[HPforGrownups] Hogwarts numbers

[Trond Michelsen]

No: HPFGUIDX 51853

Tom Wall <thomasmwall at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> -----
>>> Q: How many students attend Hogwarts, and how many
>>>    students per year per house?
>>> A: There are about a thousand students at Hogwarts.
>>> -----
>>> So, about 35 students per year per house.

Trond:
>> Well, that's what she said in an interview, she's also shown her
>> notebook with what she claims is "the students in Harry's year". It's
>> an alphabetical list of 41 names that begins with "Abbott, Hannah",
>> and ends with "Zabini, Blaise". I'm inclined to believe that this
>> list is complete.

manawydan wrote:
> "Prisoner", Chapter 15 says of the Quidditch final: "Three quarters of the
> crowd were wearing scarlet ... two hundred people were wearing green..."

Does it say that there are only students in the crowd?

> I don't pretend to be an expert at maths, but that sounds to me very much
> like a total of 800. 

Sure. about 800 people are watching the final.

> And that's in the book, so unless there is a cogent
> argument why there should either be a significant number of absentees (if
> you support the higher figure) which seems culturally unlikely or a

Actually, it's not stated that this is the entire crowd. Let's say
there's a crowd of 100 people wearing anything but scarlet or green.
That would make a total of 1200 spectators. It's not even stated that
the 200 that were wearing green were the entire green crowd. The book
says "behind the Slytherin goal posts, however, two hundred people were
wearing green". There could be any number of other green people all over
the place.

I'm not going to argue about it though. I agree that there are about 800
people in the crowd.

> significant number of outside guests (and on other occasions where there are
> guests, the books make clear mention of the fact) then that's canon.

It's just that the only spectator that is identified in this crowd is
Snape. The crowd could include wizards from Hogsmeade as well. 

> It would support the argument that Harry's year is smaller than average,
> especially when you consider that students leave if they fail their exams so
> that the higher years would be smaller than the lower.

Now, to be honest, I don't have any strong feelings about the total
number of students. My gut feeling tells me that 1000 students is way
too many, but if the number is nailed down in one of the future books,
then I'll accept it. (It'll be worse if James and Lily turns out to be
alive, or if Dumbledore is evil and Harry's grandfather)

I feel more strongly about the size of Harry's year. I'll be very
disappointed if the notebook only lists a quarter of the students in
Harry's year.

Now, we've had no indication so far about how many students there are in
the other years. If Harry's year is typical or not. But I won't mind it
if Harry's year is a lot smaller than the other years. Well, I'd be a
bit disappointed in Harry for not noticing, but more on that in another
post.

-- 
Trond Michelsen