House Size

[Jim Ferer]

No: HPFGUIDX 26138

Eric:"I've always thought that the reason we only see a few 
Gryffindors, a few Slytherins, and so on is because the houses are 
divided further than just by year.  It's possible that students of 
roughly the same talent-level are grouped together, or they just have 
quite a few rooms for each year's intake of students, and you go to 
classes not just by houses but by your room."

Intriguing, but there's no evidence for it in canon, and JKR's wording 
always seems to indicate that the five in Harry's room represent all 
of Gryffindor for the year. I concede that JKR doesn't come out and 
*say* so.

OTOH, it doesn't seem incredible that there could be more Hufflepuffs 
and Ravenclaws than Gryffindors and Slytherins. You can imply evidence 
that Gryffindor and Slytherin are elite  - they're the bravest or most 
ruthless - and they pass the House Cup back and forth between the two, 
it seems. Cedric was going to bring Hufflepuff the kind of glory it 
hadn't had in years. 

Besides, it seems reasonable that there's a lot more people in this 
world who do the work (Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs) than get the glory 
(Gryffindors) or at least the notoriety (Slytherins). (Starting to 
sound like _Brave New World_, doesn't it? 'I'm so glad I'm a Beta...')

Of course, there isn't one shred of evidence for this hypothesis.

Eric:"I'm quite sure that had HP and his pals been at the site of the 
WTC attack, they'd have been pulling people out of the windows the 
firemen couldn't reach and getting them to the ground via 
broomstick...and the devil take the risk of Azkaban.  For somebody as 
nice as they are, the knowledge that they could have done something, 
but didn't because of some fiddling wizard law, would have been worse 
torment than anything a dementor could ever have done."

I've always been interested in what would happen if our world found 
out that the wizard world was real, and I see problems. What you said 
touches on the problem. I fear that if we did find out wizards were 
real, there would be rapidly growning jealousy and resentment for 
everything in the world the wizards could have "fixed" but didn't. 

The next step would be that people would think wizards were running 
the world behind the scenes to suit themselves. An awful lot of people 
look for the invisible puppeteers messing up their lives, whether 
they're members of the Tripartite Commission or the UN, or flying 
black helicopters. Eventually violence against wizards would begin.

The wizards made the right decision to stay secret.