"Purebloods", "Mudbloods" and Muggle-borns

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 59317

Felinia Beauclerc writes:

<< I'd say the odds that there are *any* wizards who have totally pure, 
wizard-only bloodlines that go back to the dawn of time (or even to the time of 
Hogwarts' establishment) are vanishingly small. >>

And I'd agree with you. In fact I've got a series of essays over on the Red 
Hen site that go into my own interpretations of this issue, in detail. 
(www.redhen-publications.com)

Wizards and Muggles lived side-by-side for most of human history. There is no 
way that they have not interbred. It was only after the establishment of 
wizarding seclusion in 1692 that wizards stopped (temporarily) interbreeding with 
Muggles. We are talking about only some 300 years, among people who 
demonstrably live to at least 150. 

My own take on it is that the definitions are mostly cultural. And they are 
not unconnected with class distinctions within the wizarding population. And 
the issue of the "purity" of one's ancestry only even began being considered in 
the Renaisance. At a time that Muggle aristocrats were attempting to draw 
distinctions between themselves and the encroaching of a rising merchant class by 
tracing their own "glorious ancestry", wizarding aristos began tracing how 
loing their own families had been magical. It was only then that they began to 
marry other magicals for the sake of their magic rather than some prominent 
Muggle for the sake of some worldly advantage of fortune or influence. 

Their close retainers followed suit and became, if anything, more insistent 
upon marryingonly other magicals. Meanwhile the plebian wizards strewn across 
the landscape continued to marry their neighbors who were usually Muggles and 
raised familes who were mixed magical and Muggle.

It was only after the wizards went into seclusion, acompanied by their Muggle 
family members, and after about a century of isolation -- during which those 
Muggle family members died off, and fewer and fewer of the new children failed 
to be magical -- that nearly all wizards began thinking of themselves as 
purebloods. 

The resistance to the inclusion of Muggle-born wizards would only be as great 
as it is if there had been a period within memory (not necessarily "living" 
memory) during which Muggle-born wizards were *not* admitted to the wizarding 
world. And this period is likely to have been comparitively short. We have been 
directly told that Seclusion was established in 1692. We can see that the 
wizarding world had relaxed (although not abolished) its seclusion early enough 
for at least some Muggle technology to have been adopted by wizards, such as 
the Hogwarts Express. That the Express is a steam train would indicate that the 
adoption was before Muggle trains had largely converted to deisel.

Hm. I am just now realizing that one of my Red Hen essays may need some 
modification. 

Because a new, and very reasonable possibility has just occured to me. 

I have been postulating that the ww relaxed the terms of its seclusion at 
some point during the Industrial Revolution (and still think that it is the more 
likely scenario). But it is also possible that the actual relaxation of 
Seclusion may have come at the end of the 19th century rather than at the beginning. 
The ww has adopted steam trains, which indicates that the restoration of 
contact took place some time after the railroads were established in the 1830s and 
before deisel technology was widely adopted in the early 20th century. The 
wizarding world has also adopted a form of "radio" technology without the 
preliminary form of telegraph (which the Floo network performs more than adequately) 
either indicating a later time for first contact, or an established line of 
communications by the time that Muggles developed radio. The wizarding 
"wireless" would not bear that name unless the cultural exchange were moving from 
Muggle to magical rather than the other way around, and the probability is that 
these bits of "modern technology" were developed and introduced by Muggle-born 
wizards who had grown up with such conveniences.

The final contributing factor that argues in favor of a late 19th century or 
very early 20th century point of contact is the statement that Voldemort is 
the most dangerous Dark wizard that the ww has had to deal with "in a century".  

At the very least this implies that there was a serious problem with some 
Dark wizard in the later days of the 19th century. Someone that Grindlewald never 
measured up to. It is not unreasonable to suppose that it was in the 
aftermath of this conflict that the ww finally decided to seek out Muggle-born 
wizards, train and recruit them and restore their population numbers. Which would 
mean that the current resistance to this policy is an indication of the ww not 
having fully come to grips with the idea.

Another factor that enters into this is related to wizarding lifespans. 

I happen to believe that the current wizarding lifespans are due to a 2-tier 
process. First that channeling magical energy itself has a beneficial effect 
upon the wizard's physical well-being, and that, secondy, the wizard's natural 
lifespan is further increased and enhanced by medi-magical processes which 
extend his span of able-bodied and mentally-competent performance. A "natural" 
lifespan would be in the neighborhood of 90-125 years. The enhanced lifespan is 
typically 125-175 years or thereabout. 

I am not convinced that these medi-magical procedures are designed increase a 
witch's fertile years as well as to extend her able-bodied geriatric period. 
The strains of a pregnancy might be more than they can reasonably be expected 
to offset. A woman with a natural lifespan of 90-125 years is still highly 
unlikely to be fertile beyond the age of 60 or 70. And at present it is implied 
that witches reach puberty at about the same ages as Muggle females. This 
extrapolates a witch's childbearing years into a span of about 60 years, give or 
take a few.

Which means that witches of childbearing age are a comparitively small 
segment of the overall population. Extrapolating a wizarding population of some 
30,000 for Great Britian and Ireland witches of childbearing age probably number 
no more than around 5000. 

Which makes them very valuable.

And explains some of the wizard/non-human pairings of which we have been 
told. It also makes a deal of additional sense of Arthur Weasley's statement that 
wizards would have died out if they hadn't married Muggles. 

-JOdel