CoS chapters 6-10, post DH look

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 181198

CoS:
> > > "If we hadn't married Muggles we'd've died out" - p.116
> > >
> <SNIP>
> > zgirnius:
> > I believe he said what he meant. Muggleborns occur when two
Muggles carrying genes for magic but not expressing them, genes they
inherited from magical ancestors, pass those genes on to their kids in
a way that causes them to be expressed. They would thus result from
Muggle/wizard relationships, at some point in the past. (Or
Squib/Muggle). Nor are Muggle/Wizard relationships THAT rare in canon:
the Snapes, Finnegans, and Riddles were such married couples (and if
we include website backstory, so was the relationship that produced
Dean Thomas).
> 
> Bex:
> Ron is referring to pure-blooded wizards (or wizards in general),
and he is commenting on the notion of 'dirty blood.' So I think he
means what he says here, too.

Carol responds:
The problem, I think, is determining whether "we" means "pure-blood
wizards" ir "Wizards in general" (with "Wizards being a generic term
including both Witches and Warlocks).

I seriously doubt that Ron know anything about genetics. (JKR doesn't
know a lot herself; Pure=Blood Wizards would know even less, if
anything at all. I think that Slughorns' use of the term "genes" is a
Flint.)

Also, I would say that the number of Muggle/Wizard marriages that we
see (one marriage through trickery in Voldemort's generation; one in
Snape's generation (was it a love match between two unattractive,
unpopular people or an act of desperation?); two in Harry's (the
Finnigans, in which the husband didn't know that his wife was a Witch
until after the marriage, and the Thomases, which exists only in JKR's
notes and is only hinted at in the books, in which the wife never even
knew that her husband was a Wizard and Dean is regarded as a
Muggle-born because he can't prove Wizarding ancestry) is quite low.
(My apologies for the complicated sentence structure; my point is that
we see one canonical Muggle/Wizard marriage per generation plus one
uncanonical marriage in Harry's. Out of the hundred or so named
characters, that's not many. In contrast, we have the Potters (till
James married Lily), the Blacks, the Weasleys, the Malfoys, the
(childless) Lestranges, the Crouches, the Macmillans, the Notts, the
Zabinis, probably the Smiths, and perhaps others that I can't recall
as Pure-blood families, At a guess, the majority of the Slytherins and
the Death Eaters are Pure-bloods (Selwyn is, or Umbridge wouldn't
crave that locket). The rest of that House and the DEs (except
probably Wormtail) are Half-bloods, a small minority, are Half-bloods.
In fact, we know of only two Half-bloods in all of Slytherin history,
both powerful, talented, and ambitious Wizards, Tom Riddle and Severus
Snape. Most of the Half-Bloods (and we don't know who counts as a
Half-Blood--maybe anyone with a single Muggle grandparent) are in
other Houses. Harry and Dumbledore are both Half-Bloods, but their
"Muggle" parent is a Muggle-born. Wizards look at "blood," not genes.
How Pure-bloods like Draco Malfoy would even hear of genes, educated
at home and then at Hogwarts, where such things aren't taught, and
isolated in the Slytherin dormitory outside school hours, is hard to
imagine.

About a quarter of the kids at Hogwarts are Muggle-born, IIRC a JKR
interview correctly. (I think she planned it out that way for Harry's
year, at least.) Offhand, I can think of Hermione, Colin and Dennis
Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Penelope Clearwater, probably
Lavender Brown, and, in an earlier generation, Wormtail.

All of this is to say that I think Muggle-Wizard marriages are
extremely rare, and Ron knows nothing of genetics, so it's hard to
understand why he would think that marrying Muggles had kept Wizards
from dying out. He does say, IIRC, that most Wizards are Half-Bloods,
but Half-Bloods can result from Pure-Bloods or other Half-Bloods
marrying Muggle-borns. A Half-Blood marrying a Half-Blood would
produce Half-Blood children since the children would have two Muggle
(or "Muggle") grandparents. 

So whatever Ron *meant,* and whatever JKR thought he meant (really, I
wonder how her mind works sometimes), Wizards were IMO kept from dying
out by the existence of Muggle-borns to boost the population. (Of
course, it would help if the Pure-bloods other than the poor, demented
Gaunts emulated the Weasleys and had a lot of children instead of
limiting themselves to one or two.) Pure-Bloods and Half-Bloods
marrying Muggle-borns would be sufficient to keep the Wizarding
population alive and healthy.

We can speculate that Muggle-borns exist because long ago, before the
Statute of Secrecy, Wizards and Muggles intermarried (despite little
things like Witch-burning and mutual fear and loathing as illustrated
by Salazar Slytherin's paranoia), but in the last three centuries, I'd
say that the number of Wizard/Muggle marriages has played a small part
indeed in keeping the Wizarding population in existence. In two of the
four documented or semi-documented cases, the offspring (Snape and LV)
didn't produce any children themselves.

All this to say that, whatever Ron meant, and the "we" is ambiguous to
begin with, most of the Muggle/Wizarding marriages that sustained the
population must have occurred in the distant past. Thanks to the
Statute of Secrecy and the limited interactions between Muggles and
Wizards, not to mention the inconveniences for the husband or wife
forced to live in a world of which he is not a part, Muggle/Wizard
marriages in the era of the books are extremely rare, and not, if the
Snapes and Riddles are any indication, generally successful.

Carol, who thinks that once again, JKR has not thought through the
implications of a statement that she puts in a character's mouth,
assuming that we're supposed to regard Ron as authoritative here