So I guys this story's gotten a lot better for me the last few chapters. Your thoughts?

I can now say I tried to keep the thread on topic.

 

We're no strangers to love
You know the rules, and so do I
A full commitment's what I'm, thinking of
You wouldn't get this from, any other guy

( I can now say I took this thread off topic.)

 

On a unrelated note:

You got a message I could give to him? I'm sure he'd appreciate it very much. BTW, if you haven't guessed it is about PMN.

 

PMN?

Sorry if I come acrosss as ignorant

 

A Naruto fic he took down.

 

I'd agree with that...in canon magic seems to be more of a switch - you have it or you don't. There is no 'fuzzification' or magical core with differing power levels. If the 'switch' is 'on' we have a witch/wizard that can be trained up. If not, we have a squib who is about the same as a muggle with the exception that the squib is actually aware of the magical world.

Now in the case of people like Neville who is 'almost a squib', I'd say he is simply weak in his ability to perform magic. This is evident from Neville's admission that his family tried to 'shock' it out of him by putting him in stressful situations like dangling him from a window.

As to the weakness itself, instead of viewing magic as a form of energy it should be viewed as an attribute - a gene maybe. How strongly this gene has been handed down to the recipient (Neville), the extent of its dominance over other attributes, as well as circumstances of his infancy and upbringing would define how well he is able to use the ability.

Edit: And since it is a gene having muggle-borns is perfectly understandable.

 

Preaching to the choir, my friend, preaching to the choir. The choir that has been singing this tune for possibly over a year now.

However, I would say that it's not the gene itself that decides anything relating to magic other than the fact that the possessor is a wizard/witch.

Rather, I'd say that the gene is, like you say, a switch. A key that unlocks the ability to do magic. A suitable analogy would be that of a metamorphmagus - you are either born with the power or you aren't, but even if you are, it's entirely your skill at using it which decides what you can do with said power.

 

I don't like the gene analogy too much though, or at least I've never seen it explained very well. According to JKR 'magic is a dominant and resilient gene', which from my genetetics classes from high school doesn't make sense, because it doesn't allow the concept of muggleborns. I think there is a good essay on mugglenet which I was too lazy to read when I found it.

As for the special cases, you mention Neville, and we mustn't forget Tom Riddle himself (hehe, pretty good case of controlled wandless magic there) who developped his powers remarquably at such a young age. I agree that their character as well as their realtion to the same magic determines their actual magical ability and magical specificities.

Edit: there you go, for those who haven't read it and are interested in the genetics of magic

http://www.mugglenet.com/editorials/editorials/edit-wilkins01.shtml

 

I've never done biology in my life, but couldn't muggleborns be explained off as originating from a ridiculously long line of squibs?

That way, at least its possibly for magic to be gene, I suppose.

Though, we all got to remember that the family trees in England aren't the only ones in existence . . . a squib from another country could have come over, bred, and eventually down their line, sired a magical child, thus we have the muggleborn?

As for as I'm concerned, as long as you explain it well in your story, it doesn't really matter. Canon is way too vague and ambiguous in these circumstances, I think.

 

Read the Mugglenet editorial. I'm still too lazy to read the whole thing but the conclusion seemed right. To cut it very short, and without using proper terminology, a gene determines the expression of a trait, here magic or no magic. There are two entries for each gene in our DNA and the combination of those two entries determines how that trait is expressed. If the entry 'Magic' is dominant, then it only needs to be expressed in one of the two entries for 'Magic' to win. Therefore a non-magical person would have to have two 'No Magic' entries, and the offspring of two such people would have to have two 'No Magic' entries, being therefore non magical.

If magic were a recessive trait (inverse 'magic' and 'non-magic' in the previous case senario), then Muggle-born would be possible, but the simple case of recessive trait wouldn't allow for squibs and the offspring of a magical and non-magical person would only have the square root of the probability of being magical as the offspring of two non-magical people. In other words, Muggle-borns would hugely outnumber true half-bloods (who would be largely non-existent). Genetics are complicated enough that we can find better senarios that explain wizard demographics, but neither of the two simple cases work very well (and JKR is obviously not a genetics expert, she hasn't thought much before writing that dominant gene part - gene isn't even the right word in this case.

Edit: nobody will care about it, but 'the offspring of a magical and non-magical person would only have twice the probability of being magical as the offspring of two non-magical people' was wrong of course. I've changed it to 'the square root of the probability', which you will note is a higher probability.

 

What about mutations in the muggles? Can't we use that to explain the muggle-borns? Some sort of random selection or something.

