Explain This Passage

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180625

Susan McGee wrote:
<snip>
> (And a squib of course is a muggle. But a squib differs from some
muggles because a squib would have been born into family where one of
the parents was a witch or a wizard. We KNOW that a squib CAN have
> two magical parents, because Neville's family was afraid that he was
> a squib, and both his parents were magical. The non-squib muggles
> would be muggles who had two non-magical parents). <nip>

Carol responds:

Actually, that's not quite accurate. A Muggle is a a person with no
magical powers and no (known) magical ancestors. (Evidently, genes
from those unknown magical ancestors are sometimes activated in Muggle
offspring, producing Muggle-born witches and wizards, but as JKR's
attempts to explain this phenomenon are all off-page and her knowledge
of genetics is apparently limited, I won't go there.)

A Squib, OTOH, has, as you say, either one or two magical parents, and
is therefore *not* a Muggle. He or she is a Pure-Blood or Half-Blood
who somehow fails to develop magical powers. (The narrator at one
point refers to Filch as a "failed wizard.") Such people can pass as
Muggles, as Mrs. Figg does, or live in the WW as Filch does,
surrounded by Witches and Wizards who regard them as inferior. (It
appears that Squibs, unlike Muggles, can see Hogwarts and communicate
with cats, but they can't see Dementors or cast spells. The chief
difference between Squibs and Muggles, aside from their "blood," is
cultural. Squibs know about and can choose to live in the WW (though
they can't attend Hogwarts as they'd fail all their courses), and
they're not covered by the Statute of Secrecy (which would be absurd
and pointless, given that they're born into magical or partly magical
families.

As JKR says in an interview, IIRC, and Ron says in CoS, a Squib is
essentially the opposite of a Muggle-born, a nonmagical child born to
magical parents (or a magical parent) in contrast to a magical child
born to nonmagical parents.

Vernon Dursley is a Muggle. Argus Filch is a Squib. Even though
they're both eminently dislikeable, there's all the difference in the
world between their attitudes toward magic and the WW. Chiefly
cultural, I realize, but they are who they are because one was born
into a Muggle family and the other into a magical family. One refuses
to acknowledge that magic exists, even when it's used against him and
his family; the other secretly studies Qwikspell courses, hoping to
somehow live up to his Wizarding heritage.

The Black family burns the names of family members who marry "Muggles"
(most likely Muggle-borns, as in the case of Ted Tonks and Andromeda
Black) off the family tapestry. They do the same with family members
who turn out to be Squibs. But they have no Muggle offspring to burn
off the tapestry; Wizards and Witches do not give birth to Muggles,
who have no (known) Wizarding blood. It's as impossible as a Witch and
a Wizard giving birth to a House-Elf (or the blond, light-eyed Malfoys
giving birth to a black-eyed, black-haired child who resembles Severus
Snape).

Carol, who would be considered a Muggle, not a Squib, if she could
somehow enter the WW