The Horrors of History
History of Magic, and Magical Culture
The weeks flew by for many of the repeating seventh year students, which is how they found themselves faced with another Friday. Friday’s were quickly becoming many of the students' favorite days of the week. Classes finished early, and the two ministry mandated classes were much more interesting than anyone could have expected.
This week, they were doing a deep dive into lost magic. Specifically squibs, and lost family lines. Professor Tonks was excited for this class, as she would be discussing what was a taboo subject within most pureblood families. She was also bringing in a guest lecturer to speak to her class on the topic.
Promptly at 9:00, Professor Tonks started her class.
“Good Morning.” Professor Tonks was greeted with a mumble of good mornings in return.
“This morning we have a guest speaker joining us, as we are covering a historical subject they are far more qualified to speak on.”
The students looked at one another, confused by what historical subject someone other than a pureblood would be best to cover.
Noticing her students' confusion, the professor quickly chimed in.
“Briefly on our first day of class, I brought up squibs, which seemed to gain many people's attention. As that seemed to be a topic of interest, I figured who better to discuss it with you than Unspeakable Jones, who researches squibs, and has special permission to lecture on the topic.”
The students were surprised. It wasn’t often that Unspeakables were allowed to discuss their work, let alone give formal lectures about it.
“Unspeakable Jones, the floor is yours.”
A middle aged wizard stepped forward. Taking Professor Tonks' spot, in the middle of the lecture hall.
“Good Morning. I am Unspeakable Jones, I have been the lead magical genealogist, in the Department of Mysteries, for 40 years. What that means is I study the lineage of magical families, regardless of blood status.”
Many of the students looked surprised, and impressed at learning there were people who actually studied that.
“Now, I’m sure many of you are thinking, great another person here to tell you how great purebloods are. That is not at all why I’m here. With the study of magical lineage, comes a deeper study into Squibs, lost families, and genetics.”
Pureblood students looked confused at the mention of genetics. Susan Bones, raised her hand, and was immediately called on.
“Yes Ms…”
“Bones.”
“Ah, I thought you looked familiar. Your aunt was Amelia Bones?”
“Yes sir.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. What is your question?”
“Thank you. I would like you to explain what genetics is.”
“Excellent question Ms. Bones. Genetics is the study of how genes, or traits, are passed down from one generation to the next. Does that answer your question Ms. Bones?”
Susan nodded her head.
“As we study magical families we learn a lot about their genetics, and how they pass down their magic, as magic is a genetic trait.”
The unspeakable pulled a whiteboard into the center of the room.
“Can anyone tell me what a squib is?”
Theo raised his hand to answer.
“A squib is someone born to two magical parents, but they don’t have magic.”
“You are correct. Born to magical parents, but not having magic. How many of you have wondered how this happens?”
Nearly the whole class raised their hands.
“Now for the sake of learning, we are going to represent our genes as letters. The magic trait shows up on two genes, for learning we will call them W for witch or wizard, and M for magic.”
He wrote a capital W and M on the board.
“Now in genetics, there are two copies of each gene. One from each of your parents. Genes can be recessive, shown by lower case letters, or dominant, shown by upper case letters. Magic is dominant, meaning you only need one uppercase W or M to have magic.”
One the board he wrote wwmm = squib.
“This means, parents who are genetically diverse, have a less than 6% chance of having a child that is a squib.”
Unspeakable Jones took a moment to look around the room, and noticed the confusion on the students' faces. Many of them seemed to understand that squibs were far more prevalent than 6% in pureblood families.
“Now I see your confusion. If everyone only had a 6% chance of producing a squib, then why are the rates of squib pregnancies higher?”
Many of the students nodded in response.
“So, when you introduce inbreeding, you lessen the genetic diversity, as magic only needs to be dominant once.”
He wrote wwMm = magic, and Wwmm = magic on the board. Then he made a square with 16 boxes and showed all possibilities for the offspring of two people who both were wwMm.
“What I’ve shown here is all of the possible genetic combinations for two people with only one dominant magic gene. You will see they have a 25% chance of having a child born as a squib with wwmm genetics.”
Many of the pureblood students shared looks of horror across their faces.
