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Slytherin House is, of course, the bastion of “those whose blood is purest”… right? Only purebloods need apply, and if anyone else ever sorted there by accident (like those notorious alumni Tommy and Sevvie) they keep their secret “dirty” heritage a, well, secret. Right?
Well, maybe in Salazar’s day. But now? Not only does the house necessarily contain non-purebloods—it’s entirely possible that purebloods may even not be in the majority any more.
At least according to what JKR has told us, and a very little basic math.
Part I: Are (Almost) All Slytherins Purebloods?
Consider: JKR apparently said in interviews that purebloods make up about a quarter of the Hogwarts students (and magical population), Muggleborns another quarter, and people of mixed ancestry the rest. Mind, the text actually suggests that the number of “true” purebloods may be a much smaller minority than that—c.f. Ron in CoS explaining to Hermione that Draco’s pureblood supremacist views make no sense because hardly anyone is actually “pure” any more, and Hermione’s observation in GoF that Voldemort’s supporters (all several dozen of them, as it transpires) could not be comprised exclusively of purebloods because there aren’t enough of them. But we’ll take that figure of 25% as a theoretical maximum and see what happens.
(See, by the way, Jodel’s essay “The Rise of the Mudbloods” for a very in-depth discussion of wizard population dynamics. I’m just looking at the ramifications for one house, Slytherin; Madam RedHen looked at wizard society in general. http://www.redhen-publications.com/Mudb
Hogwarts is divided into four houses. Either each contains approximately one-fourth of the student population, or some houses must contain markedly more or fewer students than the others. Yet we have no evidence at all for the latter being the case. No house table in the great hall is noted as being sparsely occupied or overcrowded, nor are we told that the core subjects’ class size varies wildly according to which house our POV Gryffindors share a particular class with. So let’s provisionally assume the houses are approximately equal in size.
So, in Harry’s class there are supposedly about 40 students, about 10 in each house, 28 of whom are named or described. And supposedly about one-fourth of them should be purebloods. Let’s say a normal range of 8-12 (10 +/- 20%).
But Neville, Ron, Ernie, and a Ravenclaw girl, Morag MacDougall, are stated to be purebloods. That leaves 4-8 purebloods to fill Slytherin House’s ten slots. So already Slytherin cannot be pureblood-only.
But it gets worse. Seven non-Slytherin students in Harry’s year are identified as half-bloods, three (only!) as Muggleborns (two if one excludes Dean Thomas), and seven others as either pure or mixed (Wizarding relatives are mentioned, and/or we know that they attend Hogwarts under the D.E. occupation). If even a third of those not-sures are purebloods, that leaves us 2-6 purebloods left to be in Slytherin. If half of the not-sures are, that leaves us 0-4.
It is, in fact, entirely possible that Draco, Millicent, and Vincent (whose surnames we find on the Black Family Tree) are the only pureblood Slytherins in their year. It’s even possible—remotely—that Draco is the only Slytherin pureblood; he is, after all, the only one we know for certain. Canon doesn’t contradict that reading, and statistics allow it.
Nor does the problem go away when we look at other years. We know that house affiliation often runs in families. So the Lovegoods may have been sorting to Ravenclaw for a while, the Prewetts scurrying along with the Longbottoms, Potters and Weasleys into Gryffindor, the Diggorys proud Hufflepuffs of long standing—see where this is heading? We know of all these pureblood families sending their children to houses other than Slytherin. But any pureblood not in Slytherin means a space in Slytherin that must be filled by a non-pureblood, if the house is to be kept in balance with the rest of Hogwarts.
In fact, look at the fifteen families whose blood was pure enough to mix with Blacks according what’s been published of the Black Family Tree. Compare those names to known students in the last two generations (Harry’s and his father’s). We find six names attached to Slytherins: Flint, Bulstrode, Crabbe, Rosier, Lestrange, and Malfoy. We find three Gryffindor families, a probable Gryffindor, & a Hufflepuff: Longbottom, Potter, Weasley, Prewett, and MacMillan. We have three with no students identified in the last two generations: Yaxley, Gamp and Burke. And we have one whose house affiliation was never stated: Crouch.
(Do it the other way and look at members of the original OotP known to be purebloods: Gideon & Fabian, Frank & Alice, James & Sirius. If we assume that all Purebloods not STATED to have sorted elsewhere were Slytherins, we’d have at least four Slytherins [besides Severus, who’s undercover] in the original Order. Shouldn’t Hagrid have mentioned that to Harry? Alternatively, if we hold to the impression that Order members were mostly Gryffs, and consider that the Prewetts’ nephews and Longbottoms’ son are Gryffs, we’d have at least 6 Gryff Purebloods in the generation before this one.)
Just on names, we have for this sample (the Blacks’ marital connections) at BEST 73% of pureblood families tending to sort to Slytherin; at worst, it may be as low as 46%. So either Slytherin House is becoming smaller and smaller, or it contains between, say, 27% to 54% Half-bloods and Muggleborns.
If you look at the Black family’s possible pureblood relatives and marital connections only in the most recent generation, Harry’s, it looks even worse: we know of one each Flint, Bulstrode, Crabbe, and Malfoy in Slytherin (four), versus seven Weasleys, a Longbottom, and a MacMillan (nine in other houses).
So if Slytherin House makes up even close to a quarter of the Hogwarts population, and if purebloods do make up a quarter of the Wizarding population, purebloods are probably either already a minority or in imminent danger of slipping into a minority in their “own” house.
Just for grins, let’s try the numbers to see how much smaller Slytherin house would be by now if it were accepting only purebloods and the vanishingly rare exceptionally talented half-blood (say, one per generation or two… Tom Riddle, Severus Snape). Let’s take the 46-73% range for purebloods choosing to sort into Slytherin, and further assume that the other three houses (not being prejudiced about who they accept) are roughly equal. If 3/4 of purebloods sort to Slytherin (and in effect almost no one else does or can), Slytherin house would gain about 18% of incoming students, with the remaining 82% being roughly evenly dispersed among the other three houses (about 27% each). In Harry’s class (of 40), that would be about 7 Slytherins, with about 11children in each other house.
In other words, if just one-quarter of purebloods sorted to other houses and Slytherin accepted (almost) no one else, Slytherin would have about two-thirds the students of other houses.
If it’s more like 54% of purebloods who choose other houses, that would leave Slytherin with about 11-12% of total students, and each other house at close to 30%. In other words, each of the other houses would now outnumber Slytherin by very nearly 3:1.
And Slytherin House still managed to win the Quidditch and House Cups for years, until Harry arrived to throw things off? Now THAT is a tribute to the power of ambition! And to Harry’s powers of obliviousness (okay, Harry’s obtuseness at least IS canon) —Slytherin house holds only one-third to two-thirds of the students in Gryffindor, and Harry never once notices, if only to think spitefully, “Well, it makes sense that no one would ever sort there if they could go elsewhere!”
But I think it’s more reasonable to assume that Slytherin House, whatever Salazar’s stated preferences, has for a while now been accepting ambitious mixed-bloods and Muggleborns without all that much of a fuss.
