Hogwarts Hierarchy?

[Sarah Waggott]

No: HPFGUIDX 13447

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Rita Winston" <catlady at w...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., wings909 at a... wrote:
> > This has been bugging me for quite a while in regards to Prefects
> > and Head Boys and Girls.
> > 
> > How many Prefects can each house have?
> > Was Percy the only one for Gryffindor?
> > How are the Prefects chosen? Good grades, teachers vote?
> > According to my best guess, Percy was a Prefect in his fifth year,
> > so is year 5 the year that you can be chosen to be Prefect?
> 
>  
> However, discussion on this list has often sounded to me like most 
of 
> the people on this list think Hogwarts has six prefects per House --
 
> one boy and one girl from each of fifth, sixth, and seventh year. 

This seems like an awful lot ~ 24 prefects? If Hogwarts is (as many 
think) a small school, is this not too many? In a school of about 600 
we have 14 "pupil officers" ~ 10 prefects, head boy and girl and 
deputy head boy and girl. We have no sixth form so all are from fifth 
year. I was under the impression when I read the books that prefects 
were from fifth year and that the heads were ex-prefects in the 
seventh year. This leaves out the sixth years, so I'm not too sure 
whether this can be right.

>The 
> prefects are chosen by the faculty and list people seem to believe 
> that good grades must have something to do with it. 

Grades tend to have less bearing on this than characteristics like 
responsibility and of course the ability and willingness to take on 
extra duties. At our school, pupils in fifth year vote for the pupil 
officers then the teachers vote from a shortlist. This does not 
happen at Hogwarts because it would have probably been mentioned by 
now. I think that house rivalry may cause problems in fair voting, so 
perhaps the head of each house gives the names of a few students to 
Dumbledore to make the final decision. Head boy and girl would then 
be chosen from those who had made good prefects, I suppose.

Sarah