Hogsmeade

[Jim Ferer]

No: HPFGUIDX 2731

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Heather Edmonds" <Heather at h...> 
wrote:
> > Hermione says in PoA (Chapter5): "Hogsmeade is the only entirely
> non-Muggle settlement in Britain."
> >
> > This does not indicate it to be at all large. I think it is there 
to serve
> > the school (or at least the staff and students who want to get out
> > occasionally).
> 
> Point taken. However from the descriptions of the no. of shops etc
I 
would
> give it the status of a large village as opposed to a town and I 
still fail
> to see why it would be populated entirely by adult wizards. Not all 
of those
> shopkeepers can have been either single, childless couples or almost
> retirement age so where are the children. . . .

It's definitely a problem.  There are lots of problems about 
population in general and wizarding society.  There's been a 
controversy here about how many students there are at Hogwarts and 
what it implies for the wizarding population of the UK.  It appears
to 
some people that the wizarding birthrate has to be very low.

But back to Hogsmeade.  There's no reason at all that there aren't 
families there, with children, who need to be educated.  The answer 
just might be this: this series is about Harry's life, not about 
wizard society, and JKR has to condense a year of Harry's life into a 
few hundred pages.  She has to leave out more than she puts in. IOW, 
there might well be students from Hogsmeade and we just don't hear 
about it. It's not a critical detail.