Login

Witch Weekly · October 12, 2020 – 4:14 AM

Most families are unaware of their exact magical blood quotient unless they are established purebloods or have known muggle ancestors.

Adlard Family Will Die Out Within Three Generations, Scholar Announces
Many of our readers will have heard the rumor that Percival Adlard Jr., the Ministry official with an established reputation for being luckless in love, was recently engaged to Muggle schoolteacher Miss Jennings, of Irvingly. While it is certainly unusual for any witch or wizard to find themselves married to a Muggle, this is hardly the first time such a match has occurred. However, according to mathematician, arithmetician, and blood scientist Hallard Ludlow, this may be the most ill-fated match of such a pair in recent history.

It will come as no surprise to our readers that most academics believe magical prowess is tied to magical ancestry; if this were not the case, there would be just as many muggle-born witches and wizards as there were born to magical families, and a good deal more squibs in the world. Traditionally, this has been described in terms of blood, though the liquid running through one's veins is unlikely to be directly responsible. Pureblood, halfblood, and other terms are typically used in the metaphorical sense these days, though some do believe that blood itself is responsible (and subsequently will not accept the new medical technique, blood transfusions, unless the blood donor be of similar magical status). Blood quotient is a numerical way of describing the amount of magic present in someone's ancestry, and there are entire schools of academia dedicated to exploring how one's blood quotient determines magical ability.

"The blood isn't passed fifty-fifty from the parents, which makes it difficult to track through the family tree," Ludlow explained, pointing out sibling sets with mixes of magical and nonmagical members as evidence of this fact. "You might get most of your magic from your father's side, or your mother's — there's no way to know how it will shape out until you've grown and can demonstrate more or less magical ability." The wrong mix of blood might leave someone with too little magical blood to properly do magic, resulting in either a very weak spellcaster, or a squib.

Which is where Mr. Adlard comes in. Unfortunately, Mr. Adlard has never been particularly adept at the practical side of magic. A schoolmate described him as "rather unremarkable," and noted that his highest grades in exams were in History of Magic and Care of Magical Creatures, two subjects which require little, if any, wandwork. His career in the Ministry also relies more on physical exertion than magical exertion (and since his latest promotion, more paperwork than anything else). Ludlow estimates that Mr. Adlard's blood quotient might be "only marginally above that of a squib."

Miss Jennings, of course, will not be able to contribute much to their future children. While her magical siblings do work in her favor, implying that her magical blood quotient may be slightly higher than the average Muggle, she still has a very strong likelihood of giving birth either to squibs, or children with only weak magical ability.

The magical branch of the Adlard family, Mr. Ludlow determines, will have ceased to exist within three generations at most.

Theoretically, this situation could be saved if Mr. Adlard and Miss Jennings' children married into well-established magical families with strong spellcasters, but this seems terribly unlikely. Would Mr. Adlard, after having experienced his own turbulent romantic road to marriage, opt to arrange marriages for his children in order to keep magic within the family? And would any strong magical family allow it, knowing it would only doom their own children and grandchildren to a lackluster life with a capped magical potential? Given Mr. Adlard's own life experiences as someone with meager magical ability and his new match to a Muggle woman, he may not even think keeping magic in his family much of a priority. (We wonder if Percival Adlard Sr agrees!)

Get Featured in Witch Weekly! | Submit an article!

PMs on this account will not be checked.
Please contact a member of the Wench team for more information:
MJ | Lynn | Olive | Kit | Dante

Welcome to Charming

Issue #244 - Adlard Family Will Die Out Within Three Generations, Scholar Announces