A Genetic Hypothesis on the Wizarding Spiritual Dimension

The compartment's sliding door opened, and the youngest red-haired child walked in.

"Can I sit here?" he asked cautiously, pointing at the empty seat opposite Harry. "Everywhere else is full."

"Sure, have a seat."

Ron sat down. Without his mischievous twins beside him to back him up, young Ron was still somewhat restrained when facing the legendary Harry Potter.

He glanced at Harry, then at Tierra, who was sitting beside Harry reading, before immediately turning his gaze toward the window and pretending not to look at Harry.

Harry noticed a very conspicuous patch of dirt on Ron's nose, like dried wall plaster made from a mixture of dust and cheese. Having grown used to Tierra always being neat and immaculate, the grime on Ron's nose was particularly glaring.

It made Harry want to reach over and wipe it off for him.

"Hey, Ron."

After saying goodbye to their mother and little sister, the Weasley Twins found Ron by following the compartments down the train.

"Listen, we're going to take a look around the middle carriages. Heard Jordan got his hands on a huge Bag Spider!"

"Oh," Ron mumbled, gripping the hem of his clothes tightly with both hands. He looked a little nervous.

"Harry, and Tierra!" said the other twin. "We haven't introduced ourselves yet, have we? I'm Fred, he's George, and this is our little brother, Ron Weasley. See you later."

With that, the Weasley Twins took off down the train corridor in a flurry.

"Goodbye," Harry and Ron replied politely, while Tierra sighed as he watched the twins leave.

Tragedy was the destruction of beautiful things for people to see.

Tierra thought silently to himself.

Then Tierra gently closed Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

"Hello, my name is Tierra Wu." Tierra held out his hand to Ron. "We'll be classmates from now on."

"Uh... yeah, I-I'm Ronald Weasley! You can call me Ron." Ron held out his hand as well.

"D-do you remember what Voldemort looked like?" After Tierra broke the awkward silence, Ron finally gathered the courage to ask the question he most wanted answered.

"I don't remember," Harry replied. If he did, he would not have reached the age of eleven without knowing he was a wizard.

"You don't remember anything at all?" Ron asked eagerly.

"Um... I only remember a lot of green light. I don't remember anything else."

"Oh!" Ron stared at Harry's forehead for quite some time before suddenly realizing that this seemed terribly rude. He hurriedly turned away to look out the window.

"Is your whole family made up of wizards?" Harry asked after realizing that he and Ron were both curious about each other.

"Oh, yeah, I suppose so," Ron said. "I think my mum has a distant cousin who's an accountant, but we never talk about him."

"An accountant?" Tierra immediately caught that detail.

It was the instinctive intuition of a biology nerd.

"So, one of your mother's relatives isn't a wizard?" Tierra asked.

"Um... I think so. That's what I've heard." Ron scratched his head.

"Were the parents of that accountant relative both wizards, or was one a wizard and one a Muggle? What about that relative's paternal grandparents? Were they both wizards too? Or did they have Muggle blood? And what about that relative's maternal grandparents?"

"Uh... honestly, I don't know the details... They're very distant relatives, and we hardly ever have any contact..." Ron was starting to feel dizzy from the questions. He had no idea why Tierra was digging so deeply into such trivial matters.

He could only silently label Tierra as a weirdo in his heart.

"Is that so..." Tierra looked a little disappointed. "What a pity."

To be honest, Tierra was extremely curious about the emergence of wizards.

Although Merlin's notes and the Necronomicon explained the origin of magic through a three-dimensional theory of matter, spirituality, and spirit.

The existence of Squibs, along with the phenomenon of Muggles with absolutely no wizarding blood suddenly producing wizard descendants—and the fact that Muggle-borns displayed heredity almost identical to pure-blood wizards—made Tierra keenly detect something genetic at work.

Tierra guessed that the existence of Squibs was most likely a form of genetic masking.

According to supplementary Harry Potter settings from Rowling that Tierra had learned about in his previous life, there were only a little over eight thousand wizards in all of Britain. Combined with the pure-blood ideology that some wizards still clung to, marriages between close relatives should have been rather common among wizards.

And judging from Neville's experience—namely, that he had shown no obvious magical talent as a child until his uncle accidentally dropped him down the stairs—as well as the existence of Obscuruses, if magical talent, or Spiritual Dimension coordinates, really were determined by genes, then the expression of those genes was heavily influenced by the environment. That suggested they were likely quantitative trait genes.

From a genetic perspective, inbreeding increased homozygous or identical genes, which helped quantitative genes accumulate. Just as selectively breeding hybrid rice for desired quantitative traits often required several generations of self-pollination.

And the accumulation of such quantitative genes would eventually cause a certain type of quantitative gene to be overexpressed, masking or suppressing the expression of its allelic gene.

Perhaps that was why Squibs appeared.

Squibs were also three-dimensional beings and could see spiritual creatures like Dementors. Assuming that possessing coordinates in the Spiritual Dimension was the result of gene expression, then the reasonable explanation for Squibs was that the gene responsible for Spiritual Dimension coordinates was overexpressed, completely masking the allelic gene responsible for expressing the trait that allowed one to use magic.

Hmm... Tierra nodded silently. This was all merely speculation, lacking evidence.

If the parents of Ron's distant relative were both pure-blood wizards, and there was no record of Muggle intermarriage in their ancestry, then that might serve as powerful evidence for his hypothesis.

But final confirmation would still require rigorous experiments to prove it.

Unfortunately, he had ideas but no corresponding experimental facilities... and he lacked experimental subjects.

Otherwise, if this experiment could be carried out, it would at least be a Nobel Prize-level discovery.

It would reveal another possible branch of human evolution.

Tierra suddenly realized that the Wizarding World was a vast subject of study, not limited merely to genetics. There were also the physical and chemical principles of magic, Transfiguration, and the biological principles of Animagi.

And beyond that, research into wizard psychology, social structures, and Gringotts' financial system alone could allow large numbers of humanities researchers to apply for countless projects and grants.

Hmm... it would be better not to conduct overly excessive research for the time being.

Although he was in the Magical World of Harry Potter.

Earth's seemingly simple and orderly Magical World occupied only an insignificant part of the vast, disorderly universe.

Most of the universe beyond Earth followed rules that were mad and chaotic.

The knowledge corresponding to those cosmic laws could bring dangers capable of driving people insane.

But that was not a reason for Tierra to stop here.

Science and technology were the primary productive forces.

That was an eternal truth.

One only had to look at the wizards of this world to see it.

Their prolonged stagnation and complacency in magical research had turned these wizards, who had once created countless glorious legends, step by step from gods and legends revered in ancient times into pitiful creatures who could only hide away in remote wildernesses.

Let me explain this for the cuties who aren't biology majors.

Quantitative trait genes are traits jointly controlled by two or more allelic genes.

They mainly have the following characteristics:

① Differences between individuals are difficult to describe and require measurement;

② Within a population, variation is continuous;

③ Quantitative traits are often controlled by multiple genes;

④ Quantitative traits are sensitive to environmental influences.

Most traits in living organisms are controlled by quantitative genes. For example, flower color in wildflowers: the offspring of a red flower and a white flower will not be distributed in complete, strict accordance with Mendelian inheritance law. Besides white and red flowers resembling the parents, there will also be pink and light-red flowers in varying degrees and quantities.

Human genes for hair loss are also controlled by quantitative trait genes, and individuals carrying hair-loss genes are easily influenced by their external environment.

For example, foods high in oil and salt, staying up late, irregular routines, and even the climate.