Why do Muggles have Wizard Children

[ceefax2002]

No: HPFGUIDX 70094

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "manawydan" <manawydan at n...> wrote:
> >Mai wrote:
> 
> >>Ceef wrote:
> >> On the other hand, parent C (let's call him Lucius) with a
> >>genotype of
> >> m m, and parent D (Narcissa) also m m, would have nothing but m m
> >> children, with nothing to override the recessive genes.
> 
> >What about Squibs? Despite the claims of the Kwikspell course, i
> >dont think anyone who is *truly* a squib can do magic. (or else I'm
> >sure Ms. Figg would have learnt some).
> >
> >Maybe Squibs are just random mutations. (as some muggle-born
> >children might be).
> 

Ceef again:

The above was a bit of a over simplification - obviously there's not
just one gene that controls magical ability! Think of it like skin
colour - there's an entire spectrum available, and you can get a
pretty good idea of what the kids are going to look like by checking
out the phenotype of the parents (er... the expressed genes (what they
look like)), but that's no solid guarantee.

A squid would therefore be the equivalant of two dark-skinned parents
having a light-skinned child - which happens fairly frequently, even
though it's not thought of as the norm.

In any event - just because a wizard and a witch get married and have
kids, it doesn't necessarily follow that the wizard is the one who
provided the genetic material... ^_^

> The original post was a simplification of something that is a lot more
> complicated!
> 
> To know how many Ms and ms there are (and in the absence of a Wizard
Genome
> Project!)

Ceef again:

That is *such* a good idea! Anyone sees any wizards, tag them and
bring them in (Don't worry, we'll release them back into the wild when
we're done...)

<snip>

> Later, and I'm thinking that it was when humans began living in larger
> settlements, the concept emerged that wizards had things in common,
and that
> if two wizards were to have children, the children were more likely
to have
> wizard powers. Gradually this became more common. Possibly because
of the
> common abilities of wizards, they would have developed a culture
that began
> to separate from Muggle culture - as Muggles relied more on
technology and
> as more wizarding lore was collected and shared.

Ceef again: 

Not to mention persecution of witches, weirdos, and anyone different (g).