[HPforGrownups] Rise of the mudbloods (nasty term...)

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 51279

Jodel:

>Mind you, that's the *current* figure, and we have no idea of how rapidly
it
>reached that percentage.

That's an interesting suggestion - I've sometimes wondered idly whether the
"mix" between wizard and muggle is changing (and what the implications are
of that...)

>I have a strong conviction that bonafide, (unantcipated) Muggle-born
magical
>children were fairly rare in the period before the seclusion. (Halfbloods,
on
>the other hand, were not uncommon.) For one thing, most Muggles were pretty
>well isolated in little rural hamlets until the late 18th and early 19th
>centuries and everyone knew pretty well who one's ancestors were.

I'm quoting from memory, so i may be wrong, but I think the separation was
in the 1670s, at which time I think there was a very low level of
urbanisation virtually globally (certainly in Europe). In the UK, people did
move from place to place - it wasn't uncommon for someone to live and work
in a different village from the one of their birth (though - serendipitously
enough - it became slightly less common from the 1670s onwards because of
changes in social security legislation) so that it's conceivable that a
muggle descendant of mixed ancestors could pop into the gene pool un
beknownst to the local wizard families.

>and, with about the same degree of frequency, in the cities. These births
>were rare enough that the Wizards' Council (or possibly the early MoM by
>then) ultimately decided that the danger to the wizarding population as a
>whole was great enough that to lose these few Muggle-born children to the
>witch hunters was a price they would just simply have to pay for the safety
>of seclusion.

And whether they were abandoned or not, such small numbers coming into the
culture wouldn't have had any particular implications.

>It was the loss of the halfbloods, who had always been much more common,
>that
>brought the wizarding world to the population crisis that it landed in by
>the
>time they commissioned the charmed quill(s?). During that period, families

So am I right in thinking that you think that at the start of the seclusion,
the MoM would have forbidden intermarriage? And that that's why there
stopped being halfbloods?

I also wonder whether the "quill" will make it into the books. It strikes me
that if there is a "write down birth" Charm, then surely someone in the
Ministry has modified it and has a "write down death" Charm (especially if
the MoM has to keep track of its citizens for tax purposes). But a lot of
the plot line in the books relies on the MoM not being aware that certain
people were dead (Peter Pettigrew, Bertha Jorkins, Crouch Jr).

>which could have traced at least some mixed-blood ancestors at the
beginning
>of the seclusion, gradually stopped thinking about that part of their
>bloodline and started regarding themselves as fully pureblooded wizarding
>stock. And not altogether without reason. The birthrate during the early

And 300 years is not unreasonable for keeping a genealogical trace, if you
really need to. Longer and it becomes much more problematical

>Meanwhile, outside the wizarding world, not all of the Muggle-born magical
>children had been caught and executed by the witch hunters, and their fully
>functioning magical genomes had been seeded back into the general Muggle
>population, (rather than having found patronage from the "Big House",
>trained and absorbed into the wizarding population) further raising the
percentage
>of magical genes being passed around in those districts.

As far as Europe goes, the time of the seclusion was the time when witch
hunting pretty much dies out (bit more serendipity there perhaps...) so I
think they would have just grown up as "people that funny things happen
around" and remained unaware of why that was.

>Mind you, Muggle-born magical births have never been common. Even now when
>they represent 25% of an average Hogwarts year's intake that only accounts
>for some 40 children in all of Great Britain (and whatever else is within
>the
>quill's range, using the 1000 people at Hogwarts estimate. If you use the
>400
>students model it accounts for all of 12-15 magical births per year). But

Depending on where you stand in the argument about the numbers of pupils at
Hogwarts and whether that's where all the children go. (Personally I go for
800 which is explicitly stated in one of the books). Not significant for the
muggle world but if you assume that the 25% muggle born is for _all_
children with the wizard gene then it's highly significant for the WW.

>Ofcourse the fanatical pureblood faction can't stand it. Even leaving aside
>that purebloods, in their sense of the term, were never numerous enough to
>keep the WW going, and still aren't, and probably never will be.

There are I think two reason for this. The first one is just a matter of
maths. Human nature and attractions being what they are, then there will
inevitably be marriages between the pure blooded and mixed ancestry wizards.
So that the %age of "pures" will inexorably fall. The second is cultural -
every year (we assume) there is an influx at age 11 of 25% of people who are
at least as familiar (or more so) with muggle culture than with WW culture -
and they stay in contact with that culture at least until the end of their
school days and possibly longer. A very much smaller influx of people from
different muggle cultures is enough to generate all sorts of social
problems, it's fair to assume that wizards are no different.

Cheers

Ffred

O Benryn wleth hyd Luch Reon
Cymru yn unfryd gerhyd Wrion
Gwret dy Cymry yghymeiri