Riddle (was Re: Slytherin House / MALcolm BADdock / Eileen / Sorting Lily

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 185734


> Potioncat:
> If one of the qualities for being sorted into Slytherin is blood 
> status, then the Sorting Hat must have some way of knowing. 

Pippin:
Possibly it only knows what the student knows. Riddle assumed
immediately that he must have had one wizard parent and that it hadn't
been his mother, since she died. But  he could have been a Muggleborn,
for all he actually knew.  The Hat, according to Dumbledore, sorted
him immediately into Slytherin. I think to the Hat the appearance of
magical blood is more important than the fact of it, especially since,
AFAWK, there is no such thing anyway. 

If what Rowling says in her interviews is true and even Muggleborns
owe their magic to wizard ancestry somewhere in the past, then
probably everyone, including Muggles, has wizard ancestry. If so, 
there is probably some set of genetic switches that turns  magic off. 


Pippin