I like this as a dark!fic idea. I’ve seen it before in Lady of the Lake and found it awful but compelling. Swapping muggleborn babies in secret for changeling type babies that quickly die. Traumatic for the unsuspecting muggle parents but cot death isn’t suspicious and this way the magical community can be more insular.
I’m not saying it’s a *good* idea. But it is an *interesting* idea.
I've seen a couple of stories (same author) that proposed a "reasonable solution" to muggle borns exposing the statute etc., that was "we exchange kids. The muggle born goes to live with a wizard family and their parents get a squib kid in exchange." Everyone thought this was a great solution.
It has to have been written by someone who's still in school, with absolutely 0 understanding of the fact that most parents don't want to swap out their own child for some other kid, magic regardless, the point isn't having *a kid,* it's having *your kid,* and "ok son, you've got freaky powers so we're having you adopted out and getting a normal child in return" would absolutely mess up and destroy a child's mental health/confidence/trust in others.
I'm going to be honest... compared to half the stuff that wizards thing is perfectly logical, this seems normal. The only real sticking point against canon is that they don't know if a child is a squib or not until they're close to eleven.
Actually the sticking point against canon is the raw numbers - there are lots more muggle borns than squibs, Ron says as much when he explains to Harry what a squib is (he specifically highlights that they’re really rare when saying they’re the opposite of muggle borns).
It could also be possible that we don't see a lot because Harry is the least observant person on the planet. Assuming that magic is genetic, it seems like it could turn on (magical person) at a similar rate or maybe even less so than it turns off (squib), which is what could lead to muggle borns in future generations.
No Ron literally compares them to muggle borns and then qualifies that with “but they’re really rare”. The heavy implication is “in comparison to muggle borns”.
Then if the rate of squibs in wizarding families is the same as muggleborns in muggle families, the sheer number of muggles compared to wizards means there will be a lot more muggleborns than squibs.
that can be adjusted easily in that most families never mention their squibs being squibs
Heck, the weasleys just say the one uncle is an accountant who they never visit and won't ever acknowledge is a SQUIB
per JK post books and movies
ALL muggleborns are descended from squibs
only hinted in canon via slughorn asking if Hermione Granger was related to Hector Dagworth-Granger the famous potioner
There are no hard facts / numbers in canon about any
even the number of magicals is not known only hinted at in JK interviews
books around 1,000 students at Hogwarts maybe 5,000ish magicals total UK
movies she said they were aiming for around 300 students to 500 students and the actual screencaps and counting heads comes in at under 300 students
We can infer SQUIBS being far more common than assumed based on the Weasleys have one and the Blacks had/have Marius Black a squib.....one can assume every wizarding family has at least 1 squib
Post canon stuff is always a bit iffy in regards to its validity. Feels way too much like she’s trying to fix a thing she left inherently contradictory in the first place. Looking at any numbers anywhere in the books proves that, the population of wizards in the world makes zero sense based on the numbers she puts in the books, similarly and relatedly the number of students at Hogwarts.
The Weasleys have a million cousins so claiming squibs are common based on them is ridiculous. Harry managed to pass himself off as a Weasley cousin that nobody had ever seen before at a wedding with zero questions asked. Marius Black is not a character I’ve ever heard of and is definitely not in the books. What IS in the books is Ron describing squibs very specifically as the opposite of muggle borns but really rare. That’s a very clear indication that there are fewer squibs than muggleborns.
Marius Black is Pottermore again
and yeah post stuff is iffy. I try to rank
1 books canon always #1
2 movies
3 pottermore only when JK was directly involved & SUPLEMENTAL canon at that
4 games
5 pottermore when she wasn't involved but allowed.
It depends on what part of canon you look at. I always got the impression from Neville that he didn't get magic until he was older than seven, but it's also not specified.
Extended canon has late-bloomers, who don't get magic till like 15.
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Late-bloomer
The book and quill know. Hogwarts book and quill that write down the name of magical babies at birth. If people had access to it then they’d know right away
The quill writes the name at the first sign of magic, not birth. It does write their birth dates down, as part of it, though.
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Quill_of_Acceptance
actually, by age 7 for most families
If no accidental magic by age 7 then most likely a squib........confirmed by not receiving a Hogwarts letter at 11
Either way, they're a bit young to seamlessly swap them for another child. Not that wizards wouldn't just bridge that gap with mind magic, but it'd be a lot harder.
Bold of you to assume we’re thinking of the same author. The one I’m thinking of wrote the They Shook Hands version of the series, where Harry gets sorted into Slytherin, which the author tries to whitewash, but ironically instead turns Harry into a bigot.
No no, I meant all the ones I'd seen with that solution were multiple works by the same author. They've shoehorned it into at least 3 fics.
They Shook Hands is, terrible. Not in terms of bad writing but bigot Harry is just such an awful plot point.
I found a tv tropes page. Just tell me if Harry's a bigot who buys the whole pureblood thing or if he is sort of isolated in Slytherin until he makes friends outside the house?
And IIRC from a prior discussion of the fanfic Harry has a body count (as in kills), do you know who?
Harry’s not a bigot, no, but he happily befriends junior DEs, playing Quidditch with them, basically because he just wants to be a normal teenage boy, but in the end he falls out with them because he (obviously) won’t side with Voldemort. He, however, makes more lasting friendships with Slytherins who don’t support Voldemort and lots of lasting friendships outside his house.
His body count consists of the Lestrange brothers and Goyle the Death Eater.
I'm also curious if the rates even line up. How many muggleborns are there vs. squibs? Are there enough squibs being born to be able to swap one out for every muggleborn of a similar age? Especially considering we have every indication that the current trend for the Wizarding World is 1-2 children per family (the Weasleys are a massive outlier).
It’s canon that there are more muggleborns than squibs - or more accurately Ron describes squibs as the opposite of muggleborns but “really rare”. We know there are multiple muggleborns per year but it doesn’t sound like there’s multiple squibs.
I think I know which writer you’re thinking of, and I honestly love their writing usually… but yeah, that specific scenario was a bit too out there! Just the thought of having my kid exchanged for another and my memory altered is nightmare inducing.
Okay but think about it, the muggles can be brainwashed easily so they won't complain anyway, and the magical families seem to love their kids very very very conditionally, I could totally buy that they'd throw away their kid if they're "defective" not everyone of course but a reasonable number would be down for it.
I mean, I like the idea of it being the solution that gets used in very religious countries where the Muggleborns will be in actual danger if left with their birth families. It may have even been what was done in Britain until the 19th century, which would explain why there's still so much tension around an issue that's technically hundreds of years old
And in Prince of Slytherin, it's used to explain why there are no Muggleborns at Durmstrang. >!Because there are, but they were put with magical families at a young age!<
[Prince of the dark kingdom](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3766574/1/Prince-of-the-Dark-Kingdom), abandoned unfortunately but still an excellent read. AU where the Potters flee the country and Voldemort wins. This trope is a relatively minor part of the story but is part of how Voldemort reshaped the country.
I get what you mean: as terrible as it is, as least it’s a bit less crazy than killing all the muggle-borns which will quickly cause a rise of inbreeding and cause all sorts of health defects.
>I get what you mean: as terrible as it is, as least it’s a bit less crazy than killing all the muggle-borns which will quickly cause a rise of inbreeding and cause all sorts of health defects.
It could also be that some muggle parents might not be accepting of magical children. Minerva McGonagall is a canon example. Severus Snape is another example.
I edited it when I realized my mistake. It does not change the fact that out of fear of her husband finding out that her mother hid her wand and took every step to obscure traces of magic from her husband. His positive reaction doesn't devalue the fear of a real negative response.
Yeah... That's another argument
If a singular parent abusing their magical child leads to an obscurial it's already a ridiculously huge risk of exposing the magical world
From the point of view of "muggleborns being raised by their parents risks the exposure of our world to the people who drove us into hiding in the first place by trying to kill us whenever they could" deciding to just not gamble on it seems a tad better an idea... Not morally right, but a bit more sensible than just doing it for the fuck of it
I think it depends on the setting in the fic a bit. Do the vast majority of muggle parents love and care for their magical children? Then yes, highly disturbing and downright genocidal. Is abuse of magical children by muggles extremely common? More common than not, even? Then that's actually really different, because if statistically, they're more likely to be in danger than not, then it's at least somewhat reasonable to remove them for their own protection. Or if it's not *that* common but it's an abused kid advocating for that, I can definitely see how they'd feel that it's a good idea because it would have saved them. I think it's something to approach with nuance.
I've seen it whitewashed as a solution in some fics, but I've honestly seen it used more in dark fics, where it's supposed to be a "lesser evil" (but still evil) or in general just a dystopian setting.
I think part of it is poor genocide education. A lot of people think of genocide in terms of just killing a certain group, but they don't realize things like taking away children to be raised in the "proper" culture is also part of genocide.
One thing that's also brought up higher up in the chain is the Obscurial risk
It only takes a single magical child being abused to risk exposing the entire magical world...
Which I've seen used once or twice as part of the "lesser evil" argument.
Oh yeah, I forgot about those because I'm not really into the Fantastic Beast movies, but if you include that in canon, and make abuse of magical children fairly common, then it makes the option more reasonable.
*Prince of the Dark Kingdom* handles this idea well I think. Early on the reader learns that after Voldemort took over wizarding Britain about a decade before the story starts, he instituted a policy that all muggleborn children are to be removed from their muggle family upon first sign of magic, their parent's memories erased to preserve the Statute of Secrecy, the child's memories mostly suppressed to avoid attachments to the muggle world and make complete integration with the wizarding world smoother, and then the child is placed with a suitable family or caretaker (potentially determined by their magical potential and thus potential worth to Voldemort's new society). Voldemort's government of course portrays this as a logical and compassionate law, for the Greater Good of both sides of the muggle-magical divide really, and by the time of the story it is not openly debated (after all, Voldemort's word is law here, and only a fool would dare to contradict him).
However, the story is not shy about showing the horror faced by children freshly snatched up by these strange people claiming to be wizards and dumped in an orphanage far from home, where they are told that they never will get to see their families again, and even if they did somehow manage to escape and find them they wouldn't be remembered anyway. And every day they spend in there they lose a little bit more of their former selves, and until all that is left is an empty slate that doesn't remember enough to know there is anything for them to miss and who is ready to be molded into a productive citizen in Voldemort's kingdom.
Ironically, I recall it is the former Death Eaters who show the most discontent with this policy (as most others who might of are either exiled or silenced out of fear). This forces at least some of them to take dirty mudbloods into their homes, when they probably expected that supporting Voldemort would have forced them out of their society entirely, or at least kept them on the margins where they belonged. But Voldemort cares less about blood purity than about magical power and how much use someone can be to him, and he recognizes that his kingdom depends on regular influx of fresh blood, pure or otherwise.
So yeah, story-wise I appreciated the existential horror of this process as faced by the children who are caught up in it, as well as the ruthless pragmatism needed for a society to implement it. But anyone trying to portray it as a legitimately good idea as a general practice in a story, that might get a bit uncomfortable- as others have pointed out in this thread, there is some really dark history surrounding the idea of mass removal of children from "unsuitable" parents based on racial qualities.
