Character question

[Birdie Atwood]

Hello!

This may not be the right area to post this question but i'll ask anyway. So, I am creating a character and their dad + mum are muggles but their step mother is magical (character lives with dad). Can the step mother do magic at home? Is it fine if my character knows about magic and that even though they are muggleborn?

Thanks, and please let me know if this is the right place to ask this sort of question.

 

[Professor Elvera Le Fey]

from my understanding, it is okay for muggles who live with a witch or wizard to know about magic. and for them to use magic at home (assuming it isn't overly overt and there are no visitors etc who will see) however the witch/wizard is also ultimately responsible for keeping the secrecy. so it would depend on how much they trust the child to keep the secret.
for example they wouldn't have plates floating to the table at a dinner party, transfigure things for entertainment or brew potions on the kitchen stove. even if they are not told they may notice small things, find that their stepmom can get housework done far faster than anyone else, or that they never get spiders in the bath while she is around, or other small things. alternatively, they may only tell them once the child has shown signs of magic (again assuming it will be a future student charictor)

 

[Cyndi Kingsley]

Hi Tayla,

This is a fine place for a question like this.

To provide some additional nuance to what Mia has written above, it would depend on some of the details. The Statute of Secrecy places the responsibility on each country to protect the secret of magic, and each country places that responsibility on its magical folks. So it would be stepmom's responsibility to maintain her magic a secret unless there's a good reason she would need to be doing magic in front of a muggle/on a need to know basis. Double so if she is living in a muggle community. So that would mean that not every person who comes into her home should find out about her being magical and the when of their discovery would depend on a lot of factors (trust, age, relationship, etc.). For example, her husband might need to know she is magical but can also be trusted to understand the dangers of revealing the secret but her husband's mother who comes to stay for a few weeks would likely not have a reason to know and thus the stepmom would be expected to make every effort to conceal her magic with her. Her muggle stepchild might not need to know for years (or ever) depending on the circumstances of their relationship. I'd also expect that their house is free of magical creatures as that is covered in the Statute and would be difficult to explain away.

Some examples from canon include that Aunt Marge didn't know about magic. She was told Harry was away at a school but no details about the magic of it all. After the incident in the Dursley home, her memory was modified to forget the magic that was performed on her. Seamus Finnegan's dad did learn his wife was magical but only after they got married.