How many students at Hogwarts? (yes, again) (was: How do they know?)

[Ashfae]

No: HPFGUIDX 48163




> From: "behold_smiodan <behold_smiodan at yahoo.ca>" <behold_smiodan at yahoo.ca>
> 
> Just a thought, and I'm sorry if it already been discussed, but how do
> they know how many student there will be? I mean, from cannon we *know*
> (well we think we do....) that only 10 kids per house get admitted so,
> how do they know that exactly 40 students will be coming to Hogwarts and
> that exactly 10 of them will be in each house, 5 boys, 5 girls? What
> happens if 9 boys end up in Slytherin or 15 kids manage to make the
> Hufflepuffs any other house?

	Actually, all we know from canon is that ten students were
accepted into Gryffindor House during Harry's first year (and even that is
a bit of an estimation, as there *could* be more than two unnamed
Gryffindor girls along with Hermione, Parvati, and Lavender). There's no
reason to assume that that's a set limit on the number of students that
could be accepted. There's no way for anyone at Hogwarts to know which
first years are going to be in which houses until the Sorting Hat has had
its say; but given that it's a magical castle whose staircases rearrange
themselves, I imagine that they don't have to know far in advance in order 
to prepare. Magic makes some things very handy. 

	This is something that's often bothered me about the great "How
many students are there at Hogwarts?" argument. JKR's said in interviews
that there are about a thousand people at Hogwarts. But we know that
only five boys were sorted into Gryffindor during Harry's first year,
which leads us to assume that there were about forty first years (ten boys
and girls, four houses) sorted at that time, and therefore about two
hundred and eighty (forty kids per year times seven years) students at
Hogwarts altogether, which is significantly less than a thousand, yadda
yadda. So are there a thousand students at Hogwarts or three hundred? I
haven't seen this argument yet in here, but I'd be astonished if it's
never come up; I've run into it everywhere else.

	My problem is that we tend to use the number of male students in
Harry's year as a basis for further estimation, but it's entirely possible
that it's an unusual number. Perhaps there were just less people sorted
into Gryffindor during that particular year; where's the fuss? For all we
know there were thirty boys sorted into Gryffindor the previous year, or
twenty Ravenclaws and forty Hufflepuffs sorted into their respective
houses while only five boys were sorted into Gryffindor.  We don't have
all the information, and an estimation based on that one single fact is 
not likely to be accurate. 

	It's also entirely possible that the number of students at
Hogwarts in Harry's time is smaller than usual, given that a large number
of witches and wizards were killed during Voldemort's years of power,
which would lead to less children. Perhaps witches and wizards even
emigrated to other countries during that time; Voldemort certainly had a
lot of influence, as evidenced by Karkaroff at least, but his main sphere
of power and control seems to have been in Britain. I imagine a lot of
people fled the country to escape from him.

	Any other thoughts on this?

	Ashfae