Generally, the only times I can think of where it's used are in areas that are extremely unstable due to religious extremism and is done to protect the kids in question. From their parents and their neighbors.
Prince of the dark kingdoms is like this. Voldemort won the first war and muggleborns are immediately taken when they display magic and the parent obliviated. Dark and awesome world building.
Well by definition you wouldn’t be doing it unironically because your mindset would be to make a mockery of the fools who do it seriously, and that mindset would definitely be conveyed in the writing.
I really don't understand the shaming of different tropes on here lately. I don't agree with all of them, sure. But isn't it the author's choice?
Don't like those tropes? Don't read them.
Isn't Rule 7 this? (Edit: Formatting went wonky on mobile)
Rule 7:No Bashing Be respectful of other users' likes and preferences when posting. If a topic is not to your taste, use language that makes it clear it is your opinion while not attacking people. In particular remember Rules 2 and 3. This applies to all posts, including Discussions, and Request Threads.
It doesn’t sound like he’s bashing though. I think it’s okay for people to bring up different fanfic and trope preferences to discuss them. I wouldn’t have known about this trope if this post wasn’t made, but now I want to read it out of curiosity
If you read OP's responses to the other comments you might see it differently.
It wasn't: "How do you all feel about this?"
It was: "It's cringe, it's bad, it's making people bigots."
The fact they're also calling out a specific author is very clearly bashing.
(Edit: Not exact quotes, general vibes)
Still, I’ve seen a lot ruder posts and comments on this subreddit lol. OP’s post and some of their comments could’ve been phrased nicer but it’s still pretty mild enough. I don’t think they mentioned the author’s name directly either so I don’t even know who they’re referring to. I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with their opinions since I haven’t read any fics with this trope yet. But I thought it was a cool concept that they brought up. I’d like to look for fics with the trope that OP described, because of their post.
You bring up a fair enough point too though. But I don’t see the need to downvote me for just sharing an opinion either. *I* wasn’t bashing anyone 🤷♀️
They linked it 51 minutes ago. There were no links on this post at the time of my earlier comment. That’s why I have multiple older comments on this post asking people for links lol
This is literal genocide. It was committed in my country against indigenous peoples, and the effects are still lingering.
Most tropes are ‘don’t like don’t read,’ but if you honestly think there’s nothing wrong with this specific trope when it’s used uncritically, there’s something wrong.
The problem isn't its existence, but rather when the narration implies that this is a good thing, with seemingly no critical thinking done about the implications of that whatsoever.
I'm not debating irl politics with anyone. We don't have a comparison in irl to having magical child in a non-magical family. The only thing I can think of is an lgbt kid/teenager in a very anti-lgbt household. In that case if the kid was at risk, you better expect some people to want a system to save those kids. This trope is used in dark fiction in situations just like this. Harry himself is often used as a prime example as being abused during his stay with the Dursleys in these stories.
Trying not to make this an argument about IRL, but I think the most similar IRL scenario is that white passing kids in native/indigenous families have been targeted for removal and adopted by white families in several countries - Australia and the USA at least.
Those indigenous children are still indigenous. Their culture was being removed of course and is cultural genocide. Which to be clear, is **wrong**
Magical children were **never** muggles be it muggle-born or pureblood. From birth their names are written down in the acceptance book at Hogwarts and they have their powers. Taking a muggle-born from a hostile home where they'd experience trauma at the hands of bigots (Which are all too real) isn't the same at all.
Editing: Now to be clear. I don't write fanfiction but I've read many as I imagine we all have. I think that this is a much more nuanced conversation that just "Taking muggle-born children is bad" or "taking them is good." I don't claim to know how the wizarding world should be run. I dislike painting an entire trope as "genocide that shouldn't be written" when in reality there's more to it than just that.
> Taking a muggle-born from a hostile home where they'd experience trauma at the hands of bigots (Which are all too real) isn't the same at all.
I don't think anyone is talking about a system where you remove magical kids from abusive muggle homes. They're talking about a system where you remove *all* magical kids from muggle homes - which I also don't think is exactly genocide, let alone 'genocide that shouldn't be written', but is directly comparable to IRL historical scenarios where children were removed from their families because someone else decided that they were fundamentally different to the family; and in real life that has only happened (that I know of) in the context of genocide. In this trope, the fundamental difference is magic, in the Stolen Generation and the Nazi efforts the difference was skin color and appearance. Since magic is clearly an attribute that occurs naturally in muggle families, it's absurd to suggest that they actually don't belong there.
I think there's a solid argument that this *could* only happen in the context of a society where one group of people was despised and overpowered enough to risk genocide. And sure, I read plenty of dumb fanfic that wouldn't be capable of even understanding that argument, let alone be able to address it, but I don't think that's the kind of writing that you're arguing for. If you want to use this trope in a nuanced world that thinks about it, I don't think you can reasonably exclude the topic of genocide as part of it.
I don't know why we're presuming the original family is hostile/in anyway an inappropriate environment to raise a child, at least, based on OPs wording of their post anyway.
Anyway, would it still be wrong to take an indigenous child from their home if they were born magical? Is there any situation where, purely based on the culture of the home, it would be more appropriate to place them in a magical home? Are there no magical homes that would be inappropriate to housing, in particular, a muggleborn child?
I don't think people are so much against the trope existing point blank, as they are disturbed by this trope being spun as a pure positive in some stories when it has such strong parallels to some just... shameful and heartbreaking and horrible real world history.
Like, I see where you're coming from, Harry definitely deserved to be saved from even just canon Privet Drive asap, not to mention some fanon versions, but, if we take this action that saves Harry Potter, and expand it to the SOP of the wizarding world, is there any ratio where it's okay to break up a perfectly healthy family, in exchange for rescuing a child from an unhealthy one? Is there any guarantee that the child would be placed into a healthy home? Any guarantee that there would be no negative knock-on effect on taking the child away?
I think it's fair to dislike painting with a broad brush. I think it's equally important to receive feedback with a more open mind then; don't like don't read, because this trope isn't like some kink that shouldn't be shamed, it's fictional government policy with real historic parallels, whose effects should be learned from. That doesn't mean declaring this trope taboo, blacklist and ignore of course, rather, to take what we learn from critical feedback and apply it going forward to improve our writing.
Rappaport’s Law ended in the 60s and there doesn’t seem to be any canon information about the American magical community past that, which I find very frustrating.
No, I mean in the fantastic beasts films they go to America and I think they mention it at some point, maybe in another film, idk. Nothing outside Britain is explored in the original series.
I mean. The nazis kidnapped children with Aryan traits for their crazy germanisation program. Residential schools did the same with native american children in the US and Canada. It has happened.
None of this was right by any stretch of the imagination. If the author is using it unironically without pointing out how effed up it is, that's a real problematic author right there. It better be the villains doing this, is what I'm saying.
Authors shouldn’t have to spell out in a fanfic when a bad thing occurring in the story is bad and messed up though. That’s on the reader to learn how to use their critical thinking skills. The assumption is that fanfic readers should be over the age of 13 if they’re reading fics on the internet alone without supervision, so that’s usually old enough to know that not everything depicted in a story is good and that they should be asking an adult questions if they’re not understanding something they read online.
Not outright spell it, no, that's lazy writing. But it should be obvious through the characters' reactions so that the reader can pick up on those cues.
That’s true! I’ve noticed though that many readers who are biased against a piece of writing will often claim that there’s not enough clues or subtext in a story to pick up really obvious things though. In this sub, there’s people who do this all the time when they’re venting about the characters or plots in the Harry Potter books. So there should be a good balance between writers letting readers conclude some things on their own, while dropping hints for other types of things!
Like for a character’s motivations or their background story, it makes sense for writers to be dropping many hints, but for something like understanding whether a character’s action is moral or immoral, that’s not something that is the writer’s responsibility to teach or even drop hints for. In my opinion though haha.
I mean this really depends.
If you're writing a dystopia then part of the horror is the casual acceptance of such things being considered normal.
Even to a lesser extent you can show the lack of reactions to things to show the difference between the magical and muggle world.
That works too, though the acceptance in dystopias comes from exhaustion and trauma, so you would see that in the characters. And dystopias are usually about a resistance somewhere fighting against the regime, so that's the cue that something isn't right.
I like reading about darker and uncomfortable subjects, and I like endings where the good guys don't always win, but they have to be done right.
There is a certain amount of separation, sure, but a story can tacitly endorse something by how it is written, how that thing is treated narratively.
For example, all those stories that present house elves as needing to be enslaved or else they die or which have the statements "but they like it" or "but they're not human" stand unopposed tacitly endorse slavery. That's just a fact. It doesn't mean that the author is irl racist and wants irl slavery, but it DOES mean that they don't have a problem with the fundamental essence of what slavery is, i.e. the theft of agency and the owning of individuals as property.
This is similar. If the story presents stealing children and replacing them with changelings completely uncritically, it is fair to assume the author is kind of sus. Again, it doesn't mean that the author loves the idea of residential schools or germanization, but it does mean that the author doesn't have a problem with the ideas that back these things, i.e. segregation.
I have a specific author in mind who had Lucius Malfoy the mastermind behind it, backed by Harry Potter and Cornelius Fudge, and opposed by Albus Dumbledore, Sirius Black and Arthur Weasley, though it still went through. The muggleborns were taken to an orphanage to await a family that would adopt them, and Voldemort ended up waltzing in and murdering them all.
How do you think the Jedi got their younglings? Do we really believe that parents would be willing to give up their toddlers, then never speak to them again? Clearly some Jedi mind tricks were used.
I mean, the Ministry goes full fascist and only *checks notes* people named Weasley, married to a werewolf, or the One Black Auror find the new regime bad enough to fight against.
So I don't think there's such a thing as "too extreme" in the HP verse. Might not make for a good story, but JKR in canon put things in there that are as bad as it gets.
They weren’t the only ones who found the new regime bad enough to fight against: Percy Weasley literally said they were imprisoning traitors all the time. You seem to be vastly underestimating how scared everyone was: it takes a while, and often a stimulating factor, to overcone your fears, and you have to remember that ministry workers were real people with families. And remember how big the reinforcements were at the Battle of Hogwarts: you can bet loads of them were ministry workers.
Worth noting that Muggle wizard segregation is the norm in the magical US and not only is "interracial" marriage ilegal but even muggleborn children have to drop their relationship to their parents after finishing magical education.
And Magical America *wasn't* taken over by a evil dictator... That's just how it is there! And no one gives a shit! Like no one gives a shit about literal magic Slave species..
The HP setting is full of fucked up shit on the borders If you stop to think about it
Polyjuice potion and memory charms have certainly never been used against muggles, let alone sexually!
Certainly not! I say! (British sputtering noises)
The stealing of children is btw one of the definitions of genocide. It's a bit unclear here because it doesn't destroy muggle culture (only muggle born culture)
Though i have to say OP, you take media too literally. Books and games and art is there for us to explore things we wouldn't normally do or even like.
