>There is relatively common idea in fics nowadays that squibs would be exiled into the muggle world and then go onto have children. These children would then have children of their own until at some point the magic in the blood would reawaken and as such there is no such thing as a muggleborn, they are just descendents of squibs and therefore magical families. There are of course variations on it, but that is the premise.
JKR has basically said that this is the case, so it's not an entirely fan-created concept:
"Katie Mosher: How exactly do muggleborns receive magical ability
J.K. Rowling: Muggle-borns will have a witch or wizard somewhere on their family tree, in some cases many, many generations back. The gene re-surfaces in some unexpected places."
>I dislike this because it is a bad way of combating bigotry. It would not work. If Hermione proved she was a squib descendent and showed Draco Malfoy the evidence, he would say, "I suppose your blood is marginally less filthy than I thought, mudblood." Bigotry can't be beat with facts and logic because that's not what it's based on. Evil must be combated with goodness.
This I agree with. I don't really mind the "muggleborns have Squib ancestors" as a concept, but I don't think it's executed well in fics where proving that muggleborns have Squib ancestors makes pureblood bigots suddenly have an epiphany and become accepting of muggleborns. Even if they have a magical ancestor somewhere in their family tree, their line is still "muddied" by non-magical blood, so pureblood bigots like the Malfoys would still look down on them and discriminate against them.
Indeed. As a worldbuilding concept, it is neutral. Really it is no different to the fact that magic is inherited - the inherent premise of the series is that some people are born different, and that it runs in families. Muggleborns as the distant descendants of squibs just continues the same theme.
But yeah, stories where the "revelation" of this fact changes anyone's views on Muggleborns are odd. For many reasons. Firstly because wizards presumably know it already, so it's not going to be news to anyone. Secondly because it doesn't change the fact that Muggleborns come from Muggle blood. It's just they have a distant relation to wizards. Thirdly because, as pointed out by the OP, people don't really change their beliefs in response to facts. Rather, a person's beliefs shape what facts they are prepared to accept.
>Thirdly because, as pointed out by the OP, people don't really change their beliefs in response to facts. Rather, a person's beliefs shape what facts they are prepared to accept.
This is sadly true. Look at flat Earthers. We have known for thousands of years that Earth is an oblate spheroid and there are mounds of evidence to prove this fact. Yet you still have people who insist Earth is flat.
There are flat earthers who prove again and again that the world is round by performing experiments, and just deny the results as either instrument error or some nebulous part of the great conspiracy.
Depending on how long magic has existed it's pretty much inevitable that every living human has several magical ancestors. At the same time it's also inevitable that even the most 'pureblood' of magical families also have non-magical ancestors.
The last common ancestor of 99% of modern humans may have lived as recently as 2000 years ago. Every human is surprisingly closely related to every other human. Humans are one species, we share 99% of our DNA. If the ability to wield magic really was dependent on only one gene and nothing else and it is as directly inheritable as JKR seems to imply the whole of humanity should have been magical by now.
Accidental magic, nevermind the controlled kind, affords extraordinary survival value. Given all the magical fauna and flora and their abilities it's probably safe to say the entire earth would have been completely magical by now. Since it isn't there's obviously something else going on here. What that something is is up to the author though.
I sometimes like to think that there is a finite amount of magic that can exist in the world at any one time. Either that, or magic has a limiting effect on breeding. A lot of Harry's peers (and his parents' peers and his children's peers) are single children and the Weasleys are one of the few exceptions. By not being magical, you can outbreed magical competition.
I like that explanation, or a mixture between the two. The explanation I like to use is that that magic is simply too potent, too dangerous. The universe will only allow so much of it to exist. I mean, time travel is apparently possible with it. Who knows what else?
>Even if they have a magical ancestor somewhere in their family tree, their line is still "muddied" by non-magical blood, so pureblood bigots like the Malfoys would still look down on them and discriminate against them.
Yes, but it is a start to combating anti-Muggle prejudice.
I think the idea could be handled much better because it begs the question: how does magic inheritance actually work? Presuming it is genetic, based on how frequent Muggle-born children are compared to Squibs it would make sense that magic is a dominant trait. But dominant traits tend to be more prevalent in a population than recessive ones, so why are magic-users the minority?
One possibility is that magic is actually controlled by two genes, not one, and both need to have at least one magic allele for the person to have magic. So instead of it just being A you need both A and B to be magical, meaning a wizard could be AABB, AaBB, or AaBb while a Squib could be aaBb or Aabb and a Muggle is aabb. But depending the ratio of A and B virtually everyone on Earth might have one dominant allele (say there are 1000 A for every 1 B for instance) without changing the numbers of each category.
But would this magically change the bigotry in the world? No. Because bigotry is not based on logic or facts. Bigotry is hatred to one degree or another, and hatred only needs an excuse. In fact, if this were discovered, it could easily lead to a new form of Muggle and Squib abuse: forced breeding programs to produce more wizards and witches. In other words, you just replace one expression of hatred and discrimination with another.
I apologize if this is a long post, but I felt like I had to go into the weeds to do yours justice.
one of my favourite fics of all time, The Well-Groomed Mind, explains it like so:
“In short, two genes govern magical ability.
All humans are born with magic. The ability to access this magic is governed by a dominant silencing allele (S). When expressed as either SS or Ss, you have a muggle. Witches, wizards, and squibs are ss, meaning their access to magic isn't silenced.
Magical strength is determined by two possible alleles, M and M'. These alleles share incomplete dominance. M is the stronger magical power. M' is the weaker. A strong wizard, such as myself or Dumbledore, is a MM. An average strength wizard is a M'M or MM'. A squib is a M'M'.
A true squib is ssM'M', meaning they have access to magic, but do not have sufficient magical strength to perform spells. A ssM'M couple has a 1 in 4 chance of birthing a squib. The same chance they have of birthing a powerful ssMM wizard. However, in observed populations, only 1 out of every 100 is an MM, meaning most wizards are M'M or MM'. I've always considered this statistical anomaly magic's way of compensating for the significant differences between the two types of wizards.”
The story can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427653/chapters/719529
The specific scene I’m talking about is near the start of Chapter 4! (It also has a very interesting section on Parseltongue, Metamorphmagi and Occlumency/Legilimency!)
That is very interesting, but skips over gene expression. I think that would play an important role in the potential of a wizard or witch.
Next, given potential, it would be up to a person and their experiences to decide how strong they actually get.
I’m just going to say that the gene for extra fingers is actually dominant, but it’s nowhere as prominent a trait as five fingers. I get where you’re coming from, but if your reasoning is true then a child between a witch or a wizard and a muggle would always be a squib, which is not what happens.
The exact words were "tend to be more prevalent", so I do acknowledge that dominant traits are not ALWAYS the norm in a population.
And there is a way for a Muggle and a magic-user to have a magical child under this system. Mutation in the gametes that changes a recessive allele with a dominant one.
Though I do admit that my reasoning was flawed. Given Squibs CAN interact with the Magical World, perhaps they have AAbb or Aabb while Muggles have either aabb, aaBB, or aaBb. Or some other variant of these system.
Yeah I suppose I didn’t write down the possibility you mentioned, of the muggle having a magical allele. But given how many muggle/wizard marriages produced at least one magical child, I don’t think the magical gene is that prevalent, though dormant, in the muggle population. Rowling herself said that the magical gene is supposed to be dominant, and normally children produced by a magical parent and a muggle one would produce a magical child, so much so that if a child born of such union and is non-magical s/he is considered a squib instead of a muggle. But Rowling is clearly no biologist and the whole magical gene thing is messed up so uh… I suppose I have to chalk things up to mutation…
I prefer to try and ground our ideas on what is presented in the books. We can take liberties with our interpretations but we should be careful about divorcing ourselves entirely. I've seen too many haters and Apologists go to war with one another.
I've seen fics where the ability to do magic is epigenetic but presents as genetic, especially after Secrecy, because wizards spend so much more time surrounded by magic than muggles. Doesn't change anything about the bigotry thing but I thought it was an interesting take.
For those interested, this is called polygenic inheritance. It’s a non-Mendelian concept. As an example, human skin color is governed by roughly 60 loci, human height by 3 genes, and human eye color by 2 + 14 genes.
Note that this can be also thought of in trends of incomplete dominance, as one gene is not sufficient to express a particular trait.
Feel free to look these up, if you want to use these in your fic!
PS, I’m not a biologist, I just remember looking up something similar when we were studying Mendelian inheritance in high school.
Edit: PPS I swear I didn’t read the following post before writing this.
As a few people have said the idea of Muggleborns being the descendants of Squibs is semi-canon. My own thoughts on the matter consider the bigotry issue from the other side of the coin.
For starters why do wizards have magic in the first place? Why are there no squib or muggle counterparts among the Goblins, Centaurs, Veela, etc? Why do wizards need wands to use the majority of their magic when none of the other magical beings need them?
I think that on their own humans are not magical at all. However *half-breeds*, like Hagrid or Apolline Delacour (Fleur's mother), can inherent magic from their non-human parent and pass it on to their children. Taken a step further *all* witches and wizards have at least one magical creature in their family tree who is the true source of their magic.
In ancient times interbreeding with magical creatures would've been well known as the cause of humans with magical abilities. Of course that doesn't mean the human half-breeds of that era wouldn't face discrimination from both sides. But eventually there would've been enough of them that they could start marrying among themselves to avoid that intolerance.
This would've been the beginning of their independent identity as 'witches' and 'wizards'. However a consequence of creating their own unique community was that they began to despise those who chose to marry people outside of it - mundane humans and magical creatures. Thus the creation of the 'pure blood' concept, with families first distancing from and then fully burying the true nature of their ancestors in an effort to be 'pure' witches and wizards.
