The Scale of Things

[jferer]

No: HPFGUIDX 43334

Grey Wolf, describing Catlady's Multiple Campus Theory:"So, I think 
it's time to bring back a theory of a fellow listee that adresses 
this problem quite satisfactorily: Catlady_de_los_Angeles is the 
author of the theory, which I normally call "Multiple Campus Hogwarts
As you've probably guessed, the theory says that Hogwarts School of 
 Witchcraft and Wizardry is divided on a number of campuses and 
hidden in diverse places all over Britatin. This division makes 
sense, since a big concentration of magic and wizards at one point 
always causes trouble, and is easier to hide (say) four small schools 
than one big one. At this point, people against the theory point out 
that the place Harry goes to is designated as *the* Hogawarts, but 
this is no big deal: in my experience, the main campus is always 
refered to with the name of the whole school, while the other 
campuses receive lesser names."

The problem with this theory is there is no, absolutely no, evidence 
for it whatsoever - quite the contrary.  I don't think it's credible 
that we would have heard nothing of these campuses before.  JKR has 
stated that Hogwarts is the only wizarding school in Britain; to 
stretch that into allowing multiple campuses is just like saying that 
the University of California [system] is one school.

On the one hand, we're saying here that JKR's own pronouncement that 
there are 1,000 students at Hogwarts "contradicts canon," largely 
because JKR hasn't mentioned other students in Harry's year. We're 
taking that as proof more students can't possibly exist, but we're 
willing to believe in entire campuses that JKR hasn't seen fit to 
mention or suggest.

Several of us have, using different approaches, extrapolated the 
1,000 student figure into a possible 20,000 wizard population for 
Britian. That's enough, but barely, to support a kind of wizard 
society. That we each got to approximately the same place in 
different ways makes the 20,000 figure more credible.

JKR is the creator and ruling deity of the Harry Potter Universe. If 
she says there's 1,000 students, then there's 1,000 students. I think 
that creates a lot of problems for imagining a viable wizarding 
society, but there it is.  We have to stretch that 20,000 population, 
if that's how many wizards there are, to a large bureaucracy (MOM), 
industry (Everything from Bertie Bott's to Firebolts), arts, 
literature, entertainment, academia and sports. Everybody must have 
two jobs or something.  

What I know is that I can't explain it all, since I'm not willing to 
totally make stuff up.  We have to work with what we can find in or 
reasonablly extrapolate from canon.