“Due to inbreeding, meaning people marrying those they are closely related to, the risk for genetic mutation increases. Meaning the genes change and don’t do what you expect them to even if the individual has a dominant magic gene.”
He now wrote: *=gene mutation, gene mutation = squib. WWMM*, WwMm*, or any combination with a gene mutation = squib.
“Are you all following?”
The reluctant class shook their heads yes. Pansy raised her hand with a question.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Are you saying that for many pureblood families, the chance of having a squib is actually greater than 25% due to the inbreeding that has become commonplace in order to keep the blood pure?”
“That is exactly what I’m saying.”
“Holy shit, our parents are fucked.” Pansy said, not realizing she was speaking out loud.
Unspeakable Jones, and the rest of the class started laughing out loud.
“Ms. Parkinson, 10 points from Slytherin, 5 for each curse word.” Professor Tonks jumped in.
“Sorry ma’am. Won’t happen again.”
Once Unspeakable Jones regained his composure, he was ready to continue, but had to answer more questions first.
“Yes, Ms…”
“Greengrass, sir. How can we keep the population genetically healthy?
“To be bluntly honest ma’am, we need to abandon the pureblood ideology, and ideally increase the birth rate. 200 years ago, this school had more than 150 students per year. Now there are approximately 40 per year.”
There was shock among many of the pureblood students, as they were further finding that the ideals their parents had taught them were a crock of crap.
Another hand popped up. This time it was Harry with a question.
“Yes Mr. Potter?”
“What about Muggle Borns?”
“Great question, and wonderful segue into our next topic. How do muggle borns end up with magic? There are a few options.”
He looked around the room, unsure if the students were ready for the next dose of truth.
“The first is a gene mutation, which causes their non dominant magic genes to mutate into dominant genes. Mutations can happen even to healthy people. The next option is that both or one of their parents are squibs, or have squib lineage. Magic can be present if the mutation heals, or isn’t passed down. This is also why most muggle borns have the healthiest genetics to pass down to the next generation.”
Looking around the room, the unspeakable was trying not to laugh at the looks on the students faces and how they went between panic, and confusion.
“Now I know a lot of this is confusing, and I likely just said the exact opposite of what many of your parents have taught you, but this information is paramount for the forward movement of the magical world. If we don’t move forward we could possibly drive ourselves extinct.”
Unspeakable Jones looked at the clock, and noticed his time with the class was almost up.
“Now, I’m only able to be with you all for 45 minutes today. We only have about 15 minutes left, and there’s one more thing I wanted to get to.”
He started passing out a sheet of paper, which was a transcript of the lecture he gave today. He figured this would help the students in case they wanted to reference the information they had learned.
“Now, the last thing for today. We have a very simple blood test, which can tell you the genetic combination you have. For those of you who are muggle born, or don’t know the identity of your parents, we have the ability to do an inheritance test.”
The room started buzzing as the curious seventh years wanted to know their genetic makeup.
“This first test I’ll pass out is the genetic test, place three drops of blood in the center of the paper, then let it process for 30 minutes. Who would like one?”
All of the students, and Professor Tonks raised their hands, happy to participate in the exercise. Unspeakable Jones passed out the tests to all of the students, who promptly cut their hands and placed the required number of blood drops on the paper.
“The next test I have is the inheritance test. Please raise your hand if you would like one of these.”
A smaller number of students raised their hands, but it was those who Unspeakable Jones stated the test would be good for.
“Again with the inheritance test, three drops of blood and let process for thirty minutes. If any of you have questions, you’re welcome to owl me!”
With that, Unspeakable Jones said thank you to Professor Tonks, and made his way out of the classroom.
“Ladies, and Gentlemen. Let's take a few minutes to finish up the tests from Unspeakable Jones, before we get into the rest of today's lecture.”
Ten minutes later, everyone's hands were healed, and the tests were processing in front of each student.
“Now our guest lecturer covered a lot of information that was brand new to all of us. For the next 20 minutes we are going to talk more about the history of squibs in the magical world. This will leave us about 10 minutes at the end of class for everyone to review their test results.”
Professor Tonks took one last look around the classroom before beginning a discussion about the history of Squibs in the magical world.
