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Harry Potter and the Skittering Spouse

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Kiche said:
She said she could see them, but didn't give an accurate description of them. It read more like she didn't really see them because she was either too late or just couldn't. She gave an accurate statement on Harry's patronus though so I'm leaning towards the second.
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Might be more nuanced?

Maybe she couldn't see them clearly? Possibly worth considering that her eyesight might not be of the best, but Patronus are (I think) glowing and pretty obvious...
 
SlickRCBD said:
Sounds like a new use for an old joke.
What do you call a pureblood with half a brain?
Gifted.
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Malcanthet said:
Make on wonder what Extra Flaws they took to be able to afford that.
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You've got to realise, the whole 'Magical Package Deal' isn't cheap, even with the Games Master having leaned hard on the rules to make it fundamental to their campaign.

So, if you want the longevity, the health benefits, maybe some other bits, and as a character you're only secondary, or worse, you need those Extra Flaws just to pay for your base capabilities.

It's not easy being a 'spear carrier', (or even worse a disposable guard) who's job it is to be background, or make the heroes look good...

hidden :)
 
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Epsilon Rose said:
I'd consider interviews much less firmly canon than something in the actual books, especially in the case of Rowling, who says a lot of stupid things in interviews. I also find the "It's all genetics and the only way muggle borne get magic is if they had magical ancestors" particularly unsatisfying, because it verges on the bloodpurist worldview.
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it also fails to adequately present a reason for patient zero or any other form of first domino its entirely missing the point of such a question
 
Klendatu said:
it also fails to adequately present a reason for patient zero or any other form of first domino its entirely missing the point of such a question
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The same way the first human appeared. Evolution from more primitive hominid species that have magic in a greater or smaller way. Like there should magic monkeys and great apes and our hominid ancestors had members that could do magic.
Epsilon Rose said:
I'd consider interviews much less firmly canon than something in the actual books, especially in the case of Rowling, who says a lot of stupid things in interviews. I also find the "It's all genetics and the only way muggle borne get magic is if they had magical ancestors" particularly unsatisfying, because it verges on the bloodpurist worldview.
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It makes sense if you consider Muggles and Magical two very closely related species . Like Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. That heavily interbred. Or Magical ancestors came from another world/dimension/Universe and interbred with local human population. And at the level of interbreeding between Muggles and Magical we are shown in the books every Muggle can trace a descent from a magical human and vice versa. Realistically.
It is also very clearly in later books JKR consider soft institutional bigotry against muggles(present in the Weasleys) to be acceptable and probably ok to engage in.
EDIT
That is not to get into more wild possibilities. Like Muggles being all golems that were made a long time ago that got into the wild and became wildly successful by outbreeding the magical people. That shouldn't be out of the possibility for Rowling to say about the muggles.
 
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thor2006 said:
That is not to get into more wild possibilities. Like Muggles being all golems that were made a long time ago that got into the wild and became wildly successful by outbreeding the magical people. That shouldn't be out of the possibility for Rowling to say about the muggles.
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Muggle = ex-slave race, deliberately made to be non-magical, for ???

Just a bit... depressing. Really what you want for kids treating the Potter-verse as their first major reading experience.

I'll... choose to not accept that logic. But, then, orcs at Isengard as the toiling city-workers of Industrial Britain? Dark satanic mills, etc. Could put you off LotR...
 
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Ace Dreamer said:
Muggle = ex-slave race, deliberately made to be non-magical, for ???

Just a bit... depressing. Really what you want for kids treating the Potter-verse as their first major reading experience.

I'll... choose to not accept that logic. But, then, orcs at Isengard as the toiling city-workers of Industrial Britain? Could put you off LotR...
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It is not like witches and wizards don't create slaves. Witness the cavalier attitude to make almost all magical items sentient/sapient and house elves.
Well giving their own magic to an artificial species should be harder than creating an artificial sapient specie. So Muggles as a prototype and training wheel for the house elves it would make sense.
Muggles as version 1 of creating a slave specie without the loyalty magic and without magic as a prototype for what the wizard world did to house elves(either creating them or enslaving them).
But yes personally I tend not to take the grimdark interpretation of the Wizard World.
The best theory that I subscribe is that either Muggles and Witches are like Neaderthals and Sapiens that massively interbred. And now all muggles have wizard blood and all wizards have muggle blood.
Or having magic isn't genetic or other issues(like only wizards can see and become ghosts and similar things like that) would apply to muggles but there isn't acknowledge (because bigotry and lack of interest).
 
