The Endless Possibilities of Squibs

[harpsi-fizz.livejournal.com]

Diddle's posts always bring out waves of comments, and for good reason. The points brought up are thought provoking, if not a little depressing. To me, people who would call this community a "bunch of bitter, angry shippers" are incapable of having intellectual discussions. This place is a beautiful thing: we love the series so much that we can point out every miserable, bad, stupid, or nonsensical point and at the end of it, we still know we like the series. That's love right there. Aint it, Will?

Jo, your breath seriously reeks.
But enough flattery. Let's talk Squib.



* Filch is obviously ashamed of being a Squib, suggesting that they suffer from prejudice from fellow wizards, unlike Muggleborns. “Mudblood” is still a worse insult than “Sneakin’ Squib,” though.
-for_diddled

I can't even begin to try to put together the hierarchy and "ism" here, so I'm going to speculate on what could have been.

Rowling said magical blood was dominant, so squibs were extremely rare. Wouldn't it be nice if instead of the wizard world being such an easy place to lose respect, they all looked for opportunities to lift people up?

Imagine it- someone is born and it's discovered that they're a squib, meaning resistant to magical blood. The wizard world takes this to mean that this person will have a strong, resistant personality and that they are good to have around medical wards. They make good healer's assistants, consultants. They go to school like everyone else, but instead of transfiguration, charms, and other classes requiring magic, they can elect to take extra potions and herbology classes.
(Which is sort of pigeon-holing, but at least there isn't the shame factor.)

What if squibs were seen as great community organizers? The symbolism there would be that a person is born and has no natural defenses (wizards do place so much emphasis on magic) so the loved ones all band together to protect him/her.

Or how about if Squibs were seen as bridges between magical people and non-magical people and so were thought to be natural peacemakers, diplomats, and counselors?

The ideas are pretty superstitious, but compared to Human House Elf and outcast, it’s a better deal. If only wizards weren’t so damn clique-y and quick to group everyone. Worst part is, I can’t even tell if it’s wizards or if it’s Rowling herself. In the case of the latter, is it because she was raised in a place that obsessively sectioned people off? I'm going to just assume it's that. I had a psychology professor who came from the United Kingdom and she was always telling me about how bad the classism was and how her own daughter had a teacher make a really nasty (and wildly inappropriate) classist remark regarding the subject matter of her art gallery project.

Edit: I think we all learned something interesting here today- there's a lot of ambiguity about the class "Potions" as far as methods, grading, and procedure goes.

Comments

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

The books don't go into explicit detail about the composition of every potion, so we don't see every step. But transference of magic could easily take place during stirring for example - just because there aren't words and gestures with a wand doesn't mean no *magic* is occurring.

[harpsi-fizz.livejournal.com]

That makes sense.

I'll modify the idea a little and say that the Squibs would instead take a different sort of potions class. One that was more about the application of potions (as lynn_waterfall suggested "a squib could *use* a lot of magic that was essentially *done* by others") and creating potions that were made without magic. There have to be at least a few that don't require magic, but that a non-magical person wouldn't come up with because the ingredients required magic to obtain.

I always thought that potions were like cook books- following the directions exactly would yield the same results and only the oh-so-clever wizards were smart enough to know which ingredients to mix.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Following standard instructions, if you are a witch/wizard, will get you a lowest-common-denominator potion, is the impression I get: something that works well enough but isn't a particularly powerful version of the potion, or slightly less stable, etc. Whereas someone who knows potions well and has an intuitive grasp of it could create more subtle and powerful effects, not only because of their knowledge of how to mix things but of the character of the magic they infuse into the potion - the will, intent, etc. They also could create new potions and modify existing ones with less trial-and-error.

Just my impression. Even cookbook-style recipes, however, wouldn't take away the need for magic to make the ingredients interact in the correct way. Take Neville. His problem with all magic is control, not power. We see him mess up in potions with not following the directions, but he is *also* noted as being the one to cause his cauldron to *melt* or *explode* more often than the others, and we aren't always told that it was because the ingredients are potentially volatile on their own. If you misbrew a potion while expending lots of magical power but little control, the result would be dramatic, yes? Whereas merely mixing up ingredients wouldn't always do that, and someone with less power would not add additional volatility to the mix there, resulting in fewer *big* failures and more quiet fizzles.

And in potions, if it was all-or-nothing based ONLY on the ingredients, wouldn't grading be more pass/fail (either the potion functions or it doesn't) than by degrees of correctness/effectiveness?

[cured4life.livejournal.com]

I suppose that is what JKR meant but wouldn't it have been wise to have the Potions teachers show the class how to channel their magic without a wand into the potion making process then?

[ioanna-ioannina.livejournal.com]

I think the Squibs could be excellent as handlers of (already created) potions, because they could feel the power, but not to add any more magic to it. So I can see them e.g. in apothecaries. A potioneer in the lab, a Squib seller in the front of the shop.

[harpsi-fizz.livejournal.com]

Yes! That job is perfect. It says "we aren't capable of doing this, but with your gifts, you are" which Filch doesn't get in his current job.