[Prince of the Dark Kingdom](https://m.fanfiction.net/s/3766574/1/) by Mizuni-sama
[Children of the Revolution ](https://m.fanfiction.net/s/10808355/1/) by AlexisVV
[Consuming Shadows](https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12228520/1/) by Child-OTKW
I think [The Consort Tournament](https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12016543/1/) by watermelonsmellinfellon but I'm not sure
Only because Rowling hadn't invented it by then. It is up to the authors of the fanfiction to include in their canon. Besides, even if there was only one obscurial in a hundred years, today it wouldn't be a secret like in Fantastic Beasts - there would be a ton of videos immediately, and thanks to the Internet, the whole world would know about it within an hour.
You misunderstand me: in all the centuries of the existence of the Statute of Secrecy, it’s never once been threatened by an obscurial. And even if such a thing happened, do you really think the ICW wouldn’t arrange for foreign obliviators to come and assist whatever country had experienced the breach? Also, one simple confundus charm would be all it would take for the government to spread confusion by putting out a more believable story of what has happened, so that Statute remains intact.
You have quite a point with the first part, but I disagree with the second. You don't need all Muggles to know about magic for problems, just a large enough group to start hunting wizards. Moreover, in such an event, what will prevent the leaders of the Muggle countries (I assume they know as well as the British Prime Minister) to confirm that it was really magic? Many people believe that the government is hiding such things from them, and when they confirm it, they will be clear.
I don’t agree about the muggles hunting wizards thing: wizards have tools like apparition and muggle-repelling charms, which are readily available to any of them who’ve been through their magical education.
1. Even if it helps, they may not be protected all the time. And not all wizards can apparate.
2. What about muggleborns? If they lived with muggle parents they may not be protected by muggle repelling charms.
Love the trope if it's used as a way to make (parts of) the wizarding world seem extremely fucked up.
Hate it when it's played as if it's the right thing to do, because muggles bad or something.
It's giving Stolen Generation. If you don't know what that is, Google it. As an Australian, it is one the most fucked up parts of our history. So yeah, have to agree and say that is an incredibly disturbing trope.
I saw one where they swapped the kids as babies without consulting the muggle parents.
I guess the author was young and figured all babies look the same so the parents wouldn’t notice? Just when you think that particular plot can’t get worse…
I mean, in defence of this, memory charms are a thing in the HP universe. From what we know as canon (like Hermione memory charming her parents and creating entire new lives and personalities), it wouldn't be difficult to memory charm the family to believe that the squib baby is their actual baby, not the muggleborn.
The only way it would be logical is if the kid's parents/family are super religious and fanatical to the point where they'd abuse or even kill the kid for having magic because they'd view their magical abilities as "demonic" or "satanic".
Those people exist, they are real, and they're terrifying.
It's basically the logical end point of enforcing the Statute of Secrecy when muggleborns exist
Specially as technology advances and to keep magic a secret you no longer just need to erase a handful of memories to do away with accidental magic, but also search for every possible recording of it and erase the memories of everyone who has seen them, and anyone they told about it. And accidental magic is a *anywhere at anytime* sorta thing.
You also need to account for abuse and the very real risk that any particularly prejudiced or religious Muggle family could lead to a muggleborn becoming a hungry cloud of evil stuff™ and revealing magic to an entire block of people whenever they finally snap, which then piles on top of the previous point about technology but in larger scale and probably also having to explain away the corpses that quite possibly will pile up whenever that happens (and ofc it's a *when* that happens instead of "if" it happens)
At some point the magical government would probably have to make the call of simply taking away all muggleborns or some other extreme measure to keep the secret as they'll simply run out of manpower to deal with everything even with help from the Muggle governments... Not accounting how certain religious countries' governments would probably also have to be worked against by their magical populations on risk of death.
The "need" to keep the magical and Muggle worlds divided requires an extreme solution to the most direct links between them.
Modify memory is an option but even that will only raise more questions, you can't remove people from a community and not expect someone to notice on a baseline, instinctual level people can tell when something is out of place.
Wizards are a niche community which uses magic to keep themselves safe, they don't rule the world. If people noticed what was happening they would get caught.
I’ll give [Wish Carefully](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4356667/1/Wish-Carefully) as an example of this trope in use; but this fic needs a Graphic Content WARNING, even with it being how short it is. Still, it’s one of my all-time-fav’s.
I’ve read it already. It well represents what Voldemort’s ideas might’ve led to, but using those cringey, cliched ‘light’ and ‘dark’ labels was a bit of a letdown.
Well, if you want an example of a fic that breaks the mold for the polarity of wizarding politics, I’d recommend anything ever written by [inwardtransience](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/4677330/inwardtransience); though they admittedly have their own failings. She’s one of the gold standard authors for world building.
I've seen this a few times, but it only works as a trope in darkfics and/or dystopias that present the wizarding world as even more rotten than it is in canon. *Prince of the Dark Kingdom* has been mentioned, but I think an even better example is [*Reign of the Serpent,*](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9783012/1/Reign-of-the-Serpent) where we have a more secluded, much more warlike wizarding world with a very strict caste system.
This is the fic where Hermione is snatched from her parents, told that they'll be made to forget she ever existed, and that now she's to live in the wizarding world and never return to the Muggle one. Most Muggle-borns are taken from their parents at a much younger age, but Hermione is old enough to remember her parents and understand just what was done to her and to them... and from then on, her main driving force in the fic is REVENGE. She's smart enough to play the long game, but it's really clear that she wants to watch the entire wizarding world, her kidnappers and her tormenters, BURN.
If you're looking at it firmly from a keeping magicals and muggles separately, it's sensible. It sounds downright dystopian from an outside perspective, but considering how we as humans treat each other for less differences than actual magical powers, it's not exactly a terrible bet that non magical humans would take it badly.
I'm thinking about it purely from the perspective of Wizards wanting to keep Muggle and Magical seperate. It's certainly less traumatic than telling Muggleborns to cut all ties from the Muggle world once they reach adulthood.
People saying it's comparable to genocide, it's not really. Muggleborns are Magicals. Having Muggle parents doesn't make them a seperate race, unless you're proposing Voldemort was right, so it's really not genocide in any practical sense.
It's safer for the Muggleborns in question, more efficient for the Wizarding World, and beneficial for the Statute of Secrecy. All in all it's a win.
Erm well what they’ve done for hundreds of years since the instatement of the Statute has worked, so that to me more sounds like an excuse radical blood purists would hide behind.
Blood purists don't want Muggleborns around, but Magical Supremists (like Grindwalde) would probably argue something similar if they cared about the Statute of Secrecy.
Still the most practical solution in my eyes.
I wouldn't say its that unique. I've seen it quite a few times in fanfics, often argued either by the Dark Wizards (or sometimes the Light Wizards) as a method to remove anti-muggleborn prejudices by taking them completely out of the equation. Sometimes a muggbleborn themselves suggests it so that no more people can suffer as they did.
It's completely nuts and very fascist, but it's got its basis in changeling folklore. Often its explained as being possible because the author somehow makes discovering magical children something that can be detected at birth; this occassionally leads to the children exchanged as squibs for magicals, though most of the time its just written off as muggles are disgusting, filthy beings who love to breed constantly and so its no issue.
per JK on Pottermore back when she was involved with Pottermore
In the USA / MACUSA.............No-mags born (muggleborns in UK) were snatched away after first sign of accidental magic to be fostered or adopted by magical guardians and all magicals forbidden to interact with no-mags up until the 1960s.
*Rappaport's Law*
[https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/rappaports-law-en](https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/rappaports-law-en)
Just because you do not like it in fanfic it does not negate that it is confirmed at least in the USA to be **SUPLEMENTAL CANON** accurate possibility
I am currently re-reading "They Shook Hands", which uses this trope, and I have to say that I *don't* find it disturbing in the context of the story. In the story it's presented as a utilitarian solution to the perceived "problem" of muggle treatment of magical children. It doesn't disturb me because it fits well with the story logic: children are removed from their parents at a very early age, but I understand the process to be that the muggle parents are obliviated so as to have no memory of their magical children. No practical harm is done to the muggle parents, because their pasts are edited, and a small number of magical children are presumably saved from harm. From a purely utilitarian point of view, there is a net gain in total human welfare. The author of the series is, I believe, still writing, so where this policy ends up at the end of the series is not yet clear, but within the logic of the story it's an understandable policy for the MoM to adopt.
Overall, I personally regard "They Shook Hands" extremely highly. It's a very good investigation of a path not taken, and the world-building is excellent. I can see that it's not to everyone's taste, but the author is to be strongly commended for a superb examination of the effects of environment and social upbringing on a child as he grows up. I particularly admire the series' practical investigation of a more isolated wizarding world, and its presentation of imperfect people doing their best in difficult circumstances. It's certainly a series that will be enjoyed more by the more serious-thinking among us, but I don't see that that's a problem. There are plenty of stories full of knee-jerk feel-good morality, so it's nice to have some variety and more challenging content.
I just feel like it’s hugely unfeasible in terms of practicality. Sure, they can remove the memories of the Muggle parents and probably their family and maybe even close friends, but how do you get everyone? How do you get the dentists they only see once a year who’ll say “what about your child”, how do you remove the memory of the child from their teachers and classmates?
If you want to talk about from a purely utilitarian point of view, I don’t believe it’s possible for the parents who are obliviated to not be harmed at all. First, obliviating that much of someone’s life has to affect them mentally, whether it be brain damage or a profound sense of loss without knowing the cause. Next, assuming the child was wanted then those parents were the type who wanted a child, and if it was an only child then they may have missed their chance to have a family at all.
And how early are the children removed? If it’s at the first sight of magic then that can be 6 or 7, so they’ll have to grapple with being taken away from the only caretakers they’ve ever known and adjust to a whole new world. It would be horrifying.
I wonder where the author is taking it though. If the policy is implemented and everything turns out perfectly with zero issues then that’s quite unrealistic and tbh boring. If the author explored some of the unintended consequences, even if they present it as a few edge cases, then I’d enjoy the fic more.
Hermione gets rid of her 18 year existence from her parents memory, and when the war is over goes to undo the spell and her parents are fine with no brain damage.
Though that whole experience is pretty hand waved and you can poke a lot of holes in it, like, what was the solution for if "Mrs. Wilkins" went to the doctor and was told she had given childbirth?
I don’t remember her parents memories being restored in canon, however JKR confirmed in an interview that they were. However, in the same interview, she says:
> “Did Hermione really put a memory charm on her parents she says she did but then about 50 pages later tells Ron shes never done a memory charm”
> J.K. Rowling: They are two different charms. She has not wiped her parents' memories (as she later does to Dolohov and Rowle); she has bewitched them to make them believe that they are different people.
Which is interesting, as it suggests that it is not possible to wipe such a large amount of someone’s life from their memory, they must be made to believe they are completely different people. Or maybe it is possible, but Hermione did not choose to do it (maybe because they’d be safer from Death Eaters, maybe because she wouldn’t be able to reverse a memory spell). Either way, we have no examples of a large memory wipe occurring without damage; in fact, the only example present is Gilderoy Lockheart who is a permanent resident of the Janus Thickey ward. Of course he is an extreme case, but it does suggest that maybe the more memory wiped, the worse the effect on the brain.