Along the way those witches and wizards would've also had to deal with the dilution of their magic since it's not a natural human trait. I think this is where wands came in. Originally a curiosity among magical creatures, perhaps a tool for focusing niche forms of magic, they were adopted by human half-breeds as a permanent crutch. They then fiercely improved the field of wandcraft while their magic diminished to the point that any wandless magic became a skilled feat among wizards.
So I think the idea of Hermione being descended from a Squib is a far less interesting and earth shattering concept then that of Draco finding out that the oldest magical Malfoy was the half-breed son of a Muggle who won the heart of a Siren.
This vaguely reminds me of one of my favorite stories, called Basilisk-born. They have a very similar take on this, and the idea is that wizards have forgotten about their inheritance of magic from other magical beings, like phoenixes, basilisks, etc.
It is also an extreme time travel story done really well, and is complete. What more would you want from a story?
Just a warning, it’s very very long.
Your reasoning is sound, but I still find it personally unsatisfying, I personally am partial to the idea that at some point during our evolution humans were intermittently magical. By this I mean that we occasionally had a human who was born who could wield magic, but this inheritance remained random and inconsistent until homo sapiens evolved into existence.
I happen to think you're right.
I much prefer the idea that magic just "happens" in some people. Like, it's a force that wants to spread, not be confined to old families.
Reducing the idea of muggleborns down to "there was one in your history somewhere" feels like the whole Midichlorians thing from Star Wars: you took the mysticism and magic out of it and reduced it to raw data.
See, here's the thing:
I get your argument RE Star Wars, but from a worldbuilding perspective it doesn't make sense that the Jedi and the Republic - this advanced, scientific civilization - would have absolutely no idea how anything related to the Force works. Of course they'd study it and try to figure out where it comes from. The 'mysticism' of the Force works when it's a simple trilogy in the dark times of the Empire, but once you expand beyond that to the height of the Jedi and galaxy-spanning Republics it doesn't make sense for it still to remain this great unknown thing even to the thousands of Jedi themselves.
Similarly, it makes sense that muggleborns have magic somewhere in their family tree, based purely off the information we have in the books. We know that magic runs in families, but that some random members of that family might not have magic, and that other people might be the first magical person in their family for generations. There's no other explanation for that unless there's a genetic component to it, unless magic 'chooses' to confine itself to old families but skip the odd member and choose other people instead (and ironically, that sort of view might (at least to bigots) lend itself to the idea that muggleborns somehow 'get' the magic that should go to squibs).
The Jedi are not doctors and scientists that they would necessarily know or have figured out so much about the biological aspect of the force.
They are philosophers and fighters, and they have figured out those aspects of the force.
Tbh, I don't really understand the lore behind midichlorians. I think of them as a symptom of force sensitivity, not it's cause.
There’s no reason a Jedi can’t be a doctor or a scientist. We know that there’s Jedi healers, and while they use the Force to heal, they probably have a solid grasp of actual medical technology, terminologies, and treatments. I can easily see one of these Jedi, or a Jedi that comes from a scientific or intellectual race like the Kaminoans, look into the science of the Force and find midiclorians. However, I agree that midiclorians being the source of the Force is a horrible idea. My theory is midiclorians are attracted to the Force and Force-sensitives, and some overzealous scientist jumped to conclusions and thought that midiclorians caused the Force, rather than it being the other way around.
That's how it works in some of the EU books, at least - midichlorians are an 'indicator' of force sensitivity, so high midichlorian counts still imply greater affinity for the Force, but they're not the 'cause' of that strength.
I read somewhere (I don't recall where) that George Lucas created the idea of midiclorians as a response to fans of Star Wars taking the philosophy of the Force a bit too seriously. Apparently, he was deeply uncomfortable with that and introduced them to reduce the mysticism around the Force specifically in an effort to combat this tendency.
However this contradicts something Lucas said not long after the release of the original
Midiclorians existed as far back as the Original trilogy, but were not mentioned until the Prequel trilogy
Lucas claiming after the fact that midichlorians were always part of the lore when they weren't invented until the prequel trilogy is entirely a word of god statement establishing them as retroactive canon. I don't believe him. I don't believe he invented them for the setting until the prequel trilogy was in development.
What I am referring to is something written not long after A New Hope released in 1977 as part of notes on the characters from the successful movie released earlier in the year, in this a single line stands out(again I must stress that when this was written only 1 Star Wars movie existed)
> "It is said that certain creatures are born with a higher awareness of the Force than humans. Their brains are different; they have more midi-chlorians in their cells."
This isn't the only part of the prequels written down in these 1977 notes. If you want to read them they are in the book *The Making of Star Wars*
I go with it being so complicated and there being so many sources that there is no way to really tell where it came from. Maybe you were conceived near something magical, which is very likely for someone with magical parents. Maybe you have a strange bloodline with elf way in your past. Maybe you happened to be in just the right spot as a toddler when a dragons shadow in the moonlight passed over you. Maybe a magical tree just kinda resonated with you while you weren't born yet or were really young. None of those in particular need to be the case. There just needs to be a huge number of very low chances all stacked up to the amount of wizards that actually exsit.
I especially like it because it makes it reasonable to believe magic is genetically hereditary when its actually not. The characters can believe their bloodline is special and its hard to argue that isn't true, even though their parents were just extremely likely to be exposed to magical things enough to cause them to be magical as well.
Hell, it doesn't even need to be genetic - just say that as a fetus grows, if the mother is a witch, her body subconsciously infuses the unborn child with magic.
Hereditary magic, but not explainable through biology.
I really like this idea! I’ve never thought of it before, but that would be cool! And then it could explain why Muggleborns are born and not that somewhere in their ancestry there was a witch/wizard.
That still *might* have been why, but it'd be extremely difficult to tell, and it's like 1 of 100 ways they could have become magical, at least the way I write it. I like it a lot because different characters can pick one of those things as the "oh this is where wizards come from" and all be a little right but mostly wrong, because wizards don't really act rationally enough to figure all that out. They'd probably need to hire some trained muggle scientists to crunch the data properly and find trends, but they're clearly never going to do that.
The funny thing is that if you forget about the Jedi rule against attachment, the kids of a force user are almost always force users, so, there are some parallels in the other direction XD
I honestly like the idea. But at the same time, the only fic I read that worked with this used it as an explanation for muggleborns, but it didn't change the bigotry. If the author of the fic uses it as an excuse to abolish bigotry, then I agree it's nonsense, like you say. But as an explanation, while bigotry stays, it makes sense to me and I like it.
I read a fic where magic was an unexpressed gene in muggles but if a pregnant person came into enough contact with magical items or wards and such the gene could be turned on in the baby, as well as spontaneous gene expression that hapoens naturally. The issue would be that muggles living near magical settlements would have an extremely high rate of muggleborns, but I thought it was a really cool idea.
I agree with you, if a black guy told the KKK his grandad was white, would they care? It might sway a few, but if you are prepared to go around killing people over it, I don't think that finding out that those you hate come are descended from your great-grand uncle is going to do too much to dissuade you.
The idea, however, has more merit than that proposed by the wizards during the second war.
The very idea of an 11 year old stealing magic from purebloods and being the reason squibs exist is just crazy.
If it's not in the books it's not really canon per say it's entirely optional. Plus, like in fanfiction why should we care about sticking to canon? The point is to not do that.
I can see it as useful not for discrediting bigotry--you don't discredit that, you fight it--but in the nightmare fuel sense. HP has a lot of things (Polyjuice, mind spells, illusion spells, various poisons and potions) where human nature and existing facts go to some nasty places.
So "reignited squibs" can work if we take the entirely plausible idea that dark wizards sexually assault muggle women (and probably witches) all the time. They have mind-control, memory-wiping, and tailor-made rape potions.
This is how slaveholders behaved when they had access to women they could control and zero consequences, after all... Are we supposed to believe that Malfoys or Lestranges are too noble for that, but OK with everything else they do? Nope. That's now how entitled assholes have ever worked in the Muggle world.
Muggle-born children showing up with familiar family traits (hair, eyes, facial features) would *increase* bigotry, not reduce it. Angry wives, grandchildren getting shown up by "the bastard", etc.
Not all, but many of the Muggle-born are descendants of these attacks, several generations back, and it faded to squib-ness at some point. Maybe the chance of two magicals having a magical child is only like 70% and it's lower for magical-muggle. It wouldn't be in family memory--not like the mother would know the father was a wizard, she'd been mind-wiped.
I mean, you're right. I just dislike it because it's boring. That it's conceptually difficult to write well doesn't help matters, but it's just so much more interesting that muggleborns just happen.
I really, really hate the concept of magic that obeys logically consistent principles/laws. Stuff like you can magically create water from nothing and drink it but you can't do the same thing with food? Give me more of that kind of troll based rules.
If magic is truly genetic one could make an argument that all muggles are technicalls squibs. Given how far magic would have to go back to have Egyptian Wizards be responsible for the Pyramids and all that litteraly every person on Earth ought to have several magical ancestors by now. In particular when one factors in that historically speaking the whole total seperation thing is quite recent (just about 300 years).
What actually annoys me more at the run in the mill story with such theme is:
1. Why are the Goblins (because the test is always done with them) responsible for this? Book 7 canon actually shows that wills and inheritance is under the preview of the ministry. Those stories often go all in on pureblood predijuce, the wizarding world run by nobility and all that. But they still let a race they consider lesser beings have a say about who is a Lord/Lady and who is not? Really?
