Arranged wizard marriages?

[Jim Ferer]

No: HPFGUIDX 96704

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jdr0918" <jdr0918 at h...> wrote:
> <<<In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jim Ferer" wrote: ...This 
> brings up a problem that intermarrying groups eventually get into
> ... the danger of genetic diseases like haemophilia or even Tay-Sachs 
> disease. ...How do the Purebloods avoid it?  Do they have magical 
> help? We'll never find out, but you do wonder about it.>>>
> 
> The Sergeant Majorette says
> 
> I don't believe they *have* avoided it. Low fertility rates (the 
> Weasleys being a notable exception), mental illness (tell me Sirius 
> isn't bipolar, and that mother! And Bellatrix!), pallor and physical 
> delicacy... As Ron points out, wizards have to mix with Muggles, or 
> they'd have died out.

Good points, especially about low fertility,  and do you wonder about
Draco's "pale, pointed face?"  I know Prince Alexander of the Romanovs
had brown hair, but can't you just see Draco in the same spot?

The mental illness thing's a little harder to pin down, because
there's a percentage of crazies in every society.  Sirius might have
been bipolar, now you mention it, and of course Bellatrix has, uh,
"issues."

> I wouldn't be surprised to find that the scientific ill-advisedness 
> of inbreeding becomes a plot point in the last books.

I will be surprised, actually, there's enough on the plate as it is. 
We've got material for about thirty more books already, including

/Harry Potter and the Middle Age Spread/ and
/Harry Potter and the Enlarged Prostate/

You couldn't write a social history of the wizarding world without
deaing with it, though.

Jim Ferer