Number of students

[Steve Vander Ark]

No: HPFGUIDX 7990


> 
> I said this before, but I have a hard time with very low numbers 
for 
> the Hogwarts student body.  The evidence is conflicting in many 
areas. 
> We have the 20 student joint classes and the small dorms on one 
side, 
> and the huge castle and seating for 1200 at the Yule Ball on the 
> other.

Another thing...when they play Quidditch, the stands are said to be 
full of fans. I know we've talked about this already, but just think 
about it...there HAS to be more than 300 kids there for the stands to 
be anything close to "full." Three hundred people would never look 
like much of a crowd in a sports stadium. It doesn't look like much 
of a crowd in my theater, for that matter, and stadiums hold more 
than theaters.

But then there HAS to be more teachers. Take Snape for example. 
Suppose he's teaching Potions to every level, double classes. That 
means that he teaches two first year, two second year, etc. for a 
total of fourteen classes a week. Because they're long--an hour and a 
half--that would fill the week with time for a few lab classes with 
upper level kids who are specializing in Potions. But that would only 
give them one class a week. That doesnt' work. Logically, classes 
would meet at least twice a week, and there are plenty of examples in 
the books of this. 

What about Charms? Two or three classes a week per house per level? 
That's 28 classes a week if it's once a week, 56 if it's twice a 
week, etc. That's not possible for poor old Flitwick, I'm thinking. 
That's a bit much in a five-day week with Friday afternoon off, which 
is the Hogwarts schedule. And that's with the low number of students, 
in the range of about 300 kids. Add kids and you add classes. A 
thousand kids? You'd need a staff of three or four times what we've 
seen so far, maybe more.

Here's an interesting point, though. When I first read SS/PS, I 
imagined a large student body, maybe 700-1000 kids. I have no idea 
what gave me that impression. It wasn't anything I worked out or 
spotted evidence of. I just got that idea from the way the place 
sounded to me. I think that's the same thing that happened with Jo. 
She just imagined it that way but didn't logic it all out. Then she 
wrote details without thinking it through, but her overall picture, 
the way she just describes the world Harry and his friends live in, 
came through in her writing as being fairly large. We're trying to 
fit those two views together, the general impressions and the 
details, and they frankly don't fit. So we're stuck with taking at 
face value her comment of a thousand students and wait to see if she 
starts introducing new characters etc. in the next book to smooth it 
over. I'll bet she will. All of a sudden there will be some little 
comment about Harry seeing "all forty-eight teachers singing the 
school song together except McGonagall, who was trying to play the 
bagpipes, and Snape, who was hexing them so no sound came out" 
and "that huge class of Ravenclaw fifth years, the one with 96 kids 
in it, using up the hot water for the umpteenth time..."

Steve Vander Ark
The Harry Potter Lexicon
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon