Number of students at Hogwarts

[Marie Jadewalker <marie_mouse@hotmail.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51711

:)  Ah, the size of Hogwarts.  It's one of my favorite topics, since 
it's what brought me to this group in the first place. 

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve Binch" <stbinch at a...> 
wrote:

mysmacek writes:
<<- it seems to me, that during POA, there has to be about 10 first
years in each house - certainly less than 20. The canon for that is
that for R&H to miss the sorting ceremony, it would have to be a
really short one, since their calling off by McGonnagall does not seem
like a long one - and don't forget that the ceremony did not start
when they left.>

Tom Wall wrote:
<<Scholastic's website has several JKR Q&A sessions online.

Here's the URL for the following canon:
http://www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/author/transcript2.htm

Q: How many students attend Hogwarts, and how many students per year 
per house?
A: There are about a thousand students at Hogwarts.

If we do the math, we get:

 1000/4 = 250
 250 /7 = ~35

 So, about 35 students per year per house.

 Of course, that's assuming that each year, roughly the same number 
of students come to the school, and that out of that total, each 
house gets roughly the same number of students.

 So, apparently, we haven't even met half of 'em in Harry's year 
alone.>>

Steve wrote:
<<I think that if JKR said there is about 1000 students, there must 
be about 1000 students. Who are we to argue with the only truly 
omnipotant being in the Potter universe? Coming from a large American 
high school myself with 1000 students just in my graduating class, I 
can see why the other 700 (or whatever) students get omitted. Even 
though there were so many students at my school, I rarely interacted 
with students outside my circle of friends, and when I did, it was 
nothing to write about. In fact, after 8 years, I could probably only 
remember about 20 names. Just because Harry doesn't mention them, 
doesn't mean they aren't there, it just means they don't add to the 
story. If something doesn't add to the story, leave it out.>>

Now me:
You see, when I first read that interview, I was confused.  I worked 
out the math and it didn't seem to jive with my perceptions of 
Hogwarts from the books.  So I wondered if anyone else had questioned 
it.  I went to the Harry Potter Lexicon and found this essay: 

http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon/hogwarts_howmany.html.

It outlined some of the arguments for a small Hogwarts and reassured 
me that I wasn't crazy for doubting the 1000 number.  I went on to 
find the HP4GU "Fantastic Posts and Where to Find Them" discussion 
and debate of the same topic here:

http://www.hpfgu.org.uk/faq/hogwarts.html

which goes over the arguments from all three schools of thought.  
Personally, I still tend to be a Small-Hogwarts person.  I'm not 
going to re-hash the arguments for it because most people have heard 
them many times and they're at least outlined in the two links 
above.  :)  My answer to "Who are we to argue with the only truly 
omnipotent being in the Potter universe?" is "Obsessed fans."  ;-)  
Honestly, though, I think that since the answer was given in a chat 
format it may not have been thought through as clearly as the 
allusions to numbers in the texts, such as the 20 
earmuffs/cauldrons.  

My alternative, if I force myself to reconcile her answer with the 
fact that we only ever hear of 10 Gryffs in Harry's year (8 by name) 
is the idea of a Baby Boom.  Since the chat was in 2000, it was after 
GOF was released, so the canon she's speaking from has 3 classes 
younger than Harry.  Harry is young(ish) for his class AFAIK and 
Voldemort was defeated in October of Harry's first year.  So, er, I 
think a baby boom as a (direct or indirect) result of the post-
Voldemort celebrations and relative peace would make sense.  (And it 
jives with the idea that Ron wondered if Colin and Ginny would meet, 
even though both were first year Gryffs in COS -- if there's any 
doubt there must be a lot more of them than there are members of 
Harry's class that we've seen.)  As a caveat, I wonder how many 
children named Harry, James, or Lily there are in the lower grades at 
Hogwarts.    

~Marie J