*
Part II: Possible Changes in Attitudes to Blood “Superiority” Over Time
Please note that Draco Pureblood Malfoy never once used the opprobrious epithet ‘Mudblood’ of Hermione (or anyone) until after SHE had mortally insulted HIM by asserting that Malfoy could never have made his house’s Quidditch team without cheating. (Maybe Hermione had been channeling Trelawney in this scene—and how Hermione would have hated that!—and projected forward to HBP, when only cheating—hers—could get someone on the team. In my grade school, we used to sing to someone who’d accused another of transgressing schoolyard codes, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, what you say is what you are.”)
Before Draco entered Hogwarts, he had an encounter with a kid dressed in Muggle cast-offs—and he tried, repeatedly, to strike up a conversation with him. Only after the presumed Muggle-born had rudely snubbed his every conversational overture did Draco start asking about Harry’s family and pontificating about how Hogwarts shouldn’t let “the other sort” in. (Thanks, duj, for having pointed this out.)
IOW: Draco didn’t start with Pureblood supremacist rantings the moment he met his first (if illusory) Muggle-born. He turned to that after being snubbed by the supposed Muggle-born, perhaps to protect himself from being hurt by Harry’s rejection, perhaps to hit back.
And he didn’t talk about blood purity; he talked about the outsiders “not knowing our ways.”—which Harry had, in fact, just been demonstrating.
At the beginning of CoS when Lucius criticized Draco’s grades, Draco protested “the teachers all have favorites, that Hermione Granger—”
It’s his father who pointed out that Hermione was “a girl of no wizard family” who nonetheless beat Draco “in every exam.” (Um—every exam? So that would include Potions? Then Snape did grade fairly on his finals, as some of us had otherwise surmised? And, er, no one else, apparently, beat Draco’s exam scores? Oh, how he must have hated Hermione--not for her blood status, but as his only serious academic rival. And notice that neither father nor son, speaking privately, attached opprobrious epithets to the despiséd Hermione.)
And Mr. Borgin, listening in, inserted (greasily, per JKR), “It’s the same all over. Wizard blood is counting for less everywhere—”
Let’s get this straight, because subtle differences matter. The “stooping” Mr. Borgin (who may therefore have been older, of an earlier pureblood generation) implied strongly that “wizard blood” ought to “count” to get Draco the better grade, regardless of whether Draco’s performance had actually merited it.
Lucius Malfoy, in contrast, argued explicitly that his pureblood son ought to be able to EARN a higher grade than “a girl of no wizard family.”
And Draco protested (unconvincingly, in my view) that Muggle-born Hermione’s higher grade was earned by being a teacher’s pet, and thus (implicitly) that truly fair grading would have put Draco first.
Let’s review Draco’s logic. A scion of the Slytherin pureblood filthy-wealthy elite finds it plausible (in 1992) to assert that he’s the put-upon victim of unfair grading at Hogwarts? That Dumbledore’s teachers (including Snape?) would unjustly grade a Muggle-born Gryffindor higher than a rich pureblood Slytherin?
Oh, my.
Not that I accept Draco’s excuse, but that Draco could offer that argument to his father and expect to be believed casts a FASCINATING light on the Hogwarts subculture.
*
Part III: Is “Blood Purity,” in itself, the Only/Primary Source of Status in Slytherin House?
Clearly, being ‘well-born’ (pure) is a POSSIBLE source of status in Slytherin house, as in the WW in general. But the only one? Or even necessarily the overriding one? As a source of status, after all, it’s competing with wealth, fame, connections to the political power elite, raw magical talent, intelligence, even beauty… with NONE of which is it directly correlated by now.
We saw that Draco combined pure birth, wealth, connection to the power elite, intelligence, magical power, and a creative talent for adolescent mocking humor. We know that at least some of the other Slytherins in his year followed his lead. But we also know that when his family lost status, he lost influence: Slughorn shunned him as a DE’s son in HBP, Crabbe ended up rejecting him in DH as a failed DE’s son/ DE. His purity of blood hadn’t changed, but his (changing) family status apparently trumped that. On both (on all?) sides.
And remember that canon showed us that Draco pulled the “Mudblood” card on Hermione only after she had both bested him academically and viciously insulted him.
It’s quite possible that only those who came up short in every other possible arena would automatically totally privilege pureblood birth over all other considerations (*cough* Marvolo Gaunt).
On the other hand, there’s the underlying blood prejudice that Slughorn so innocently expressed to Harry, that surely, people of magical birth MUST (in general) be more adept at magic. But though Sluggy thought Lily’s and Hermione’s brilliance unusual, he was not at all surprised by half-blood Harry’s proficiency in Potions. More to the point, Sluggy specifically and repeatedly attributed Harry’s talent to LILY’s blood running in Harry’s veins, not to the thousand-year-pure Potter blood with which Lily’s was mixed. So Slughorn, at least, seems to think that ANY magical inheritance is sufficient to account for magical greatness; he doesn’t think that “purity” is necessary. (Note this was also Hagrid’s view—he told Harry that of course Harry would be a thumpin’ great wizard, with the parents he had. Hagrid did NOT say that of course Harry would be great as the last scion of the Potters, despite his father’s unfortunate misalliance.) So the prejudice in the general population seems to be more that it’s astonishing that magical brilliance could emerge out of nothing, not (among any but the loony fringe like Walburga and Marvolo), that purity of blood is required for magical power.
And indeed, in areas of Muggle mastery we Muggles generally think the same. We’re more astonished if an Olympic athlete is the child of dedicated couch-potatoes than a trained-from-birth scion of top athletes; and at my (top-ranked, private, expensive) college there were far fewer first-generation scholars than children of the professionally-educated classes. And, um, we first-generationers felt ourselves at a bit of a disadvantage compared to those for whom higher education was an obvious birthright….
Moreover, Sluggy at least allowed that the rule, magical birth is a prerequisite for magical greatness, could be disproved in any specific case. A given Muggleborn, such as Lily or Hermione or Dirk Cresswell, could win personal acceptance without necessarily dislodging the overall belief.
What’s the saying?
“A Muggleborn has to do something twice as well as a pureblood in order to be thought half as good.
Fortunately, that’s not difficult.”
But that you had to be “pure” to win acclaim…. there’s no more evidence (that I know of) that that’s true in general in Slytherin, than that it’s true in the WW in general. That is, there is evidence that (some) people value blood purity, and that some (mostly losers) value it highly. But the most-honored person in Wizarding Britain when we readers entered it was Dumbledore the Half-blood. Who had been contested by (and defeated) Riddle the secret Half-blood, that promoter of Pureblood supremacy.
*
Part IV: Mortal Insults versus Insults between Friends
Blood status was not the only type of “superiority” that we saw deployed against enemies, but not against (supposed) friends and allies.
