Terms for Blood (WAS: Re: Quote from GOF)

[alice_loves_cats]

No: HPFGUIDX 56872

Hi,

there was some discussion about the quote

"You stand, Harry Potter, upon the remains of my late father,"
[Voldemort] hissed softly. "A Muggle and a fool... very like your dear
mother."

(GoF, p. 560, British First Ed.)

I have found that this is not the only place where the definitions
"Muggle = person without magical capabilities", "Mudblood = person of
Muggle parentage", half-blood (just my reasoning): "person with one
Muggle parent" don't seem to be exactly right. My quote is:

"[Hagrid] looked at Harry <snip> "It'd show `em all... yeh don't have
ter be pureblood ter do it."

(GoF, p. 396, British First Ed.)

Hagrid is referring to Harry's winning the Tournament, saying that
Harry isn't a pureblood – implying that he's a Mudblood or half-blood
(more likely the second). Even though he had a witch and a wizard for
parents.

Also, in CoS, Hagrid says something like there isn't a wizarding
family left that doesn't have some Muggle ancestor. (I cannot,
unfortunately, find the exact quote, as I only have the first 3 books
in Hungarian.) Meaning that any family with a Muggle ancestor clinging
to the family tree is in a way not pureblooded. 

I think the World War II parallel can be extended to the question of
"Who's Jewish?" As time wore on, it was enough to have a Jewish
great-grandfather to be categorised as Jewish, while Jewish religion
states clearly that one if Jewish only if one's mother is. But these
definitions are always twisted according to what the people in power
wish them to be (especially because the definitions themselves don't
make much sense anyway, we're not talking about objective categories,
or things that should have any relevance at all). 

Probably the same with the Mudblood - pureblood - half-blood theory.
Maybe you've got witch/wizard parents, but your Mum was a Mudblood, so
you're a Mudblood, full stop. The fact that Hagrid gets "confused"
with these terms probably means that the definitions have been
"violated" before, most probably during Voldemort's first reign of
terror – the extended definition has become customary. 

And so Voldemort, by calling Lily a Muggle, and Hagrid, by implying
that Harry's not a pureblood, are not making mistakes after all.

Love, Alice