Black Sisters / alternate look at pureblood mania

[Jee H. Lee]

No: HPFGUIDX 84623

You know, I just reread the "Noble and Most Ancient
House of Black" chapter, and I noticed for the first
time that the sisters' names are written down in order
of Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa. I totally missed
it before. :P *Puts on Crabbe cap and sits in the
corner*

Mandy:
> I get the sense that all the
> *evil* or *bad* characters are handsome and
attractive. Where as the
> *good* guys (and girls) are all plain looking and
social misfits.

Interesting. I get that feeling, too. For instance,
ever since I read about the Black sisters I imagine
Andromeda as rather plain, in sharp contrast to her
vivid and beautiful sisters. I imagine she was the
ugly duckling(I won't say black sheep :) of the family
even before she married Ted Tonks. 

Onto another track...

JJPandy:
> How did other muggle-born wizards learn where to buy
their 
> school supplies and how to get onto Platform 9 and
3/4 once they 
> received their Hogwarts' letters? 

and

eiffelangel:
> If Slytherin took only pure-blooded wizards and
Riddle was a
> half-blood, then why would he have been in
Slytherin?

and

Nemi:

>I had a thought that perhaps the definition of 
>"pureblood" has changed over the ages.

These three comments got me thinking about what being
"pure-blooded" really means. Maybe its meaning, or at
least its ideological origins, wasn't about blood per
se. 

Consider: The inclusion of Muggle-born wizards into
Hogwarts necessarily brings Muggles into the wizarding
world as well. Think of the Grangers, the Creeveys,
the Finch-Fletchleys, the Thomases, the Abbots--these
are all Muggles who came to be aware of the WW through
their children. 

What if Salazar Slytherin, at least originally, was
objecting not to Muggle-borns themselves, but to their
Muggle families becoming a part of the WW? This was
way before the Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, yet it's
easy to imagine there was a lot of bad blood(okay, bad
choice of words) between wizards and Muggles. 

Maybe, then, Slytherin was concerned with the
sociological, rather than genetic, impact of
Muggle-borns and Muggles. Afterward it degenerated
into eugenics. Not trying to defend Salazar Slytherin,
and it's still racism any way you put it, but this
version of events does make him a little more
understandable. 

Perhaps, then, the Sorting Hat takes into account not
100% purity of wizarding blood, but the impact that a
particular student is going to have on the wizarding
world, namely how much he or she will bring Muggles
into the picture. With Tom Riddle, the Hat might have
judged the effect to be minimal.

Here's a far-fetched flight of fancy(ooh,
alliteration). I can imagine Slytherin or one of his
ideological successors trying to make a Muggle-borns'
entering Hogwarts dependant on their cutting ties with
their Muggle families. One can imagine how well *that*
went over..


-Lunatique

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