The Magic Quill, Hogwarts' Admission and Squibs

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 40836

The Catlady wrote:

> JKR said in an interview long ago that there is a magic quill that 
> writes down the name of every magic child born in the UK. Once a 
> year, McGonagall looks in the quill's book for all the children 
> that 'are' 11 that 'year' and addresses Hogwarts admission letters 
> to them. 

This is yet another of those questions -- much like "how many 
students at Hogwarts?" -- on which I tend to disbelieve the author's 
answer as given in interview because it seems so difficult to 
reconcile with my reading of the actual canon.  I'm not quite sure
that I can believe that birth is when the name appears.

Aldrea touched on my reasons why when she wrote:

> Hagrid's remark..something like "He's had his name down since he 
> was a baby!"...would that be because of Harry's whole deflection 
> thing agianst Voldie? 

That was certainly my reading.  Hagrid says this as if it is not at 
all *usual* for a child to have had their name down for Hogwarts 
since birth.  I tend to agree with Aldrea's suggestion that a child's 
name first appears in the book not at birth, but rather at the moment 
that the child first manifests his or her magical talent.

However, if we want to be able to reconcile JKR's statement as given 
in interview with this idea, then Aldrea suggested a terrific way to 
do so:

> I think someone said earlier it writes down the name when magical 
> children are "born"... could born be used in a sort of spiritual 
> sense? Like when the Magical Moment, the moment when the child 
> first uses some sort of magic, -that's- when they are "born" as a 
> wizard? 

Sure!  That works for me.


The Catlady wrote:

> I am worried how such a system could deal with Muggle-born magic 
> children who emigrated with their parents to UK after birth but 
> before age 11.

Hmmm.  Well, it's a Magical Quill, isn't it?  It has a mystic ability 
to detect magical children.  So I'm willing to accept that it might 
also be able to just *know* which magical children would be living in 
Britain at the age of eleven and which would not.

It's a bit creepy, that, admittedly, since it raises some troubling 
questions of predestination and free will -- but then, so do 
Trelawney's "true prophecies." 

This touches on the question of why families are not notified the 
instant that their child's name goes down in that book, to save them 
the apprehension over their child's eventual future.  My gut feeling 
about this is that the stewards of the Quill deliberately eschew such 
a policy on the very grounds of that thorny predestination/free will 
question.  Had Neville's family already *known* that he was "magical 
enough" to go to Hogwarts, for example, would they have spent so much 
time trying to badger some magic out of him?  And if they hadn't done 
so, then *would* he have qualified for Hogwarts?

I don't think that the Keepers of the Quill know the answers to those 
thorny questions any more than any of the rest of us can, and I 
suspect that this is the reason that McGonagall only ordinarily 
checks the book for the names of those children that are eleven "that 
year."  Harry Potter was likely an exception, as his eventual magical 
status would have been a question of particular interest for the 
wizarding world as a whole.  Hagrid therefore knew that his name had
been in the book since he was a baby, but he would not have had this 
type of knowledge about a less famous or portentious child.

David suggested a rather more ugly reason, though, why the staff of 
Hogwarts might not want to let parents know about their children's 
magical status.

He wrote:

> IOW, most magic reflects the intention of the wizard or witch. This 
> is apparently not the case with birth, in the sense that neither 
> wizards nor Muggles have any way of influencing whether their 
> offspring are magical. (It has occurred to me that the reason 
> Squibs are rare might be infanticide: what do you suppose the
> Malfoys would do if they had a Squib baby? The Fudges?)

Well, if they could tell from the beginning that a child was a Squib, 
then I think that many families probably *would* leave it on a 
mountainside to die, or (if we were talking about the Malfoys) 
possibly even use it in some nasty Dark ritual.  At the very least, I 
suspect that many of those "Fine Old Wizarding Families" would put a 
non-magical child up for Muggle adoption -- and then try to hide the 
evidence that the child had ever even existed.

But I don't get the impression that most magical children first 
manifest their talent early enough in life for this to be a feasible 
policy.  Neville admittedly does seem to have been an unusually late 
bloomer, but Hagrid speaks of Harry's name being down for Hogwarts 
since infancy as if this is quite unusual as well.  My conclusion is 
therefore that most magical children first manifest their gift later 
than infancy, but well before the age of eight (which is when Great 
Uncle Algie finally browbeat some magic out of poor Neville by 
dropping him out of that window).  I'd guess that the norm is for 
children to do their first bit of magic somewhere around toddlerhood.

JKR has also intimated that people can sometimes show their first 
signs of magic quite late in life.  This interests me very much.  
Does the wizarding world have any type of formalized "adult 
education" for extraordinarily late-blooming ex-Squibs?  Or are they 
forced to see to their own training as best they can, relying on 
sorry excuses like Filch's Kwikspell Correspondence Course if they 
cannot afford private tutelage?  Rather hard luck on them, isn't it?


-- Elkins