Number of Students -- Best Character Entrances

[caliburncy at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 29421

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., raolin1 at h... wrote:
> So, is Harry's year just slim, or are there less students that get 
> sorted into Gryffindor (maybe less fill the personality 
> requirement??) or are there really only about 280 students at a
> given time?

The HP4GU essay on Hogwarts (link below) has a very large section 
devoted to the Great Debate on Number of Students at Hogwarts.  It 
won't really give you any concrete answers, but it will map out all 
the arguments and evidence for various estimates.  The only concrete 
answer we have, which many feel defies canon evidence and logic, is 
that JKR confirmed in a chat that there were about 1000 students at 
Hogwarts total.

http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon/faq/hogwarts.html

Happy reading!

**********

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Cindy C." <cindysphynx at h...> wrote:
> But the nifty thing about JKR is that she also knows when to 
> underplay an entrance.  Lupin is sleeping when we first meet him.  
> What better way to convey his reserved and unstated personality
> than to have him be . . . unconscious?

Yes, although I really enjoy the overdone drama of Moody's entrance 
into the Great Hall, I think Lupin would have to take my award for 
favorite entrance (and twice over at that).

What I mean by twice over is that in a way Lupin had two "entrances" 
(in truth he doesn't really "enter" anywhere) for me: one when the 
trio found him sleeping in the train compartment and the other when 
Harry recovers from the dementor and Lupin is standing there, now 
awake.  I count this last as a separate "entrance" of sorts because 
in the first case he still hadn't actually done anything to introduce 
us to his character.

And in fact, that enigmatic non-information (as opposed to the 
supplying of information to make Moody enigmatic) is why I love these 
two Lupin "entrances".  It's not just because I am a great Lupin 
proponent, because at this point I wasn't one yet, I didn't know 
anything about him.  It was marvelous.  Here's this professor 
sleeping on the train.  Is he nice or mean?  Is he a good guy or 
bad?  Is he really sleeping or just faking?  Why is he the only 
professor who has ever taken the train?  Is the fact that he's so 
poorly kept meant to emphasize him as someone who's indifferent and 
boring, or beyond material things, or poor and bitter?  Is the 
apparent frailty of his appearance an accurate representation of how 
easily he'll crumble (like what was done with Quirrel--a pushover) or 
is it intended to belie some other strength?

Those were roughly some of the questions going through my head when I 
first read POA, and the best part was that because JKR wasn't telling 
me anything, I knew I was grasping at straws.  But based on his 
placement on the train relatively early in the novel, it was clear 
there must be something important about him, so the guessing wasn't 
obnoxious, it was a heck of a lot of fun.

And then, when he's awake, I still didn't know what to make of him 
for a while.  He was so disarmingly nice that it was almost not 
trustworthy, specifically with the offer of chocolate and all that.

Basically, he took a little while to get a feel for that I was really 
confident I was correct about, and that's what was enjoyable.

-Luke