Note how the indisputably-wealthy Malfoys and Blacks used their superior economic status to insult their less well-off enemies. Lucius insulted Arthur for his poverty; his son regularly taunted Ron and the other Weasleys about being poor, starting from the moment Draco identified the strange redhead on the Hogwarts Express as an enemy Weasley. In PoA Draco jeered at Lupin, whom he didn’t like, for shabby robes. And Draco called Hagrid (excuse me, Professor Hagrid—though he wasn’t then) a servant, disparagingly.
Yet Severus Snape lived in a Muggle slum, in a moldering tiny house with shabby furnishings—and Narcissa Malfoys knew exactly where to find him, so his domicile (and what it revealed about Snape’s background) had presumably not been a secret from the Malfoys. Though Bellatrix denigrated his home, Narcissa did not—nor did we ever see Lucius or Draco do so, even when Draco was fighting with Snape in HBP. Nor do we have any reason to think that Vincent or Gregory’s families commanded anything like the Malfoy fortune, yet we never saw Draco attempt to hold their comparative poverty against them.
Similarly, we never saw Sirius Black hold Remus’s poverty against him. But Black did call Severus Lucius’s lapdog, insinuating (among other things) that Snape was a hanger-on rather than a true friend of the wealthy Malfoys.
It seems that economic disadvantage can be used as a weapon—and that such weapons are to be used against enemies, not against allies or friends.
So is blood status the same in the WW? Something a “superior” MIGHT use (as one might use superior economic status) to taunt an enemy, but that one would never invoke against an ally/friend?
Bellatrix clearly disparaged both Snape’s economic status and his genetic heritage when she characterized his home as being situated in “a Muggle dung heap.” Yet Narcissa, equally bred of the Blacks and married to the Malfoy millions, didn’t encourage Bella’s criticism.
And which of the women, again, was visiting Severus to ask him for a favor?
Yet not even Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Voldemort’s right hand (she wished!), criticized Snape’s half-blood birth or relative poverty to his face, though we know she inherited her aunt Walpurga’s mania on the subject of blood purity. Instead, she focused on his supposed failures to achieve their Lord’s ends.
There are insults one doesn’t voice, at least not aloud to one’s allies’ faces.
Bellatrix and Severus were, after all, allies in devoted service to one Lord.
*
Part V: Is the House of Ambition Currently the “Best” House?
A few other unsupported misconceptions about Slytherins and/or purebloods—are Slytherins in general, purebloods in general, or specifically Slytherin purebloods all (or mostly) members of a politically powerful and fabulously wealthy elite?
Well. Pureblood families described in canon as rich include the Malfoys, Blacks, Lestranges (all Slytherin) and the Potters (Gryffindor). The Crouches (house unknown) certainly had not been hurting for money, and Hufflepuff’s heiress Smith had been fabulously wealthy back in the forties. Zacharias is said to be a half-blood, so if he’s her relative the family, like the Potter family, is no longer entirely “pure.” The Gaunts emphatically were not wealthy, nor are the current Weasleys or the Lovegoods. The Longbottoms don’t seem to be, though their reluctance to spend money on top-quality gear for Neville may reflect their opinion of the near-Squib more than their financial standing. Slytherin Blaise Zabini’s mother is wealthy through her deceased husbands—none of whose blood status is known, nor is her own or her son’s. Nor, in fact, is the former Mrs. Zabini’s house, nor the houses of any of her husbands.
Do we have canon evidence for the financial status of any other pureblood family now, or for any other Slytherin of whatever blood status?
Well, Slytherins Tom and Severus entered Hogwarts penniless. And who, after all, is more likely to be ambitious, someone born with a silver spoon in hir mouth or someone who has to scrabble for everything?
There’s no direct evidence for anyone else (that I recall). But… remember Draco’s second year, when Lucius bought the entire Slytherin Quidditch team Nimbus 2001 brooms to celebrate his son’s making the team (or, per Hermione, to bribe the team to accept his son)? That gesture makes no sense unless most of the team had previously, like the Weasley twins, been riding inferior brooms. If all or most of the team already had their own top-of-the-line brooms, new ones should make little difference. (And, per the Weasley twins, who spied on the Slytherins’ practice, the brooms did make a difference.)
Ergo, most students on the Slytherin Quidditch team could not afford new top-of-the-line brooms every year, or, perhaps, at all. So Slytherins are definitely not uniformly, and probably not even mostly, fabulously rich; the Malfoys are exceptional. (And note that the Blacks and Lestranges have apparently died out, and the Potter and Black fortunes have both passed to a half-blood….)
So then, are Slytherins unduly influential in politics and society? Currently? (Mind you, I imagine that the perception—which as I have previously pointed out, may be entirely incorrect—that most of You-Know-Who’s supporters were Slytherins may have severely damaged the house’s standing over the past twenty years or so.)
Well, ask Horace Slughorn; I’m sure his judgment is more to be trusted on such a matter than mine. He’s spent a long lifetime honing such observations, yes?
We never saw the exact composition of the current Slug Club. But we did see the first round of invitations (based mostly on family connections, before Horace got to know the current batch of students). On the Hogwarts Express Slughorn’s invitations were extended to one Slytherin (Blaise), one Ravenclaw (Belby), and four Gryffindors—Harry, Neville, Cormac, and Ginny. (Note too, Terri adds nastily, that there was only one girl of the six, and she an afterthought. Grr!) We know that Sluggy dropped Belby, Neville, and apparently Ginny, and added Hermione. It’s apparent from this guest list that—to put it mildly—Slughorn doesn’t consider his house to be unduly influential. And, er, which house seems to be? (And, BTW, the two known Purebloods both evaporate.)
In fact, ask the well-researched Hermione Granger. On her first Hogwarts Express ride, she gave an absolutely Slytherin reason for wanting to be Sorted into one house over another: “I’ve been asking around, and I hope I’m in [X], it sounds by far the best; I hear Dumbledore himself was in it….”
*
All of this would certainly throw some light—or darkness—on the appeal Voldemort’s stated objectives might have had to some of the WW’s pureblood supremacists. That faction, by the time Tom started to whisper in its horrified, fascinated ears, was in decline. They were bleeding to death, and they knew it, however vehemently they might have denied the truth.
With every passing year they were losing numbers, power, financial standing, and prestige.
And the result of some of those Pureblood scions desperately throwing in their lot in behind Lord Voldemort (who proved, oddly enough, to be a Halfblood) was probably to accelerate that slow decline to a swift broom-ride to destruction.
Ain’t karma grand when one gets to see it work?
Well, maybe in Salazar’s day. But now? Not only does the house necessarily contain non-purebloods—it’s entirely possible that purebloods may even not be in the majority any more.
At least according to what JKR has told us, and a very little basic math.
Part I: Are (Almost) All Slytherins Purebloods?
Consider: JKR apparently said in interviews that purebloods make up about a quarter of the Hogwarts students (and magical population), Muggleborns another quarter, and people of mixed ancestry the rest. Mind, the text actually suggests that the number of “true” purebloods may be a much smaller minority than that—c.f. Ron in CoS explaining to Hermione that Draco’s pureblood supremacist views make no sense because hardly anyone is actually “pure” any more, and Hermione’s observation in GoF that Voldemort’s supporters (all several dozen of them, as it transpires) could not be comprised exclusively of purebloods because there aren’t enough of them. But we’ll take that figure of 25% as a theoretical maximum and see what happens.
