Anyone think how weird it is that none of the Muggleborns question the Statute of Secrecy?
Even if you think Rowling is correct that re-introducing magic to muggles would be a very bad idea there’s always that one special pick-me 11 yr. old who thinks they’ll be the one to change things. Having a special secret that no one knows about and living with a bunch of kids your age and no parents is fun in the short-term, but you can’t tell me these kids didn’t get frustrated with the no magic during the summer rule, the exclusion of their parents from magical events (muggle parents could also be targeted by trigger-happy aurors, so there’s the constant fear that your parents could be obliviated), the muggleborn discrimination, and even just the difference in culture could be jarring.
That’s enough to make any kid frustrated and want to change things. So why don’t they?
I have no ducking clue but I’m gonna find out.
Muggleborns find out about the wizarding world before their first year at Hogwarts on their 11th birthday. Why not earlier?
First, let’s look at it from the angle of moving to a new country vs being a tourist in one. You see the pamphlets and the guidebooks; they all talk about how amazing this place is. The travel agent (aka the Hogwarts professor) that’s been working with you had done all of the hard work for you. In both instances you probably see the destination through rose-tinted glasses in the beginning. But if you’re living there eventually the glasses come off and you start to get opinions about how to make it a better place and more accommodating for you.
Telling Muggleborns earlier gives them time to get used to the new culture they’ve found themselves in, and the lack of school gives the parents more opportunity to explore it too. But by being introduced so close to the beginning of the school year, the introduction to the wizarding world becomes all about school and preparing for that aspect of this new culture. Everything else is secondary to that and it puts both the parents and the child at a disadvantage. It also makes this new world feel more temporary. For example, the difference between dual citizenship vs studying abroad on a temporary student visa (not an exact comparison but you get what I mean right?). All the parents know is that their kid needs to learn how to control their magic and they need to go to magic school to do that. The parents and the kid probably aren’t told what happens after, the kid at least is definitely not thinking about the long-term.
When you tell the kids right before school starts and offer a professor to guide them through the world, the parents don’t exactly get time to adjust and learn with their kid. And before they get the chance to bond as a family over this crazy new world they’ve found themselves in, the kid is off to boarding school and whoops how the fuck are the parents going to explore now without A) magic B) being obliviated by uncaring Aurors C) a convenient magical guide or D) getting past the anti-muggle wards.
Then once the kid comes back from school for the summer, it’s not a family experience anymore: it’s an us vs parents. The parents have missed out on the cultural immersion. The kid gets irritated because not only are they not allowed to do magic during the summer but their parents just seem so ignorant and oblivious now. They keep asking questions about the magical world the kid doesn’t want to talk about it bc they’ll have to explain every other word and it just reminds them that they’re not allowed to do magic did you make friends? mudbloods stick together but they can’t tell their parents about that part bc what if they try to kick up a fuss. The purebloods could kill them and no one would care did you try anything new? someone dosed them with a love potion for a day and was mad when they got upset about it. and how was school? what was the school like? the staircase is a death trap mom. There was a whole corridor sectioned off bc whatever was there could kills us dad. My friend told me you could get sent to the forbidden forest in the dead of night for detention while a unicorn killer was on the loose. I’m scared but I can’t tell you bc they won’t listen to you and if you’re too loud they’ll just obliviate you.
The parents want to help but being away from them has made the child distance themselves from needing their parents help. I also imagine that all of the anti-muggle talk might’ve gotten to them a little bit. Kids aren’t saints, they like to believe that they know better and being surrounded by other kids who were also thinking the same thing did not help. And in this case, where they have something their parents will never have in a world their parents will never be able to enter without them I imagine some of them starting feeling a little superior Hermione. And the thing is they’re right in a way, the parents didn’t get to experience the culture, the discrimination, the people, the context. Muggleborn children themselves are kind of gatekeeping this knowledge to weaponize the parents ignorance for their own benefit. As the parents continuously stay ignorant, the children steadily feel more justified in their belief that they know best. They’re doing the Purebloods job for them.
The Wizarding government is actually very clever for doing this. It’s sick but you can’t deny it’s effectiveness.
If you tell the kid that they have magic earlier, then it gives the muggle parents time to adjust with their child and create a united front. It also gives them time to find other Muggleborn kids and parents experiencing the same thing.
But if you tell them right before they legally have to go to school...the Wizarding World appears like this mystical solution to the Muggleborn parent’s problems after years of unexplained accidental magic. It also has the added benefit of weeding out the more extreme end of the anti-magic parents bc those that didn’t tolerate the accidental magic probably got rid of their kid one way or another so now the Wizarding World doesn’t have to worry about policing those parents or helping that kid from an abusive home! (it’s dark I know but this is a government we’re talking about. You can read worse in the news.) It definitely didn’t catch all of the abusive muggle parents, Harry Potter notwithstanding, but I digress. The parents that did keep their kid could develop a strained relationship with them due to accidental magic and the parents not believing the kids. Then there’s probably the lack of muggle friends due to said accidental magic in one way or another. The kid is feeling freakish but special, alone, scared, and frustrated that no one seems to know how they can do the things they do. The parents were at their wits end when magic came knocking and offered them a solution.