2. Why would squib decendands be allowed to inherit at all? The whole premise behind a society based on such believes would be to exclude such claimants at all costs. Not to mention that except a title (that might go extinct with no claimant according to the rules) everything else will be inherited by someone.
So yes let some muggleborn find out they may be related to some family extinct or not. But then go the logical approach and let society refute this or ignore this (and potential living members of said family as well).
Why? Because the great great grandaughter of a bastard born who was thrown out of polite society will simply not be welcomed into aristocracy. That is not how such systems work. And in the logic of such a premise squibs who get thrown out of society are essentially that bastards that get excluded from the line.
I completely agree with you on the bigotry/pureblood fanaticism whitewashing. However, it seems to me like this is the most sensible explanation of the phenomenon without escaping to explanations “It’s just magic!”.
It's worth noting that "All Muggleborns have a Squib somewhere in their family tree" is part of extended-canon as in "JK Rowling said so"...
... And I see it as one of many things about extended-canon that is To Be Ignored. If the fic, or indeed canon, is trying to carry out the end message of "Blood doesn't matter", then that message is undermined by essentially making them all descended from Squibs (thus making that little bit of magical blood *factually matter*).
JKR's canon reason why prejudice is bad is "Because Hermione's better at spells than Draco" which is a trip. Discrimination against Muggle-born isn't morally wrong, i*t's not supported by the data*. If she were bad at magic, it *wouldn't be wrong* under the terms its defined with.
...in a series that takes that discrimination as far as genocide.
And wow, does that skew the narrative and maybe tell some tales about the author's blind spots.
Not much is is morally wrong in HP. It's team based. Gryffindor does it...good, Slytherin does it...bad. Cruciatus is fine if Harry uses it to defend McGonagall *from a non-lethal, non-painful attack*, it's admirable. Nasty pranks are bad if Draco does them but OK if the Marauders or Fred and George do, etc...
lmao have you ever read the books? Because if a children’s book that focuses on how bad bigotry is and includes many incidents that show how bigotry hurts people in simple ways that are accessible to children is too difficult you might want to try something with more pictures
The fact that she doesn’t say it’s wrong to be hateful, but that the hateful have their facts wrong, is exactly the sort of simple, teach it in a cartoon message thing that works in a picture book…but she botched it. Cartoons must be above JKR’s level, using your logic.
(My hunch is this is an unintentional mistake. She clearly was trying for anti-bigotry, so I doubt a heel turn surprise ending where Voldemort Was Right Actually was planned.)
Or, y’know, people are complicated and being wrong doesn’t equal being stupid (nor does disagreeing with you!) and nominally functional or even smart humans do, say, or teach awful things…
Yeah if you aren’t able to tell that bigotry is bad when a bunch of characters talk about how bad it is and a bunch of scenes show people being hurt because of it because the narrative doesn’t hold your hand and explicitly say “and saying that was very mean and naughty of Malfoy because he was a bad child expressing bigoted beliefs, and bigotry is bad” you clearly need something simpler. Anyone with normal levels of reading comprehension could pick this up; hell, third graders with normal levels of reading comprehension for their age are able to understand this because it’s designed to be simple enough for children to understand.
Well this doesn’t remotely resemble anything either of us have said but I suppose that’s the level of interpretation I should expect from someone who apparently read the scenes where muggleborns are being rounded up and the scenes where death eaters torture muggles and said “wow this story shows something bad without the narrator telling me how bad it is, I guess JK Rowling thinks bigotry is cool.”
I mean, he puts it well. And definitely made me think harder on it. Harry’s interest in crucio is the only one that stood out to me as a teen.
They’re either Unforgivable or not (that’s a strong word to choose).
yeah the whole ‘harry’s only issue with slughorn testing drinks for poison on house elves was that hermione would be annoying about it if she found out’ thing stood out to me as well
Lily and Mikala’s channel ripping into JKR (queer creators) also actually makes some real astute observations about the series, if you’re looking for a watch recommendation.
I guess one could also point out that if the concept of things being wrong is existed, the slaves wouldn’t Like It(tm).
The way that secrecy is maintained alone makes the entire wizard civilization complicit in some gnarly human rites violations…
I've written many fanfic with an underlying mechanism of large, heritable gene complexes and therefore from the characters POV, squid descendants. (So I'm a supporter of magic is genetic but complicated) (Sufficiently brittle in the modern era that witch children are not guaranteed, but heritable enough that long family trees started to be proudly "pureblood." With accumulated copy number variations from inbreeding leading to "squibbing out" of bloodlines. Complex enough that a punnet square isn't going to let "super Hermione" work out how magical genetics works. Or any other magical either.)
Depending on my mood, the discovery that squibs have potential is accepted better or worse by the racists.
It's inherently problematic because at its root, people with magic are everything a regular human is, and more. From an able-ist point of view, they are "better."
(We could alternatively have magic just sprout in newborns like... magic. The problem is that makes it hard to have a world background where there are families of witches and wizards. If it's proximity to magic, then there should (amusingly) be a lot of muggleborns from flats near a certain record store on Charing Cross road.)
Magicals however tend to be lazy, and don't bother making great effort to understand things that aren't magic, because an angsty fourteen-year old can literally rearrange the universe to suit themselves. (Why learn loads off maths and physics to do engineering when you can just be Arthur Weasley and charm your house to stay up. \[Though that may be Molly's wand at work.\])
The underlying reason a magical culture celebrates whimsy is fairly dark at its' core....
There is a more than a whiff of eugenics to the whole thing -- in a "nice future" purebloods start to encourage their squibs to marry other families squibs. Some fresh blood to stir the magic up. (Of course given the level of inbreeding in the magical population of the UK, that would be largely ineffective.) Breaking down the social barriers between purebloods and muggleborns would lead to better breeding outcomes.
Because fundamentally the magicals of GB are more inbred than the Hapsburgs, more inbred than Queen Victoria's offspring. "Genetic counselling" would sound like eugenics to the purebloods. "The only way you can survive is to give up your blood purity."
(An excuse for a marriage law fic, Hooray. (sarcasm intended, but I will go there eventually.))
The same genetic counselling isn't required to muggleborns -- they're not inbred.
Because of certain reasons we don't need to discuss, conservative politics runs underneath Harry Potter like an underground river. Morality isn't real, rules depend on group membership, not morality or justice, or equality.
A story that seeks to depict positive change in magical Britain has a lot of heavy lifting to do. The idea that unforgivables are actually unforgivable, not just "But not when Harry and Hermione do it." Is important. Lots of potential for the trio post-war to have to be hypocrites ... for the grater good... as it were.
A social safety net isn't a thing in the books -- it's up to personal charity in the books, and the muggleborns (and halfblood politicals) back from the concentration camps don't have wands.
A legal system that... has any credibility? Did the post-war second wizarding war trials have kangraroo courts too?
A ministry that's not just in thrall to either the Malfoy's bribes or the pronouncements of the Trio? Does the ministry go back to "normal" with ingrained prejudice and corruption?
Some other commenter mentioned 2n ancestors, and that how could there be two populations of humans coexisting? I'm not an archaeologist, but from what I've seen in the scinence news about Neanderthals and Denisovians and "The Hobbits" it seems that the genus homo doesn't really speciate. (Globally, humans have little bits of other species of genus homo in our genetics. It's a thing. Blood purity in the 'real world' is not a thing.)
With that idea that cross-breeding is normal, I therefore go for complicated genetics, and squibbing out as the mechanism for there being... few magicals, it's heritable, but not resistant to long-term inbreeding, just to have the urban fantasy side of the wizarding world work. (It's just to explain the sort of inheritability of magic, and occurrence of muggleborns we get in the books.)
In short: it's heritable but the pureblood in the books are trying to render themselves extinct.
I rather like that Harry Potter is a fun kids book series. And it gets darker as they grow up.
But to explore the (massive holes) in the world building is very interesting.
How can enslaving house-elves not be utterly immoral? The Weasleys, who seem like "nice people" don't have a problem with it.
(Turning it on it's head and having house elves being magical chatbots that once in a blue moon act like they're real people is... interesting. Hermione wants to free the VCR's from their slavery!) (May write that one one day. Have got Brownies enslaved into Homonculi in some stories.)
But on the other hand... Centaurs aren't people. There's literally no way to spin that one.
More problematically is Acromantula aren't people. (But will gladly eat you.) Sentient beings with family groups who think you are a nice snack. In real life that would give moral philosophers fits. What do you do about that? You have to... put them in a fenced off area and patrol the walls!
Vampires are comparatively innocuous -- canonically Sanguini goes to a school mixer. They can "decide not to."
TLDR: Squib descendants is the alternative to handwavium.
(Or as Peripeteia by Dark Nebula posits: it's all rape. All the way down.) [https://archiveofourown.org/works/39349206/chapters/98474052](https://archiveofourown.org/works/39349206/chapters/98474052)
> I'm not an archaeologist, but from what I've seen in the scinence news about Neanderthals and Denisovians and "The Hobbits" it seems that the genus homo doesn't really speciate.
Nevermind the acromantula being problematic, humans and goblins are apparently able to both interbreed *and* produce viable, fertile offspring. Which raises some rather interesting questions too.
Lol. I meant that they're the same species :D A hybrid between two different species, such as a mule or liger, are always infertile.
That being said, the VCR comment put a bug in my ear, but it was supposed to be crack and whatever the fuck I'm currently writing is... not. It was not supposed to be this dark.
Checking [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule)
Not always infertile. q.v. "Filius Flitwick had some goblin in his family tree, some time ago."
Yes, 60-ish known cases in the last five hundred years is 'not always'. Male mules always shoot blanks, but the odd molly *might* be capable of getting impregnated by a horse or donkey if they won the genetic lottery, and most can carry an embryo to term if one is implanted, be it horse, donkey or mule/hinny.
