CHAPTER DISCUSSION Chamber of Secrets Ch. 4, At Flourish and Blotts

[Geoff]

No: HPFGUIDX 188779

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jelly92784" <jelly92784 at ...> wrote:

Janelle:
> I'm a little rusty but I'll give this a shot!

7. Hagrid says at the end of the chapter that the Malfoys are rotten to the core, the whole family, "bad blood, that's what it is". This is the first time we hear about blood in the WW. What does Hagrid mean? Does he think evil character can be inherited? Is this a common opinion in the WW? How does it fit in with other uses of blood in the series?

Janelle:
> This one is trickier!  I don't think that Hagrid is thinking that evil is literally something in the blood- I think he's speaking more generally about similarities between father and son personality-wise.  But, looking at the bigger picture, it's possible that Hagrid's words do have some deeper meaning attached to them.  The Malfoys are pure-bloods and they consider everyone who isn't to have "bad blood", however, there aren't so many pure-bloods left and so maybe all the intermarriages and stuff that has taken place in order to keep pure-bloods "pure" has polluted their blood.  I'm not saying that this pollution manifests itself as evil, but maybe there's just something not quite right with their blood.

Geoff:
Jut a quick answer to one question. Actually, it isn't tricky. "Bad blood" is 
sometimes used in UK English with two possible meanings,

One in the context of speaking about a person or a group, exactly 
as Hagrid is doing here.... "Don't have anything to do with him. There's 
bad blood in that family".

The second is when two groups or families or individuals are in opposition
to each other: "There's been bad blood between John and Michael for years".

So, I would say that Hagrid is using the phrase in the context of my first 
example above.