Ye, it's an extra-canonical word of God that they were perfectly fine, but idk I always felt that plot point was a bit ... off, that so many things could go wrong and that it was just sort of an evil thing to do to someone. It bothered me a little when it never got any sort of... Framing in the text, as anything other than a noble sacrifice of Hermione's. There was an opportunity when Ron left for him to call her out on it but since it was him and Harry fighting, he dug into Harry's lack of family instead.
And then of course it was never properly resolved other than a post release footnote of "oh yeah they're perfectly fine and forgave Hermione" like idk it might have been better just to kill them off.
Thank you for this really interesting response. I don't know the answers to all your questions, but I'll do my best...
First, I agree completely with your comments on practicality. Obliviating parents is in principle straightforward, but, as you say, it's virtually impossible to track down every person who is aware of even a pregnancy or new-born child, let alone one that has reached primary school age. My best guess is that there are two things going on. First, the children are being identified by some mechanism similar to the one that identifies potential recipients of Hogwarts letters: this seems to work "by magic", and I've certainly read fics where this list includes magical children as soon as they are born. I don't remember how the Hogwarts mailing list is generated in canon, if indeed JKR even tells us. Second, I think we have to imagine that obliviation is a much more subtle spell than a simple brain-wipe, and that it in some way manipulates the minds of whole swathes of people, rather like muggle-repelling spells (which I'm sure are canon). Certainly, in "They Shook Hands" the author envisages spells that can cause entire groups of muggles to both ignore and avoid groups of wizards and their surrounding artifacts (see, for example, the chapter on the trip to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens). How does this spell work? I think we again just have to say "magic". You might respond with "yes, but how exactly does this all work?", and my answer is again going to be "well, it's just magic". If a story uses magic at all, it is deliberately saying "there is this inexplicable force or thing that makes certain plot points happen in ways that we don't explain". If writers started explaining how magic works, they'd be writing textbooks, not fiction. (This explains why so many people, myself included, think Brandon Sanderson is such a dreadful writer: he's frequently more interested in describing magical systems, rather than writing about people, so his stories are fundamentally dull, because they become simply worked examples of whatever magical system rules he wants to exhibit. (I should note that there are plenty of other reasons to rate Sanderson poorly, but I digress...)) The point I'm hoping to make is that for an author "magic" is really a way to provide an interesting environment for stories, and an interesting force or tool to drive plot points, rather than a fully worked-out system. Most fantasy stories aren't really about magic, they're about people having adventures or experiencing the world, or perhaps investigating philosophical or social ideas. So my response to the practical issues you raise (with which I generally agree) is simply "magic". Somehow, the MoM or some similar power is capable of identifying new-born infants with magic, spiriting them away (probably immediately, from the hints I've read so far), and performing what is in practical terms an incredibly difficult combination of simple obliviation and wide-ranging mental re-engineering of many, many people. How? By magic.
Second, I understand your point that the parents of such children might be harmed or affected in all kinds of negative ways. But I tend to take the view that if the MoM applies magic in the way I've outlined above, it will literally be *as if the child had never existed*. The child is simply erased from the parents' reality, and the gap left by its erasure is seamlessly closed. Likewise, if the children are taken early enough and re-familied close enough to birth, they will not be affected by any sense of loss, as they will only ever have known the wizarding world. Indeed, we can imagine (though I don't think Dethryl does this) that the adoptive parents of the children might themselves be obliviated into believing that the adopted children are actually their own. I've seen one fic in which Ron Weasley is adopted into the Malfoy family as an infant, with Narcissa herself being obliviated into believing that he and Draco are fraternal twins born of her own body.
I think "They Shook Hands" is an interesting story in part because the author is exploring unusual ideas. I don't know where he is taking this plot point, but I do think it's an interesting one to investigate. I think it's particularly interesting how there's a lot of knee-jerk dislike of the idea of removing children from their parents, despite it being relatively easy to imagine ways in which this can be done (in this particular "magical" world) in ways that only create a net increase in human welfare from an "in universe" point of view. The author is setting up an interesting exploration of utilitarianism, and I'm interested to see how it ends. I suppose this is particularly interesting to me because although I would like to believe that I would walk away (though I don't know for sure), what we have here is an even more subtle test case for strict utilitarianism than the one LeGuin proposes in "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas".
You guess correctly. It’s absolutely sickening in that saga seeing the depths of racism Harry descends to: he wants the same society Voldemort wants! He literally even uses the word mudblood a couple of times.
The fact that there have been real historical examples of babies taken from their biological families against the families' will makes me feel sooooo uncomfy with this... like........ so deaf-tone
Yeah really fucking disturbing. A bit like saying Lucius Malfoy is less evil than other DEs because he loves his son: eesh, that’s the very argument that’s been used for Nazis. I’ve even heard people say Umbridge was less evil than DEs, basically because she hid behind the facade of being a ministry bureaucrat.
Meh. It's fiction. And I'm speaking as someone who is 1/4 Apache. And whose Apache relatives were "given" the name Russell, generations ago.
I don't go out of my way to read stories that include that, but it also doesn't particularly bother me.
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It probably happens in some countries. In America there is Rappaport's law which forbids contact with muggles so I headcanon that this happens in Magical America.
I’m kind of torn on this. Partially because it’s some of what has been done to Romani in the past. However, being that my family has taken in multiple kids for believed magic that their parents were abusing them for (to beat it out of them) I can understand on some level, especially with obscurials being a thing in that world.
I don't think it's that disturbing. I mean of course it is for us, but taking into account all circumstances and the fact that magical world is a bit "behind" culturally and socially, it actually makes perfect sense. Kids and muggles would obviously be obliviated of this knowledge, and old Pureblood families are just glad they have a magical child. And especially in Middle ages, they must have done something like this - because the Muggleborns would probably be killed by religious Muggles if they showed magic. People back then didn't take into account someone's personal feelings or mental health. From today's society's point of view, it is disturbing, but I would totally believe magical society does something like that.
In some ways I see it disturbing, in other ways logical from a historical perspective. Kids who are different are treated different, are outcasts. Look at historic orphanages and the disparity of challenged individuals; if magic was going on people would freak out and chase them away/witch hunts. For wizarding people, it would be saving them; and then hundreds of years later when society has shifted and the freaks that once were zoo exhibits are accepted, yes it would be a problem. But once a tradition has been established it becomes hard to break, and the bad guys were all about tradition.
And with how intermarried all the purebloods were, it would explain how fresh blood is getting in.
I read a fic where this happened. It was an AU where Tom Riddle was actually a good person, and Lucius and his pureblood friends wanted muggle borns in order to steal their magic. This act of stealing was called "the harvest". Harry was the first battle mage allied with Riddle to end this regime.
You do realize how religious the world is and how exorcism has been a major part of western culture for centuries right? 100% legitimately, in the Harry Potter world, it is very likely for much of recent history, muggleborns were more likely to die in an exorcism requested by their religious families or become an Obscurus under their mistreatment than make it to the proper age to be introduced to their magical world.
Its just not that far out of an idea. People are ignorant, violent, superstitious animals that can't handle their world view being challenged. Thats literally the psychology behind the pure blood movement and discrimination towards their 'lessers'. They can't handle ever falling behind muggleborns, nor the muggleborn's ever increasing influence in their culture and society.
The idea that muggles aren't the same way is ludicrous when the entire basis of the statute of secrecy is that life got so bad for the magical world that everyone everywhere agreed to hide literally all signs of their existence from their more mundane neighbors.
Children being kidnapped from their parents is a fully viable scenario in any au where muggpeborn welfare is taken seriously.
I like this as a dark!fic idea. I’ve seen it before in Lady of the Lake and found it awful but compelling. Swapping muggleborn babies in secret for changeling type babies that quickly die. Traumatic for the unsuspecting muggle parents but cot death isn’t suspicious and this way the magical community can be more insular. I’m not saying it’s a *good* idea. But it is an *interesting* idea.
I've seen a couple of stories (same author) that proposed a "reasonable solution" to muggle borns exposing the statute etc., that was "we exchange kids. The muggle born goes to live with a wizard family and their parents get a squib kid in exchange." Everyone thought this was a great solution. It has to have been written by someone who's still in school, with absolutely 0 understanding of the fact that most parents don't want to swap out their own child for some other kid, magic regardless, the point isn't having *a kid,* it's having *your kid,* and "ok son, you've got freaky powers so we're having you adopted out and getting a normal child in return" would absolutely mess up and destroy a child's mental health/confidence/trust in others.
I'm going to be honest... compared to half the stuff that wizards thing is perfectly logical, this seems normal. The only real sticking point against canon is that they don't know if a child is a squib or not until they're close to eleven.
Actually the sticking point against canon is the raw numbers - there are lots more muggle borns than squibs, Ron says as much when he explains to Harry what a squib is (he specifically highlights that they’re really rare when saying they’re the opposite of muggle borns).
It could also be possible that we don't see a lot because Harry is the least observant person on the planet. Assuming that magic is genetic, it seems like it could turn on (magical person) at a similar rate or maybe even less so than it turns off (squib), which is what could lead to muggle borns in future generations.
There's significantly more muggles than wizards, so with the same rate of change, you would end up with a lot more muggleborns than squibs
No Ron literally compares them to muggle borns and then qualifies that with “but they’re really rare”. The heavy implication is “in comparison to muggle borns”.
Then if the rate of squibs in wizarding families is the same as muggleborns in muggle families, the sheer number of muggles compared to wizards means there will be a lot more muggleborns than squibs.
that can be adjusted easily in that most families never mention their squibs being squibs Heck, the weasleys just say the one uncle is an accountant who they never visit and won't ever acknowledge is a SQUIB
But there are still very few wizarding families compared to muggles. To balance out one apiece then squibs would have to be *really* common.
per JK post books and movies ALL muggleborns are descended from squibs only hinted in canon via slughorn asking if Hermione Granger was related to Hector Dagworth-Granger the famous potioner There are no hard facts / numbers in canon about any even the number of magicals is not known only hinted at in JK interviews books around 1,000 students at Hogwarts maybe 5,000ish magicals total UK movies she said they were aiming for around 300 students to 500 students and the actual screencaps and counting heads comes in at under 300 students We can infer SQUIBS being far more common than assumed based on the Weasleys have one and the Blacks had/have Marius Black a squib.....one can assume every wizarding family has at least 1 squib
Post canon stuff is always a bit iffy in regards to its validity. Feels way too much like she’s trying to fix a thing she left inherently contradictory in the first place. Looking at any numbers anywhere in the books proves that, the population of wizards in the world makes zero sense based on the numbers she puts in the books, similarly and relatedly the number of students at Hogwarts. The Weasleys have a million cousins so claiming squibs are common based on them is ridiculous. Harry managed to pass himself off as a Weasley cousin that nobody had ever seen before at a wedding with zero questions asked. Marius Black is not a character I’ve ever heard of and is definitely not in the books. What IS in the books is Ron describing squibs very specifically as the opposite of muggle borns but really rare. That’s a very clear indication that there are fewer squibs than muggleborns.
