Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Magic/Muggle
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| Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter - Magic | |
| Muggle | |
|---|---|
| Type | Status |
| Features | No distinctive features |
| First Appearance | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone |
Contents |
[edit] Overview
A Muggle is a non-magical human. Most Muggles don't know about magic or any of the wizarding world.
[edit] Extended Description
For most wizards, Muggles are regarded with fondness. Poor, non-magical people, how ever do they survive without magic? Some wizards are bemused or intrigued by the techniques and gadgets that Muggles use to get around their lack of magic. For a few, though, particularly those gathered around Lord Voldemort, Muggles are inferior, and they and anyone descended from them should be exterminated.
[edit] Analysis
The Dark belief in the inferiority of Muggles conveniently disregards the facts that many of the strongest wizards alive, including Harry Potter and even Voldemort himself, are children of Wizard / Muggle marriages, and that the top grades in Harry's year, for all the first six years of Harry's high school career, have been won by Hermione Granger, the daughter of two Muggles; it also ignores the fact that scions of older wizarding families like the Longbottoms sometimes are not terribly powerful wizards.
Despite their fondness for them, many wizards do feel that the Muggles are somehow diminished by their lack of magic; in fact, Professor McGonagall remarks, in the first chapter of the first book, that the Dursleys "are the greatest load of Muggles you'll ever come across." Many Muggles who are aware of the Wizarding world, such as the Dursleys, chose to ignore the magical community, denying the evidence even if it is plainly clear that there is magic happening all around them. In the context of Professor McGonagall's remark, the comment does not directly refer to the Dursleys' denial of magic, as that has not yet been observed by Professor McGonagall. One must wonder whether McGonagall meant "the worst sort of Muggle", or "the worst sort who happen to also be Muggles."
[edit] Questions
[edit] Greater Picture
We will learn that the belief of Wizard superiority to Muggles is very widespread; even Albus Dumbledore, as a youth, envisioned a world in which Muggles accepted the benevolent rule of wizards.
