CoS chapters 6-10, post DH look

[Cassandra Wladyslava]

No: HPFGUIDX 181219

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).

Cassie:

I've always took it to be "Wizards in general", but now don't know.
Certainly he couldn't have meant "pure-bloods" because once a wizard/witch
marries a muggle and they have children the line won't be pure anymore.  But
even if purebloods always married purebloods...there's still the muggles who
have children with the "magic gene"...so I can't imagine "Wizards in
general" dying out even if all the purebloods and halfbloods and even other
muggleborn wizards all decided to be celibate for some reason.  Eventually a
muggle family would produce another witch/wizard.

If magic is genetic...I couldn't see it being selected out.

On the subject of blood discrimination...I've always thought it to be akin
to white supremacy.  You and your children are automatically "lesser beings"
if you marry/have children with someone from a different race.  And then
there's also the correlation of muggles "stealing" magic to non-white races
trying to "destroy" the white race...and the only solution being
sterilization or execution.

Just thinking outloud.  I saw a show on the KKK and "Neo Nazis" and those
kinds of groups and it made me think of it.

I also seem to recall reading something about how royal families married
within the family (cousins, at least) in order to keep the line "pure".

Carol:

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.)

Cassie:

I don't think the term "genes" necessarily has a scientic denotation here.
I think it's more about ansestry.  Just a guess.

Carol:

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.

Cassie:

You're forgetting about Andromeda and Ted Tonks ^^

Carol:
<lots of snipping>
and we don't know who counts as a
Half-Blood--maybe anyone with a single Muggle grandparent
<more snippng>

Cassie:

Just wanted to comment on this little bit here.  I reminded of a quote by
Marvolo Gaunt:

"Generations of purebloods, wizards all -" (HBP pg. 208).   I think, at
least in the "pureblood supremesist's" mind, one bad apple spoils the
bunch.  That's why so many purebloods who marry non-purebloods are
disowned/cut off from the line. The Black line is still considered pureblood
even though some of the descendants (Andromeda again comes to mind) have
married muggles.  Even in the case of the Gaunts there may've been a
marriage to a muggle that was seen as disgraceful or traitorous to the line
and was erased from history.  Perhaps Mrs. Slytherin had her own family tree
with a few scroch marks that ended up being destroyed...

~Cassie~


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