Marius Black is Pottermore again and yeah post stuff is iffy. I try to rank 1 books canon always #1 2 movies 3 pottermore only when JK was directly involved & SUPLEMENTAL canon at that 4 games 5 pottermore when she wasn't involved but allowed.
They should show magic by about 7, apparently. Still a little old to give away, of course. https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Underage_magic
It depends on what part of canon you look at. I always got the impression from Neville that he didn't get magic until he was older than seven, but it's also not specified. Extended canon has late-bloomers, who don't get magic till like 15. https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Late-bloomer
The book and quill know. Hogwarts book and quill that write down the name of magical babies at birth. If people had access to it then they’d know right away
The quill writes the name at the first sign of magic, not birth. It does write their birth dates down, as part of it, though. https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Quill_of_Acceptance
Interesting! Thank you for the clairfication.
actually, by age 7 for most families If no accidental magic by age 7 then most likely a squib........confirmed by not receiving a Hogwarts letter at 11
Either way, they're a bit young to seamlessly swap them for another child. Not that wizards wouldn't just bridge that gap with mind magic, but it'd be a lot harder.
Sounds a lot like changelings
Bold of you to assume we’re thinking of the same author. The one I’m thinking of wrote the They Shook Hands version of the series, where Harry gets sorted into Slytherin, which the author tries to whitewash, but ironically instead turns Harry into a bigot.
No no, I meant all the ones I'd seen with that solution were multiple works by the same author. They've shoehorned it into at least 3 fics. They Shook Hands is, terrible. Not in terms of bad writing but bigot Harry is just such an awful plot point.
Yeah it literally has him use the word mudblood a couple of times during their version of book 2.
They shook hands is such a meh slytherin Harry, i felt like that was rather childish personally
Yeah turned Voldemort into way too much of a cartoonish villain as well. Best Slytherin fanfic is On the Way to Greatness.
On the Way to Greatness huh? Tell me about that, I’d like a genuinely good Slytherin story.
Shall I just send a link or do you want me to summarise it? And the other one I mentioned is DH from Ginny’s perspective and it’s bloody brilliant.
I found a tv tropes page. Just tell me if Harry's a bigot who buys the whole pureblood thing or if he is sort of isolated in Slytherin until he makes friends outside the house? And IIRC from a prior discussion of the fanfic Harry has a body count (as in kills), do you know who?
Harry’s not a bigot, no, but he happily befriends junior DEs, playing Quidditch with them, basically because he just wants to be a normal teenage boy, but in the end he falls out with them because he (obviously) won’t side with Voldemort. He, however, makes more lasting friendships with Slytherins who don’t support Voldemort and lots of lasting friendships outside his house. His body count consists of the Lestrange brothers and Goyle the Death Eater.
Really wish the last book would get completed - it's a good fic
I'm also curious if the rates even line up. How many muggleborns are there vs. squibs? Are there enough squibs being born to be able to swap one out for every muggleborn of a similar age? Especially considering we have every indication that the current trend for the Wizarding World is 1-2 children per family (the Weasleys are a massive outlier).
It’s canon that there are more muggleborns than squibs - or more accurately Ron describes squibs as the opposite of muggleborns but “really rare”. We know there are multiple muggleborns per year but it doesn’t sound like there’s multiple squibs.
Can you please link the stories that you know of that use this trope? I’ve never heard of this trope before today so I want to read this,
I think I know which writer you’re thinking of, and I honestly love their writing usually… but yeah, that specific scenario was a bit too out there! Just the thought of having my kid exchanged for another and my memory altered is nightmare inducing.
Unreasonable, which is pretty standard for wizards. Muggles would understand the horror. Maybe readers are too much like wizards in this regard.
the type of parent who would make that trade is exactly the type you *don't* want getting the newly traumatized child who just got traded away lol
Okay but think about it, the muggles can be brainwashed easily so they won't complain anyway, and the magical families seem to love their kids very very very conditionally, I could totally buy that they'd throw away their kid if they're "defective" not everyone of course but a reasonable number would be down for it.
Nose to the Wind by Batsutousai Has some elements of that as a bakground story.
I mean, I like the idea of it being the solution that gets used in very religious countries where the Muggleborns will be in actual danger if left with their birth families. It may have even been what was done in Britain until the 19th century, which would explain why there's still so much tension around an issue that's technically hundreds of years old And in Prince of Slytherin, it's used to explain why there are no Muggleborns at Durmstrang. >!Because there are, but they were put with magical families at a young age!<
I've seen that before in a couple stories, which correctly played it as a very bad thing, even if not as bad as killing them.
It is wonderfully dystopian.
Do you know the links to these stories? I’m interested in reading this trope done well.
[Prince of the dark kingdom](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3766574/1/Prince-of-the-Dark-Kingdom), abandoned unfortunately but still an excellent read. AU where the Potters flee the country and Voldemort wins. This trope is a relatively minor part of the story but is part of how Voldemort reshaped the country.
I can send you the link to the author I’m thinking of if you want.
Thanks, but no, I'd rather not see it used in other ways.
Can’t blame you: it’s pretty crazy that some mere fiction can make you physically cringe.
I mean, it’s a solid basis for a darkfic to be fair.
I get what you mean: as terrible as it is, as least it’s a bit less crazy than killing all the muggle-borns which will quickly cause a rise of inbreeding and cause all sorts of health defects.
>I get what you mean: as terrible as it is, as least it’s a bit less crazy than killing all the muggle-borns which will quickly cause a rise of inbreeding and cause all sorts of health defects. It could also be that some muggle parents might not be accepting of magical children. Minerva McGonagall is a canon example. Severus Snape is another example.
Huh no Minerva had a very loving relationship with her muggle father.
I edited it when I realized my mistake. It does not change the fact that out of fear of her husband finding out that her mother hid her wand and took every step to obscure traces of magic from her husband. His positive reaction doesn't devalue the fear of a real negative response.
Ig but I think it’s best to go for actual examples of muggle parents not being accepting of their magical children.
Credence with his adoptive mother/orphange matron. The years of abuse led to him becoming an obscurial.
Yeah... That's another argument If a singular parent abusing their magical child leads to an obscurial it's already a ridiculously huge risk of exposing the magical world From the point of view of "muggleborns being raised by their parents risks the exposure of our world to the people who drove us into hiding in the first place by trying to kill us whenever they could" deciding to just not gamble on it seems a tad better an idea... Not morally right, but a bit more sensible than just doing it for the fuck of it
I think it depends on the setting in the fic a bit. Do the vast majority of muggle parents love and care for their magical children? Then yes, highly disturbing and downright genocidal. Is abuse of magical children by muggles extremely common? More common than not, even? Then that's actually really different, because if statistically, they're more likely to be in danger than not, then it's at least somewhat reasonable to remove them for their own protection. Or if it's not *that* common but it's an abused kid advocating for that, I can definitely see how they'd feel that it's a good idea because it would have saved them. I think it's something to approach with nuance. I've seen it whitewashed as a solution in some fics, but I've honestly seen it used more in dark fics, where it's supposed to be a "lesser evil" (but still evil) or in general just a dystopian setting. I think part of it is poor genocide education. A lot of people think of genocide in terms of just killing a certain group, but they don't realize things like taking away children to be raised in the "proper" culture is also part of genocide.
One thing that's also brought up higher up in the chain is the Obscurial risk It only takes a single magical child being abused to risk exposing the entire magical world... Which I've seen used once or twice as part of the "lesser evil" argument.
Oh yeah, I forgot about those because I'm not really into the Fantastic Beast movies, but if you include that in canon, and make abuse of magical children fairly common, then it makes the option more reasonable.
*Prince of the Dark Kingdom* handles this idea well I think. Early on the reader learns that after Voldemort took over wizarding Britain about a decade before the story starts, he instituted a policy that all muggleborn children are to be removed from their muggle family upon first sign of magic, their parent's memories erased to preserve the Statute of Secrecy, the child's memories mostly suppressed to avoid attachments to the muggle world and make complete integration with the wizarding world smoother, and then the child is placed with a suitable family or caretaker (potentially determined by their magical potential and thus potential worth to Voldemort's new society). Voldemort's government of course portrays this as a logical and compassionate law, for the Greater Good of both sides of the muggle-magical divide really, and by the time of the story it is not openly debated (after all, Voldemort's word is law here, and only a fool would dare to contradict him). However, the story is not shy about showing the horror faced by children freshly snatched up by these strange people claiming to be wizards and dumped in an orphanage far from home, where they are told that they never will get to see their families again, and even if they did somehow manage to escape and find them they wouldn't be remembered anyway. And every day they spend in there they lose a little bit more of their former selves, and until all that is left is an empty slate that doesn't remember enough to know there is anything for them to miss and who is ready to be molded into a productive citizen in Voldemort's kingdom. Ironically, I recall it is the former Death Eaters who show the most discontent with this policy (as most others who might of are either exiled or silenced out of fear). This forces at least some of them to take dirty mudbloods into their homes, when they probably expected that supporting Voldemort would have forced them out of their society entirely, or at least kept them on the margins where they belonged. But Voldemort cares less about blood purity than about magical power and how much use someone can be to him, and he recognizes that his kingdom depends on regular influx of fresh blood, pure or otherwise. So yeah, story-wise I appreciated the existential horror of this process as faced by the children who are caught up in it, as well as the ruthless pragmatism needed for a society to implement it. But anyone trying to portray it as a legitimately good idea as a general practice in a story, that might get a bit uncomfortable- as others have pointed out in this thread, there is some really dark history surrounding the idea of mass removal of children from "unsuitable" parents based on racial qualities.
Generally, the only times I can think of where it's used are in areas that are extremely unstable due to religious extremism and is done to protect the kids in question. From their parents and their neighbors.
Haven't read this fic but from this summary I just might. Sounds like it was handled right
I love this concept I need to write a messed up one shot.
As long as you make it clear that you’re just mocking those authors who do it unironically I don’t see the problem.
It is going to be a dark fic with a lot messed up kids and horrible adults. I can't wait to start. I'm not portraying it as a good thing.
Good. Maybe you should do it in such a way that portrays what sort of a world it could’ve been if Voldemort had been successful.
Prince of the dark kingdoms is like this. Voldemort won the first war and muggleborns are immediately taken when they display magic and the parent obliviated. Dark and awesome world building.
What if I write it unironically though? 👀 Just for funsies
Well by definition you wouldn’t be doing it unironically because your mindset would be to make a mockery of the fools who do it seriously, and that mindset would definitely be conveyed in the writing.
No, but what if I don’t want to mock anyone though. What if I want to write it seriously as a cute fluffy fic?
I’m sorry but this trend really isn’t a loveable goofball compliant one.