(See, by the way, Jodel’s essay “The Rise of the Mudbloods” for a very in-depth discussion of wizard population dynamics. I’m just looking at the ramifications for one house, Slytherin; Madam RedHen looked at wizard society in general. http://www.redhen-publications.com/Mudb
Hogwarts is divided into four houses. Either each contains approximately one-fourth of the student population, or some houses must contain markedly more or fewer students than the others. Yet we have no evidence at all for the latter being the case. No house table in the great hall is noted as being sparsely occupied or overcrowded, nor are we told that the core subjects’ class size varies wildly according to which house our POV Gryffindors share a particular class with. So let’s provisionally assume the houses are approximately equal in size.
So, in Harry’s class there are supposedly about 40 students, about 10 in each house, 28 of whom are named or described. And supposedly about one-fourth of them should be purebloods. Let’s say a normal range of 8-12 (10 +/- 20%).
But Neville, Ron, Ernie, and a Ravenclaw girl, Morag MacDougall, are stated to be purebloods. That leaves 4-8 purebloods to fill Slytherin House’s ten slots. So already Slytherin cannot be pureblood-only.
But it gets worse. Seven non-Slytherin students in Harry’s year are identified as half-bloods, three (only!) as Muggleborns (two if one excludes Dean Thomas), and seven others as either pure or mixed (Wizarding relatives are mentioned, and/or we know that they attend Hogwarts under the D.E. occupation). If even a third of those not-sures are purebloods, that leaves us 2-6 purebloods left to be in Slytherin. If half of the not-sures are, that leaves us 0-4.
It is, in fact, entirely possible that Draco, Millicent, and Vincent (whose surnames we find on the Black Family Tree) are the only pureblood Slytherins in their year. It’s even possible—remotely—that Draco is the only Slytherin pureblood; he is, after all, the only one we know for certain. Canon doesn’t contradict that reading, and statistics allow it.
Nor does the problem go away when we look at other years. We know that house affiliation often runs in families. So the Lovegoods may have been sorting to Ravenclaw for a while, the Prewetts scurrying along with the Longbottoms, Potters and Weasleys into Gryffindor, the Diggorys proud Hufflepuffs of long standing—see where this is heading? We know of all these pureblood families sending their children to houses other than Slytherin. But any pureblood not in Slytherin means a space in Slytherin that must be filled by a non-pureblood, if the house is to be kept in balance with the rest of Hogwarts.
In fact, look at the fifteen families whose blood was pure enough to mix with Blacks according what’s been published of the Black Family Tree. Compare those names to known students in the last two generations (Harry’s and his father’s). We find six names attached to Slytherins: Flint, Bulstrode, Crabbe, Rosier, Lestrange, and Malfoy. We find three Gryffindor families, a probable Gryffindor, & a Hufflepuff: Longbottom, Potter, Weasley, Prewett, and MacMillan. We have three with no students identified in the last two generations: Yaxley, Gamp and Burke. And we have one whose house affiliation was never stated: Crouch.
(Do it the other way and look at members of the original OotP known to be purebloods: Gideon & Fabian, Frank & Alice, James & Sirius. If we assume that all Purebloods not STATED to have sorted elsewhere were Slytherins, we’d have at least four Slytherins [besides Severus, who’s undercover] in the original Order. Shouldn’t Hagrid have mentioned that to Harry? Alternatively, if we hold to the impression that Order members were mostly Gryffs, and consider that the Prewetts’ nephews and Longbottoms’ son are Gryffs, we’d have at least 6 Gryff Purebloods in the generation before this one.)
Just on names, we have for this sample (the Blacks’ marital connections) at BEST 73% of pureblood families tending to sort to Slytherin; at worst, it may be as low as 46%. So either Slytherin House is becoming smaller and smaller, or it contains between, say, 27% to 54% Half-bloods and Muggleborns.
If you look at the Black family’s possible pureblood relatives and marital connections only in the most recent generation, Harry’s, it looks even worse: we know of one each Flint, Bulstrode, Crabbe, and Malfoy in Slytherin (four), versus seven Weasleys, a Longbottom, and a MacMillan (nine in other houses).
So if Slytherin House makes up even close to a quarter of the Hogwarts population, and if purebloods do make up a quarter of the Wizarding population, purebloods are probably either already a minority or in imminent danger of slipping into a minority in their “own” house.
Just for grins, let’s try the numbers to see how much smaller Slytherin house would be by now if it were accepting only purebloods and the vanishingly rare exceptionally talented half-blood (say, one per generation or two… Tom Riddle, Severus Snape). Let’s take the 46-73% range for purebloods choosing to sort into Slytherin, and further assume that the other three houses (not being prejudiced about who they accept) are roughly equal. If 3/4 of purebloods sort to Slytherin (and in effect almost no one else does or can), Slytherin house would gain about 18% of incoming students, with the remaining 82% being roughly evenly dispersed among the other three houses (about 27% each). In Harry’s class (of 40), that would be about 7 Slytherins, with about 11children in each other house.
In other words, if just one-quarter of purebloods sorted to other houses and Slytherin accepted (almost) no one else, Slytherin would have about two-thirds the students of other houses.
If it’s more like 54% of purebloods who choose other houses, that would leave Slytherin with about 11-12% of total students, and each other house at close to 30%. In other words, each of the other houses would now outnumber Slytherin by very nearly 3:1.
And Slytherin House still managed to win the Quidditch and House Cups for years, until Harry arrived to throw things off? Now THAT is a tribute to the power of ambition! And to Harry’s powers of obliviousness (okay, Harry’s obtuseness at least IS canon) —Slytherin house holds only one-third to two-thirds of the students in Gryffindor, and Harry never once notices, if only to think spitefully, “Well, it makes sense that no one would ever sort there if they could go elsewhere!”
But I think it’s more reasonable to assume that Slytherin House, whatever Salazar’s stated preferences, has for a while now been accepting ambitious mixed-bloods and Muggleborns without all that much of a fuss.
*
Part II: Possible Changes in Attitudes to Blood “Superiority” Over Time
Please note that Draco Pureblood Malfoy never once used the opprobrious epithet ‘Mudblood’ of Hermione (or anyone) until after SHE had mortally insulted HIM by asserting that Malfoy could never have made his house’s Quidditch team without cheating. (Maybe Hermione had been channeling Trelawney in this scene—and how Hermione would have hated that!—and projected forward to HBP, when only cheating—hers—could get someone on the team. In my grade school, we used to sing to someone who’d accused another of transgressing schoolyard codes, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, what you say is what you are.”)
Before Draco entered Hogwarts, he had an encounter with a kid dressed in Muggle cast-offs—and he tried, repeatedly, to strike up a conversation with him. Only after the presumed Muggle-born had rudely snubbed his every conversational overture did Draco start asking about Harry’s family and pontificating about how Hogwarts shouldn’t let “the other sort” in. (Thanks, duj, for having pointed this out.)