thor2006 said:
Or having magic isn't genetic or other issues(like only wizards can see and become ghosts and similar things like that) would apply to muggles but there isn't acknowledge (because bigotry and lack of interest.)
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I sort of like the one fan theory that any infant has a chance to be born capable of using magic, provided there is sufficient magic in the environment during conception. So, all that's needed is for the parents to be close enough to an area with sufficient natural magic available and the resulting child can actively access the energy, providing there isn't some other factor blocking access.

(Like genetic damage from inbreeding.)
 
I regard magical ability as a low-probability inheritable mutation with, I think the correct term is high penetrance. Magical humans rarely have non-magical offspring even with non-magical mates, and non-magical humans less rarely have magical offspring; there seem to be many more muggleborn than squibs.
 
Whitewings said:
I regard magical ability as a low-probability inheritable mutation with, I think the correct term is high penetrance. Magical humans rarely have non-magical offspring even with non-magical mates, and non-magical humans less rarely have magical offspring; there seem to be many more muggleborn than squibs.
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High penetrance means that most of the time, if you have the genotype you express the phenotype. This is a step down from the usual naive assumption of total penetrance.

It doesn't really do a good job of explaining magical inheritance as it appears, though. Partly because it doesn't explain its position on the genetics! And partly because of what it implies about squibs. If squibs are the rare case of non-expressed magical genes, you'd expect the children of squibs to have just as much chance of being magical as the children of magicals. And I don't know if there's a single magical known to have a squib parent?

Is magic dominant or recessive? Both answers are awkward. If it's dominant, then muggle-borns would be expected to be heterozygous and contribute magic to only half their children. You'd expect to see a lot of magical couples producing 25% fully non-magical children.

If it's recessive, then there must be a bunch of muggles running around with magic genes they don't get benefit of, including Riddle Senior and many parents of muggle-born magicals. It doesn't come up much, but I had the impression that a magical and a muggle were expected to have magical children in general, though, which doesn't work with this at all. It would mean that you could count on the children of two magicals (regardless of their pedegrees) being magical in turn.

Dominant with non-free assortment would be possible - heterozygous magicals could be very unlikely to pass on their non-magical genetics. Life doesn't actually play Mendel's rulebook straight all the time!
 
Aineko said:
Dominant with non-free assortment would be possible - heterozygous magicals could be very unlikely to pass on their non-magical genetics. Life doesn't actually play Mendel's rulebook straight all the time!
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Which strongly implies there's more than just straight genetics going on?

Whitewings said:
We know exactly nothing about the offspring of squibs.
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True, but it's strongly implied that a magical with a non-magical child doesn't expect to get magical grandchildren out of them. They consider magic to be gone from that child and their children, in turn. So, they write them off, often casting them more-or-less from the family.

Would this strongly imply that magic 'submerges' genetically, and skips at least the next generation, and quite possibly more (consider how long magicals live)?

If that's genetic then something quite weird would seem to be going on...

EDIT:

Say there's two magical genes, A and B.

If you get just A from a parent you're magical. If you get A from one and B from the other you're strongly magical (or, at least, normally magical).

If you have neither A nor B, you're mundane, one B, mundane, B and B, mundane. A and A, non-magical, and all your children will be A and A, 'locked', no matter what the other parent is like. Probably your grandchildren, too.

The double A, once no longer 'locked', all they need is a partner without an A. In other words, double A with a magical partner (or another double A), with an A gene, gives you double A in all children - they'll be non-magical (but not 'locked'). But, a partner with no magic genes, or a B or double B, and a double A will guarantee magical children.

If you throw in an exception clause, a double B or a double A child with an A and B parent there at their birth magically transforms into an A and B child. You get most magicals from two parents who are both A and B. Having at least one parent who is A and B is strongly recommended.

Raising children in magical or non-magical families may effect things.

Above is probably not complete, but worth considering?
(Yes, it should be complex enough you'd need a Hermione in research mode, and with custom spells, actually at births, to work it out. Dept. of Mysteries? Ha!)
 
