Harry and the Phoenix

[grey_wolf_c]

No: HPFGUIDX 43540

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "doffy99" <doffy99 at y...> wrote:
> 
> I wrote:
> > > Why is this unlikely? Has there ever been mention, I don't 
> remember 
> > > it if there was, of how many wizards were killed during 
> Voldemorts 
> > > last reign of terror? Could he not been purposely going AFTER the 
> > > Heir of Gryffindor? Maybe James and Harry Potter were the last 
> ones? 
> > > Maybe he had killed all the others.
> > > 
> > > -Jeff
> 
> 
> Grey Wolf Wrote:
> > It's unlikely because "descendent" is a very generic term. To put 
> it 
> > mathematically: if Godric had two sons, and they had two sons each, 
> > etc., there would be in our days 2^40 descendants of Godric 
> Gryffindor 
> > (that's 1 million million, a thousand billion (trillion?), for 
> > Americans). It's not such a stretch of the mind that they had two 
> sons 
> > each; in fact, the average number of sons is probably bigger. 
> > Obviously, there aren't that many people in the WW (or the world, 
> for 
> > that matter), but that is because some die childless, others leave 
> the 
> > country, and others simply don't make it. However, the fact is that 
> > "descendency" is a very general concept, and after 40 generations, 
> > almost everyone in the country could be a theorical descendant of 
> > Gryffindor.
> > 
> > If Voldemort was going for descendents, he would've had to 
> eliminate 
> > everyone. Besides, after 40 generations it's normally very 
> difficult to 
> > know exactly who is a dscendant and who isn't.
> > 
> > Hope that helps,
> > 
> > Grey Wolf
> 
> There's a flaw in this theory somewhere. I'm not a good enough 
> mathematician to see it, but there is. My quess is, that it's in the 
> assumptions we have to make to get to this point:
> 
> 1) That JKR will stand by her statement that there are only 1000 
> students at Hogwarts. It's never said in the books.
> 2) That this "1000" Statmement is enough information to base a guess 
> on the population of the wizarding world in Great Britan.
> 3) That Hogwarts is the ONLY school, teaching magic of any kind, 
> anywhere in England. We know it's the only "School of Witchcraft and 
> Wizardry" in England, but is it the only school you can go to to 
> learn magic? Are there Vocational Schools? Junior Colleges? Whatever.
> (Random thought: Is there a difference, in the WW of HP, between 
> knowing magic and being a wizard or a witch? Where does a hag come 
> in? Is it possible that there are different classifications depending 
> on how gifted someone is in the magical arts?)
> 4) That Wizards reproduce at the same rate, or near the same rate, as 
> muggles in the real world.
> 
> We don't know for a fact any of these. 

I'm not sure were you want to go with this. There is, of course, a flaw 
in the fact that there aren't 1 million million people in the whole 
England, much less in the WW, so that cannot be the number of 
descendents of Gryffindar anyway. That, however, is a simple number to 
show you just how many they can be. Reality is different. I am 
assuming, for example, that every son finds a person from a family NOT 
related to Gryffindor to marry. After ten generations at the (slow) 
rate I've suposed (2 offspring), this ceases to be probable 
(probability < 0.5), since we're talking at that point of 2^10 (1024) 
people of the same generation belonging to 512 different families, 
whaih are related by close blood to only 256 of the other heirs, which 
leaves 768 other descendants to choose from. By the time 30 generations 
have passed, the gryffindor descendants would number (aproximately) 
1000 million, but this is again impossible, simply because there aren't 
enough people belonging to other families to make it possible. At some 
point, all the families would belong to Griffyndor descendants, and 
would stop growing in number.

What DOES happen, then? It's easier to look at it from my perspective: 
In my country, a married woman has always kept her surnames, instead of 
taking the ones of her husband. Their children receive all the surnames 
of both parents, intercalating one from each (starting with the 
father's). Which means that, if HP was happening in my country, all the 
descendants would have the surname "Gryffindor" sooner or later, in the 
list of surnames. To put forward a case I know best: my own name has 
(aproximately) 2^34 surnames (16000 million surnames). Needless to say, 
there *aren't* 16000 million possible surnames in my country (or, in 
fact in the whole world, I'd say), so most of them are surely repeated. 
This is because, after a set number of generations, bloodlines are 
distant enough to interbreed without problems, which means that I am 
descendant of the same people through several different lines. I am not 
a sociologist, but I know that there is some point were the probability 
of being a descendent of any given person is very big, especially if 
there are many generations between them and you, regardless of the 
number of people in the country, and circunstances like social class, 
money, etc. (I don't, however, know where that point is. I'd say 
someplace between 20 and 30 generations, but it's a guess).
 
> Although we do have canon. With few exceptions, the Patil's, the 
> Weasley's and the Creevy's, we know that very few Hogwart's students 
> have brothers or sisters. We know bloodlines are important to some 
> families. Perhaps, in order to keep the bloodlines as pure as 
> possible, it has become a tradition of some sort to have only one 
> child. This could go back generations. Also, the larger the 
> population, the harder it is to hide! Another good reason to keep 
> families small. A tradition that goes back 100's of years. It would 
> limit the number of hiers to Slytherin and to Gryffindor. 

Please notice that my rate was the smallest possible: 2 offsprings per 
family keeps the population at a steady size: neither grows nor 
reduces. While the society has enough people to keep offering mates to 
the gryffindor descendants that weren't gryffindors descenants 
themselves, the gryffindor blood would continue to spread. This, as I 
have mentioned, stops to happen after a while, and the gryffindor 
descendants start marrying other griffyndor descendants. However, a 
compound probability rate shows that, after a while, any families that 
had not joined the gryffindor bloodline will sooner or later do so, 
since the gyffindor descendents would be so common.

The number of descendents is actually increased when you put forward 
offspring numbers that get closer to the truth. While it is true that 
families like the Malfoy have controled their numbers through the ages, 
other families have probably had considerably more sons and daughters 
in each generation. In the middle ages (1200's), a normal family could 
have between 5 and 15 sons (not all of them survived). In the 12 
generations between Godric and the year 1300, the number of possible 
gryffindors descendents (averaging 10 offspring) would be 10^12 1 
million million -again, too many, so by then the different branches had 
already interbred. Besides, after like 6 or seven generations, some of 
the branches of the family are so distant that they don't know they are 
members of the same family anyway (not that there is much way to tell, 
since 6 or 7 generations is a big jump). However, even if they can't 
tell, they are still theorically descendents of the same person 
(Godric, in this case).

> More support for this last idea: The only hier to Slytherin that we 
> know of, the only one who has successfully opened the CoS, is Riddle. 
> If there are so many, why isn't a student opening the chamber every 
> school year? 
> 
> -Jeff

You seem to be mistaking "heir" with "descendant". A heir is the 
descendent that is closest to the unbroken father-first born line 
(closest, because you have to allow for first-borns that don't have 
sons themselves). Anyway, Parselmouth is not necesarily a sign of the 
Slytherin line. Besides, even if it is, we are told that very few 
people have it, although most of them were dark wizards. But we're told 
that Salazar looked for other potential wizards and witches with 
parselmouth for his slytherins so it's not just his descendants.

And of course, to open the chamber you just need parseltongue. There is 
no need to be a descendent of Slytherin (heir or not) to open the 
chamber; you just need to speak the language of serpents.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf, who doesn't know all his surnames, nor is particularly 
interested in knowing them.