IOW: Draco didn’t start with Pureblood supremacist rantings the moment he met his first (if illusory) Muggle-born. He turned to that after being snubbed by the supposed Muggle-born, perhaps to protect himself from being hurt by Harry’s rejection, perhaps to hit back.
And he didn’t talk about blood purity; he talked about the outsiders “not knowing our ways.”—which Harry had, in fact, just been demonstrating.
At the beginning of CoS when Lucius criticized Draco’s grades, Draco protested “the teachers all have favorites, that Hermione Granger—”
It’s his father who pointed out that Hermione was “a girl of no wizard family” who nonetheless beat Draco “in every exam.” (Um—every exam? So that would include Potions? Then Snape did grade fairly on his finals, as some of us had otherwise surmised? And, er, no one else, apparently, beat Draco’s exam scores? Oh, how he must have hated Hermione--not for her blood status, but as his only serious academic rival. And notice that neither father nor son, speaking privately, attached opprobrious epithets to the despiséd Hermione.)
And Mr. Borgin, listening in, inserted (greasily, per JKR), “It’s the same all over. Wizard blood is counting for less everywhere—”
Let’s get this straight, because subtle differences matter. The “stooping” Mr. Borgin (who may therefore have been older, of an earlier pureblood generation) implied strongly that “wizard blood” ought to “count” to get Draco the better grade, regardless of whether Draco’s performance had actually merited it.
Lucius Malfoy, in contrast, argued explicitly that his pureblood son ought to be able to EARN a higher grade than “a girl of no wizard family.”
And Draco protested (unconvincingly, in my view) that Muggle-born Hermione’s higher grade was earned by being a teacher’s pet, and thus (implicitly) that truly fair grading would have put Draco first.
Let’s review Draco’s logic. A scion of the Slytherin pureblood filthy-wealthy elite finds it plausible (in 1992) to assert that he’s the put-upon victim of unfair grading at Hogwarts? That Dumbledore’s teachers (including Snape?) would unjustly grade a Muggle-born Gryffindor higher than a rich pureblood Slytherin?
Oh, my.
Not that I accept Draco’s excuse, but that Draco could offer that argument to his father and expect to be believed casts a FASCINATING light on the Hogwarts subculture.
*
Part III: Is “Blood Purity,” in itself, the Only/Primary Source of Status in Slytherin House?
Clearly, being ‘well-born’ (pure) is a POSSIBLE source of status in Slytherin house, as in the WW in general. But the only one? Or even necessarily the overriding one? As a source of status, after all, it’s competing with wealth, fame, connections to the political power elite, raw magical talent, intelligence, even beauty… with NONE of which is it directly correlated by now.
We saw that Draco combined pure birth, wealth, connection to the power elite, intelligence, magical power, and a creative talent for adolescent mocking humor. We know that at least some of the other Slytherins in his year followed his lead. But we also know that when his family lost status, he lost influence: Slughorn shunned him as a DE’s son in HBP, Crabbe ended up rejecting him in DH as a failed DE’s son/ DE. His purity of blood hadn’t changed, but his (changing) family status apparently trumped that. On both (on all?) sides.
And remember that canon showed us that Draco pulled the “Mudblood” card on Hermione only after she had both bested him academically and viciously insulted him.
It’s quite possible that only those who came up short in every other possible arena would automatically totally privilege pureblood birth over all other considerations (*cough* Marvolo Gaunt).
On the other hand, there’s the underlying blood prejudice that Slughorn so innocently expressed to Harry, that surely, people of magical birth MUST (in general) be more adept at magic. But though Sluggy thought Lily’s and Hermione’s brilliance unusual, he was not at all surprised by half-blood Harry’s proficiency in Potions. More to the point, Sluggy specifically and repeatedly attributed Harry’s talent to LILY’s blood running in Harry’s veins, not to the thousand-year-pure Potter blood with which Lily’s was mixed. So Slughorn, at least, seems to think that ANY magical inheritance is sufficient to account for magical greatness; he doesn’t think that “purity” is necessary. (Note this was also Hagrid’s view—he told Harry that of course Harry would be a thumpin’ great wizard, with the parents he had. Hagrid did NOT say that of course Harry would be great as the last scion of the Potters, despite his father’s unfortunate misalliance.) So the prejudice in the general population seems to be more that it’s astonishing that magical brilliance could emerge out of nothing, not (among any but the loony fringe like Walburga and Marvolo), that purity of blood is required for magical power.
And indeed, in areas of Muggle mastery we Muggles generally think the same. We’re more astonished if an Olympic athlete is the child of dedicated couch-potatoes than a trained-from-birth scion of top athletes; and at my (top-ranked, private, expensive) college there were far fewer first-generation scholars than children of the professionally-educated classes. And, um, we first-generationers felt ourselves at a bit of a disadvantage compared to those for whom higher education was an obvious birthright….
Moreover, Sluggy at least allowed that the rule, magical birth is a prerequisite for magical greatness, could be disproved in any specific case. A given Muggleborn, such as Lily or Hermione or Dirk Cresswell, could win personal acceptance without necessarily dislodging the overall belief.
What’s the saying?
“A Muggleborn has to do something twice as well as a pureblood in order to be thought half as good.
Fortunately, that’s not difficult.”
But that you had to be “pure” to win acclaim…. there’s no more evidence (that I know of) that that’s true in general in Slytherin, than that it’s true in the WW in general. That is, there is evidence that (some) people value blood purity, and that some (mostly losers) value it highly. But the most-honored person in Wizarding Britain when we readers entered it was Dumbledore the Half-blood. Who had been contested by (and defeated) Riddle the secret Half-blood, that promoter of Pureblood supremacy.
*
Part IV: Mortal Insults versus Insults between Friends
Blood status was not the only type of “superiority” that we saw deployed against enemies, but not against (supposed) friends and allies.
Note how the indisputably-wealthy Malfoys and Blacks used their superior economic status to insult their less well-off enemies. Lucius insulted Arthur for his poverty; his son regularly taunted Ron and the other Weasleys about being poor, starting from the moment Draco identified the strange redhead on the Hogwarts Express as an enemy Weasley. In PoA Draco jeered at Lupin, whom he didn’t like, for shabby robes. And Draco called Hagrid (excuse me, Professor Hagrid—though he wasn’t then) a servant, disparagingly.
Yet Severus Snape lived in a Muggle slum, in a moldering tiny house with shabby furnishings—and Narcissa Malfoys knew exactly where to find him, so his domicile (and what it revealed about Snape’s background) had presumably not been a secret from the Malfoys. Though Bellatrix denigrated his home, Narcissa did not—nor did we ever see Lucius or Draco do so, even when Draco was fighting with Snape in HBP. Nor do we have any reason to think that Vincent or Gregory’s families commanded anything like the Malfoy fortune, yet we never saw Draco attempt to hold their comparative poverty against them.