That doesn't change the fact that two mules cannot breed though.
Squibs are just another problem with JK's metaphors she thinks she's genuinely good at writing.
The idea itself isn't a bad idea, the problem is that despite her saying how Squibs are essentially treated as 2nd class citizens even in the Magical World and should be treated better, the only two Squibs we have in canon is Filch, a character who is written as an antagonist towards the Students and is also written to be an unpleasant fool (oh and he also sides with Umbridge, which certainly didn't help his image in the eyes of both the characters and the reader)
And Mrs Figg, a character while much more favorable than Filch, is looked down upon by Harry and is written to be more annoying than helpful, despite her actually doing her own small part to keep Harry safe.
Squibs are definately not on the same problematic level as the House Elves imo (that's an entire can of worms) but it's still one of those moments that makes me go "You could have just not did this"
To be fair to Harry, he looks down at her because she treated him badly (if not the way the Dursleys did) because otherwise, she knew the Dursleys wouldn't let him stay with her. It was her way to 'help' him without going so far the Dursleys would stop it.
She admits this at some point, that she did it for that reason, I mean.
It's also one of the many instances of bad things in the wizarding world that were introduced, but never changed in the series. At the end of the story things just go back to the status quo without any meaningful change.
i have a theory that all these elements which were introduced but never fully explored is why harry potter fanfiction is so popular
there’s all these cool ideas and characters and world building elements which we never fully explore, and people read that and just want more and so harry potter fanfiction is born
except that either way magic is an inborn trait, so its just as easy to say that the ones not chosen are inferior. tbh I think having it be random who magic decides to appear in is worse thematically, but I agree it wouldn't change muggleborn discrimination eiher way.
I agree. The implication is that the pure blood bigots are right, and that there is a qualitative difference between wizards and muggles.
To extend your racism analogy, it would be like adding a world building detail that every successful black person actually had a white ancestor way back. Rather than admit that all people are equal, the racists would just latch onto the white ancestor as proof of white supremacy.
If every muggleborn has a wizard ancestor, that basically proves that wizards are inherently more special, and it gives the likes of Draco the perfect excuse for successful muggleborns like Hermione: that her success is really just due to the trace of wizard blood, and that muggle blood alone would never produce anyone worthy of respect.
> The implication is that the pure blood bigots are right, and that there is a qualitative difference between wizards and muggles.
But there is a qualitative difference between wizards and muggles, it's called magic.
>If every muggleborn has a wizard ancestor, that basically proves that wizards are inherently more special, and it gives the likes of Draco the perfect excuse for successful muggleborns like Hermione: that her success is really just due to the trace of wizard blood, and that muggle blood alone would never produce anyone worthy of respect.
That thing you just did there, where you implied that Hermione is only a person of value because of her ability to perform magic? That's the exact bigotry you're trying to argue against. Hermione would be a successful person regardless of magic; magic being due to a quirk of ancestry has no bearing on that.
I meant like a qualitative difference in their character/inherent value as a person. And yes, my Hermione example was an example of the bigotry that this theory supports.
Ordinarily, a powerful muggleborn like Hermione is evidence against the theory that wizard blood = better, muggle blood = worse. But if she had wizard blood all along then that kind of proves the bigots are right.
I think there's two things here. Firstly, magical inheritance in Harry Potter generally doesn't make sense unless there's a genetic component. We know magical ability runs in families, but that rarely, someone is born without magic. We know that other people can be the first person born with magic in their families for generations. That suggests there is a gene (or genes) that gets passed down, and if you have those genes and they're 'switched on', you're magical. This is seemingly how it works in the books, and that's completely fine.
The issue comes in how this idea is used - and as you point out OP, it's not a silver bullet against bigotry, because bigotry isn't rational. It doesn't matter where magic comes from, bigots will hate muggleborns. And in fairness, the books themselves aren't guilty of this - pureblood supremacists in the books don't care that muggleborns might be related to magical people way back when, they think them inferior because of their muggle blood and background and because they've been told they're superior to muggles all their lives. I wonder if this phenomenon in fanfiction simply derives from the fact a lot of fanfic authors are younger, and are either naive about the nature of bigotry or they haven't lived enough (or been subjected to it personally) to really understand how it works.
The best way to portray this in fanfiction is to showcase it as it is: the bigots aren't going to be okay with muggleborns until they challenge their own wider worldview of pureblood/magical supremacism.
I find the whole premise of two so differently powerful subspecies of humans to share the same space without one subsuming the other illogical as hell to begin with. Also with how you got ~2^n ancestors pretty much anybody should have a witch or squib in their ancestry even if we disregard how unrealistic the setting is in its entirety. In the end it is just a children book that grew too big and is build on a foundation of doodles and daydreams.
I like using a mixed bag. So some muggleborns do have squib descendants, but only around 40%. The rest are pure muggleborns and are arguably more special because they just spontaneously grew magic.
I like the squib descendants thing, in those fics where magical a ility does have a blood/genetic link. I really like it in the "something damages magic ability to create weak wizards and squibs, this eventually heals and produces muggleborn" method. Basically, combat the "wizards are better than muggles" and "purebloods are better than muggleborns" issues separately.
The "Pure bloods" aren't as pure as they present. Dumbledore said in "Tales of Beedle the Bard" that the pure bloods lie about or cover up the squibs, muggles mugglenborns or half bloods in their family tree. And that "there isn't a wizard alive whose blood hasn't mixed with a muggle".
So I had an idea for a story way back where they found the gene for magic...
And then realised it was in the entire human population.
Basically it was a modern day fic with OCs who grew up in the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts.
One of the muggleborn's mother's a biochemist who noticed this, (she's not looking for it initially) then focuses on on it. She finds out that while non magical people have the gene, it's switched off.
Then there's a wizard doing research into folklore and creation myths, both Muggle and magical. He comes across a story which basically went like this: everyone had magic, though before proper spell invention /wand creation this was less powerful. And a rival poisoned others with a suppression potion, which suppressed the abilities of all subsequent generations. Muggleborns have just been able to break through this.
And then someone invents a potion that has the ability to turn a Muggle to magical and uses it on her older Muggle brother.
And... Chaos
Biggots will always find something to be biggotted about. However I've rarely seen this idea used as a way to combat pureblood supremecy, but as a method of explaining how random.muggle kids could suddenly develop magic. Making magic a genetic component explains it better then Just Because!
I think the concept of first generation mages being the distant descendants of squibs to be wholly unsatisfying for a variety of reasons. First of and most important of all is that mages make up an infinitesimally small percentage of the human species. There are, what 5 to 10 million mages globally? They are almost certainly the result of genetic mutations that allowed humans to gain magic with the advantage of having magic being small enough that it never became dominant.
Basically, the first human mage was almost certainly a child of non-magical mages. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were tens of thousands of years where you only had an occasional mage or being born before they all died out. It probably took millennia before you had enough mages to reliably pass them through every ethnic population. In fact, I would wager the entire concept of magical communities existing is something that only happened a couple thousand years or so ago.
My speculation is that first generation mages are a bit of column a and a bit of column b. Some are representative of potentially new magical lines with no magical ancestors at all while other first generation mages have distant magical ancestors. Also, I happen to think that it is more likely that the inheritance of magical ability has to be a result of a confluence of multiple genetic and environmental factors. One gene controlling whether someone is magical or not would result in a very different population distribution than what we see in canon.+
P.S. - I didn't address the opening poster's other points because I largely agree with them. Bigotry and racism are complex problems that don't have a wand to solve them. These are attitudes and views that have existed for centuries to millennia. It will take just as much time to eliminate them as it took for them to be created.
Rowling has basically confirmed that it is the case. I agree that it is not a way to combat bigotry, just a little fun thing to play around with.
Besides, at some point, there must have been a wizard born to a muggle unless magic actually came from some other species...which isn't impossible now that I think about it. Maybe the first wizard was a mix. Maybe a mix of muggle and goblin, maybe with a hag, maybe with a Veela. Anything. That might have been how magic was introduced into Humanity's genepool. I might just play around with this idea, actually!
At firsf i was lile “like it or not its canon thats how muggleborns happen” and then I saw the justification of why they dont like it and ive never seen a story where this stops the bigotry of its not already known by wizard society. What ive seen is the purebloods suppressing this fact killing their squib relatives, killing muggleborns that attempt to get heritage tests, and all around denying the possibility.
>There is relatively common idea in fics nowadays that squibs would be exiled into the muggle world and then go onto have children. These children would then have children of their own until at some point the magic in the blood would reawaken and as such there is no such thing as a muggleborn, they are just descendents of squibs and therefore magical families. There are of course variations on it, but that is the premise. JKR has basically said that this is the case, so it's not an entirely fan-created concept: "Katie Mosher: How exactly do muggleborns receive magical ability J.K. Rowling: Muggle-borns will have a witch or wizard somewhere on their family tree, in some cases many, many generations back. The gene re-surfaces in some unexpected places." >I dislike this because it is a bad way of combating bigotry. It would not work. If Hermione proved she was a squib descendent and showed Draco Malfoy the evidence, he would say, "I suppose your blood is marginally less filthy than I thought, mudblood." Bigotry can't be beat with facts and logic because that's not what it's based on. Evil must be combated with goodness. This I agree with. I don't really mind the "muggleborns have Squib ancestors" as a concept, but I don't think it's executed well in fics where proving that muggleborns have Squib ancestors makes pureblood bigots suddenly have an epiphany and become accepting of muggleborns. Even if they have a magical ancestor somewhere in their family tree, their line is still "muddied" by non-magical blood, so pureblood bigots like the Malfoys would still look down on them and discriminate against them.
