DH Questions: Lovegoods/Ron's absence/blood status

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 188319

Melissa wrote: 
<snip>  
> It never made sense to me that Harry was considered a HB.  His  father was a PB and his mother was a MB.  IMHO a half-blood is one who  has 1 magical and 1 muggle parent. Both of Harry's parents are magical so at the  most I would consider Harry to be Full-blooded rather than Pure-blooded or Half-blooded.  
>  
> But JKR would probably consider Harry and Ginny's children to be HB.
>  
> Melissa 

Carol responds:
I don't think so. According to JKR in an interview, blood status (for those who care about it) has to do with the grandparents. Rose and Hugo Weasley, like Harry, are Half-Bloods because they have two Muggle and two magical grandparents (who happen to be purebloods). But James, Albus Severus, and Lily Potter are Pure-bloods because they have four magical grandparents (three purebloods and a Muggle-born, but that doesn't matter because the Muggle great-grandparents are too far back to count). Technically, I suppose, they could be "three-quarter bloods" since Lily Evans Potter has no Wizarding blood, but we don't see any such quibbling distinctions. Even eleven-year-old Draco only talks about "our kind" and "the other kind," meaning, apparently, those with Wizarding blood and those without. By the same token, the LV-run MoM targets "Mud-bloods" but not Half-Bloods. Anyone who can prove that he has one Wizarding family member (not necessarily a parent or other ancestor, IIRC) is allowed a wand.

As Ron (I think) says, there are very few genuine Pure-Bloods with no Muggle ancestry whatever: "If we hadn't married Muggles, we would have died out." Of course, Blacks who marry Muggles are burned off the family tree, and Malfoys et al. who marry Muggles are probably similarly ostracized, but if the alternative is habitually marrying your own cousins and end up like the Gaunts, obviously it's preferable to marry Muggles (or, at least, Muggle-borns). Just how a Pure-Blood with no known (or recent) Muggle ancestors would meet and marry a Muggle is hard to imagine (unless they live in a mixed village Godric's Hollow or Ottery St. Catchpole), but it's considerably more likely than Wizards marrying Giants (or Goblins or Trolls).

At any rate, I think the simplest solution is the most logical. Four Muggle grandparents (and two Muggle parents) equals a Muggle-born; one, two or three Muggle grandparents (technically) equals a Half-Blood regardless of whether the parent(s) with Muggle blood is/are Muggles or Muggle-borns; and no Muggle grandparents equals a Pure-Blood even if one or more of those grandparents is a Muggle-born because the Muggle blood is three generations back.

OTOH, "Half-Bloods" whose parents are both magical can easily pass as Pure-Bloods and no one will care much (unless a Pure-blood who cares about such things rejects them as a marriage partner because their surname isn't in the wizarding genealogy).

Carol, who was also initially confused by Harry's blood status but thinks she understands the concept now