years in a wizarding generation. Therefore, nine
generations of witches & wizards meeting the standard for "pure blood" (such
that one will think that the Heir of Slytherin won't get him) cannot be more
than 200 or so years. In other words, 1800-ish. 
Thus, it's a reasonable conjecture to think, if my second definition of
"pure blood" is the real one, that if Draco's great great great great great
great great great great grandmother was a Veela, he'd still be pureblood,
and have a source for that silvery blond hair. 


heidi
some people fear death; I fear literalists