Hogwarts letters Re: Choosing sides

[ginnysthe1]

No: HPFGUIDX 119108


Snow wrote :
"Could Hermione or any child from a muggle background survive in the
muggle world, I would tend to agree that they could, if they wanted
to! None of the muggle background children that we have met have been
discouraged from attending Hogwarts and none have considered going
home even after the basilisk incident where muggles were the prime
target."

Del replies :
This is *precisely* the heart of my problem : ALL the Muggleborns we
see are absolutely delighted to live in the WW, and firmly intend to
stay there.

This is statistically and psychologically impossible, unless they had
a VERY compelling reason to all think the same way. So far, the only
reason I've been offered that comes close to being compelling is :
because the WW is so great. Well, it doesn't look so great to me, so
I'm wondering why it seems to look so great to ALL those kids.

My personal idea of that compelling reason is : because things seem
easier there. The kids see adults do things magically, without any
apparent effort, and of course they like that. They just have to sit
at the table, and their dinner appears magically out of nowhere.
People can apparently turn anything into anything else. They can make
things fly, or other cool things.

But as they grow up, the kids realise that things aren't that simple.
All those spells have to be learned. Not everybody can have a
House-Elf. Not everything can be created out of nowhere, or
transformed into something else. They also discover that there's a
dark side to the wonder : people can control or impersonate you,
potions and hexes can do horrible things to you, magical creatures and
people aren't necessarily that cool to work with, some people consider
Muggleborns as second-class citizens, and so on.

But it's almost too late to change their mind by the time they
discover all that. Going back to the Muggle World would imply making
huge efforts to hide their magic, and to catch up on all the training
they didn't get. Considering that apparent easiness is what got them
to enthusiastically jump into the WW, I doubt many of them would even
consider making the efforts necessary to live a Muggle life, even if
they wanted to.

So I stand by what I said before : the Muggleborn kids who go to
Hogwarts don't truly expand their world, they just exchange one world
for another, and there's almost no going back.

Now Kim chimes in:

After reading through this thread, here's my 2 cents FWIW.  I don't 
think the Muggle-borns would ever choose one world exclusively over 
the other:  in any way possible, they would keep one foot firmly 
planted in each world.  Just put yourself in Hermione's (or Seamus's) 
shoes.  She obviously loves her Muggle parents and they know about 
and accept their daughter's magical abilities and the WW she inhabits 
most of the year, even though they aren't part of it, strictly 
speaking.  Every summer Hermione goes home to her parents, not 
because it's especially "cool" in the Muggle world (though there may 
be things that she loves as much about the MW as she does about the 
WW), but because she loves her parents.  And perhaps she even had 
Muggle friends (before the age of 11?) and may have other Muggle 
relatives that she would badly miss if she ended up living almost 
exclusively in the WW.  Granted we don't know many details about 
Hermione's life outside of Hogwarts and we may never know more than 
we do now.  So do I *really* know what I'm talking about?  No. 

As far as Muggleborns hiding their magic, they only have to lock 
their wands away in a trunk when they visit the Muggle world in order 
to keep themselves from inadvertantly practicing magic in front of 
unsuspecting Muggles who might not understand....  But, hey, what 
about all us Muggles out here who would be delighted to know there 
was a witch or wizard in our midst... ;-)?  I think the Muggleborns 
actually have an advantage over pureblood wizard kids (including even 
nice ones like the Weasleys), as someone probably already pointed 
out, since they can adapt to both non-magical and magical 
circumstances in life if need be, whereas a wizard kid would be a 
total fish out of water outside of the WW.  It's kind of like kids in 
the RW who are bilingual (often due to their parents being 
immigrants) -- it's a good thing, it can make them broader-minded, 
stronger, even wiser, in my opinion.
  
It seems to me too that deep down, and it may never show up in the 
books, JKR may want some sort of reconciliation to occur between the 
wizard and muggle worlds.  The two worlds lived in some sort of 
harmony many years ago, didn't they, before the witch burnings and 
other reasons drove the two camps apart and the witches and wizards 
chose to go into "hiding" for their own safety.  But also in a 
different thread recently, we discussed how the population of the WW 
is not exactly going up, so if the two worlds don't make some kind of 
re-connection, it seems that sooner or later there won't be any more  
wizards left.  Well, not pure-bloods anyway.  Actually pure-bloods 
are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.  And the more non-pureblood 
witches and wizards there are (and non-purebloods would already be in 
the majority now, I think), the greater the chances of a 
reconciliation (IMO).  Actually it's inevitable (also IMO).  Though 
I'm no population expert, I think such a thing is a fact of life in 
the natural world -- interbreed (i.e. adapt) or die!

Cheers, Kim