: Muggle-borns

[Scott Northrup]

No: HPFGUIDX 49190

Hi all, this is my first post, so forgive me if this has been brought up.  With so much time since GoF was released, I have to imagine most theories have been beaten into the ground.

Anyway-- I've always wondered about Muggle Born students since first seeing SS/f (I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I didn't read any of the books until after seeing both movies... I've read them a few times over since, however).  That 'proud to have a witch in the family' comment from Petunia (in regards to her parents attitudes toward Lily) was always interesting to me.  

Now, it's getting hard to distinguish information from the books, and from reading other peoples' theories, but I seem to recall Ron saying in CoS that he imagines that wizards might have died out if they hadn't interbred with muggles.  So that leads to the question-- is it possible for a wizard to be born to parents of ZERO magical ancestry?  I'm not really sure if that's true or not (there may be some text evidence to indicate that is... geez it's late), but my general feeling is that since magical ability definitely appears hereditary in the books, I would guess that all muggle borns have some Magical heritage.  This of course, hasn't really been intimated in the books, and is basically just trying to apply real world  logic to fiction.  Anyway, if muggle born students had a magical grandparent, or great-grandparent, well, that would certainly explain quite a bit.  Also, this would possibly give a reason why muggle born parents would be able to find magical locales-- perhaps since they carry magical genes, they're immune to anti-muggle spells (or of course, it's pretty easy to imagine that once they've been shown the entrance to a magicallly concealed location, they can find it on their own).  

Anyway... Ockham's Razor would probably just tell us that instead of getting ONLY a letter, a true muggle born would have a guide as well.  Oh well.

--Scott, who should go to bed

P.S. I promise my next post will be more coherent.