“Unspeakable Jones did a brilliant job of teaching us how a squib is born. History has shown us how squibs are treated by magical society. The Ministry of Magic has long since not gotten itself involved in family dynamics, including how squib births are managed by families. The only papers the Department of Magical Law Enforcement has on squibs, is that birth of a squib is listed as a valid reason a man can divorce his wife.”
This caused many jaws to drop in the room. Divorce was inherently rare in the magical world, after what they had just learned, it seemed inappropriate for a squib birth to be blamed on the wife.
“I’ll warn you that what I’m about to say is not a happy fact. Many families would dispose of squibs. Either through a well orchestrated accident, obliviation and abandonment, or some would just disown them.”
There were faces of shock and horror on the students.
“In the 1700’s a healer invented a spell for fetal magic detection, praeseminatio magicus, allowing for the detection of magic after the 16th week of pregnancy. This led to mothers having more accidents after seeing their healer.”
A knowing glance was shared among the students, who stayed silent so the professor could continue.
“In the late 1800’s, a potions master invented a potion that would expel a fetus from the mother in the event of an emergency. This position was later banned as it was being used to end squib pregnancies. In the 1900’s, more specifically the 1930’s and onward, as the pureblood supremacy movement rose in popularity, so did the number of squibs.”
Students in the classroom listened to everything Professor Tonks shared, but they couldn’t hide their disgust at the complete lack of care for human life.
“Compassionate families felt the best path of success for squibs was for them to be raised in a muggle atmosphere with no knowledge of the muggle world. This led to many squib children being abandoned at a muggle hospital shortly after birth. Some families wanted to love their children, regardless of magical ability, but unintentionally set their child up for a life of ridicule and poverty due to their lack of knowledge about the muggle world. In the worst cases the child was used like a house elf, and when their use ran out they disposed of them like trash.”
All of the students were horrified, muggleborns, and purebloods alike. Seeing the complete disgust on her students' faces actually comforted Professor Tonks. She hoped that knowing these facts would provide her students with more compassion if they ever had a child that was a squib.
“The last thing I want all of you to think about is this; knowing what you know now, how would you choose to handle the birth of a squib into your family?”
After approximately five minutes had passed, the professor stood back up.
“I want to thank you again for your attention today. I know this was not an easy subject to cover by any means. If my timer was correct, your genetic combination, and lineage tests should be ready for you to check.”
With that Professor Tonks lost the attention of her students as they all turned to their blood tests. Reactions around the room varied. Some students, particularly the half bloods and muggle borns were openly discussing their results.
Many of the purebloods were keeping their results quiet, as they were surprised to see they only had one dominant magic gene. Looking at the lecture transcript Unspeakable Jones passed out they found having only one magic gene means it was likely they could have had a squib somewhere in their family line.
When Draco Malfoy looked at his genetic test, he was pleasantly surprised to see that he held two dominant genes. He was a WwMm. Thankfully the Malfoy family, although historically blood purists, chose to mix with purebloods across Europe rather than the same ones that were in England, who all seemed to be related. He figured that must be what kept him genetically healthy.
Across the room, Hermione first looked at her genetic test. She was surprised to see she had four dominant genes, WWMM. She decided after reading it that she must have had one hell of a gene mutation. Time was spent comparing results before she remembered she also had done the inheritance test.
Unfolding the paper containing the inheritance test results, her eyes nearly bugged out of her head as she read the results.
Father: Daniel John Granger
3rd generation squib
Dagworth-Granger Family
Mother: Emma Jean Granger
4th generation squib
Fawley Family
Hermione Jean Granger
Heir to the House of Dagworth-Granger (by birth)
Heir to the House of Fawley (by birth)
She was the heir to not one, but two magical houses. On top of that, both of her parents were descendents of squibs. Looking through the handout from Unspeakable Jones, she determined that both of her parents' family lines were squib due to gene mutation, and that she had magic due to the way their genes combined, not the result of a mutation.
There were so many questions going through her head. Once classes were finished, she would be writing a letter to Unspeakable Jones, and possibly taking a trip to Gringotts to confirm the results.
This was certainly a peculiar way to end the week.