Skip to main content

harry potter - Book or Rowling quote that there are **no** contemporary wizards without muggle ancestors?


I saw this question:


Which pure-blood supremacists were actually half-bloods?



and I was gonna be a smart-alec and answer 'all of them' as there are no actual pure-bloods anymore. However I couldn't find anything to canonically back this up, so I can't be sure. There's the quote from Hagrid in The Chamber of Secrets (film):



Why, there isn’t a wizard alive today that’s not half-blood or less.



Which may be what made me think this. I thought I'd read an author quote backing it up but perhaps I imagined it. Am I mistaken?


Is there any canon (book / JK Rowling / Pottermore sources preferred) confirmation that there are no contemporary, actual pure-blood wizards?


Edit: there’s some confusion so let me clear it. When I say pure blood I mean it literally. No muggle ancestors. 'Pureblood' is defined in Pottermore thus:



The term ‘pure-blood’ refers to a family or individual without Muggle (non-magic) blood. (https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/pure-blood)





Answer




In a letter to Lucius Malfoy, explaining why he refused to ban “The Fountain of Fair Fortune”, Dumbledore says that all wizards have some Muggle ancestry.



“So-called pure-blood families maintain their alleged purity by disowning, banishing, or lying about Muggles or Muggle-borns on their family trees. They then attempt to foist their hypocrisy upon the rest of us by asking us to ban works dealing with the truths they deny. There is not a witch or wizard in existence whose blood has not mingled with that of Muggles, and I should therefore consider it both illogical and immoral to remove works dealing with the subject from our students’ store of knowledge.”
- The Tales of Beedle the Bard



Dumbledore, though his intent with his letter was likely at least in part to annoy Lucius, would likely have based his statements in some amount of truth. Some wizards’ blood is of course still purer comparatively than that of other families - for example, the Black family can trace their pure-wizard ancestry through the generations at least to Phineas Nigellus Black.


In addition, a J.K. Rowling writing on Pottermore says there was intermarrying for centuries before the Statute of Secrecy was implemented, so wizards would all have Muggle ancestry. Soon after it was implemented, though, some wizards were already describing themselves as pure-bloods.




As Muggle/wizard marriage had been common for centuries, those now self-describing as pure-bloods were unlikely to have any higher proportion of wizarding ancestors than those who did not. To call oneself a pure-blood was more accurately a declaration of political or social intent (‘I will not marry a Muggle and I consider Muggle/wizard marriage reprehensible’) than a statement of biological fact.
- Pure-Blood (Pottermore)



It’s likely their blood would get ‘purer’ as they continued to only marry other wizards, but they’d already have Muggle ancestry from before the Statute, even if there’s none from after.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...