In the potterverse, how do giants procreate with humans?

Question

Inspired by the specie-ism discussion in a recent question about Hagrid, how did Hagrid's parent and other mixed human/giant species manage to reproduce?

I am not sure of what the average giant dimensions are, but Hagrid's brother is massive enough to suggest some mechanical difficulties.

(And no, "the male is the small one" does not solve them either.)

Answer 1

If you're worried about whether Hagrid's father did it voluntarily, be assured that he did: Hagrid says in Goblet chapter 23:

‘Me dad was broken-hearted when she wen'.’

If you wanted to know about the technical details (eg. you want to replicate the feat), forget it. This is a question better left unasked for your own sanity. You don't want to learn about what some humans manage to have sex with IRL, and enjoy it.
Let me quote the flavor text of the Magic: the Gathering card "Distress" from Kamigawa.

"Today I asked Master Dosan what the ogre mages did with the humans they sacrificed. He gave me a hard look and said to think no more on the matter." —Meditation journal of young budoka

Just assume it was in-vitro fertilization.

Answer 2

I know a dog that was born of a german shepherd, but fathered by a chiuahua. Conversly, our puppy comes from a cross between a queensland and a cockapoo. Maybe size really doesn't matter as long as you know how to use the tool you have?

All that would be required for fertilization to occur would be that one of his "swimmers" found one of her eggs and penetrated through the cell wall and it really does only take one. The fact that his anatomy is the smaller of the two really makes that completely believable in terms of possibilities - she doesn't even have to have felt anything for fertilization to be successful.

However, biologically, usually animals from two different species have the wrong numbers of chromosomes to result in offspring. The fact that a giant and a human can inter-breed would indicate that either:

• We are actually of the same species but of vastly different sizes (as in the dog example I offered), and they simply over came the size differential either through magic using spells to make one or the other a different size, or the size differential didn't actually pose a problem for them.

or

• The two species can have an offspring, but that offspring will never successfully produce its own offspring (as in the case of mules which are bred from a horse and a donkey and always come out female and infertile. This kind of a result happens, but amongst animals is extremely rare - most of the time, cross species intercourse is quite literally fruitless.

So, my problem with this pairing is less about size issues (seriously, he was a wizard - he had magical options here - as listed by others) and more about the chromosomal difficulties in the match. It helps that niether Hagrid nor Madam Maxime went on to have children of their own in determining that perhaps the second option here is the case making it less of a "hole" if it ever was one.

In either case, I don't really believe the size differential actually poses a problem to inpregnation, though it may have created a problem in Hagrid's Mother's enjoyment of the process.

Answer 3

I have two solutions to your problem, hun.

• One: like my previous answerers, Engorgio.
• Two: the Swelling Solution. A potion which causes whatever it touches to swell in size; its three key ingredients (the only ingredients in it) are bat spleens, dried nettles, and puffer-fish eyes.

I got this from The Harry Potter Wiki.

Answer 4

I would like to propose a different theory, which I think is much simpler, and consistent to what we know about the wizard society. Maybe half giants are a rare type of giant who, quite ironically, suffer from the giant equivalent of dwarfism, and the notion that they must be the offspring of humans and giants is just a myth or misconception. People in the wizarding world seem to be very poorly informed about other magical species, and that led some of them to actually believe this. As half giants are so extremely scarce, it is hard to dispute this idea.

Meanwhile, giants are very proud of their size and strength, so, upon seeing how children with this uncommon condition would be outcasts in the community, probably killed or left to die, there were a couple of times when the occasional wizard envoy/researcher among them would end up adopting said children, who were not only smaller, but more prone to use magic.

Hagrid is very sweet and somewhat simpleminded, and it would be easy to convince him that a man could fall in love with a giantess, since he himself loves unusual creatures, in his own nonromantic way. Maybe his father was only “broken-hearted” to remember how a giantess abandoned her child, and would never tell him the truth. It is possible that when Hagrid was still a baby, he grew attached to the human, the only one around that would care for him, and never doubted that he was his father.

Madame Maxime, on the other hand, is much more intelligent and sophisticated. Well-informed people like her know that "half" is just a reference to their height (the same way Tyrion from Game of Thrones is sometimes called the Halfman), not their bloodlines. She is aware of why she is what she is, and struggled to try to pass as human because she does not want to be erroneously seem as “half” a person, neither is she willing to admit that, among giants, she is an undesirable figure. It simply has a different connotation to her, because, after all, she was not as naïve and spared the implications of her condition as Hagrid.

Answer 5

Why does everybody assume Hagrid's dad enlarged himself rather than have shrinked down Hagrid's mother into human size? I mean I'm sure there's a spell for that, or if ever may she took some shrinking potion daily like a brith control pill.