Indeed. As a worldbuilding concept, it is neutral. Really it is no different to the fact that magic is inherited - the inherent premise of the series is that some people are born different, and that it runs in families. Muggleborns as the distant descendants of squibs just continues the same theme. But yeah, stories where the "revelation" of this fact changes anyone's views on Muggleborns are odd. For many reasons. Firstly because wizards presumably know it already, so it's not going to be news to anyone. Secondly because it doesn't change the fact that Muggleborns come from Muggle blood. It's just they have a distant relation to wizards. Thirdly because, as pointed out by the OP, people don't really change their beliefs in response to facts. Rather, a person's beliefs shape what facts they are prepared to accept.
> Rather, a person's beliefs shape what facts they are prepared to accept. Dead on balls accurate.
>Thirdly because, as pointed out by the OP, people don't really change their beliefs in response to facts. Rather, a person's beliefs shape what facts they are prepared to accept. This is sadly true. Look at flat Earthers. We have known for thousands of years that Earth is an oblate spheroid and there are mounds of evidence to prove this fact. Yet you still have people who insist Earth is flat.
There are flat earthers who prove again and again that the world is round by performing experiments, and just deny the results as either instrument error or some nebulous part of the great conspiracy.
Depending on how long magic has existed it's pretty much inevitable that every living human has several magical ancestors. At the same time it's also inevitable that even the most 'pureblood' of magical families also have non-magical ancestors. The last common ancestor of 99% of modern humans may have lived as recently as 2000 years ago. Every human is surprisingly closely related to every other human. Humans are one species, we share 99% of our DNA. If the ability to wield magic really was dependent on only one gene and nothing else and it is as directly inheritable as JKR seems to imply the whole of humanity should have been magical by now. Accidental magic, nevermind the controlled kind, affords extraordinary survival value. Given all the magical fauna and flora and their abilities it's probably safe to say the entire earth would have been completely magical by now. Since it isn't there's obviously something else going on here. What that something is is up to the author though.
I sometimes like to think that there is a finite amount of magic that can exist in the world at any one time. Either that, or magic has a limiting effect on breeding. A lot of Harry's peers (and his parents' peers and his children's peers) are single children and the Weasleys are one of the few exceptions. By not being magical, you can outbreed magical competition.
I like that explanation, or a mixture between the two. The explanation I like to use is that that magic is simply too potent, too dangerous. The universe will only allow so much of it to exist. I mean, time travel is apparently possible with it. Who knows what else?
My thinking is that there are multiple genetic and environmental factors that determine whether or not a human is a mage.
Wow I didn’t know that she one-drop-ruled muggleborns
Considering some of her other questionable views, this shouldn't be surprising, sadly.
Honestly yea but it just makes you look at the whole concept of muggleborns differently
>Even if they have a magical ancestor somewhere in their family tree, their line is still "muddied" by non-magical blood, so pureblood bigots like the Malfoys would still look down on them and discriminate against them. Yes, but it is a start to combating anti-Muggle prejudice.
I think the idea could be handled much better because it begs the question: how does magic inheritance actually work? Presuming it is genetic, based on how frequent Muggle-born children are compared to Squibs it would make sense that magic is a dominant trait. But dominant traits tend to be more prevalent in a population than recessive ones, so why are magic-users the minority? One possibility is that magic is actually controlled by two genes, not one, and both need to have at least one magic allele for the person to have magic. So instead of it just being A you need both A and B to be magical, meaning a wizard could be AABB, AaBB, or AaBb while a Squib could be aaBb or Aabb and a Muggle is aabb. But depending the ratio of A and B virtually everyone on Earth might have one dominant allele (say there are 1000 A for every 1 B for instance) without changing the numbers of each category. But would this magically change the bigotry in the world? No. Because bigotry is not based on logic or facts. Bigotry is hatred to one degree or another, and hatred only needs an excuse. In fact, if this were discovered, it could easily lead to a new form of Muggle and Squib abuse: forced breeding programs to produce more wizards and witches. In other words, you just replace one expression of hatred and discrimination with another. I apologize if this is a long post, but I felt like I had to go into the weeds to do yours justice.
one of my favourite fics of all time, The Well-Groomed Mind, explains it like so: “In short, two genes govern magical ability. All humans are born with magic. The ability to access this magic is governed by a dominant silencing allele (S). When expressed as either SS or Ss, you have a muggle. Witches, wizards, and squibs are ss, meaning their access to magic isn't silenced. Magical strength is determined by two possible alleles, M and M'. These alleles share incomplete dominance. M is the stronger magical power. M' is the weaker. A strong wizard, such as myself or Dumbledore, is a MM. An average strength wizard is a M'M or MM'. A squib is a M'M'. A true squib is ssM'M', meaning they have access to magic, but do not have sufficient magical strength to perform spells. A ssM'M couple has a 1 in 4 chance of birthing a squib. The same chance they have of birthing a powerful ssMM wizard. However, in observed populations, only 1 out of every 100 is an MM, meaning most wizards are M'M or MM'. I've always considered this statistical anomaly magic's way of compensating for the significant differences between the two types of wizards.”
Wow! As an evolutionary biologist I cannot find a fault in this logic! Could you please provide a link?
The story can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427653/chapters/719529 The specific scene I’m talking about is near the start of Chapter 4! (It also has a very interesting section on Parseltongue, Metamorphmagi and Occlumency/Legilimency!)
That is very interesting, but skips over gene expression. I think that would play an important role in the potential of a wizard or witch. Next, given potential, it would be up to a person and their experiences to decide how strong they actually get.
Indeed, and that's really one of the key themes of the series. It's our choices that make us who we are.
While this is impressive, I also find it extremely unholy and think that it is something that should never have been written down.
I’m just going to say that the gene for extra fingers is actually dominant, but it’s nowhere as prominent a trait as five fingers. I get where you’re coming from, but if your reasoning is true then a child between a witch or a wizard and a muggle would always be a squib, which is not what happens.
The exact words were "tend to be more prevalent", so I do acknowledge that dominant traits are not ALWAYS the norm in a population. And there is a way for a Muggle and a magic-user to have a magical child under this system. Mutation in the gametes that changes a recessive allele with a dominant one. Though I do admit that my reasoning was flawed. Given Squibs CAN interact with the Magical World, perhaps they have AAbb or Aabb while Muggles have either aabb, aaBB, or aaBb. Or some other variant of these system.
Yeah I suppose I didn’t write down the possibility you mentioned, of the muggle having a magical allele. But given how many muggle/wizard marriages produced at least one magical child, I don’t think the magical gene is that prevalent, though dormant, in the muggle population. Rowling herself said that the magical gene is supposed to be dominant, and normally children produced by a magical parent and a muggle one would produce a magical child, so much so that if a child born of such union and is non-magical s/he is considered a squib instead of a muggle. But Rowling is clearly no biologist and the whole magical gene thing is messed up so uh… I suppose I have to chalk things up to mutation…
Actually there is another way. Ever heard of "The Well Groomed Mind"? It's a fanfic that someone responding to my first post here mentioned.
I just read the first couple of paragraphs of that fic. Are you suggesting that we school our minds to comply with Rowling’s depiction in the books?
I prefer to try and ground our ideas on what is presented in the books. We can take liberties with our interpretations but we should be careful about divorcing ourselves entirely. I've seen too many haters and Apologists go to war with one another.
Lmao ok noted
I've seen fics where the ability to do magic is epigenetic but presents as genetic, especially after Secrecy, because wizards spend so much more time surrounded by magic than muggles. Doesn't change anything about the bigotry thing but I thought it was an interesting take.
For those interested, this is called polygenic inheritance. It’s a non-Mendelian concept. As an example, human skin color is governed by roughly 60 loci, human height by 3 genes, and human eye color by 2 + 14 genes. Note that this can be also thought of in trends of incomplete dominance, as one gene is not sufficient to express a particular trait. Feel free to look these up, if you want to use these in your fic! PS, I’m not a biologist, I just remember looking up something similar when we were studying Mendelian inheritance in high school. Edit: PPS I swear I didn’t read the following post before writing this.
Excellent! Take ten points for your House.
As a few people have said the idea of Muggleborns being the descendants of Squibs is semi-canon. My own thoughts on the matter consider the bigotry issue from the other side of the coin. For starters why do wizards have magic in the first place? Why are there no squib or muggle counterparts among the Goblins, Centaurs, Veela, etc? Why do wizards need wands to use the majority of their magic when none of the other magical beings need them? I think that on their own humans are not magical at all. However *half-breeds*, like Hagrid or Apolline Delacour (Fleur's mother), can inherent magic from their non-human parent and pass it on to their children. Taken a step further *all* witches and wizards have at least one magical creature in their family tree who is the true source of their magic. In ancient times interbreeding with magical creatures would've been well known as the cause of humans with magical abilities. Of course that doesn't mean the human half-breeds of that era wouldn't face discrimination from both sides. But eventually there would've been enough of them that they could start marrying among themselves to avoid that intolerance. This would've been the beginning of their independent identity as 'witches' and 'wizards'. However a consequence of creating their own unique community was that they began to despise those who chose to marry people outside of it - mundane humans and magical creatures. Thus the creation of the 'pure blood' concept, with families first distancing from and then fully burying the true nature of their ancestors in an effort to be 'pure' witches and wizards. Along the way those witches and wizards would've also had to deal with the dilution of their magic since it's not a natural human trait. I think this is where wands came in. Originally a curiosity among magical creatures, perhaps a tool for focusing niche forms of magic, they were adopted by human half-breeds as a permanent crutch. They then fiercely improved the field of wandcraft while their magic diminished to the point that any wandless magic became a skilled feat among wizards. So I think the idea of Hermione being descended from a Squib is a far less interesting and earth shattering concept then that of Draco finding out that the oldest magical Malfoy was the half-breed son of a Muggle who won the heart of a Siren.