Similarly, we never saw Sirius Black hold Remus’s poverty against him. But Black did call Severus Lucius’s lapdog, insinuating (among other things) that Snape was a hanger-on rather than a true friend of the wealthy Malfoys.
It seems that economic disadvantage can be used as a weapon—and that such weapons are to be used against enemies, not against allies or friends.
So is blood status the same in the WW? Something a “superior” MIGHT use (as one might use superior economic status) to taunt an enemy, but that one would never invoke against an ally/friend?
Bellatrix clearly disparaged both Snape’s economic status and his genetic heritage when she characterized his home as being situated in “a Muggle dung heap.” Yet Narcissa, equally bred of the Blacks and married to the Malfoy millions, didn’t encourage Bella’s criticism.
And which of the women, again, was visiting Severus to ask him for a favor?
Yet not even Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Voldemort’s right hand (she wished!), criticized Snape’s half-blood birth or relative poverty to his face, though we know she inherited her aunt Walpurga’s mania on the subject of blood purity. Instead, she focused on his supposed failures to achieve their Lord’s ends.
There are insults one doesn’t voice, at least not aloud to one’s allies’ faces.
Bellatrix and Severus were, after all, allies in devoted service to one Lord.
*
Part V: Is the House of Ambition Currently the “Best” House?
A few other unsupported misconceptions about Slytherins and/or purebloods—are Slytherins in general, purebloods in general, or specifically Slytherin purebloods all (or mostly) members of a politically powerful and fabulously wealthy elite?
Well. Pureblood families described in canon as rich include the Malfoys, Blacks, Lestranges (all Slytherin) and the Potters (Gryffindor). The Crouches (house unknown) certainly had not been hurting for money, and Hufflepuff’s heiress Smith had been fabulously wealthy back in the forties. Zacharias is said to be a half-blood, so if he’s her relative the family, like the Potter family, is no longer entirely “pure.” The Gaunts emphatically were not wealthy, nor are the current Weasleys or the Lovegoods. The Longbottoms don’t seem to be, though their reluctance to spend money on top-quality gear for Neville may reflect their opinion of the near-Squib more than their financial standing. Slytherin Blaise Zabini’s mother is wealthy through her deceased husbands—none of whose blood status is known, nor is her own or her son’s. Nor, in fact, is the former Mrs. Zabini’s house, nor the houses of any of her husbands.
Do we have canon evidence for the financial status of any other pureblood family now, or for any other Slytherin of whatever blood status?
Well, Slytherins Tom and Severus entered Hogwarts penniless. And who, after all, is more likely to be ambitious, someone born with a silver spoon in hir mouth or someone who has to scrabble for everything?
There’s no direct evidence for anyone else (that I recall). But… remember Draco’s second year, when Lucius bought the entire Slytherin Quidditch team Nimbus 2001 brooms to celebrate his son’s making the team (or, per Hermione, to bribe the team to accept his son)? That gesture makes no sense unless most of the team had previously, like the Weasley twins, been riding inferior brooms. If all or most of the team already had their own top-of-the-line brooms, new ones should make little difference. (And, per the Weasley twins, who spied on the Slytherins’ practice, the brooms did make a difference.)
Ergo, most students on the Slytherin Quidditch team could not afford new top-of-the-line brooms every year, or, perhaps, at all. So Slytherins are definitely not uniformly, and probably not even mostly, fabulously rich; the Malfoys are exceptional. (And note that the Blacks and Lestranges have apparently died out, and the Potter and Black fortunes have both passed to a half-blood….)
So then, are Slytherins unduly influential in politics and society? Currently? (Mind you, I imagine that the perception—which as I have previously pointed out, may be entirely incorrect—that most of You-Know-Who’s supporters were Slytherins may have severely damaged the house’s standing over the past twenty years or so.)
Well, ask Horace Slughorn; I’m sure his judgment is more to be trusted on such a matter than mine. He’s spent a long lifetime honing such observations, yes?
We never saw the exact composition of the current Slug Club. But we did see the first round of invitations (based mostly on family connections, before Horace got to know the current batch of students). On the Hogwarts Express Slughorn’s invitations were extended to one Slytherin (Blaise), one Ravenclaw (Belby), and four Gryffindors—Harry, Neville, Cormac, and Ginny. (Note too, Terri adds nastily, that there was only one girl of the six, and she an afterthought. Grr!) We know that Sluggy dropped Belby, Neville, and apparently Ginny, and added Hermione. It’s apparent from this guest list that—to put it mildly—Slughorn doesn’t consider his house to be unduly influential. And, er, which house seems to be? (And, BTW, the two known Purebloods both evaporate.)
In fact, ask the well-researched Hermione Granger. On her first Hogwarts Express ride, she gave an absolutely Slytherin reason for wanting to be Sorted into one house over another: “I’ve been asking around, and I hope I’m in [X], it sounds by far the best; I hear Dumbledore himself was in it….”
*
All of this would certainly throw some light—or darkness—on the appeal Voldemort’s stated objectives might have had to some of the WW’s pureblood supremacists. That faction, by the time Tom started to whisper in its horrified, fascinated ears, was in decline. They were bleeding to death, and they knew it, however vehemently they might have denied the truth.
With every passing year they were losing numbers, power, financial standing, and prestige.
And the result of some of those Pureblood scions desperately throwing in their lot in behind Lord Voldemort (who proved, oddly enough, to be a Halfblood) was probably to accelerate that slow decline to a swift broom-ride to destruction.
Ain’t karma grand when one gets to see it work?
It is unknown whether Eileen was a Slytherin or not, but it seems likely that SHE did not stress the pureblood aspect of the house to her son. For all we know, Sev thought Slytherin was the place to be based on hearing about a combination of a Head of House who promoted students in the real world post-Hogwarts and a house that produced a talented Head Boy that had come from an orphanage (without a 'wizarding' surname).
AND that the lack of money (for that Head Boy) had nothing to do with Sluggy's opinion of Tom. We can see in Slughorn's memory that Tom had been a favorite and likely would have been heavily promoted by him IF he had not chosen to disappear from wizarding Britain within a year of Hogwarts. We saw in the Memory that Horace was hoping to push Tom towards the Ministry.
Sounds like the best place to go IF you are a poor kid with talent - of course Sev wanted to be there AND he was convinced Lily could sort there too.
Most surprising of all - Lucius WELCOMES him at his sorting. Lucius - who OUGHT to know just about ALL pureblood families of importance.
Lastly of note: JKR once had a TV interview waaaay back at the beginning entitled Harry and Me. In it she showed a list of students in Harry's year with little symbols next to the names. The symbols indicated House, Gender and Blood Purity. Millicent Bulstrode was a halfblood. Unfortunately, it is practically impossible to find this little chart anymore.
At the time I wondered whether we were supposed to believe that Millicent really WAS part hag/troll like Harry thought (and possibly whether Harry's similar opinion of Flint might also be true - I have since wondered whether Crabbe and Goyle were also supposed to be part troll due to their size and lack of intelligence). However, then we later get the Black Family Tree with a Bulstrode on it - so either Millie's non-pure blood was more recently acquired than the intermarriage with the Blacks - or she comes from a lesser (non-pure) branch of her own tree.
