Were the Creevey Brothers Muggle-Borns?

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

We have discussed before how Rowling seems to have "forgotten" in her later books that she originally intended for Colin Creevey to be a Muggle-born student. For one, it seems somewhat improbable that Colin and Dennis both turned out to be wizards if both of their parents were Muggles. For two, the fact that Professor McGonagall had to "chivvy" at least one Creevey out of the castle in chapter 31 of DH suggests that, despite the prohibition against Muggle-borns, the brothers were able to attend Hogwarts while Tom was in power... though it's possible that Colin, like Dean, was present for the final battle only because he had responded to Neville's alert on the DA coins.

However, it occurs to me that Colin's blood status was actually a bit ambiguous from the beginning.

What he told Harry in chapter 6 of COS is this:

I never knew all the odd stuff I could do was magic till I got the letter from Hogwarts. My dad’s a milkman, he couldn’t believe it either. So I’m taking loads of pictures to send home to him.

What Colin did not include in his introduction is any information about his mother. Thus, despite Colin's ignorance of magic, it's entirely possible that his mother was, in fact, a witch (or maybe a squb). If so, she would not have been the first witch to have hidden her magical abilities from her Muggle husband for as long as possible, nor do we know if she was even still in the picture by the time Colin received his invitation to Hogwarts.

Yes, Colin was petrified by the basilisk in COS, but that does not prove that he was a Muggle-born. It's possible, for instance, that he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Furthermore, as far as we know, the only way to properly identify a Muggle-born is by investigating his or her family tree, and Diary!Tom could only know what Ginny knew or believed about the current student body.

Comments

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

----So 'true' Muggleborns are descendants of squibs on both sides, one parent Uuww and the other uuWw.

Well, yes, a Muggleborn's parents are both geneticallly "squibs," but their most recent wizarding ancestors could be many, many generations back.

And I think the truth may be that everyone has at least one magical ancestor somewhere in their family tree, in much the same way that probably anyone with European ancestry is descended from British royalty (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/the-royal-we/2497/). But that doesn't mean that everyone is carrying around magical DNA. For instance, if a first generation squib with genotype Uuww marries a muggle with uuww, then 50% of her children will be uuww- completely "muggle."

----But besides the two main genes there must be minor modifier loci - that in themselves can't cause one to be magical, but if one is magical some alleles of these loci cause one's magic to be exceptionally strong. That would explain Albus, Tom and Lily (and probably Severus and maybe Harry too).

Actually, I think the magical strength of Albus, Tom, Lily, Severus, and Harry may have something to do with the fact that they all have recent muggle ancestors. They all have a high probability of having the genotype UuWw, especially Tom, Lily, and Severus. This suggests to me that the "recessive" alleles u and w may, in fact, carry rather valuable genetic material that has been lost over time in the pureblood population. They may be alleles that affect factors such as intelligence, metabolism, mental stability, immune system strength, etc. So I suspect that Muggle-borns and Half-bloods tend to be more powerful because of hybrid vigor.

But I agree that there are probably additional genes that play a role in magical strength and specific magical abilities. Again, they may not be genes that only affect magic. For instance, there's a genetic disorder known as Ehlers–Danlos syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehlers%E2%80%93Danlos_syndrome) that affects collagen and causes various connective tissues to be more "elastic." So maybe a metamorphmagus is a witch with something like EDS.