McGonagall a Muggle? (Was: Did I Miss Something?)

[Matt]

No: HPFGUIDX 81325

--- Responding to Pip's theory that McGonagall
is Muggle-born, Wendy wrote: 
 
> I've never heard this theory ... and I'd like 
> to know how you think it fits with a bit of 
> canon that's been bothering me (from the first 
> chapter of the first book). When Minerva meets 
> Dumbledore at the Dursleys, during their 
> conversation she says:
> 
> "'You'd think they'd be a bit more careful, 
> but no -- even the Muggles have noticed 
> something's going on. It was on their news.' 
> She jerked her head back at the Dursleys' dark 
> living-room window. 'I heard it. Flocks of 
> owls...shooting stars...Well, they're not 
> completely stupid.'"

Along the same lines, in the same conversation,
McGonagall strongly objects to DD's placing 
Harry with the Dursleys on the ground (and I 
paraphrase only slightly) that "you couldn't 
find a bunch of Muggles more unlike *us*."

Wendy goes on to suggest three possible ways of
resolving McGonagall's apparent disdain toward
non-magic folk with a background in which she
is Muggle-born.

A fourth, and simpler, possibility (if you'll pardon an explanation
that implies fallibility on the part of the creator <gr>) is that
Rowling might have made the decision to write McGonagall as a
Muggle-born teacher only after book one.  This is a small enough
backstory detail that it is easy to imagine it not having crossed
JKR's mind until, perhaps, she was dealing with the political tensions
over the issue in CS.  If so, she might have then viewed the
conversation in PS/SS as a minor enough inconsistency to simply
ignore, or she might have mentally resolved it along one of the lines
of reasoning that Wendy suggests.