And yet we have Sirius complain about how his ENTIRE family was dark and blood-obsessed AND sorted into Slytherin - even when it is easily proven untrue by the tapestry. -- Hwyla
Well, taking interview and extended canon (Beedle) into consideration, Lily could sort into Slytherin.
We know from Dumbledore's comments in Beedle that Muggleborns have Squib ancestry. There aren't any real Muggleborn witches or wizards. Then there's the infamous Mafalda Weasley, the daughter of a Weasley Squib and a Muggle. If she had made it into the books, she had been a halfblood Slytherin. So if the Hat by unknown magic means knows the real bloodstatus of a student, it could have put Lily or any other so-called Muggleborn into Slytherin. Funnily this should not have caused severe problems with the racist students, because the Hat's decision verifies itself. Slytherin doesn't admit Mudbloods -> sorted into the house anyway means you are at least halfblood -> good enough. Tom Riddle proves the assumptions that the Hat has some ways of guessing bloodstatus. His parents were unknown, he was accepted among his peers anyway.
I have always assumed that Lockhart was an ex-Slytherin (if only because of his duplicity "There's not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin.")
And re A scion of the Slytherin pureblood filthy-wealthy elite finds it plausible (in 1992) to assert that he’s the put-upon victim of unfair grading at Hogwarts? That Dumbledore’s teachers would unjustly grade a Muggle-born Gryffindor higher than a rich pureblood Slytherin?
Well, maybe that is why Lucius was able to convince the Governors that Dumbledore wasn't the best person to be in charge of Hogwarts?
Secrets of the Classlist
Grain of salt as it's 3-4 years old now, but it's an interesting analysis and links to a (unfortunately poor quality) screenshot of the classlist.
This always made me wonder if Severus Snape ever contact with the Prince side of his family growing up.
Lady Whitehart
I haven't read the rest of the post yet, and I imagine I will agree with your final conclusion, but this brought an interesting hypothetical to my mind that I wanted to share. Could the fact that a given child has been sorted to Slytherin say something otherwise non-apparent about the purity of their blood? By this I don't mean that e.g. Severus or Tom are not half-bloods, but that it is an indicator of more wizarding ancestry than might at first be apparent, or the strength or purity of the wizarding part of the line?
JKR apparently said in interviews that purebloods make up about a quarter of the Hogwarts students (and magical population), Muggleborns another quarter
I thought that if we actually counted up known Muggleborns we didn't quite get this number she said she'd intended. Have you read Secrets of the Classlist? ("If we add the information from the classlist to the information in canon [CoS], we find five Muggle-borns, twelve half-bloods, thirteen pure-bloods, and ten students whose status is difficult to deduce. This suggests that Muggle-borns comprise about 20% of the student body, while pure-bloods and half-bloods are 40% each.")
And notice that neither father nor son, speaking privately, attached opprobrious epithets to the despiséd Hermione.)
I imagine it's not considered "proper", that "Mudblood" is a very coarse word and is eschewed in favour of euphemisms by upstanding people of good manners.
despite his father’s unfortunate misalliance.
"misalliance"?
Question: Where does your information about Morag MacDougall and Zacharias Smith come from?
How much trust can we place in Rowling's claim of 1:2:1 ratio of purebloods:half-bloods:Muggle-borns? Is this the ratio of Harry's year, of late-20th century wizards in general or what? Much depends on what we think of trends in magical birth rates. Canon states there were over 100 students taking the DADA OWL with Severus (or perhaps those were OWL and NEWT students together?). Canon implies about 40 students in Harry's year though we know the names of 8 Gryffindors, 5 Hufflepuffs, 7 Ravenclaws (including Morag whose House is only mentioned in Rowling's notebook, AFAIK), 8 Slytherins (including Daphne Greengrass whose House is extra-canonical) and 2 students of unknown House. If Severus' year is typical and Harry's year unusual then we can estimate a wizarding population of 8-10 thousands (or even more, depending how many students there were beyond 100 in Severus' year). If Harry's is typical then probably only 3-4 thousand. Even if Muggle-borns have magical ancestors, if those are usually far enough in the past I don't expect events in the wizarding world to influence the rate of Muggle-born births much - not directly in any case. In that case we can assume that for most of the 20th century there were a handful of Muggle-borns born each year, but their proportion of the student body was much smaller in years like Severus' compared to Harry's year. The proportion of pure-bloods vs half-bloods is even harder to determine because of uncertainty about definitions.
Then there is the question of who counts as a pureblood. We know that the child of a magical person and a Muggle is a half-blood, but so is the child of a wizarding-born magical person and a Muggle-born. Are all those of more magical ancestry purebloods or do some still count as half-bloods? If we follow the Nazi-era parallelism then perhaps anyone who has 4 magical grandparents would be a pureblood. IOW Ginny and Harry's children are purebloods, Ron and Hermione's children are half-bloods but their grandchildren might be purebloods if their children marry people with 2 magical parents, even if one or both of those parents was Muggle-born. However if for the purpose of ancestry a Muggle-born counts as a Muggle and that is the reason for Harry to be considered a half-blood then perhaps Harry's children are half-bloods, but it is possible for his grandchildren to be purebloods. Notice that if this rule is applied consistently then the child of a Muggle-born and a Muggle or two Muggle-borns would be considered technically a Muggle-born. In fact it would be possible (though unlikely) for one to have a very long ancestry of many generations of Muggle-borns. Whichever definition is used, it looks like one's lineage can go in and out of being pureblooded over the course of not so many generations. Perhaps some families insist on a longer known magical ancestry. And perhaps having a relative marry into such a family helps 'sanitize' one's own position. We do have Ernie's claim to 9 generations of witches and warlocks (on all sides? if none of these overlap that's 512 magical ancestors 9 generations back) but we don't know about others. Even if the Potters were entirely magical through the line that came through Ignotus Peverell they may have occasionally married Muggles, Muggle-borns or half-bloods on occasion (and it is possible to marry half-bloods multiple times in a single lineage without it ever losing pureblood status). So the statement that someone is a pureblood wizard or witch says very little about hir ancestry. For all we know Septimus Weasley could have been the son of two half-bloods - Arthur would still be a pureblood.
Does it make sense to use such designations? Well, if we consider that wizards live in fear of their world becoming exposed to Muggles then wizards who have regular association with Muggles within their family circle are a security risk. If most families have no more than 3 generations alive contemporaneously then a magical person with a living Muggle grandparent is such a risk.
Some more comments
Slughorn's attitude in 1996 was very significantly influenced by not wanting to be associated with known DEs. He asked about Theodore Nott, but when he learned that his father was among the DEs arrested at the Ministry he did not invite him. But he didn't invite other Slytherins instead. No members of influential families in Slytherin in the year above or below Harry's?
