[HPforGrownups] Pureblood (was Snape and Malfoy related? (was: Snape and Lucius ages)

[Gabriel Fey]

No: HPFGUIDX 115260


Sandy wrote:
> But my question actually goes to an understanding of what "pureblood"
> means. JKR says on her website that Harry is considered a half-blood
> because his grandparents (Lily's parents) were muggles. But with
> someone like the Malfoys, I'm sure they look much further back than
> grandparents, as well. In other words, if your (or Snape's or
> whoever's) great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was
> a muggle, their blood is still sullied and they count as half-bloods,
> right? (If Harry weds another halfblood, or even a pureblood, their
> kids still aren't purebloods, right?)
> I know that at some periods/places in U.S., they even had
> specific words for people with various proportions of black blood in
> them, but even if it was only 1/32, they were still considered to be
> black (or so Mark Twain tells us in Pudd'nhead Wilson), and I think
> the pureblood maniacs have a similar mindset, they just don't bother
> to do the math to figure out the fraction.

Gabriel now:

You're quite correct about words for people of any African descent. I've 
never heard them used in real life myself, but as someone with an 
obsessive love of both Anne Rice books (which have portions set in the 
time when the words were used) and language, I tend to remember them. 
They're rather ridiculous words, like "quadroon" (1/4) or "octoroon." (1/8)

I doubt that, in the WW, they go to such an extent as to coin multiple 
terms for what is basically the same prejudice - "mudblood" seems like a 
general enough term to use on anyone, and we haven't really seen any 
others in the books, unless I've missed something. However, it does seem 
like the blood obsession is virulent enough to make someone half-blooded 
if, as you suggested, their great*5 grandfather was a Muggle.

On a slightly more humourous bent, the movie "Dr. Strangelove" was on 
television recently, and thinking of it made a peculiar image come to 
mind. Suddenly I had this picture of Lucius Malfoy, crouching in his 
cell in Azkaban, scrawling the words "Purity of Essence" over and over 
again on the walls. Is anyone else amused by this, or is it just me?

- Gabriel Fey