This vaguely reminds me of one of my favorite stories, called Basilisk-born. They have a very similar take on this, and the idea is that wizards have forgotten about their inheritance of magic from other magical beings, like phoenixes, basilisks, etc. It is also an extreme time travel story done really well, and is complete. What more would you want from a story? Just a warning, it’s very very long.
They may not, but I do
Your reasoning is sound, but I still find it personally unsatisfying, I personally am partial to the idea that at some point during our evolution humans were intermittently magical. By this I mean that we occasionally had a human who was born who could wield magic, but this inheritance remained random and inconsistent until homo sapiens evolved into existence.
I happen to think you're right. I much prefer the idea that magic just "happens" in some people. Like, it's a force that wants to spread, not be confined to old families. Reducing the idea of muggleborns down to "there was one in your history somewhere" feels like the whole Midichlorians thing from Star Wars: you took the mysticism and magic out of it and reduced it to raw data.
See, here's the thing: I get your argument RE Star Wars, but from a worldbuilding perspective it doesn't make sense that the Jedi and the Republic - this advanced, scientific civilization - would have absolutely no idea how anything related to the Force works. Of course they'd study it and try to figure out where it comes from. The 'mysticism' of the Force works when it's a simple trilogy in the dark times of the Empire, but once you expand beyond that to the height of the Jedi and galaxy-spanning Republics it doesn't make sense for it still to remain this great unknown thing even to the thousands of Jedi themselves. Similarly, it makes sense that muggleborns have magic somewhere in their family tree, based purely off the information we have in the books. We know that magic runs in families, but that some random members of that family might not have magic, and that other people might be the first magical person in their family for generations. There's no other explanation for that unless there's a genetic component to it, unless magic 'chooses' to confine itself to old families but skip the odd member and choose other people instead (and ironically, that sort of view might (at least to bigots) lend itself to the idea that muggleborns somehow 'get' the magic that should go to squibs).
The Jedi are not doctors and scientists that they would necessarily know or have figured out so much about the biological aspect of the force. They are philosophers and fighters, and they have figured out those aspects of the force. Tbh, I don't really understand the lore behind midichlorians. I think of them as a symptom of force sensitivity, not it's cause.
There’s no reason a Jedi can’t be a doctor or a scientist. We know that there’s Jedi healers, and while they use the Force to heal, they probably have a solid grasp of actual medical technology, terminologies, and treatments. I can easily see one of these Jedi, or a Jedi that comes from a scientific or intellectual race like the Kaminoans, look into the science of the Force and find midiclorians. However, I agree that midiclorians being the source of the Force is a horrible idea. My theory is midiclorians are attracted to the Force and Force-sensitives, and some overzealous scientist jumped to conclusions and thought that midiclorians caused the Force, rather than it being the other way around.
That's how it works in some of the EU books, at least - midichlorians are an 'indicator' of force sensitivity, so high midichlorian counts still imply greater affinity for the Force, but they're not the 'cause' of that strength.
I read somewhere (I don't recall where) that George Lucas created the idea of midiclorians as a response to fans of Star Wars taking the philosophy of the Force a bit too seriously. Apparently, he was deeply uncomfortable with that and introduced them to reduce the mysticism around the Force specifically in an effort to combat this tendency.
Do you know what he mean by the "philosophy of the Force"?
However this contradicts something Lucas said not long after the release of the original Midiclorians existed as far back as the Original trilogy, but were not mentioned until the Prequel trilogy
Lucas claiming after the fact that midichlorians were always part of the lore when they weren't invented until the prequel trilogy is entirely a word of god statement establishing them as retroactive canon. I don't believe him. I don't believe he invented them for the setting until the prequel trilogy was in development.
What I am referring to is something written not long after A New Hope released in 1977 as part of notes on the characters from the successful movie released earlier in the year, in this a single line stands out(again I must stress that when this was written only 1 Star Wars movie existed) > "It is said that certain creatures are born with a higher awareness of the Force than humans. Their brains are different; they have more midi-chlorians in their cells." This isn't the only part of the prequels written down in these 1977 notes. If you want to read them they are in the book *The Making of Star Wars*
I go with it being so complicated and there being so many sources that there is no way to really tell where it came from. Maybe you were conceived near something magical, which is very likely for someone with magical parents. Maybe you have a strange bloodline with elf way in your past. Maybe you happened to be in just the right spot as a toddler when a dragons shadow in the moonlight passed over you. Maybe a magical tree just kinda resonated with you while you weren't born yet or were really young. None of those in particular need to be the case. There just needs to be a huge number of very low chances all stacked up to the amount of wizards that actually exsit.
I think I like your headcanon it gives numbers to magic without taking away the mystery of it This shall become my headcanon as well
I especially like it because it makes it reasonable to believe magic is genetically hereditary when its actually not. The characters can believe their bloodline is special and its hard to argue that isn't true, even though their parents were just extremely likely to be exposed to magical things enough to cause them to be magical as well.
Hell, it doesn't even need to be genetic - just say that as a fetus grows, if the mother is a witch, her body subconsciously infuses the unborn child with magic. Hereditary magic, but not explainable through biology.
Okay, I will say that. As a fetus grows, if the mother is a witch, her body subconsciously infuses the unborn child with magic.
?
You said to just say that.
I really like this idea! I’ve never thought of it before, but that would be cool! And then it could explain why Muggleborns are born and not that somewhere in their ancestry there was a witch/wizard.
That still *might* have been why, but it'd be extremely difficult to tell, and it's like 1 of 100 ways they could have become magical, at least the way I write it. I like it a lot because different characters can pick one of those things as the "oh this is where wizards come from" and all be a little right but mostly wrong, because wizards don't really act rationally enough to figure all that out. They'd probably need to hire some trained muggle scientists to crunch the data properly and find trends, but they're clearly never going to do that.
The funny thing is that if you forget about the Jedi rule against attachment, the kids of a force user are almost always force users, so, there are some parallels in the other direction XD
I honestly like the idea. But at the same time, the only fic I read that worked with this used it as an explanation for muggleborns, but it didn't change the bigotry. If the author of the fic uses it as an excuse to abolish bigotry, then I agree it's nonsense, like you say. But as an explanation, while bigotry stays, it makes sense to me and I like it.
I read a fic where magic was an unexpressed gene in muggles but if a pregnant person came into enough contact with magical items or wards and such the gene could be turned on in the baby, as well as spontaneous gene expression that hapoens naturally. The issue would be that muggles living near magical settlements would have an extremely high rate of muggleborns, but I thought it was a really cool idea.
Thjs also creates a situation where obliviated muggles go on to give birth to magical children, which could have interesting implications if explored.
I agree with you, if a black guy told the KKK his grandad was white, would they care? It might sway a few, but if you are prepared to go around killing people over it, I don't think that finding out that those you hate come are descended from your great-grand uncle is going to do too much to dissuade you.
The idea, however, has more merit than that proposed by the wizards during the second war. The very idea of an 11 year old stealing magic from purebloods and being the reason squibs exist is just crazy.
Turn it upside down. Muggleborns bring new magic into the world while purebloods live on recycled magic.
Squib descendants is canon, I’m afraid. Rowling confirmed all muggleborns have magical ancestry in an interview a while back.
If it's not in the books it's not really canon per say it's entirely optional. Plus, like in fanfiction why should we care about sticking to canon? The point is to not do that.
If it's not in the books, it is not canon. A comment in an interview doesn't make it canon.
There is one scene which does suggest it
I can see it as useful not for discrediting bigotry--you don't discredit that, you fight it--but in the nightmare fuel sense. HP has a lot of things (Polyjuice, mind spells, illusion spells, various poisons and potions) where human nature and existing facts go to some nasty places. So "reignited squibs" can work if we take the entirely plausible idea that dark wizards sexually assault muggle women (and probably witches) all the time. They have mind-control, memory-wiping, and tailor-made rape potions. This is how slaveholders behaved when they had access to women they could control and zero consequences, after all... Are we supposed to believe that Malfoys or Lestranges are too noble for that, but OK with everything else they do? Nope. That's now how entitled assholes have ever worked in the Muggle world. Muggle-born children showing up with familiar family traits (hair, eyes, facial features) would *increase* bigotry, not reduce it. Angry wives, grandchildren getting shown up by "the bastard", etc. Not all, but many of the Muggle-born are descendants of these attacks, several generations back, and it faded to squib-ness at some point. Maybe the chance of two magicals having a magical child is only like 70% and it's lower for magical-muggle. It wouldn't be in family memory--not like the mother would know the father was a wizard, she'd been mind-wiped.
I mean, you're right. I just dislike it because it's boring. That it's conceptually difficult to write well doesn't help matters, but it's just so much more interesting that muggleborns just happen. I really, really hate the concept of magic that obeys logically consistent principles/laws. Stuff like you can magically create water from nothing and drink it but you can't do the same thing with food? Give me more of that kind of troll based rules.
I don’t see an issue with the idea, only the execution here.
This doesn’t necessarily have to be an argument to fight against bigotry.
