The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (a thread for Potterheads)

i saw this just now

 

I mean it is magic.

This is probably why I prefer universes where they don't try to make the magic all too logical. Sure there are rules but they don't have to map to reality all that much.

 

I imagine it's something along the lines of 'wizarding genocide mostly concentrated on wizarding families ironically' where blood purity matters way more when there's any degree of purity to sully (so muggle families with wizard kids are going to have a higher concentration of kids because they aren't actively being targeted) but

I have no idea how magic carries. I think I saw a post like, three years ago about how a dominant trait can carry recessively but I couldn't tell you where the post was or how it came to that conclusion and I am not nearly well educated enough to try and reconstruct the argument.

The more logic JK (tries to) use, the less sense it makes. See also: male vampires in Twilight can get ladies pregnant because "sperm doesn't die but eggs do that's why 90 year old men can get girls pregnant but 90 year old women can't get pregnant!" with the sideorder of "all vampires are venom, with venom for blood and also semen and ?????" because SMeyer was convinced she needed to biology to explain the magic vampire pregnancy.

 

I mostly agree except with McGonagall's backstory which I actually sort of like. Though I usually add "And then she and Professor Sprout retired to the country"
But that's just me.

 

It acts exactly like a recessive trait, though. Two magic people almost always have magic kids, because they're both homozygous recessive. Muggleborns can happen from heterozygous Muggle pairs. A Muggle and a wizard could have magical or nonmagical children depending on the Muggle's genotype and chance. Squibs are rare because they happen from point mutations.

 

And re: muggleborn population, that actually makes sense to me. The number of Muggleborns being born is the same as always because Muggles mostly got left alone, but because the war killed off so many people in the wizarding community, the number of kids being born to wizards is lower than average. So it's a much higher percentage, but not a higher number.

 

I don't think it's ever clarified? We know they can, but I don't know if it ever said they always do. JKR said in an interview once that magic is "a dominant and resilient gene," but I suspect she may not have known what she was talking about.

 

There was a fascinating theory I read by an actual geneticist that magic comes not from a single gene but from a series of repeating "junk DNA". Muffles naturally have some of the repeats, and natural mutation can generate high repeats and this results in a muggleborn. Squibs have less repeats than a wizard but normally have more repeats than the average muggle, so they have a higher chance than muffles of having magical children. Sometimes you get someone like Dumbledore or Riddle who have more repeats than average in a wizard and have more potent magic. Muggleborns with wizard heritage come about more than those without because they inherited fairly high repeats from said wizarding ancestor and then probably the non magical heritage spouse happened to have enough repeats to reach magical levels. The history of accumulation of high repeats meant that some wizards are bound to have magical children because even half of their repeats would reach their children and be enough to provide magic even with a low repeat spouse. There are several proposed models that take into mind recombination and other more complex mechanisms in genetics and inheritance.

 

Ok, I found the paper written by a bio major with that theory! The original link given in many articles talking about it no longer leads to her tumblr, but I am glad there is an archive with it!

There is another theory by a guy called Eric Spana, an actual professor.

Finally, there is an actual published scientific paper on the topic.

 

Someone pointed out that the Old Spice wild collection makes a better set of American Wizard School Houses and well, I agree.

 

Bearglove, though. BEARGLOVE. What on earth.

 

Bears with gloves on! Or... gloves with bears on??

(I am genuinely sad that most places don't seem to stock Foxcrest. It's so good and all this damn Bearglove and Wolfthorn is everywhere. FOXGLOVE HOUSE 4 LYFE.)

 

I am curious to try the new flavors scents but they are 5 euros a pop here, and I still kind of resent that I can't seem to find the classic scent. (If I have, I don't recognize it anymore. Wweh.)

 

Classic scent seems to be missing stateside too-- I found one the other day, only in deoderant. I miss my bodywash. :(

Though now I'm trying to think of defining traits for each house.

Foxcrest would be cleverness, I think?
Wolfthorn would probably be something like loyalty with how we tend to characterize packs.

Bearglove and Hawkridge are messing with me though-- I could see Hawkridge being bravery/ferocity, but Bearglove is harder for me! All I can think of is things like mamabears and not poking sleeping bears, so that sort of mellow Hufflepuff vibe, but loyalty is... less of a bear thing?

Hawkridge is bravery, but Bearglove is peacemaking?

edit: "Walk softly and carry a big stick" is a terribly American thing to apply to a school house. Thanks Teddy.

 

It's "speak softly," actually.
#unless you were trying to make a joke #in which case i apologize for ruining it :::PPP

 

Hawks just make me think of kings and kingly qualities. The maintaining of face. A sort of regality and bravery. Skillfulness and boastfulness.

BEAUTY

BRAVERY

WISDOM

But then I'm a weirdo in that note with hawks. Has to do with bird associations and Celtic bullshit.

Wolves I tend to think of loyalty and care. That and I characterize them as guardians of the lost and children. They're no more fierce than you provoke them into being. Again this being Celtic bullshit. Specifically the faoladh of Ireland.

Foxes are clever tricksters. Not just cleverness to me but also a sort of...prankish nature? They like to laugh and troll you.

Bears I really have no thoughts about. They...exist.

 

A while back, someone on Tumblr made this post, which is honestly one of the reasons I started using this line of bodywash

There's also the slogans to go off of:
Foxcrest - For Cunning Gentlemen
Hawkridge - For Men with Swift Minds
Wolfthorn - For Nocturnal Creatures
Bearglove - For the Commanding Man

and:
Lionpride - For the King of the Jungle


ETA
there's a tumblr for this AU, too

 

Huh. Ravenclaw has cleverness to combat Slytherin's cunning, but I just have a really hard time seeing hawks as 'clever and thoughtful' over 'bold and brash'. Also there's a weirdness in having all the birb houses be The Smart Ones-- let the hawks be the Old Boys Club!

THAT'S A GOOD POST THOUGH, so into the queue it goes.

(I was misremembering the quote, so you were spot on. Corrections are good!)

 

My split for this would be:

• Wolf- Teamwork and communication. People whose first instinct when there's a problem is to get some friends to help them with it, and who jump to the defense when others ask for it.
  
• Hawk- Observation and opportunity. Like a hawk soaring and waiting and then striking when they see prey, you wait for the perfect moment and then seize it.
  
• Fox- Like Aon said, tricks and cunning. It's the most common association with foxes in Western culture, after all. Probably occasionally prone to outthinking themselves and getting screwed over by their own complicated plan.
  
• Bear- Endurance, preparation, and adaptability. Bears are omnivores that are able to survive off lots of different things in lots of different ways, and they put a lot of effort into hibernating for the winter. Bear people are really good at weathering problems and coming out the other side by doing something different.

 

Looking at other posts they've made on the subject they lean more toward Hawkridge being about TRUTH AND JUSTICE than intellect