How many students go to Hogwarts?

[vjmerri]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C6174
From: vjmerri
Subject: Re: How many students go to Hogwarts?
Reply To: [Yahoo! #6099] Re: How many students go to Hogwarts?
Date: 8/8/00 12:17 am  (ET)

Catlady, deciding on pure speculation that there are 800 to 1000 students
at Hogwarts.


Me:

And this would be based on . . . ??? what, what you want it be? It makes
no sense. There is not one shred of evidence in JKR's books to support
the contention that there are that many students. We have nothing to go
on EXCEPT what JKR put in the books but for some reason you are creating
your own fictional numbers based on complete supposition. Inventing
your own statistics without even a sentence or two from JKR to support
your theories makes no sense to me. You are inventing your own world,
not describing JKR's world.

 Now right now we truly do NOT know how many students there are. JKR has
 NEVER mentioned that there is a second group of Griffindor boys. She
 also has not mentioned that there is NOT, but still, she has mentioned
 many students, at least in passing, but always only made reference to
 Seamus, Dean, Ron etc. The only Griffindor girls of that year that she
 has mentioned are Hermione, Lavender and Brown.

If we even speculate with no support whatsoever from JKR that there is
a second room of girls & boys, that still only raises the total school
to 560, and that is doubling the number of students that JKR has thus
far stated are in her classes.

Now we do know that some classes are taught together. Your hypothesis
requires Professors Snape and Sprout to be dealing with 60 to 80 students
at a time for hands on experience. I truly do NOT think that is very
likely, especially when there is no evidence in JKR's books. A teacher
simply can't do lab work very well with that many students.

The only information that goes in a FAQ is that which is directly
derivable (even if disputed)from the Harry Potter books, but to
say "when JKR was making a novel out of the historical facts" is to
basically replace her Harry Potter world with "The world according to
Cat Lady." That's fine for fan fiction, and I enjoy fan fiction, but it
surely does not belong in a FAQ.

Vicki