Unmarked spoilers ahead. You have been warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- The people who would kill their squib children after getting a magically-strong grandchild knee-capped themselves in the long run because they still only have one grandchild. Instead of having the squib child sire back-up kids, they hate squibs so much they are killed at the first opportunity. This has Reality Subtext in China and their troubles with the One-Child Policy, in particular because Chinese culture favors male children (being a patriarchal culture). The result was that many baby girls were being aborted/abandoned at the first opportunity, so people could try for boys. As a result, modern-day China has demographic issues such as a population heavily skewed towards males (read: they don't have enough women). For this reason, China has tried relaxing the one-child policy several times since 2010:
- First, in 2014, most Chinese provinces began allowing couples in which at least one of the spouses was an only child to have two children.
- The nationwide limit was increased to two children in 2016. In the same year, the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, which was badly hit by the transition to a quasi-market economy, allowed couples in 18 of its cities to have three children.
- The nationwide limit was increased to a maximum of three children which was adopted nationwide in May 2021, after seeing births plummet by 15% in 2020 alone (although this was partially due to COVID-19 economic dislocations).
- The very next month (July 2021), it was reported that Chinese authorities are considering scrapping all restrictions on birth rates, starting in the country's more depressed regions with the new policy to be implemented nationwide by 2025.
- Future British Muggleborns are going to have it made since they will be taken to a magical, tropical island paradise in the Light side version of Hogwarts.
- How'd Harry get the Heart of Hogwarts to recognize him as a descendant of Slytherin? He has a piece of Voldemort's soul in him, as revealed in Deathly Hallows, and Voldemort is Slytherin's last living descendant.
- Alternately, Harry might have been able to claim the inheritance by "right of conquest", having beaten Voldemort in battle at least three times before — disembodying him as an infant, forcing his soul fragment out of Quirrell at age 11, and killing the diary Horcrux with a Basilisk fang at age 12.
- If Leonidas really is a Light wizard, then his detailed speculation about Harry's ultimate endgame for magical Britain may come from Harry himself or one of his allies revealing that to Leonidas. They could have potentially met during Leonidas's efforts to smuggle squibs out of Voldemort's reach.
- An early hint that Lucius is a Retired Monster rather than The Atoner is how he never even considers the easy escape route of deliberately interacting with the muggle world and losing his magic, which would make him untouchable to Voldemort. Lucius would rather live in a thoroughly miserable Pureblood regime than escape that life as a muggle (although all that magic and the society that comes with it is a lot to give up).
- There's another out besides that: just admit that the Death Eaters and blood purity are wrong. He could make a formal request to speak with whoever the lead Light official will be at the Parley at Stonehenge and then, while there, make a formal acknowledgment and apology that the Malfoys completely renounce their participation in the Death Eaters and are willing to do ANYTHING to correct this mistake. Like the above mentioned, Lucius would rather suffer than admit that he isn't inherently superior.
Fridge Horror
- Unless they have the money and fertility to remarry and birth/sire new children, any single child families would be utterly screwed if their child is killed before they have their own children. Look at the real life concept of shīdú (失獨/失独), the bereavement of losing your only child in modern Chinese culture. Lucius Malfoy shows elites get around this by having concubines, but for the middle and working classes Death Eaters? Their adult child dies, and they are left with the emotional and societal consequences. Plus, with Voldemort happily torturing anyone in his vicinity when he's bored, people would have to live with the constant paranoia that one wrong move means their kid might die.
- The families of the muggle-born witches and wizards who are taken from Britain each year risk either never seeing their kids again or having to leave everything behind and move to a different country (albeit one with a good quality of living) because of an ancient war they had no idea existed until their children were born.