This scenario didn’t happen to every Muggleborn but I imagine there were enough of them going through some variation of this and that’s enough for the Wizarding World.
The Statute of Secrecy stays intact because Muggleborns aren’t introduced into the world early enough to question it beyond the surface level. And by the time they realize what they’ve gotten themselves into, they’ve deluded themselves into thinking things are better this way.
And for the few that grow up still desiring the Statute’s abolishment, what are they going to do as a lone ranger standing against the wealthy pureblood elites? They can’t get anywhere of note without a Pureblood’s backing and breaking the Statute would result in mass chaos, it’s unprofitable, why would they endorse it? Not to mention, in the aftermath of Grindelwald any talk of that would be shut down quick.
THANK YOU. Finally someone says it!
I can’t even count the number of fics and hp theories I’ve read that completely ignore this fact.
I honestly think the reason why so many people forget this is because the characters themselves never acknowledge it. And the fact that most of the people Harry surrounds himself are firmly entrenched in Magical Society. He has a lot of Pureblood allies and friends for example. I don’t think many of them understand just how deep discrimination can go. Nor do I think they understand the difference between being called a blood traitor vs a mudblood. It’s the difference between being sympathetic to muggles rather than actually being related to one and that shit matters.
They associate anti-Muggle sentiments with Voldemort and the Death Eaters. In their minds, as soon as they’re defeated everything will go back to normal! Normal just being more subtle and unspoken discrimination that can be waved away by the few well-meaning but ignorant Purebloods, “Oh Sally from accounting said something to you? You must’ve misunderstood! I know her very well, she’s no Death Eater.”
I’ve lost my point, if you can’t tell I’m really interested in the politics behind hp discrimination, I’m very sad that there aren’t more fics about it pre and post-Voldemort. But back to Tom.
Another factor is the fact that Dumbledore canonically theorizes Tom had a gang of Slytherins following him called the Knights of Walpurgis (KoW) during school. I think that bit of canon is absolute garbage and I hate it because as you said: he’s perceived Muggleborn. I swear every time I read a fic with this ‘gang’ that isn’t a crack fic I want to scream.
You’re telling me that this man worked in customer service for years voluntarily? When he had like 5 Sugar Daddies on speed-dial? Honey, please. Magic I can rationalize but KoW is just straight up unrealistic.
Also, fun fact Dumbledore 100% knew Tom wasn’t a Muggleborn because of his Parseltongue abilities (or at least suspected). This man let Tom be discriminated against and did not say a WORD. Nor did he attempt to help find Tom’s family. And poor feral baby Tom probably didn’t tell another soul about his ability to speak to snakes during school because of Dumbledore’s reaction when he told him.
Considering his Catholic upbringing in addition to Dumbledore’s response to learning about his in-built Snake Google Translate, Tom was probably like “Ok so the Magical world also has bad associations with snakes. Good to know.”
And then Tom probably found out Parseltongue was an indicator for Slytherin ancestry during the Chamber fiasco and flipped the fuck out. Because that meant his elitist-ass housemates were disrespecting him in what was essentially his own fucking house??? I’d be mad too if I went to school somewhere where the students worshipped the ground the founder walked on and used the founder’s beliefs to try and prove I didn’t belong. And then discover that I was related to the founder they would use as a reason to bully me? The audacity. I’d implode on the spot.
(In answer to your last query, I headcanon that his hiatus from Britain was so he could re-brand himself. Tom Riddle was the bullied Slytherin Muggleborn. He had to disappear. Voldemort was the messiah-like cryptid who emerged from the shadows with all of life’s answers. He just needs your first born.)
Tom Riddle, aka, Voldemort was canonically perceived to be a muggleborn for many years before he found out about Merope Gaunt. Because only for muggleborns does a teacher visit the parents/guardian/orphanage. Harry was simply given a letter even though he lived in the muggle world, while McGonagall visited Hermione.
In the same vein, Dumbledore visited Tom’s orphanage to inform him about Hogwarts.
where am i going with this?
the sorting hat put a perceived muggleborn in Slytherin. Don’t try to tell me that oh no, the sorting hat knows who or what you and your ancestors are. No it doesn’t. It reads your mind. it’s very much possible (and by that, i mean i’m certain) that the gaunts did not attend hogwarts.