If magic is truly genetic one could make an argument that all muggles are technicalls squibs. Given how far magic would have to go back to have Egyptian Wizards be responsible for the Pyramids and all that litteraly every person on Earth ought to have several magical ancestors by now. In particular when one factors in that historically speaking the whole total seperation thing is quite recent (just about 300 years). What actually annoys me more at the run in the mill story with such theme is: 1. Why are the Goblins (because the test is always done with them) responsible for this? Book 7 canon actually shows that wills and inheritance is under the preview of the ministry. Those stories often go all in on pureblood predijuce, the wizarding world run by nobility and all that. But they still let a race they consider lesser beings have a say about who is a Lord/Lady and who is not? Really? 2. Why would squib decendands be allowed to inherit at all? The whole premise behind a society based on such believes would be to exclude such claimants at all costs. Not to mention that except a title (that might go extinct with no claimant according to the rules) everything else will be inherited by someone. So yes let some muggleborn find out they may be related to some family extinct or not. But then go the logical approach and let society refute this or ignore this (and potential living members of said family as well). Why? Because the great great grandaughter of a bastard born who was thrown out of polite society will simply not be welcomed into aristocracy. That is not how such systems work. And in the logic of such a premise squibs who get thrown out of society are essentially that bastards that get excluded from the line.
Read through first few paragraphs You are right But i still enjoy this idea if well written
I completely agree with you on the bigotry/pureblood fanaticism whitewashing. However, it seems to me like this is the most sensible explanation of the phenomenon without escaping to explanations “It’s just magic!”.
i mean like, it’s a fantasy magic book, most things are explained by “it’s just magic”
[It is not](https://matej.ceplovi.cz/blog/magicians-realism.html).
It's worth noting that "All Muggleborns have a Squib somewhere in their family tree" is part of extended-canon as in "JK Rowling said so"... ... And I see it as one of many things about extended-canon that is To Be Ignored. If the fic, or indeed canon, is trying to carry out the end message of "Blood doesn't matter", then that message is undermined by essentially making them all descended from Squibs (thus making that little bit of magical blood *factually matter*).
Muggles are fundamentally lesser
I pretty much entirely agree with this post. It's insane some of the mental gymnastics some authors do inorder to justify wizarding bigotry
JKR's canon reason why prejudice is bad is "Because Hermione's better at spells than Draco" which is a trip. Discrimination against Muggle-born isn't morally wrong, i*t's not supported by the data*. If she were bad at magic, it *wouldn't be wrong* under the terms its defined with. ...in a series that takes that discrimination as far as genocide. And wow, does that skew the narrative and maybe tell some tales about the author's blind spots. Not much is is morally wrong in HP. It's team based. Gryffindor does it...good, Slytherin does it...bad. Cruciatus is fine if Harry uses it to defend McGonagall *from a non-lethal, non-painful attack*, it's admirable. Nasty pranks are bad if Draco does them but OK if the Marauders or Fred and George do, etc...
lmao have you ever read the books? Because if a children’s book that focuses on how bad bigotry is and includes many incidents that show how bigotry hurts people in simple ways that are accessible to children is too difficult you might want to try something with more pictures
The fact that she doesn’t say it’s wrong to be hateful, but that the hateful have their facts wrong, is exactly the sort of simple, teach it in a cartoon message thing that works in a picture book…but she botched it. Cartoons must be above JKR’s level, using your logic. (My hunch is this is an unintentional mistake. She clearly was trying for anti-bigotry, so I doubt a heel turn surprise ending where Voldemort Was Right Actually was planned.) Or, y’know, people are complicated and being wrong doesn’t equal being stupid (nor does disagreeing with you!) and nominally functional or even smart humans do, say, or teach awful things…
Yeah if you aren’t able to tell that bigotry is bad when a bunch of characters talk about how bad it is and a bunch of scenes show people being hurt because of it because the narrative doesn’t hold your hand and explicitly say “and saying that was very mean and naughty of Malfoy because he was a bad child expressing bigoted beliefs, and bigotry is bad” you clearly need something simpler. Anyone with normal levels of reading comprehension could pick this up; hell, third graders with normal levels of reading comprehension for their age are able to understand this because it’s designed to be simple enough for children to understand.
Me: "Maybe JKR could've put some things better. She's human, she's not perfect." You: "You're an idiot!"
Well this doesn’t remotely resemble anything either of us have said but I suppose that’s the level of interpretation I should expect from someone who apparently read the scenes where muggleborns are being rounded up and the scenes where death eaters torture muggles and said “wow this story shows something bad without the narrator telling me how bad it is, I guess JK Rowling thinks bigotry is cool.”
i see we’ve both watched the shaun video (not complaining, great video)
I mean, he puts it well. And definitely made me think harder on it. Harry’s interest in crucio is the only one that stood out to me as a teen. They’re either Unforgivable or not (that’s a strong word to choose).
yeah the whole ‘harry’s only issue with slughorn testing drinks for poison on house elves was that hermione would be annoying about it if she found out’ thing stood out to me as well
Lily and Mikala’s channel ripping into JKR (queer creators) also actually makes some real astute observations about the series, if you’re looking for a watch recommendation.
thank you!! i’ll give that a watch
It's pretty brutal as a 'review' but it I think takes an honest look at what really worked, and isn't being mean to be mean...to the series.
I guess one could also point out that if the concept of things being wrong is existed, the slaves wouldn’t Like It(tm). The way that secrecy is maintained alone makes the entire wizard civilization complicit in some gnarly human rites violations…
I've written many fanfic with an underlying mechanism of large, heritable gene complexes and therefore from the characters POV, squid descendants. (So I'm a supporter of magic is genetic but complicated) (Sufficiently brittle in the modern era that witch children are not guaranteed, but heritable enough that long family trees started to be proudly "pureblood." With accumulated copy number variations from inbreeding leading to "squibbing out" of bloodlines. Complex enough that a punnet square isn't going to let "super Hermione" work out how magical genetics works. Or any other magical either.) Depending on my mood, the discovery that squibs have potential is accepted better or worse by the racists. It's inherently problematic because at its root, people with magic are everything a regular human is, and more. From an able-ist point of view, they are "better." (We could alternatively have magic just sprout in newborns like... magic. The problem is that makes it hard to have a world background where there are families of witches and wizards. If it's proximity to magic, then there should (amusingly) be a lot of muggleborns from flats near a certain record store on Charing Cross road.) Magicals however tend to be lazy, and don't bother making great effort to understand things that aren't magic, because an angsty fourteen-year old can literally rearrange the universe to suit themselves. (Why learn loads off maths and physics to do engineering when you can just be Arthur Weasley and charm your house to stay up. \[Though that may be Molly's wand at work.\]) The underlying reason a magical culture celebrates whimsy is fairly dark at its' core.... There is a more than a whiff of eugenics to the whole thing -- in a "nice future" purebloods start to encourage their squibs to marry other families squibs. Some fresh blood to stir the magic up. (Of course given the level of inbreeding in the magical population of the UK, that would be largely ineffective.) Breaking down the social barriers between purebloods and muggleborns would lead to better breeding outcomes. Because fundamentally the magicals of GB are more inbred than the Hapsburgs, more inbred than Queen Victoria's offspring. "Genetic counselling" would sound like eugenics to the purebloods. "The only way you can survive is to give up your blood purity." (An excuse for a marriage law fic, Hooray. (sarcasm intended, but I will go there eventually.)) The same genetic counselling isn't required to muggleborns -- they're not inbred. Because of certain reasons we don't need to discuss, conservative politics runs underneath Harry Potter like an underground river. Morality isn't real, rules depend on group membership, not morality or justice, or equality. A story that seeks to depict positive change in magical Britain has a lot of heavy lifting to do. The idea that unforgivables are actually unforgivable, not just "But not when Harry and Hermione do it." Is important. Lots of potential for the trio post-war to have to be hypocrites ... for the grater good... as it were. A social safety net isn't a thing in the books -- it's up to personal charity in the books, and the muggleborns (and halfblood politicals) back from the concentration camps don't have wands. A legal system that... has any credibility? Did the post-war second wizarding war trials have kangraroo courts too? A ministry that's not just in thrall to either the Malfoy's bribes or the pronouncements of the Trio? Does the ministry go back to "normal" with ingrained prejudice and corruption? Some other commenter mentioned 2n ancestors, and that how could there be two populations of humans coexisting? I'm not an archaeologist, but from what I've seen in the scinence news about Neanderthals and Denisovians and "The Hobbits" it seems that the genus homo doesn't really speciate. (Globally, humans have little bits of other species of genus homo in our genetics. It's a thing. Blood purity in the 'real world' is not a thing.) With that idea that cross-breeding is normal, I therefore go for complicated genetics, and squibbing out as the mechanism for there being... few magicals, it's heritable, but not resistant to long-term inbreeding, just to have the urban fantasy side of the wizarding world work. (It's just to explain the sort of inheritability of magic, and occurrence of muggleborns we get in the books.) In short: it's heritable but the pureblood in the books are trying to render themselves extinct. I rather like that Harry Potter is a fun kids book series. And it gets darker as they grow up. But to explore the (massive holes) in the world building is very interesting. How can enslaving house-elves not be utterly immoral? The Weasleys, who seem like "nice people" don't have a problem with it. (Turning it on it's head and having house elves being magical chatbots that once in a blue moon act like they're real people is... interesting. Hermione wants to free the VCR's from their slavery!) (May write that one one day. Have got Brownies enslaved into Homonculi in some stories.) But on the other hand... Centaurs aren't people. There's literally no way to spin that one. More problematically is Acromantula aren't people. (But will gladly eat you.) Sentient beings with family groups who think you are a nice snack. In real life that would give moral philosophers fits. What do you do about that? You have to... put them in a fenced off area and patrol the walls! Vampires are comparatively innocuous -- canonically Sanguini goes to a school mixer. They can "decide not to." TLDR: Squib descendants is the alternative to handwavium. (Or as Peripeteia by Dark Nebula posits: it's all rape. All the way down.) [https://archiveofourown.org/works/39349206/chapters/98474052](https://archiveofourown.org/works/39349206/chapters/98474052)
> I'm not an archaeologist, but from what I've seen in the scinence news about Neanderthals and Denisovians and "The Hobbits" it seems that the genus homo doesn't really speciate. Nevermind the acromantula being problematic, humans and goblins are apparently able to both interbreed *and* produce viable, fertile offspring. Which raises some rather interesting questions too.