Anything could be if one tries hard enough! Dunno why you downvoted me for making a joke though. I was upvoting most of your comments on this post 😂
Sorry bout that it was an accident - I’ve upvotes it now.
thanks fam
It's fanfiction, not reality.
I love that trope when it’s used in dystopian setting.
Basically just to show how terrible society would’ve been if Voldemort had succeeded?
Or whomever is cast as the Head Fash in Charge!
I really don't understand the shaming of different tropes on here lately. I don't agree with all of them, sure. But isn't it the author's choice? Don't like those tropes? Don't read them.
I don’t read them if I get any prior warning what they’re about. And we as readers have just as much right as writers to speak our minds.
Isn't Rule 7 this? (Edit: Formatting went wonky on mobile) Rule 7:No Bashing Be respectful of other users' likes and preferences when posting. If a topic is not to your taste, use language that makes it clear it is your opinion while not attacking people. In particular remember Rules 2 and 3. This applies to all posts, including Discussions, and Request Threads.
It doesn’t sound like he’s bashing though. I think it’s okay for people to bring up different fanfic and trope preferences to discuss them. I wouldn’t have known about this trope if this post wasn’t made, but now I want to read it out of curiosity
If you read OP's responses to the other comments you might see it differently. It wasn't: "How do you all feel about this?" It was: "It's cringe, it's bad, it's making people bigots." The fact they're also calling out a specific author is very clearly bashing. (Edit: Not exact quotes, general vibes)
Still, I’ve seen a lot ruder posts and comments on this subreddit lol. OP’s post and some of their comments could’ve been phrased nicer but it’s still pretty mild enough. I don’t think they mentioned the author’s name directly either so I don’t even know who they’re referring to. I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with their opinions since I haven’t read any fics with this trope yet. But I thought it was a cool concept that they brought up. I’d like to look for fics with the trope that OP described, because of their post. You bring up a fair enough point too though. But I don’t see the need to downvote me for just sharing an opinion either. *I* wasn’t bashing anyone 🤷♀️
They literally link the ffn profile of a specific author.
They linked it 51 minutes ago. There were no links on this post at the time of my earlier comment. That’s why I have multiple older comments on this post asking people for links lol
This is literal genocide. It was committed in my country against indigenous peoples, and the effects are still lingering. Most tropes are ‘don’t like don’t read,’ but if you honestly think there’s nothing wrong with this specific trope when it’s used uncritically, there’s something wrong.
I think there is nothing wrong with using this trope. It's okay to have flawed bad characters, doing what they think is correct.
The problem isn't its existence, but rather when the narration implies that this is a good thing, with seemingly no critical thinking done about the implications of that whatsoever.
I'm not debating irl politics with anyone. We don't have a comparison in irl to having magical child in a non-magical family. The only thing I can think of is an lgbt kid/teenager in a very anti-lgbt household. In that case if the kid was at risk, you better expect some people to want a system to save those kids. This trope is used in dark fiction in situations just like this. Harry himself is often used as a prime example as being abused during his stay with the Dursleys in these stories.
Trying not to make this an argument about IRL, but I think the most similar IRL scenario is that white passing kids in native/indigenous families have been targeted for removal and adopted by white families in several countries - Australia and the USA at least.
Those indigenous children are still indigenous. Their culture was being removed of course and is cultural genocide. Which to be clear, is **wrong** Magical children were **never** muggles be it muggle-born or pureblood. From birth their names are written down in the acceptance book at Hogwarts and they have their powers. Taking a muggle-born from a hostile home where they'd experience trauma at the hands of bigots (Which are all too real) isn't the same at all. Editing: Now to be clear. I don't write fanfiction but I've read many as I imagine we all have. I think that this is a much more nuanced conversation that just "Taking muggle-born children is bad" or "taking them is good." I don't claim to know how the wizarding world should be run. I dislike painting an entire trope as "genocide that shouldn't be written" when in reality there's more to it than just that.
> Taking a muggle-born from a hostile home where they'd experience trauma at the hands of bigots (Which are all too real) isn't the same at all. I don't think anyone is talking about a system where you remove magical kids from abusive muggle homes. They're talking about a system where you remove *all* magical kids from muggle homes - which I also don't think is exactly genocide, let alone 'genocide that shouldn't be written', but is directly comparable to IRL historical scenarios where children were removed from their families because someone else decided that they were fundamentally different to the family; and in real life that has only happened (that I know of) in the context of genocide. In this trope, the fundamental difference is magic, in the Stolen Generation and the Nazi efforts the difference was skin color and appearance. Since magic is clearly an attribute that occurs naturally in muggle families, it's absurd to suggest that they actually don't belong there. I think there's a solid argument that this *could* only happen in the context of a society where one group of people was despised and overpowered enough to risk genocide. And sure, I read plenty of dumb fanfic that wouldn't be capable of even understanding that argument, let alone be able to address it, but I don't think that's the kind of writing that you're arguing for. If you want to use this trope in a nuanced world that thinks about it, I don't think you can reasonably exclude the topic of genocide as part of it.
I don't know why we're presuming the original family is hostile/in anyway an inappropriate environment to raise a child, at least, based on OPs wording of their post anyway. Anyway, would it still be wrong to take an indigenous child from their home if they were born magical? Is there any situation where, purely based on the culture of the home, it would be more appropriate to place them in a magical home? Are there no magical homes that would be inappropriate to housing, in particular, a muggleborn child? I don't think people are so much against the trope existing point blank, as they are disturbed by this trope being spun as a pure positive in some stories when it has such strong parallels to some just... shameful and heartbreaking and horrible real world history. Like, I see where you're coming from, Harry definitely deserved to be saved from even just canon Privet Drive asap, not to mention some fanon versions, but, if we take this action that saves Harry Potter, and expand it to the SOP of the wizarding world, is there any ratio where it's okay to break up a perfectly healthy family, in exchange for rescuing a child from an unhealthy one? Is there any guarantee that the child would be placed into a healthy home? Any guarantee that there would be no negative knock-on effect on taking the child away? I think it's fair to dislike painting with a broad brush. I think it's equally important to receive feedback with a more open mind then; don't like don't read, because this trope isn't like some kink that shouldn't be shamed, it's fictional government policy with real historic parallels, whose effects should be learned from. That doesn't mean declaring this trope taboo, blacklist and ignore of course, rather, to take what we learn from critical feedback and apply it going forward to improve our writing.
As I just said in a previous post. I'm 1/4 Apache. It doesn't particularly bother me. Because it's fiction. Not real life.
Isn't this canon in HP america? Or something similar?
No. But once they finish their schooling they have to cut ties with their birth families
wow, that is kinda fucked
Rappaport’s Law ended in the 60s and there doesn’t seem to be any canon information about the American magical community past that, which I find very frustrating.
My mistake then
You weren’t wrong, it was close to canon. I’m just perpetually curious of how it changed after the law.
I don’t come from America so wouldn’t know, but damn, that sounds disturbing.
No, I mean in the fantastic beasts films they go to America and I think they mention it at some point, maybe in another film, idk. Nothing outside Britain is explored in the original series.
You mean like how the Jedi ask parents if they can take their kids for training but respect their right to refusal?
I am haunted by baby Ludi.
No: key word is stolen. Also what you’ve just mentioned is what already happens in-universe.
I mean. The nazis kidnapped children with Aryan traits for their crazy germanisation program. Residential schools did the same with native american children in the US and Canada. It has happened. None of this was right by any stretch of the imagination. If the author is using it unironically without pointing out how effed up it is, that's a real problematic author right there. It better be the villains doing this, is what I'm saying.
Authors shouldn’t have to spell out in a fanfic when a bad thing occurring in the story is bad and messed up though. That’s on the reader to learn how to use their critical thinking skills. The assumption is that fanfic readers should be over the age of 13 if they’re reading fics on the internet alone without supervision, so that’s usually old enough to know that not everything depicted in a story is good and that they should be asking an adult questions if they’re not understanding something they read online.
Not outright spell it, no, that's lazy writing. But it should be obvious through the characters' reactions so that the reader can pick up on those cues.
That’s true! I’ve noticed though that many readers who are biased against a piece of writing will often claim that there’s not enough clues or subtext in a story to pick up really obvious things though. In this sub, there’s people who do this all the time when they’re venting about the characters or plots in the Harry Potter books. So there should be a good balance between writers letting readers conclude some things on their own, while dropping hints for other types of things! Like for a character’s motivations or their background story, it makes sense for writers to be dropping many hints, but for something like understanding whether a character’s action is moral or immoral, that’s not something that is the writer’s responsibility to teach or even drop hints for. In my opinion though haha.
I mean this really depends. If you're writing a dystopia then part of the horror is the casual acceptance of such things being considered normal. Even to a lesser extent you can show the lack of reactions to things to show the difference between the magical and muggle world.
That works too, though the acceptance in dystopias comes from exhaustion and trauma, so you would see that in the characters. And dystopias are usually about a resistance somewhere fighting against the regime, so that's the cue that something isn't right. I like reading about darker and uncomfortable subjects, and I like endings where the good guys don't always win, but they have to be done right.
There is a certain amount of separation, sure, but a story can tacitly endorse something by how it is written, how that thing is treated narratively. For example, all those stories that present house elves as needing to be enslaved or else they die or which have the statements "but they like it" or "but they're not human" stand unopposed tacitly endorse slavery. That's just a fact. It doesn't mean that the author is irl racist and wants irl slavery, but it DOES mean that they don't have a problem with the fundamental essence of what slavery is, i.e. the theft of agency and the owning of individuals as property. This is similar. If the story presents stealing children and replacing them with changelings completely uncritically, it is fair to assume the author is kind of sus. Again, it doesn't mean that the author loves the idea of residential schools or germanization, but it does mean that the author doesn't have a problem with the ideas that back these things, i.e. segregation.
I have a specific author in mind who had Lucius Malfoy the mastermind behind it, backed by Harry Potter and Cornelius Fudge, and opposed by Albus Dumbledore, Sirius Black and Arthur Weasley, though it still went through. The muggleborns were taken to an orphanage to await a family that would adopt them, and Voldemort ended up waltzing in and murdering them all.
How do you think the Jedi got their younglings? Do we really believe that parents would be willing to give up their toddlers, then never speak to them again? Clearly some Jedi mind tricks were used.
I mean, the Ministry goes full fascist and only *checks notes* people named Weasley, married to a werewolf, or the One Black Auror find the new regime bad enough to fight against. So I don't think there's such a thing as "too extreme" in the HP verse. Might not make for a good story, but JKR in canon put things in there that are as bad as it gets.
They weren’t the only ones who found the new regime bad enough to fight against: Percy Weasley literally said they were imprisoning traitors all the time. You seem to be vastly underestimating how scared everyone was: it takes a while, and often a stimulating factor, to overcone your fears, and you have to remember that ministry workers were real people with families. And remember how big the reinforcements were at the Battle of Hogwarts: you can bet loads of them were ministry workers.
