How many students go to Hogwarts?

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C6099
From: catlady_de_los_angeles
Subject: Re: How many students go to Hogwarts?
Reply To: [Yahoo! #6082] How many students go to Hogwarts?
Date: 8/7/00 8:01 pm  (ET)

> I've long been perplexed by the question of how many students there
actually are at Hogwarts.

When the FAQ project is completed, there will DEFINITELY be a long
section on this question. In my opinion there are approximately 120-150
students in each year for a total student body between 800 and 1000. I
believe that Hogwarts is the only wizarding school for all of Britain
and Ireland (I had believed that Ireland had its own wizarding school
until JKR said otherwise in an interview). I believe that wizards
have an average lifespan of 100 years (rather than the Muggle 75)
[altho' that average was probably lowered by V's massacres]. If 120-150
wizard children were born each year times lifespan 100 years, the total
wizarding population of Britain and Ireland would be 12,000 to 15,000,
which sounds about right. Also, a large portion of the population would
be old people (in their wizarding prime), which explains why so *many*
wizards have long white beards.

There are five boys in Harry's dormitory but that is not all the
Gryffindor boys of his year: there are more than one dormitory for
House/year/gender, but max of six people per dorm. The Sorting Hat,
having looked inside each student's head, decides whom they should room
with, and notifies the rooms in their House, which magically arrange
themselves to have the right number of beds and a sign on the doors with
the occupants' names.

The fictional Hogwarts has only 280 students, average of 5 boys and 5
girls per House per year, because when JKR was making a novel out of the
historical facts, she thought it would be too confusing to have so many
characters. No doubt some of the characters are really a combination of
several real people who each played a minor part in Harry's saga.