He might’ve turned out to be a half blood, but at the time, he was considered muggleborn, both by magic and by himself-even though he hated the thought of it.
there are muggleborns in slytherin.
slytherin is cunning and ambition. not blood purity.
(also, i do not understand how people like the malfoys and the blacks and the lestranges and other blood purity fanatics followed a perceived muggleborn. like did voldy tell them that oh no, i’m a half blood? or was it because he was so charismatic that he made them forget that essentially, he was not a pureblood?)
I just had the craziest HP au idea so bare with me.
Tom went AWOL for a decade or two where we have no clue what happened to him or what the fuck he did beyond finding Ravenclaw’s diadem.
What we do know is that before his absence the Purebloods were very comfortable in their power...but then Nobby Leach became the Minister of Magic I will find some way to squeeze him into everyone of my TMR stories mark my words somehow and suddenly the Purebloods were ready to throw down upon TMR’s return.
I personally headcanon that some sort of Muggleborn rights movement occured in this time frame that led to Leach’s ascent but I honestly don’t think that would be enough to result in such a drastic change.
There’s also no way Tom wouldn’t have wanted to get in on some of that chaos if he knew it would help him later.
Before I get into where the vigilante part comes in I should also probably share my other au idea for the Grindelwald-WW2 overlap. I think that some of the Purebloods took advantage of the chaos that arose from the bombings, the fighting, and the imprisonment going on in the Muggle World to hide their own war crimes. What kind of war crimes? Well that depends on how angsty you want it to get.
Could this happen in canon? Probably not given how ignorant most Purebloods are to the Muggle World but it is an idea to play around with that they’re not all as ignorant as they pretend to be. Arthur Weasley just can not be the most informed Pureblood on Muggle matters because I would have no fic ideas otherwise.
Anyway, they could use WW2 as a cover to do away with Muggles, Squibs, and Muggleborns in a manner that would go unnoticed. These raids also serve as a precursor to the Death Eater’s later strategies of attacking head on with violence rather than subtly in the courtroom. It makes much more sense for them to go this route later if they had recent evidence it had worked for them before. Purebloods are all about tradition and playing it safe; why would they take risks on an unknown?
Tom Riddle is the perfect victim for Purebloods during WW2: he’s in London during The Blitz, he’s an orphan, a presumed Muggleborn, and he’s in Slytherin despite all of this. The Purebloods take offense to this. The audacity of this kid to want a place to belong, shocker. People in actual history have killed or done worse for less than this.
Obviously, their attempts didn’t work otherwise Harry Potter would be very different. Tom survived with an extra dose of trauma and knows the Purebloods are actively unaliving (or worse) random children and getting away with it. And now he has to go back to Hogwarts and pretend like his housemates didn’t ask their parents to do the same to him. But he’s fine. Everything’s fine.
This is where Vigilante Tom comes in. Once the war was over and the Purebloods no longer had a cover to hide their criminal activities they had to get subtle. I mean they could stop but they’ve gotten away with it so far, what could go wrong?
Tom. Tom and all of the Muggleborns they failed to get rid of. And they are here to make it everyone’s problem.
While the Muggleborns and Leach vibe check the Wizarding World, Tom throws down in the background dismantling the Pureblood crime syndicate.
The Purebloods find this terrifying. They’re being attacked on two fronts: the public and the private. The Muggleborns attack their credibility and power, but Tom straight up attacks whoever he finds and kills without mercy. Suddenly, their power no longer makes them untouchable. The Muggleborns don’t know about Tom but the Purebloods don’t know that they don’t know. They also don’t know if the Muggleborns do know.
To be safe, the Purebloods keep the situation with Tom underwraps. They control the newspapers so nothing is printed that even vaguely mentions him. Neither do the Purebloods mention him aloud. He’s the You-Know-Who to anyone who knows am I right? HA. Okay I’ll shut up now.
But what they can not hide is the frankly concerning number of Pureblood deaths. Luckily they have a solution ready to go.
Haven’t you heard? Dragonpox is terrible this time of year.
Yes I know there’s technically a cure for it in canon, this is an au, let me dream. The phrase becomes code for ‘oh yeah they were absolutely unalived by You-Know-Who.’ (Except they didn’t know who otherwise they never would’ve joined his cult)
So the Purebloods are spooked on both fronts when Nobby Leach becomes Minister for Magic and Tom continues to dismantle their criminal underground. They are desperate, scared, furious, vengeful, and ready to rumble. But how are they going to-oh hey that You-Know-Who guy is gone yay! And so is Nobby Leach. I guess we can chill now-
And then before they can simmer down, some guy shows up who knows exactly what to say to get them fired up again.
And no Pureblood connected the dots until years later when Voldemort visited Abraxas Malfoy on his deathbed and spilled the beans. Too bad he never got to tell anyone! Dragonpox is terrible this time of year afterall.