Especially since it's usually done less to have an oppressive elitist upper class, and more as an excuse to give Harry or some other character a ton of wish-fulfillment powers.

Speaking of which, you could probably make some sort of commentary on the messy implications of stories that reveal that Hermoine is actually a secret pureblood/heir to a pureblood house and is actually more pureblooded than Malfoy and co. Given the whole Pureblood/Muggleborn thing is pretty clearly meant to remind us of racism, it'd be sort of like if they revealed a black character was actually white all along. Then again, considering the One Drop Rule makes people who are 7/8th white and 1/8 black still be black that would mean that ... okay, dropping the comparison before I go too far down that rabbit hole.

 

I believe the point was supposed to be that since Remus has to specify that there are no wizarding princes, he is sort of implicitly confirming/allowing for the existence of other nobility.

Now, the logic pretty clearly doesn’t flow from that cause to the conclusion reached but I believe that’s what’s momo means.

 

@Sorrows, I would read the shit out of either (or both) of those stories.

 

I think it's probably a matter of lying about how pure they are, or at least conveniently forgetting. The wizarding world doesn't seem to make a big deal over blood quantums, all you ever hear mention of is muggleborns and half-bloods. There's no mention of quarter-bloods, eight-bloods, and so on in canon (unless I'm forgetting that).

That would seem to indicate that if a half-blood and pureblood hook up the resulting kids are considered pureblood, or at least close enough to pureblood that nobody but the most obsessed care about it.

 

What chengar said.

My understanding is:

muggle + muggle --> muggleborn (Hermione)
muggle + half/pure --> halfblood (Snape, Lupin, Riddle, Dean(?)
muggle + muggleborn and muggleborn + muggleborn --> presumably muggleborn, until at some point jumps to pureblood or at least nobody says anything
half/pure + muggleborn --> halfblood (Harry)
half/pure + half/pure --> pureblood, again with an increasingly smaller group demanding a more refined scale
pure + pure --> pureblood

One suspects it also depends on family name and status as well, though this is me making inferences than relying on evidence. Ron + Hermione's children may be considered honorary purebloods as Weasley's, in a way they might not if it were Ron Granger + Hermione Weasley (Tonks would be a good example of this, is there anything in canon as to what she is considered? Beyond the Blacks of course)

 

...Jesus Christ. That makes so much sense.

For the love of god, Sorrows, you need to write this story.

 

Its always been firmly in my head that if both your parents and all your grandparents are magical you're a pureblood. If one of your parents or grandparents isn't magical you're a halfblood. And if neither of your parents are magical you're a muggleborn.

I can't remember if that's from the books, Taure fanon or just some half forgotten story but it feels right.

Edit: derp. Forgot ASP was a halfblood. Scratch out grandparents for greatgrandparents.

 

To answer the original point of this thread.

If Lord Potter isn't possible then explain Dark Lord Potter Dot Net

checkmate

 

My belief was if all your grandparents are purebloods, you are considered a pureblood.

Harry's children wouldn't be considered a pureblood, because of Lily, but if any of his children had kids with a pureblood, their children would be.

I always felt there needs to be another term in there, for those who have all magical grandparents, but they aren't 'technically' purebloods.

However, going back to the original topic, my belief is that many wizards were part of nobility in the ancient days, but started fading after the rise of Christianity and Islam. Very few wizards remained nobility by the time the Statute of Secrecy was passed. My headcanon does have the Ottoman Empire being ran by Wizards (and kidnapping and molding young witches and wizards). It is a reason why they expanded so rapidly, and a huge reason why the Statute of Secrecy was put into place. The pass of that international law started the decline of the Ottomans.

 

Question, do we know if deformities from inbreeding is even possible in wizards? It seems like magic could fix that...

 

I'm not sure if purebloods largely are inbred anyway. The minimum population size to prevent inbreeding is ~160; we already get 28 families from the Sacred Twenty-Eight, but there are more which aren't included in the list, such as the Potters, Crabbes, Goyles, and some of the surnames on the Black Family Tree JKR drew. I'm guessing a lot of "respectable" families aren't on the list. And it's mentioned these families do have some members of questionable lineage but they just hide it.

Vlad brings up a good point. I wonder what people with two muggleborn parents are called.

 

There are two different meanings of "pure-blood".

There's the technical definition, which JKR has stated to be grandparents.

Then there's the political definition, i.e. the one used by Death Eaters and those like them, which is not having any Muggle ancestry at all. The latter is more about politics than actual ancestry, because in reality there would be no "pure-bloods" by this definition (except, perhaps, the Gaunts, who took inbreeding to the next level). To qualify as a pure-blood, therefore, you must gain acceptance of the group that uses this extreme definition, i.e. by aligning yourself with them politically and following their practices, which include obliterating any record of any familial connection to Muggles (see: the heavily redacted Black family tree). It's essentially a group delusion.

The latter is why it's no big deal that Voldemort is actually a half-blood. The whole political faction is premised upon erasing the actual past and making up a fake past for your family.

It's an important point, often missed in the fandom, that Dumbledore and the Order reject both these definitions, not just the latter one. Dumbledore's philosophy is not equality between "Pure-bloods" and "Muggleborns". His philosophy is to reject the entire classification system. He never refers to purity of blood without use of the phrase "so-called".

Useful materials:

1. https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/pure-blood

2. https://web.archive.org/web/2009021...owling.com:80/textonly/en/faq_view.cfm?id=100

3. https://web.archive.org/web/2009022...rowling.com:80/textonly/en/faq_view.cfm?id=58

 

JKR said in a WoG that the purebloods determined who was pure or not in the same way that the Nazis determined if someone was a Jew or not. I'm pretty sure it came down to having four half or pure blooded grandparents. Having said that, I can't remember where I found that WoG and I don't care enough to go looking.

 

"Scientifically," aren't they all effectively a distinct human subspecies or w/e, as muggleborns according to Rowling are actually drscended from squibs.

If so, the real difference is magicals-muggles, and muggle-born is not just a political distinction but an inaccurate one.

God, I hate extended verse canon. It is - foregive me for saying so - bad.

 

Yes and no.

The extended verse is good in that it accomplishes it’s purpose of alluding to a world hidden beneath our own. It sets the scene for Harry’s adventures.

But it’ was not meant to be the creation of a world and lore a la Middle Earth.

Tolkien set out to create a world. Rowling set out to create a story.

I think they both succeeded.

 

Rowling's a lot better at coming up with fun and creative ideas than she is at maintaining the sort of internal consistency and logic needed for robust worldbuilding.

 

Which is why I find it absurd when people here go on about how some things are "canonically impossible".

Anything in possible, the only real test is whether it makes for good storytelling or not.

 

The thread title was changed from 'Possible' to 'Impossible' as a piss take.

 

So most are lying through their teeth, though a bunch of crazies tries to actually execute that.

EDIT: Ups, haven't noticed the whole second page.