Cedric-marcus-school leaving age / You Go, Porphyria! / More wizard schools

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

No: HPFGUIDX 34601


Muridae wrote:

> Do we know whether Cedric Diggory was a sixth or seventh year 
> student at the time of the TriWizard Tournament? 

Cedric was a fifth year in PoA: "Wood had pointed out Cedric Diggory 
to him in the corridor; Diggory was a fifth year and a lot bigger 
than Harry."

> Flint's repeated year probably means that he flunked either his 
> O.W.L.'s  or N.E.W.T.'s and had to resit that year rather than any
> other.

Hogwarts DOES have holding students back a year other than fifth or 
seventh: In PS/SS, Hermione scolds the boys that end-of-term exams 
are very important: they determine whether we get into second year. 
Personally, I believe that was JKR making a joke about education 
obsession, where even eight year olds are being told to do stuff 
because it will look good for university admission, rather than 
Hermione herself saying such an obsessive thing.

And the year that Marcus Flint repeated cannot have been fifth year, 
as he was a sixth year in PS/SS, either sixth or seventh in CoS, so 
as to be still around (as a seventh) in PoA. You could be right that 
he repeated seventh year in order to try again on the NEWTs.

> if some of the students did leave after the fifth year. Crabbe and
> Goyle aren't particularly bright, so Draco Malfoy might suddenly 
> find himself bereft of his two sidekicks.

I feel sure that Crabbe and Goyle will stay as long as Draco does, 
simply for the purpose of staying with him.

Porphyria wrote:

> I've been musing over Lupin's character for a little while and 
> thought this was as good a place as any to insert my comments.

This is a forbidden "So True!" reply to your entire post, and btw I 
love purple, I named the Prewetts Porphyry and Perpetua in my fic. 
While I'm at it, your defense of Snape was good, too.

Unc Mark wrote:

> Are we further to guess from the Triwizard Tournament that there
> are only 3 secondary schools worldwide?

In the early part of GoF, Ron tells Harry that Bill used to have a 
penpal at a wizarding school in Brazil, but when Bill couldn't afford 
to go on a school trip to Brazil to meet him (her?), he (she?) got 
angry and sent Bill a cursed hat that did something bad to his ears 
that I don't recall just now. [Incidentally, implying that the 
Weasleys already had money trouble when they had only two kids.] 
Personally, I believe that there are not only several more wizarding 
schools in Europe besides the prestigeous Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, 
but also more wizarding schools in the British Isles besides the 
prestigeous Hogwarts. Here's my reasoning:

I had already decided that there most be 1000 Hogswarts-age 
wizarding kids in the British Isles to maintain the population 
large enough to have all those wizarding businesses and Quidditch 
teams that JKR has mentioned, so I cheered JKR's statement that there 
were 1000 kids at Hogwarts. But the amount of evidence that there are 
250-300 kids at Hogwarts is so immense that it is very laborious to 
explain it all away. Yes, JKR inconveniently *did* say that Hogwarts 
is the only wizarding school in Britain. I very recently came up with 
a solution: all the wizarding schools in the British Isles (four 
schools, all the same size, Hogwarts-original in Scotland, the others 
probably one in Ireland one in England one maybe on Isle of Man, or 
three schools, one is Hogwarts-original, one the same size in 
Ireland, one large in England) are CAMPUSes or BRANCHes of Hogwarts, 
all under the Headmaster of Hogwarts, like the University of 
California has 9 campuses and only the original (UC Berkeley) is 
called Cal. So only the original school is CALLED Hogwarts and the 
others are CALLED from their location or something. But TECHNICALLY 
the statement that Hogwarts has 1000 student and is the only school 
is true, and description of Harry's Hogwarts campus is also true.