[HPforGrownups] wizard/muggle relations: The Dark Side

[Sushi]

No: HPFGUIDX 48634


>It could be just me, but I suspect that Draco had a quiet respect - not 
>liking - for hermione.  However, some of the 'good' wizards do not 
>hesitate at possibly inflicting permerment harm on Muggles.  What an 
>Irony; the 'bad' wizards may respect muggles and muggle-born more then the 
>'good' ones.


         You mean respect through fear?  I'd like to know where you get 
your suspicions of Draco's respect for Hermione, but I can see where this 
sort of thinking would come from.

         Take Voldemort.  Based on CoS, set during '92-'93, he attended 
Hogwarts from about 1938 to about 1945.  Given that he was shuffled between 
the wizarding and Muggle worlds (school and summers), he would have seen 
what Muggles are capable of (via news reports, possibly newsreels if the 
orphanage had access to any, the Blitz, rationing, the general civilian 
horrors of WWII).  Let's face it, humans are more than capable of doing 
some nasty things to each other.  While a pure-blood wizard would be at 
least somewhat isolated from the direct impact of that sort of thing and 
raised with, presumably, a different basic moral code to what a Muggle 
would be given (that's a can of worms in itself), a Muggle-born or a 
half-blood would be exposed to, well, the nastiness that can ensue without 
the threat of things like Veritaserum and dementors.  In Voldemort's case, 
this is a double-edged sword: it could have influenced him and made him 
more creative in his view (I hesitate to say "crueler" as I have no doubts 
a pure-blood can be a nasty SOB); at the same time, it might have instilled 
a more realistic view of what Muggles are capable of doing should they ever 
find out about the wizarding world.

         If that sort of attitude is instilled, especially in the Death 
Eaters' children, it would provide a painfully fertile breeding ground for 
fear, bigotry, and intolerance of anything Muggle via a sense of 
self-preservation.  Comparing HP canon with mythology about witchcraft (not 
ignoring all those people who say that the books are evil), it's easy to 
see how prejudice in this case could go both ways.  Despite its power, the 
wizarding world is a fragile thing.  When the numbers are 50,000 to one, a 
wand isn't going to be very adequate protection.

         Oh, yeah, I'm new around here. :)  Haven't had much time to read 
lately (the Hellidays are upon me, and I want to go hide), but I'm enjoying 
what I've seen so far.  I so dearly, dearly hope I'll have time to get to 
my back emails. *grin*

Sushi, Snape fanatic and Voldemort addict


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