Pure-blood

"*The term 'pure-blood' refers to a family or individual without Muggle (non-magic) blood. The concept is generally associated with Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, whose aversion to teaching anybody of Muggle parentage eventually led to a breach with his three fellow founders, and his resignation from the school.*"
— Where the term 'pure-blood' originated from[src]

**Pure-blood** was the term for wizarding families who claimed to have no Muggles, Squibs, Muggle-borns, or half-bloods in their family tree; however, when traced back far enough, nearly every family tree had a few non-magical ancestors. Most wizards and witches considered an individual to be a pure-blood if his or her parents and grandparents were not Muggles or Muggle-born.

By 1995, the number of pure-blood families were declining. Most pure-blood families were related by then in an effort, by some, to retain their status by marrying only other pure-blood families, but it had eventually led to inbreeding. While some families, such as the Malfoys, had allowed for marrying half-bloods, many others such as the Gaunts, Blacks, and Lestranges, required their family to only marry pure-blood individuals, or those with no Muggle, Muggle-born, or Squib ancestors, in order to maintain their “pure” bloodline. This refusal of marrying Muggles or Muggle-borns had led to difficulty in propagating their families.

## Overview

"*The pure-blood families are all interrelated. If you’re only going to let your sons and daughters marry pure-bloods, your choice is very limited; there are hardly any of us left.*"
— Sirius Black's overview of blood purity[src]

Pure-blood individuals were people who had no Muggles or Muggle-borns as parents or grandparents. Traditionalist pure-bloods liked to keep the generations "pure" by breeding with other pure-bloods and were generally the ones who used the term "Mudblood", a term considered highly derogatory by the wizarding world. Families of pure-blood status often avoided marrying their heirs off to Muggles, Squibs, Muggle-Borns, and half-bloods, believing that the next generation could lose their capability to perform magic. Mudblood itself was a term suggesting that Muggle-borns had “dirty” blood and were a big disgrace to the wizarding world and thus had no right to be a witch/wizard. Pure-bloods who did not share these prejudices were considered "blood traitors" by the ones that do.

In the 1930s, a wizard, commonly believed to be Cantankerus Nott, wrote the *Pure-Blood Directory* featuring twenty-eight families he believed to be truly pure-blooded, though many objected to this designation.

## Maintaining "purity"

"*So-called pure-blood families maintain their alleged purity by disowning, banishing, or lying about Muggles or Muggle-borns on their family trees. Then they attempt to foist their hypocrisy upon the rest of us by asking us to ban works dealing with the truths they deny. There is not a witch or wizard in existence whose blood has not mingled with that of Muggles...*"
— Pure-blood wizards are not so pure[src]

Some pure-blood families could trace their pure-blood status through many generations of magical ancestors and deny ever having any nonmagical ancestors within the family, such as the House of Black, the motto of which is "Toujours pur", meaning "Always (or Still) Pure". However, the truth is that if they ever did exist in the past, true pure-blood wizards and witches did not exist in the present day, as Squibs and Muggle-borns were too common. These pure-blood families simply erased all Muggles, Squibs, and Muggle-borns from their family trees.

Half-bloods who considered blood purity very important also hid their Muggle ancestry, clinging to the magical heritage they did have. Many Death Eaters were believed to have done this, and their leader himself took on the name Lord Voldemort out of a desire to not keep the name of his "*filthy Muggle father*". It is likely that Voldemort told his followers he was a pure-blood, or that most of the Death Eaters knew better than to question his blood status, given the reaction of Bellatrix Lestrange to Harry's "accusation" that he was in fact a half-blood.

Many pure-blood families, such as the Blacks and Gaunts, practised marrying cousins in order to maintain their pure-blood status, and disowned any members who married someone who was not a pure-blood. This practice had been known to cause problems as families often became inbred because of this; for example, the Gaunts showed signs of violent tendencies, mental instability, and being enfeebled. The number of pure-bloods had diminished over time because of said inbreeding.

## Attitude

"*I really don't think they should let the other sort in, do you? They’re just not the same, they've never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families.*"
— Draco Malfoy's prejudice concerning Muggle-borns[src]

Some pure-bloods regarded themselves as superior to those witches and wizards who were born to Muggles and half-bloods. They believed that Muggles were just little more than animals and that Muggle-borns, whom they derisively called "Mudbloods", were second-class citizens, inferior and unworthy of being allowed to practise magic. Many also discriminated against half-breeds, giants, werewolves and magical creatures.

Salazar Slytherin believed that only pure-bloods should be allowed to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and be educated in magic; this was the cause of his conflict with the other Founders and his leaving the school. However, he left behind the Chamber of Secrets in the hope that one day his heir would open the Chamber and release the basilisk within to target Muggle-born students. Tom Riddle was this heir, and the basilisk petrified several Muggle-born students in 1943 and the 1992–1993 school year and managed to kill one student, Myrtle Warren, in 1943.