On wealth and brooms: For whatever reason when Harry managed to end up with a more modern and superior broom than Draco's, Draco did not get an upgraded one. Either the Malfoy fortune was being overly stretched by donations and bribes or Lucius had other priorities.
Hermione made the connection between Draco's dad buying the whole team expensive equipment and him getting on the team.
Malfoy retaliated by calling her a racial slur, implying that she (and her family) were by their nature sub-human.
I'm curious - if she had been black and Malfoy had called her a 'filthy little nigger', would you still be jumping to his defence? Because there really isn't much difference.
night_train_fm
Here's a dictionary definition for you:
op·pro·bri·ous
–adjective
1.
conveying or expressing opprobrium, as language or a speaker: opprobrious invectives.
2.
outrageously disgraceful or shameful: opprobrious conduct.
What terri DID do was use the exact circumstances surrounding a particular incident of using a blood-based slur to investigate those situations in which the characters who hold prejudices based on blood find it acceptable to express that prejudice out loud, to the other person's face, with the term "Mudblood." And from there other situations in which one might expect them to use the term among themselves or to others and don't, and possible reasons why they don't.
That is, getting a sense of how the characters' prejudice gets manifested and why. How characters with bigoted attitudes actually interact with supposedly inferior people, and what this indicates about the nuances of what they actually think about blood, beyond simply "pure blood is better."
In attempting to understand these things and so get a better picture of certain characters and the WW as a whole, NOWHERE does terri say IT IS NOT WRONG TO BE BIGOTED. The essay is not a defense or a moral judgment on the phenomenon, merely an attempt to understand WHAT it is and HOW it is manifested.
If almost all Slytherins are purebloods and there are quite a few pureblood families whose members consistently Sort to other Houses then the proportion of purebloods in Harry's year has to be higher than 25%, and more importantly, the proportion of purebloods among the wizarding-born has to be higher than 33%. If so Ron's claim that without marrying Muggles wizards would have gone extinct and even more so Hermione's claim about there not being enough purebloods to fill the ranks of the DEs have to be unfounded.
-Chalts
Please
I used to post to everything. Snapedom was the most special home I had on the internet. Now, frankly, I'm afraid to post.
I have my own canon, which has its reasons, but they are debatable and surely not held by one and all. Nevertheless, I want to share my insights, and I want to read and learn of other's insights. I don't wish to be forced to defend them.
I loved territesting's essay. I would have loved to discuss it.
Even little Snapey is sad.
Re: Please
I gather you like Dark!Severus, based on the fact that you co-moderate Dark Prince Rising. That isn't my "canon view" of him, but I *do* think it's a fun thing to explore.
I would really enjoy reading your thoughts on Terri's essay.
Lynn
Re: Please
Re: Please
I'll definitely note that you aren't up for challenge and keep that in mind, if ever we wind up in discussion together, here.
And now for something completely fluffy...
Your Snape doll is adorable, btw! <3 Did you make it? It's so cute~! *covets*
Not racism, ablism
True intellectual disability is invisible in the Potterverse. There are some on the slow end of neuro-typical, all of whom are held up to ridicule and/or hatred, eg Crabbe, Goyle., Dudley. (I don't really count Neville, because as soon as he actually starts *trying* - in OotP - he turns out to be quite competent.) There are some who were born neuro-typical and suffered brain damage, eg Neville's parents: they are locked away in institutions. But no one who falls into the developmentally-delayed slot.
Or do they?
The closest analogues to developmental disability in the Potterverse are Muggles and Squibs. And not even the supposed good guys care about *their* rights. Quite the contrary. Even the Muggle-borns like Hermione and Muggle-lovers like Arthur Weasley see no problem with Obliviating them for wizard convenience. No one ever even questions it.
There was a time when Muggle institutions thought nothing of doing experiments on the inmates without their consent (or even their families' consent). That's the sort of ablism that JK is advocating when she presents Confunding a Muggle as acceptable, or worse, humorous.
Intellectually disabled people are not less human than neuro-typicals. Basic human rights include having one's welfare, dignity and (to the extent one is capable of making any) choices treated with respect. That is the standard the Australian government requires of every disability organisation I've ever had contact with; it is the UN standard of universal human rights.
*No one* in the Order or the wizarding world respects the dignity, welfare or choices of individual Muggles or Squibs with whom they come in contact. No one. The dehumanisation of non-magical beings - disabled in magical society, but not in their own societies - is embedded in the Potterverse as a fundamental principle. Not questioned, not criticised, but upheld by *everyone* on *every* side. Harry's voice is the author's: Ron Confunds a Muggle in the epilogue and "All was well."
It disgusts me.
Re: Not racism, ablism
duj
PS In case someone brings up the Order's and the Ministry's disapproval of Muggle-baiting, a la GoF Quidditch World Cup, I'll just add that, sure, they protect the Muggles from just-for-fun harassment, but it's in the way that Muggles protect animals. We have laws against torturing/mistreating non-humans, too. But Muggles and Squibs are *not* kittens. Their rights go beyond mere non-harassment, non-torture, non-wrongful death/injury.
Some might argue that the mistreatment of Filch (for instance Harry hexing him in HBP) and the Dursleys (for instance Dumbledore terrorising them in their own home, also in HBP) is justified because they're nasty. But some intellectually-disabled people *are* what you might call nasty. They bash their families and/or strangers. They badmouth people who've gone out of their way to help them. They may even enjoy causing others pain. And even the most difficult are treated by Muggle organisations with as much respect for their choices and their dignity as their behaviour allows. Because rights are not dependent on goodness or niceness, obedience or tractability. They are intrinsic to any just society.
Re: Not racism, ablism
Re: Not racism, ablism
I object to that remark (like a few of your other remarks!) very strongly. As I've said repeatedly, I am a Muggle, and proud of it. And Muggles are not stupider, less logical, less capable, or in any way "delayed" compared to Wizards. What they are is less powerful. They cannot command matter to obey them through an act of will, as Wizards can.
And yes, this does make them vulnerable to Wizards. But their intelligence, or lack of it, has nothing to do with it. It's much more as if the Muggles were physically handicapped. Like the inhabitants of H.G. Wells's "Country of the Blind", with the Wizards being the occasional sighted people born into this population. Note: in this story, in their own world, the blind people are not even handicapped. They manage very well, and live productive lives, and obviously do not miss what they have never had and do not need - the power of sight. Their error is in decrying vision in the few born with it and considering it a handicap in turn.
It seems Wells says everything in this short story that Rowling might have been trying for in her lengthy series, but he's a lot clearer and more chilling.
But Muggles are not developmentally delayed. If you will forgive me, you seem to want to bring intelligence into this discussion even when it obviously doesn't belong . It's a touchy subject and I think we should leave it alone. (I was one of the people who was offended by your last statement on intelligence and genetics.)
Muggles are not inferior to Wizards. This is so, not merely because the handicapped, as human beings, deserve all the rights of the "able-bodied", but because they actually are as smart, as brave, and as capable of love and other higher emotions, as Wizards are. After DH, I see Wizards as severely handicapped in comparison to Muggles.
Just my two cents.