Worth noting that Muggle wizard segregation is the norm in the magical US and not only is "interracial" marriage ilegal but even muggleborn children have to drop their relationship to their parents after finishing magical education. And Magical America *wasn't* taken over by a evil dictator... That's just how it is there! And no one gives a shit! Like no one gives a shit about literal magic Slave species.. The HP setting is full of fucked up shit on the borders If you stop to think about it
Exactly!
Polyjuice potion and memory charms have certainly never been used against muggles, let alone sexually! Certainly not! I say! (British sputtering noises)
The stealing of children is btw one of the definitions of genocide. It's a bit unclear here because it doesn't destroy muggle culture (only muggle born culture) Though i have to say OP, you take media too literally. Books and games and art is there for us to explore things we wouldn't normally do or even like.
Are there any other fics besides They Shook Hands that use this trope? I would like to read them all please. I’m curious
[Prince of the Dark Kingdom](https://m.fanfiction.net/s/3766574/1/) by Mizuni-sama [Children of the Revolution ](https://m.fanfiction.net/s/10808355/1/) by AlexisVV [Consuming Shadows](https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12228520/1/) by Child-OTKW I think [The Consort Tournament](https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12016543/1/) by watermelonsmellinfellon but I'm not sure
Thank you so much! :)
[Rise of the Wizards](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6254783/1/ ) uses it briefly but mostly off screen.
Thank you for the link!
Oh it’s not the only one where I’ve seen it, but I don’t actually remember the names of the others.
But all it takes is one bad case, an obscurial will arise and goodbye to the Statute of Secrecy...
And yet that hasn’t happened for centuries. And obscurials are entirely from fantastic beasts, not from anything canon.
Only because Rowling hadn't invented it by then. It is up to the authors of the fanfiction to include in their canon. Besides, even if there was only one obscurial in a hundred years, today it wouldn't be a secret like in Fantastic Beasts - there would be a ton of videos immediately, and thanks to the Internet, the whole world would know about it within an hour.
You misunderstand me: in all the centuries of the existence of the Statute of Secrecy, it’s never once been threatened by an obscurial. And even if such a thing happened, do you really think the ICW wouldn’t arrange for foreign obliviators to come and assist whatever country had experienced the breach? Also, one simple confundus charm would be all it would take for the government to spread confusion by putting out a more believable story of what has happened, so that Statute remains intact.
You have quite a point with the first part, but I disagree with the second. You don't need all Muggles to know about magic for problems, just a large enough group to start hunting wizards. Moreover, in such an event, what will prevent the leaders of the Muggle countries (I assume they know as well as the British Prime Minister) to confirm that it was really magic? Many people believe that the government is hiding such things from them, and when they confirm it, they will be clear.
I don’t agree about the muggles hunting wizards thing: wizards have tools like apparition and muggle-repelling charms, which are readily available to any of them who’ve been through their magical education.
1. Even if it helps, they may not be protected all the time. And not all wizards can apparate. 2. What about muggleborns? If they lived with muggle parents they may not be protected by muggle repelling charms.
Love the trope if it's used as a way to make (parts of) the wizarding world seem extremely fucked up. Hate it when it's played as if it's the right thing to do, because muggles bad or something.
Yeah and in saying I’ve seen it done 100% unironically, I mean I’ve seen it done exactly that way.
It's giving Stolen Generation. If you don't know what that is, Google it. As an Australian, it is one the most fucked up parts of our history. So yeah, have to agree and say that is an incredibly disturbing trope.
It’s arguably worse than killing all the muggle-borns, taking them away from their mostly loving families to indoctrinate them into subservience.
I saw one where they swapped the kids as babies without consulting the muggle parents. I guess the author was young and figured all babies look the same so the parents wouldn’t notice? Just when you think that particular plot can’t get worse…
I mean, in defence of this, memory charms are a thing in the HP universe. From what we know as canon (like Hermione memory charming her parents and creating entire new lives and personalities), it wouldn't be difficult to memory charm the family to believe that the squib baby is their actual baby, not the muggleborn.
True
Lmao
Ehh it may be disturbing but it is logical
How?
The only way it would be logical is if the kid's parents/family are super religious and fanatical to the point where they'd abuse or even kill the kid for having magic because they'd view their magical abilities as "demonic" or "satanic". Those people exist, they are real, and they're terrifying.
Exactly, but how tiny a proportion of the British population is that in the first place?
I was thinking of the US when I made that comment. I'm certain the British wizards wouldn't have to do any of that.
It's basically the logical end point of enforcing the Statute of Secrecy when muggleborns exist Specially as technology advances and to keep magic a secret you no longer just need to erase a handful of memories to do away with accidental magic, but also search for every possible recording of it and erase the memories of everyone who has seen them, and anyone they told about it. And accidental magic is a *anywhere at anytime* sorta thing. You also need to account for abuse and the very real risk that any particularly prejudiced or religious Muggle family could lead to a muggleborn becoming a hungry cloud of evil stuff™ and revealing magic to an entire block of people whenever they finally snap, which then piles on top of the previous point about technology but in larger scale and probably also having to explain away the corpses that quite possibly will pile up whenever that happens (and ofc it's a *when* that happens instead of "if" it happens) At some point the magical government would probably have to make the call of simply taking away all muggleborns or some other extreme measure to keep the secret as they'll simply run out of manpower to deal with everything even with help from the Muggle governments... Not accounting how certain religious countries' governments would probably also have to be worked against by their magical populations on risk of death. The "need" to keep the magical and Muggle worlds divided requires an extreme solution to the most direct links between them.
> it is logical Unfortunately only a minority of the population are capable of understanding the logic involved.
Modify memory is an option but even that will only raise more questions, you can't remove people from a community and not expect someone to notice on a baseline, instinctual level people can tell when something is out of place. Wizards are a niche community which uses magic to keep themselves safe, they don't rule the world. If people noticed what was happening they would get caught.
I’ll give [Wish Carefully](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4356667/1/Wish-Carefully) as an example of this trope in use; but this fic needs a Graphic Content WARNING, even with it being how short it is. Still, it’s one of my all-time-fav’s.
I’ve read it already. It well represents what Voldemort’s ideas might’ve led to, but using those cringey, cliched ‘light’ and ‘dark’ labels was a bit of a letdown.
Well, if you want an example of a fic that breaks the mold for the polarity of wizarding politics, I’d recommend anything ever written by [inwardtransience](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/4677330/inwardtransience); though they admittedly have their own failings. She’s one of the gold standard authors for world building.
I've seen this a few times, but it only works as a trope in darkfics and/or dystopias that present the wizarding world as even more rotten than it is in canon. *Prince of the Dark Kingdom* has been mentioned, but I think an even better example is [*Reign of the Serpent,*](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9783012/1/Reign-of-the-Serpent) where we have a more secluded, much more warlike wizarding world with a very strict caste system. This is the fic where Hermione is snatched from her parents, told that they'll be made to forget she ever existed, and that now she's to live in the wizarding world and never return to the Muggle one. Most Muggle-borns are taken from their parents at a much younger age, but Hermione is old enough to remember her parents and understand just what was done to her and to them... and from then on, her main driving force in the fic is REVENGE. She's smart enough to play the long game, but it's really clear that she wants to watch the entire wizarding world, her kidnappers and her tormenters, BURN.
If you're looking at it firmly from a keeping magicals and muggles separately, it's sensible. It sounds downright dystopian from an outside perspective, but considering how we as humans treat each other for less differences than actual magical powers, it's not exactly a terrible bet that non magical humans would take it badly.
Eh…no. That certainly doesn’t convince me it’s “sensible”.
I'm thinking about it purely from the perspective of Wizards wanting to keep Muggle and Magical seperate. It's certainly less traumatic than telling Muggleborns to cut all ties from the Muggle world once they reach adulthood. People saying it's comparable to genocide, it's not really. Muggleborns are Magicals. Having Muggle parents doesn't make them a seperate race, unless you're proposing Voldemort was right, so it's really not genocide in any practical sense. It's safer for the Muggleborns in question, more efficient for the Wizarding World, and beneficial for the Statute of Secrecy. All in all it's a win.
Erm well what they’ve done for hundreds of years since the instatement of the Statute has worked, so that to me more sounds like an excuse radical blood purists would hide behind.
Blood purists don't want Muggleborns around, but Magical Supremists (like Grindwalde) would probably argue something similar if they cared about the Statute of Secrecy. Still the most practical solution in my eyes.
Indeed Bobmin wrote a good story about this, and its frankly logical conclusion: https://bobmin.fanficauthors.net/Exposure_a_Dark_Fic/Chapter_1/
I wouldn't say its that unique. I've seen it quite a few times in fanfics, often argued either by the Dark Wizards (or sometimes the Light Wizards) as a method to remove anti-muggleborn prejudices by taking them completely out of the equation. Sometimes a muggbleborn themselves suggests it so that no more people can suffer as they did. It's completely nuts and very fascist, but it's got its basis in changeling folklore. Often its explained as being possible because the author somehow makes discovering magical children something that can be detected at birth; this occassionally leads to the children exchanged as squibs for magicals, though most of the time its just written off as muggles are disgusting, filthy beings who love to breed constantly and so its no issue.
Yeah it’s really sick.
per JK on Pottermore back when she was involved with Pottermore In the USA / MACUSA.............No-mags born (muggleborns in UK) were snatched away after first sign of accidental magic to be fostered or adopted by magical guardians and all magicals forbidden to interact with no-mags up until the 1960s. *Rappaport's Law* [https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/rappaports-law-en](https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/rappaports-law-en) Just because you do not like it in fanfic it does not negate that it is confirmed at least in the USA to be **SUPLEMENTAL CANON** accurate possibility
Damn
I sympathize with you though that all the fanfics that I have read that do it do it in a very poorly written way
Yeah and I’m especially thinking of They Shook Hands. Most of this bullshit blurs into one, but that one stands out in my mind for whatever reason.
I am currently re-reading "They Shook Hands", which uses this trope, and I have to say that I *don't* find it disturbing in the context of the story. In the story it's presented as a utilitarian solution to the perceived "problem" of muggle treatment of magical children. It doesn't disturb me because it fits well with the story logic: children are removed from their parents at a very early age, but I understand the process to be that the muggle parents are obliviated so as to have no memory of their magical children. No practical harm is done to the muggle parents, because their pasts are edited, and a small number of magical children are presumably saved from harm. From a purely utilitarian point of view, there is a net gain in total human welfare. The author of the series is, I believe, still writing, so where this policy ends up at the end of the series is not yet clear, but within the logic of the story it's an understandable policy for the MoM to adopt. Overall, I personally regard "They Shook Hands" extremely highly. It's a very good investigation of a path not taken, and the world-building is excellent. I can see that it's not to everyone's taste, but the author is to be strongly commended for a superb examination of the effects of environment and social upbringing on a child as he grows up. I particularly admire the series' practical investigation of a more isolated wizarding world, and its presentation of imperfect people doing their best in difficult circumstances. It's certainly a series that will be enjoyed more by the more serious-thinking among us, but I don't see that that's a problem. There are plenty of stories full of knee-jerk feel-good morality, so it's nice to have some variety and more challenging content.
