Muggleborns, Most Natural Form of Magic

[Stefan Archer]

In a discussion I had in university today, we got on to the topic of creating a written constitution for the UK, and we jokingly suggested people to write this. A friend of mine suggested J.K.Rowling and after throwing out that idea, we got on to the topic of Harry Potter and Muggleborns within the wizarding world. (It was a strange discussion, I'll admit).

Now, as we know in the Potter books, muggleborns are often made fun of, and are often the ones who suffer very serious prejudice from some people within the magical community. But, this got me thinking about muggleborns and the fact that they have magic, and I threw out the suggestion that perhaps muggleborns have the most natural, pure form of magic since they are not technically born into magic. I'd like to hear everyone else thoughts on it too.

The Harry Potter Wiki says that, "Muggle-borns inherit magic from a distant ancestor; they are descended from Squibs who have married Muggles and whose families had lost the knowledge of their wizarding legacy." Link. Which implies that squibs have a sort of recessive magical gene, which takes quite a number of generations before it reappears, there is no sort of indication as to why this is.

Whereas JKRowling said this, "Nobody knows where magic comes from. It is like any other talent. Sometimes it seems to be inherited, but others are the only ones in their family who have the ability." Link

Making the assumption that magic is naturally occurring, you have to think that magic has to have come from somewhere, its genetic, and is passed through the generations, but there would've had to be a first wizard or witch in every family that would then go on to become a pureblood family, a person, or small group of people whom most of the purebloods, or any one with a very long history of magic within their family would be directly related to. This person would most likely be born of muggle parents and would develop or become magic.

Magic is a dominant gene in magical families, and squibs are incredibly rare, more rare than muggleborns. In families with muggleborn children the magic appears to be recessive, as in not all of the children of two muggles with one magical child will be magical. As can be seen with the Creeveys, both magic and then also Lily and Petunia, one non-magic. Therefore where a child born to magic parents is more than likely to also be magic, a child born to two muggle parents who have no knowledge or perhaps any trace of any magical blood anywhere in the family, would only a tiny percentage of the time have a magical child. (Side note, the second website I linked to says that the muggleborn population of the school is like 20%)

It could be said from this perspective because muggleborns are born with no magic blood previous to them, then the magic that they gain or possess is in a more natural and stronger form than in someone that was bound to magical.

An example of how this can be true, in a way, is in both Lily Evans, and Hermione Granger, both muggleborn witches said to be the greatest witches of their generation.

I think, and remembering that this is a fictional world and none of it is real, that magic in a child of muggle parents could have magic which is purer, more natural and more powerful that a child who even at the point of conception is more than likely to be magical.

Now, I concede that magic has to be tuned and perfected for a person to be considered good at magic, but I'm not really arguing, at least I think I'm not, that muggleborns would be better at magic itself, but that their magic is a more natural purer form of it.

So, really I want to know everyone else thinks. Do you agree, disagree? Am I just incoherently rambling? Do you have any other thoughts?

This is an HP forum, and I thought it would be something to consider and discuss. In a calm and civilised manner, remembering that a discussion doesn't mean you can swear at folk or get anger because they disagree with you.

So, what do you think?

This has been on my mind for most of the day, and most of my friends are not into Harry Potter enough to have this discussion with me. I'm really curious to know what others think.
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[Abbigale Raven]

I can't believe someone has actually started this discussion. My family and I have discussions on this and similar things all the time and I think it is great to hear some other opinions on the matter. I have always been of the idea that magic as a gene is a mutation (sort of). Considering what we know of the magical world, it is only a small percentage of the whole muggle world, which leads us to the knowledge that the magical world is quite small in comparison. We know this from the fact that all the magical kids of Great Britain can fit into one school. We don't know much about the wider magical world, but I think we can safely assume that magical genes are not the superior genes of humanity. In saying this, magic did have to come from somewhere and considering that there are less magical people in the world then muggles, I would say that magic first appeared in a muggle which would mean that your stance is pretty good. Not saying that muggleborns are the purest form because one could argue that it is rather diluted. However, with the knowledge of Pureblood wizarding families and the occurrence of squibs, we know that many squibs are sent to live in the muggle world. Because they are essentially 'wizard-born Muggles', I like to think that it is proof of muggles coming before wizards, but again, someone could make a different argument because of muggleborns. All in all, I think you have an interesting thought and it would be cool if we could discuss it further.
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[Rosie Chamberlin]

I like the point you made with Hermione and Lily, they were both really talented when it came to magic and they were muggle born, so that could be a huge reference towards muggle borns maybe having something that other wizards and witches do not?

If I read this and understood it as you explained it, to me it seems like they'd all be sort of natural forms of magic. One way or another they are all passed down genetically, so to me it would all seem pretty natural regardless of one's blood status. But this is just my opinion and I may have totally misunderstood what you were trying to get at, but it's an interesting theory nonetheless.
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