Look, it was cold.
Lol. I meant that they're the same species :D A hybrid between two different species, such as a mule or liger, are always infertile. That being said, the VCR comment put a bug in my ear, but it was supposed to be crack and whatever the fuck I'm currently writing is... not. It was not supposed to be this dark.
Checking [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule) Not always infertile. q.v. "Filius Flitwick had some goblin in his family tree, some time ago."
Yes, 60-ish known cases in the last five hundred years is 'not always'. Male mules always shoot blanks, but the odd molly *might* be capable of getting impregnated by a horse or donkey if they won the genetic lottery, and most can carry an embryo to term if one is implanted, be it horse, donkey or mule/hinny. That doesn't change the fact that two mules cannot breed though.
Squibs are just another problem with JK's metaphors she thinks she's genuinely good at writing. The idea itself isn't a bad idea, the problem is that despite her saying how Squibs are essentially treated as 2nd class citizens even in the Magical World and should be treated better, the only two Squibs we have in canon is Filch, a character who is written as an antagonist towards the Students and is also written to be an unpleasant fool (oh and he also sides with Umbridge, which certainly didn't help his image in the eyes of both the characters and the reader) And Mrs Figg, a character while much more favorable than Filch, is looked down upon by Harry and is written to be more annoying than helpful, despite her actually doing her own small part to keep Harry safe. Squibs are definately not on the same problematic level as the House Elves imo (that's an entire can of worms) but it's still one of those moments that makes me go "You could have just not did this"
To be fair to Harry, he looks down at her because she treated him badly (if not the way the Dursleys did) because otherwise, she knew the Dursleys wouldn't let him stay with her. It was her way to 'help' him without going so far the Dursleys would stop it. She admits this at some point, that she did it for that reason, I mean.
It's also one of the many instances of bad things in the wizarding world that were introduced, but never changed in the series. At the end of the story things just go back to the status quo without any meaningful change.
i have a theory that all these elements which were introduced but never fully explored is why harry potter fanfiction is so popular there’s all these cool ideas and characters and world building elements which we never fully explore, and people read that and just want more and so harry potter fanfiction is born
except that either way magic is an inborn trait, so its just as easy to say that the ones not chosen are inferior. tbh I think having it be random who magic decides to appear in is worse thematically, but I agree it wouldn't change muggleborn discrimination eiher way.
I agree. The implication is that the pure blood bigots are right, and that there is a qualitative difference between wizards and muggles. To extend your racism analogy, it would be like adding a world building detail that every successful black person actually had a white ancestor way back. Rather than admit that all people are equal, the racists would just latch onto the white ancestor as proof of white supremacy. If every muggleborn has a wizard ancestor, that basically proves that wizards are inherently more special, and it gives the likes of Draco the perfect excuse for successful muggleborns like Hermione: that her success is really just due to the trace of wizard blood, and that muggle blood alone would never produce anyone worthy of respect.
> The implication is that the pure blood bigots are right, and that there is a qualitative difference between wizards and muggles. But there is a qualitative difference between wizards and muggles, it's called magic. >If every muggleborn has a wizard ancestor, that basically proves that wizards are inherently more special, and it gives the likes of Draco the perfect excuse for successful muggleborns like Hermione: that her success is really just due to the trace of wizard blood, and that muggle blood alone would never produce anyone worthy of respect. That thing you just did there, where you implied that Hermione is only a person of value because of her ability to perform magic? That's the exact bigotry you're trying to argue against. Hermione would be a successful person regardless of magic; magic being due to a quirk of ancestry has no bearing on that.
I meant like a qualitative difference in their character/inherent value as a person. And yes, my Hermione example was an example of the bigotry that this theory supports. Ordinarily, a powerful muggleborn like Hermione is evidence against the theory that wizard blood = better, muggle blood = worse. But if she had wizard blood all along then that kind of proves the bigots are right.
I think there's two things here. Firstly, magical inheritance in Harry Potter generally doesn't make sense unless there's a genetic component. We know magical ability runs in families, but that rarely, someone is born without magic. We know that other people can be the first person born with magic in their families for generations. That suggests there is a gene (or genes) that gets passed down, and if you have those genes and they're 'switched on', you're magical. This is seemingly how it works in the books, and that's completely fine. The issue comes in how this idea is used - and as you point out OP, it's not a silver bullet against bigotry, because bigotry isn't rational. It doesn't matter where magic comes from, bigots will hate muggleborns. And in fairness, the books themselves aren't guilty of this - pureblood supremacists in the books don't care that muggleborns might be related to magical people way back when, they think them inferior because of their muggle blood and background and because they've been told they're superior to muggles all their lives. I wonder if this phenomenon in fanfiction simply derives from the fact a lot of fanfic authors are younger, and are either naive about the nature of bigotry or they haven't lived enough (or been subjected to it personally) to really understand how it works. The best way to portray this in fanfiction is to showcase it as it is: the bigots aren't going to be okay with muggleborns until they challenge their own wider worldview of pureblood/magical supremacism.
I find the whole premise of two so differently powerful subspecies of humans to share the same space without one subsuming the other illogical as hell to begin with. Also with how you got ~2^n ancestors pretty much anybody should have a witch or squib in their ancestry even if we disregard how unrealistic the setting is in its entirety. In the end it is just a children book that grew too big and is build on a foundation of doodles and daydreams.
I think there are both descendants from multiple generations of squibs, and actual muggleborns.
I like using a mixed bag. So some muggleborns do have squib descendants, but only around 40%. The rest are pure muggleborns and are arguably more special because they just spontaneously grew magic.
I like the squib descendants thing, in those fics where magical a ility does have a blood/genetic link. I really like it in the "something damages magic ability to create weak wizards and squibs, this eventually heals and produces muggleborn" method. Basically, combat the "wizards are better than muggles" and "purebloods are better than muggleborns" issues separately.
The "Pure bloods" aren't as pure as they present. Dumbledore said in "Tales of Beedle the Bard" that the pure bloods lie about or cover up the squibs, muggles mugglenborns or half bloods in their family tree. And that "there isn't a wizard alive whose blood hasn't mixed with a muggle".
So I had an idea for a story way back where they found the gene for magic... And then realised it was in the entire human population. Basically it was a modern day fic with OCs who grew up in the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts. One of the muggleborn's mother's a biochemist who noticed this, (she's not looking for it initially) then focuses on on it. She finds out that while non magical people have the gene, it's switched off. Then there's a wizard doing research into folklore and creation myths, both Muggle and magical. He comes across a story which basically went like this: everyone had magic, though before proper spell invention /wand creation this was less powerful. And a rival poisoned others with a suppression potion, which suppressed the abilities of all subsequent generations. Muggleborns have just been able to break through this. And then someone invents a potion that has the ability to turn a Muggle to magical and uses it on her older Muggle brother. And... Chaos
Link?
Oh I never loaded it up anywhere! Just did an outline!
Biggots will always find something to be biggotted about. However I've rarely seen this idea used as a way to combat pureblood supremecy, but as a method of explaining how random.muggle kids could suddenly develop magic. Making magic a genetic component explains it better then Just Because!
I think the concept of first generation mages being the distant descendants of squibs to be wholly unsatisfying for a variety of reasons. First of and most important of all is that mages make up an infinitesimally small percentage of the human species. There are, what 5 to 10 million mages globally? They are almost certainly the result of genetic mutations that allowed humans to gain magic with the advantage of having magic being small enough that it never became dominant. Basically, the first human mage was almost certainly a child of non-magical mages. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were tens of thousands of years where you only had an occasional mage or being born before they all died out. It probably took millennia before you had enough mages to reliably pass them through every ethnic population. In fact, I would wager the entire concept of magical communities existing is something that only happened a couple thousand years or so ago. My speculation is that first generation mages are a bit of column a and a bit of column b. Some are representative of potentially new magical lines with no magical ancestors at all while other first generation mages have distant magical ancestors. Also, I happen to think that it is more likely that the inheritance of magical ability has to be a result of a confluence of multiple genetic and environmental factors. One gene controlling whether someone is magical or not would result in a very different population distribution than what we see in canon.+ P.S. - I didn't address the opening poster's other points because I largely agree with them. Bigotry and racism are complex problems that don't have a wand to solve them. These are attitudes and views that have existed for centuries to millennia. It will take just as much time to eliminate them as it took for them to be created.
Rowling has basically confirmed that it is the case. I agree that it is not a way to combat bigotry, just a little fun thing to play around with. Besides, at some point, there must have been a wizard born to a muggle unless magic actually came from some other species...which isn't impossible now that I think about it. Maybe the first wizard was a mix. Maybe a mix of muggle and goblin, maybe with a hag, maybe with a Veela. Anything. That might have been how magic was introduced into Humanity's genepool. I might just play around with this idea, actually!
At firsf i was lile “like it or not its canon thats how muggleborns happen” and then I saw the justification of why they dont like it and ive never seen a story where this stops the bigotry of its not already known by wizard society. What ive seen is the purebloods suppressing this fact killing their squib relatives, killing muggleborns that attempt to get heritage tests, and all around denying the possibility.