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harry potter - Are there non-squib wizards/witches who work 100% in muggle world?


This Q/A ( Does Hogwarts teach non magical classes? ) made me realize that I can't seem to remember a single HP wizard/witch who had a Muggle job with a Muggle company, aside from Kingsley's bodyguard cover as the Prime Minister's secretary.


Everyone whom I recall being mentioned as having a job is either employed in some magical company or the Ministry of Magic (which seems to employ more magical people than every other employer combined) or be self-employed - again economically interacting with wizards.


Am I merely forgetting someone, or was Kingsley really the only magically capable person with a paycheck from the Muggle world (which doesn't count since the job was a cover)?



UPDATE: Just to clarify - I didn't necessarily mean "working a Muggle job while using magic to help you" - it could also mean simply doing a Muggle job. So there's not necessarily a concern about Statute of Secrecy (plus, you can use the magic, say, to learn - e.g. Hermione could magick herself to learn how to do dentistry in 1 month or something). So no need to answer how having some wizard doing a Muggle job would be contrary to HP universe rules. I merely want to know if there's an example, NOT why there should't be one.



Answer



Isobel McGonagall, mother of Minerva McGonagall


The Pottermore section on Minerva McGonagall talks at length about her mother, Isobel. After she eloped with a muggle, Isobel kept her magical heritage a secret from her husband, lived in isolation from the wizarding world, and voluntarily chose to lock up her wand.



By the time she was eighteen, [Isobel] had fallen in love with Robert. Unfortunately, she had not found the courage to tell him what she was.


The couple eloped, to the fury of both sets of parents. Now estranged from her family, Isobel could not bring herself to mar the bliss of the honeymoon by telling her smitten new husband that she had graduated top of her class in Charms at Hogwarts, nor that she had been Captain of the school Quidditch team. […]


Missing her family, and the magical community she had given up for love, Isobel insisted on naming her newborn daughter after her own grandmother, an immensely talented witch.



While no occupation is mentioned, it seems that Isobel neither used magic, nor associated with anyone who used magic, since she got married. Even after she revealed to her husband that she was a witch, Isobel kept herself isolated from others in the wizarding community (the fact that she was married to a minister probably influenced that). It's clear that by the time Minerva was accepted to Hogwarts (at least 11 years after they were married), Isobel still hadn't rejoined the magical community.




[Minerva] sensed, too, how much of a strain it was for her mother to fit in with the all-Muggle village, and how much she missed the freedom of being with her kind, and of exercising her considerable talents. Minerva never forgot how much her mother cried, when the letter of admittance into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry arrived on Minerva’s eleventh birthday; she knew that Isobel was sobbing, not only out of pride, but also out of envy.



So while Isobel McGonagall didn't necessarily work in the muggle world without magic, she did live 100% in the muggle world without any use of magic or connections to the Wizarding World.


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