Riddle, later known as Lord Voldemort, continued his persecution of those who were not pure-bloods (ironically being a half-blood himself) with his followers, the Death Eaters. They strove to place pure-bloods in control of the wizarding world and to eventually rid it of Muggle-borns entirely. When Voldemort succeeded in taking over the Ministry of Magic during the height of the Second Wizarding War, his followers created the Muggle-Born Registration Commission in order to weed Muggle-borns out of the population and send them to Azkaban for allegedly stealing magic. Pure-bloods were also blatantly favoured within the Ministry and, to a lesser extent, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, although half-blood was sufficient to avoid prosecution.

However, there were pure-bloods who did not have these beliefs, and instead treated all magical people and Muggles as equals. These pure-blood folk were often labelled "blood traitors" by the more bigoted pure-bloods. There were also a few pure-bloods who were still fanatical, but were more lax about marriages and allowed their family members to marry Half-Bloods, for example the Malfoys.

## Known pure-blood families

### Possible pure-bloods

Due to their affiliation to Slytherin and Lord Voldemort, many wizards and witches might be considered pure-bloods. Others had openly expressed their prejudice toward half-bloods and Muggle-borns, which is another reason to believe they were pure-blood supremacists. Some even became Death Eaters.

## See also

* Blood purity
* Death Eaters

## Behind the scenes

* On J. K. Rowling's draft list of students in Harry Potter's class, the following students were mentioned as pure-bloods:
	+ Lavender Brown
	+ Stephen Cornfoot
	+ Isobel MacDougal (Possibly a precursor to Morag McDougal)
	+ Morag MacDougal
* Coincidentally, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley are all the three types of wizards; Harry being a half-blood, Hermione being Muggle-born, and Ron being a pure-blood.
* Many characters mention throughout the series that blood purity doesn't matter, often using Hermione Granger in comparison to Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom as an example. Ron had long struggled with living in the shadows of how much better students his older brothers were, and often would not try if he felt the situation was out of his control or too difficult, preferring to goof off or play with Chocolate Frog cards (though he did ultimately emerge as a capable student and wizard in his own right). Similarly, despite Neville's pure-blood heritage, he was not initially an extremely talented wizard and also suffered from a lack of confidence, two things which made him a target for ridicule and difficulty, particularly from Professor Snape (but like Ron in his later life he better grasped his full potential). However, Hermione, by contrast, is a supremely gifted witch despite her Muggle-born status and, unlike Ron and Neville, performed very well right from the beginning.
	+ Likewise, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle were both often thuggishly stupid and gave poor academic performances in spite of their Pure-Blood status, and Harry's mother Lily was one of her teachers', Horace Slughorn's, all-time favourite students, performing exceptionally well in his and other classes.
* The *Harry Potter* Glossary at Scholastic's official website lists the term "Trueblood" as "Someone born to pure magical parents." This term, however, is not known to have appeared in any official *Harry Potter* media. The nuance with "pureblood" may be that while the child of a half-blood and a pureblood counts as a pureblood, a trueblood can only be the child of two purebloods. That is however unconfirmed.
* The concept of pure-blood is also similar to the real-life situation of nearly all European royal families being related, especially the British and (now extinct) German monarchies. Royals were only allowed to marry another member of the aristocracy, so most of the families were interrelated through marriage. Similarly, the issue of in-breeding is something that ravaged many real life European royal lines.
	+ Likewise, the concept of blood purity, and how if one goes back far enough it is clear there is no such thing, is strongly analogous to real life racial purity attitudes such as those held by White Supremacists and the Nazis (the latter of whom J.K. Rowling explicitly compared to the Death Eaters, as seen below), but also how it is theorised all human being's ancestry can be traced back to Africa (and specifically Ethiopia), thus precluding the idea that "wholly white" lineages could have ever existed.

### Author's comments

On the subject of blood purity, J. K. Rowling has said the following:

> *The expressions 'pure-blood', 'half-blood', and 'Muggle-born' have been coined by people to whom these distinctions matter, and express their originators' prejudice. As far as somebody like Lucius Malfoy is concerned, for instance, a Muggle-born is as 'bad' as a Muggle. Therefore Harry would be considered only 'half' wizard, because of his maternal grandparents. If you think this is far-fetched, look at some of the real charts the Nazis used to show what constituted 'Aryan' or 'Jewish' blood...the Nazis used precisely the same warped logic as the Death Eaters. A single Jewish grandparent 'polluted' the blood, according to their propaganda.*
>
>

This statement indicates that all of a wizard or witch's grandparents must have magical heritage — i.e. that he or she cannot have a single Muggle or Muggle-born grandparent — in order for him or her to be considered pure-blood. The detailed and lengthy family trees maintained by pure-blood families such as the House of Black maintained a record of all the pure-bloods born and married into the family (as well documenting those who were blasted off to maintain the family's sense of purity).