In that case magic could be a dominant gene and muggle-borns would be classified as chance occurences...which would explain the whole pure-blood supremacy business.

 

Or... it could be magic. Let's leave it at that, at least in this thread.

 

Can we expect updates for either story this weekend? I'm stuck alone with my sister's three children until Tuesday and I am bored as hell already.. Hurry up and update so I have something to read, you nerd..

Edit: Kinda funny.. 17 people don't care who you pair character with because they like a big fat 'D' in their 'A'.. Neat

 

You could try, but I suppose that would only let it happen statistically as often as any other mutation, so you would have as many Muggle-borns as people with 6 fingers on one hand (this is speculation, I'm obviously not an expert). The thing with mutations is that there are a lot on each individual, but very very few actually have a noticeable impact.

Pure bloods don't understand genetics. It's just standart elitism between privileged people. In the same way as new money was frowned upon by the aristocracy in the 19th century.

 

Back on the issue of genetics, something that strikes me as peculiar is the issue of completely muggle parents siring two magical children.

Creevey brothers, for instance.

(I'm basing this off logic, seeing as I can't get to that link in muggle.net for some reason.)

How did that magic genetics piece explain the chances of both Creevey brothers becoming magical if both their parents are muggles?

Unless, of course, the parents are heirs to a really long line of squibs, then I guess you could pin it down to genetics.

Otherwise, isn't any other situation incredibly unlikely? Unless, by having one magical child, you increase your chances of having another?

I kind of always like the idea of magic being passed down genetically, I don't like it when people explain it off as 'it just is'; Science should be able to explain everything, at least, for everything until I die.
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If magic is a recessive gene, then chance of having a magical child if both parents possessed the gene would be 1/4. If only one parent had the gene it would be impossible.

However, it being a recessive gene doesn't allow for Squibs, which is a problem. But if you change it so that magic is a dominant gene so that Squibs are allowed, then you can't get Muggleborns any more. Also, if it were dominant, the chances of having a Squib would be 1/4, and Squibs are much rarer than that, so this another reason why it's unlikely.

So either the magical gene doesn't obey the Muggle laws of genetics, or it's more complex than a single gene (JKR refers to it as a single gene, but she knows nothing of genetics).

Another solution to the problem would be saying that the gene is recessive but Squibs are a magical phenomenon, rather than a genetic one.

 

Surely it's a bit more complicated than that? I remember doing those chart things in introduction to Biology back in the ninth grade, the ones where you have a table with two rows and two columns and figure out people's possible dominant and recessive genes . . . homozygous, heterozygous, this is basically all I remember.

I always thought that (admittedly, I didn't put MUCH thought into it) those chart inheritance things made up one gene, and there were many more in the body which determined which traits one would inherit. I also remember something about not all genes needing to be either dominant or recessive . . .

I definitely had something lined up in my story that used genetics, but I might just scrap it because the shit is giving me a headache.
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When you say 'the parents are heirs to a really long family of squibs', you mean that the parents would need to have the gene (the right word is actually allele, but whatever) in the first place, and their parents before that etc. However, the notion of squib simply doesn't work in the schematic situations we are describing: the situation were the parents each have one 'gene' and have a child with both, for him to be magical is when the 'gene' is recessive, in which case squibs are impossible. Ergo, the parents or any ancestors can't be squibs. The other case of a dominant magic 'gene' doesn't allow squibs to have magical children (idem: contradiction).

Moreover, I don't like when people associate science and magic in certain ways. I find a need to determine where the science stops, and the magic starts, because the moment science intrudes on the magic, it really isn't magic but rather science. Magic where the magic is explained too well I call science fiction. I personally probably wouldn't have brought genetics into it if she hadn't.

 

This is exactly what I've done. For example:




And here's why you can't get Squibs if it's recessive, unless Squibs are a non-genetic phenomena, or the magic gene doesn't follow Muggle rules of genetics:

 

There's really no point in calling it a gene if it doesn't work like muggle genetics. I see the point in making squibs a magical phenomenon though; following the discussion on different magical abilities, it would be squibs 'having the magic' but not being able to connect to it (though this really goes against JKR's statements on squibs and genetics).

The Link stopped working for me as well, but now it works again (maybe a mugglenet error). You can also google 'magic is a dominant and resilient gene' though, it's the first result (this thread comes up pretty high as well).




Also, this isn't strictly related to magic or genetics, but think of it as baby Harry Potter driving the sitter nuts (I found it hilarious):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WtCYwVohWEY