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Ace Dreamer said:
Muggle = ex-slave race, deliberately made to be non-magical, for ???

Just a bit... depressing. Really what you want for kids treating the Potter-verse as their first major reading experience.
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That reminds me of some versions of Lovecraft where Humans were a slave race that either overthrew or survived our creators. In that context, non-magical could have been the default and magical was a breed that was created for specific tasks. Alternatively, magicals could be the descendants of the groups that actively participated in overthrowing their masters and obtained some of their magic in the process.

thor2006 said:
Or having magic isn't genetic or other issues(like only wizards can see and become ghosts and similar things like that) would apply to muggles but there isn't acknowledge (because bigotry and lack of interest).
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Since we know souls exist in the HP world and this is magic we're talking about, it could be based on something metaphysical, rather than something biological. For example, it could be based on the structure of your soul and exposure to certain conditions (like ambient magic or other people with souls that have certain shapes) could catalyze the formation of those structures, bit some souls could also just form them on their own.
 
Critiquing the charcters of Harry Potter and their actions... Just isn't interesting to me any more. You can pick most characters in the story and find major flaws with their actions, their motivations, and internal consistency, to be sure. But that's also one of the least interesting thing you can do with the story, to my tastes. I find it far more compelling to speculate / tell stories to show how these flaws make sense from their perspective, or use it as an opportunity for world building that explains why they did what they did, or write a different story where the character in question is sharper, making different, smarter choices.

In short, bashing is boring, and if you have a competent Taylor as a protagonist, putting her against a competent Dumbledore/Snape/Voldy/Molly Weasley in an antagonist role is great fun.
 
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Whitewings said:
We know exactly nothing about the offspring of squibs.
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We know that nobody ever mentions being one. That is not no information, with how much people do mention their parents.
Ace Dreamer said:
Which strongly implies there's more than just straight genetics going on?
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Unless you are drawing some distinction between 'straight genetics' and 'known real-life patterns of genetic inheritance', no, the thing you quoted does not do that.
 
Guys…. Gals… various shades of nonbinary…

The flying fuck are you going with this? I dipped in and out a few times to skim but apparently we're now at the point of discussing Lovecraft lore. Which ya know off topic….

……..

Lovecraft… Lovegood…..

……………..

Is that why she's the character introducing a whole menagerie of non existent critters?
 
Fencer said:
Lovecraft… Lovegood…..

……………..

Is that why she's the character introducing a whole menagerie of non existent critters?
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Nah. She's just weird. :)

Did you ever hear of a film called Doctor Strangelove? No obvious connection with Doctor Strange (in any genre I know) or... unconventional affection.

IMHO, Lovecraft and HP don't mix that well - one is paranoid fear of anything different, one is a story of wonder and magic, and trying to grow-up in that world.

Problems? Because, magic can be deeply scary, when it is misused. And, conservative magicals, still shell-shocked by two non-magical wars they couldn't ignore, one multi-national and one civil magical war... Aren't handling a potential second magical civil was that well.

M. H. Fuzzball said:
I have read at least one fic in which HP Lovecraft was a distant member of the Lovegood family. As well as one where she actually summoned a shoggoth.
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I'm sure Hagrid would say shoggoths are misunderstood.

And, treated well, maybe hidden with Disillusionment charms for the... sensitive, are excellent engineers and construction staff. And, should be treated as such.
:)

How could having invisible shoggoths roaming around repairing and maintaining Hogwarts cause any problems?
 
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Ace Dreamer said:
True, but it's strongly implied that a magical with a non-magical child doesn't expect to get magical grandchildren out of them. They consider magic to be gone from that child and their children, in turn. So, they write them off, often casting them more-or-less from the family.
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This really says more about the attitude of the magical world and it's treatment of squibs. For a long time just about all squibs apparently got killed, so they wouldn't have had a chance to know if squibs could have magical children or not. And even families like the Weaselys pretty much disown/exile squibs, so if the government just assumed that your kid was a muggleborn since you were a nonmagical household, then knowing that correcting that mistake would mean contributing in some fashion to the family that had thrown you out and probably have them take your kids away (or at least try, and plenty of them regard anyone without magic as subhuman, so murder to get what they want isn't completely off the table), how eager would you be to correct that mistake? I'd bet a lot of squibs would rather let their kids be mistaken for muggleborn.
 
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