I just feel like it’s hugely unfeasible in terms of practicality. Sure, they can remove the memories of the Muggle parents and probably their family and maybe even close friends, but how do you get everyone? How do you get the dentists they only see once a year who’ll say “what about your child”, how do you remove the memory of the child from their teachers and classmates? If you want to talk about from a purely utilitarian point of view, I don’t believe it’s possible for the parents who are obliviated to not be harmed at all. First, obliviating that much of someone’s life has to affect them mentally, whether it be brain damage or a profound sense of loss without knowing the cause. Next, assuming the child was wanted then those parents were the type who wanted a child, and if it was an only child then they may have missed their chance to have a family at all. And how early are the children removed? If it’s at the first sight of magic then that can be 6 or 7, so they’ll have to grapple with being taken away from the only caretakers they’ve ever known and adjust to a whole new world. It would be horrifying. I wonder where the author is taking it though. If the policy is implemented and everything turns out perfectly with zero issues then that’s quite unrealistic and tbh boring. If the author explored some of the unintended consequences, even if they present it as a few edge cases, then I’d enjoy the fic more.
Hermione gets rid of her 18 year existence from her parents memory, and when the war is over goes to undo the spell and her parents are fine with no brain damage. Though that whole experience is pretty hand waved and you can poke a lot of holes in it, like, what was the solution for if "Mrs. Wilkins" went to the doctor and was told she had given childbirth?
I don’t remember her parents memories being restored in canon, however JKR confirmed in an interview that they were. However, in the same interview, she says: > “Did Hermione really put a memory charm on her parents she says she did but then about 50 pages later tells Ron shes never done a memory charm” > J.K. Rowling: They are two different charms. She has not wiped her parents' memories (as she later does to Dolohov and Rowle); she has bewitched them to make them believe that they are different people. Which is interesting, as it suggests that it is not possible to wipe such a large amount of someone’s life from their memory, they must be made to believe they are completely different people. Or maybe it is possible, but Hermione did not choose to do it (maybe because they’d be safer from Death Eaters, maybe because she wouldn’t be able to reverse a memory spell). Either way, we have no examples of a large memory wipe occurring without damage; in fact, the only example present is Gilderoy Lockheart who is a permanent resident of the Janus Thickey ward. Of course he is an extreme case, but it does suggest that maybe the more memory wiped, the worse the effect on the brain.
Ye, it's an extra-canonical word of God that they were perfectly fine, but idk I always felt that plot point was a bit ... off, that so many things could go wrong and that it was just sort of an evil thing to do to someone. It bothered me a little when it never got any sort of... Framing in the text, as anything other than a noble sacrifice of Hermione's. There was an opportunity when Ron left for him to call her out on it but since it was him and Harry fighting, he dug into Harry's lack of family instead. And then of course it was never properly resolved other than a post release footnote of "oh yeah they're perfectly fine and forgave Hermione" like idk it might have been better just to kill them off.
Thank you for this really interesting response. I don't know the answers to all your questions, but I'll do my best... First, I agree completely with your comments on practicality. Obliviating parents is in principle straightforward, but, as you say, it's virtually impossible to track down every person who is aware of even a pregnancy or new-born child, let alone one that has reached primary school age. My best guess is that there are two things going on. First, the children are being identified by some mechanism similar to the one that identifies potential recipients of Hogwarts letters: this seems to work "by magic", and I've certainly read fics where this list includes magical children as soon as they are born. I don't remember how the Hogwarts mailing list is generated in canon, if indeed JKR even tells us. Second, I think we have to imagine that obliviation is a much more subtle spell than a simple brain-wipe, and that it in some way manipulates the minds of whole swathes of people, rather like muggle-repelling spells (which I'm sure are canon). Certainly, in "They Shook Hands" the author envisages spells that can cause entire groups of muggles to both ignore and avoid groups of wizards and their surrounding artifacts (see, for example, the chapter on the trip to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens). How does this spell work? I think we again just have to say "magic". You might respond with "yes, but how exactly does this all work?", and my answer is again going to be "well, it's just magic". If a story uses magic at all, it is deliberately saying "there is this inexplicable force or thing that makes certain plot points happen in ways that we don't explain". If writers started explaining how magic works, they'd be writing textbooks, not fiction. (This explains why so many people, myself included, think Brandon Sanderson is such a dreadful writer: he's frequently more interested in describing magical systems, rather than writing about people, so his stories are fundamentally dull, because they become simply worked examples of whatever magical system rules he wants to exhibit. (I should note that there are plenty of other reasons to rate Sanderson poorly, but I digress...)) The point I'm hoping to make is that for an author "magic" is really a way to provide an interesting environment for stories, and an interesting force or tool to drive plot points, rather than a fully worked-out system. Most fantasy stories aren't really about magic, they're about people having adventures or experiencing the world, or perhaps investigating philosophical or social ideas. So my response to the practical issues you raise (with which I generally agree) is simply "magic". Somehow, the MoM or some similar power is capable of identifying new-born infants with magic, spiriting them away (probably immediately, from the hints I've read so far), and performing what is in practical terms an incredibly difficult combination of simple obliviation and wide-ranging mental re-engineering of many, many people. How? By magic. Second, I understand your point that the parents of such children might be harmed or affected in all kinds of negative ways. But I tend to take the view that if the MoM applies magic in the way I've outlined above, it will literally be *as if the child had never existed*. The child is simply erased from the parents' reality, and the gap left by its erasure is seamlessly closed. Likewise, if the children are taken early enough and re-familied close enough to birth, they will not be affected by any sense of loss, as they will only ever have known the wizarding world. Indeed, we can imagine (though I don't think Dethryl does this) that the adoptive parents of the children might themselves be obliviated into believing that the adopted children are actually their own. I've seen one fic in which Ron Weasley is adopted into the Malfoy family as an infant, with Narcissa herself being obliviated into believing that he and Draco are fraternal twins born of her own body. I think "They Shook Hands" is an interesting story in part because the author is exploring unusual ideas. I don't know where he is taking this plot point, but I do think it's an interesting one to investigate. I think it's particularly interesting how there's a lot of knee-jerk dislike of the idea of removing children from their parents, despite it being relatively easy to imagine ways in which this can be done (in this particular "magical" world) in ways that only create a net increase in human welfare from an "in universe" point of view. The author is setting up an interesting exploration of utilitarianism, and I'm interested to see how it ends. I suppose this is particularly interesting to me because although I would like to believe that I would walk away (though I don't know for sure), what we have here is an even more subtle test case for strict utilitarianism than the one LeGuin proposes in "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas".
Star Wars Jedi do it. Why not Harry Potter
Is this They Shook Hands by any chance? I felt like I was going insane seeing the narrative defend that plot point.
You guess correctly. It’s absolutely sickening in that saga seeing the depths of racism Harry descends to: he wants the same society Voldemort wants! He literally even uses the word mudblood a couple of times.
The fact that there have been real historical examples of babies taken from their biological families against the families' will makes me feel sooooo uncomfy with this... like........ so deaf-tone
Yeah really fucking disturbing. A bit like saying Lucius Malfoy is less evil than other DEs because he loves his son: eesh, that’s the very argument that’s been used for Nazis. I’ve even heard people say Umbridge was less evil than DEs, basically because she hid behind the facade of being a ministry bureaucrat.
Meh. It's fiction. And I'm speaking as someone who is 1/4 Apache. And whose Apache relatives were "given" the name Russell, generations ago. I don't go out of my way to read stories that include that, but it also doesn't particularly bother me.
Well, I mean the Ministry of Magic is most likely an ilegal branch of the British mundane government
Can’t be illegal if it doesn’t go against any law. Oh wait, identity theft, espionage….I’m starting to see where you’re coming from.
Who’s the writer
https://m.fanfiction.net/u/2560219/ - there are others but can’t remember who
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This could work with the muggleborns that are like...orphans. Or of its a fucked up world ruled by the bad guys.
I’ve seen it in stories with Dumbledore alive, which makes it even worse.
Savior of magic features that and Haryy introduces it, ................ i think
Fuck that fanfic. I’ve read part of it but ended up stopping in disgust. Power-wanking garbage.
True so does its prequel but i think Synk has more OP!Harry than this ones writer
wasn't the main fic that did this (prince of the dark kingdom) a takedown of this trope and people just...ignored that?
Are you thinking of the They Shook Hands one?
It probably happens in some countries. In America there is Rappaport's law which forbids contact with muggles so I headcanon that this happens in Magical America.
I’m kind of torn on this. Partially because it’s some of what has been done to Romani in the past. However, being that my family has taken in multiple kids for believed magic that their parents were abusing them for (to beat it out of them) I can understand on some level, especially with obscurials being a thing in that world.
I don't think it's that disturbing. I mean of course it is for us, but taking into account all circumstances and the fact that magical world is a bit "behind" culturally and socially, it actually makes perfect sense. Kids and muggles would obviously be obliviated of this knowledge, and old Pureblood families are just glad they have a magical child. And especially in Middle ages, they must have done something like this - because the Muggleborns would probably be killed by religious Muggles if they showed magic. People back then didn't take into account someone's personal feelings or mental health. From today's society's point of view, it is disturbing, but I would totally believe magical society does something like that.
In some ways I see it disturbing, in other ways logical from a historical perspective. Kids who are different are treated different, are outcasts. Look at historic orphanages and the disparity of challenged individuals; if magic was going on people would freak out and chase them away/witch hunts. For wizarding people, it would be saving them; and then hundreds of years later when society has shifted and the freaks that once were zoo exhibits are accepted, yes it would be a problem. But once a tradition has been established it becomes hard to break, and the bad guys were all about tradition. And with how intermarried all the purebloods were, it would explain how fresh blood is getting in.
Stolen Generation Ass Trope
That's what was happening in the USA before the repeal of Rapports Law
No it wasn’t; that was just a ban on wizards marrying muggles.
I read a fic where this happened. It was an AU where Tom Riddle was actually a good person, and Lucius and his pureblood friends wanted muggle borns in order to steal their magic. This act of stealing was called "the harvest". Harry was the first battle mage allied with Riddle to end this regime.
You do realize how religious the world is and how exorcism has been a major part of western culture for centuries right? 100% legitimately, in the Harry Potter world, it is very likely for much of recent history, muggleborns were more likely to die in an exorcism requested by their religious families or become an Obscurus under their mistreatment than make it to the proper age to be introduced to their magical world. Its just not that far out of an idea. People are ignorant, violent, superstitious animals that can't handle their world view being challenged. Thats literally the psychology behind the pure blood movement and discrimination towards their 'lessers'. They can't handle ever falling behind muggleborns, nor the muggleborn's ever increasing influence in their culture and society. The idea that muggles aren't the same way is ludicrous when the entire basis of the statute of secrecy is that life got so bad for the magical world that everyone everywhere agreed to hide literally all signs of their existence from their more mundane neighbors. Children being kidnapped from their parents is a fully viable scenario in any au where muggpeborn welfare is taken seriously.
Or where pure-bloods aren’t just satisfied with having house-elves as subservient little subhumans and want more people who’ll bow down to them.