Petunia/wizards/muggles etc

[gkjpo <kristen@sanderson-web.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50616

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "manawydan" <manawydan at n...> 
> Well of course Lily and Petunia are sisters - Lily had the magic 
talent,
> Petunia didn't - there's been a lot of discussion recently not only 
about
> how Petunia felt about it but also whether Dudley might be a wizard 
after
> all.
> 
Yes a truely scary thought.  I vaguely remember a quote from JKR at 
some point saying that someone will discover late in life that they 
are capable of magic.  Could it be Dudley or Petunia? Hmmm.  

> 
> One further piece of speculation though. If wizards and muggles form
> relationships, how do they meet? Most wizards seem to live in a 
wholly
> separate frame of reference and are totally unfamiliar with muggle 
concepts
> so that most of the normal avenues for social contact would seem to 
be
> closed - so how would they get together in the first place?

We just sort of discussed this on another thread (don't worry, I 
didn't expect you to have read it :).  The question there being how 
come the wizards didn't know how to dress like muggles at the World 
Cup if they live mostly intermingled.  Steve's answer was that 
wizards live in their own little enclaves.  They live in the muggle 
world, but either live out in rural areas away from others (e.g. The 
Burrow) or live in a separate area where they keep to themselves 
(like Chinatown).  Either way, they don't mix much. The wizards that 
are half and half probably do have more sense of how to dress and how 
to survive in the muggle world. To answer your question, I would 
guess that those that live in partial-muggle households are more 
likely to intermingle.  Families with squibs may also intermingle 
more as they may have a member that associates with muggles (e.g. the 
Weasly accountant - though granted they don't mix much with him).  
With the wizard world and the muggle world living together, chances 
to meet are inevitable.  What they do with those chances are up to 
them.

> 
> Even scarier piece of speculation - would Death Eaters use the 
Imperius
> spell for the purposes of date rape?

This is scary, but as these are "children's books" I'm going to make 
a strong guess that the subject won't come up.  For a technical 
answer, I would guess that this is not an option as it may breed more 
half-blood wizards - something DEs don't like.

Kristen