Keep in mind that for Muggle parents of wizards & witches, the Hogwarts letter might come as something of a relief.
Think about it: You’ve got this kid who you love, but you’re worried. Strange things are always happening to them, and you’re starting to suspect that this kid has these weird abilities to make the impossible happen. Is your kid a freak? What’s going to happen when they hit puberty?
Then the letter comes, and it’s a relief. “Oh, thank goodness! Little Susie’s just a witch. That explains EVERYTHING.”
Mom would be thrilled and it would kill her that she wouldn’t be able to brag to the Muggle parents of my friends. She’d also cry her eyes out before I jumped into Platform 9 3/4 and would send me care packages by owl once every few weeks.
Dad would say nothing, and his silence would be taken as quiet disapproval. But he would never think of trying to stop me from going.
Out of all the fantasy worlds I’ve read about in books, there isn’t another one I more wish was what the real world actually was like.
The boarding school aspect wouldn’t have bothered my mom much. I had started begging to go to boarding school when I was about 9, so she would’ve understood that. I ended up going to a completely non-magical boarding school for high school.
FWIW, in the UK it isn’t all that uncommon for kids to start boarding school when they are 11 or so. Harry and Dudley were both on their way before the Hogwarts letter arrived. In the US very few boarding schools start prior to 9th grade.
I think my parents might have been a TAD concerned it wasn’t a Catholic school (and my maternal grandmother would have had a stroke if they told her the nature of it - I think my grandfather would have taken it better (though not much, really)), and a touch confused about why it was a British school rather than a Canadian or even American one… But I’d have ended up taking a trip to Diagon Alley in the long run, probably.
Ah, I hadn’t even thought about that, kaylasdad99! That probably would have taken care of parents’ boarding worries, since Salem Witches Institute (Eastern campus) would be only a few minutes drive from our house.
