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[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 82286

Toby Reiner asked in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/81946 :

<< How many wizards are there in Harry Potter's Britain? I ask,
because it seems to me that the population is barely adequate to 
cover the infrastructure detailed in the books. (Especially a
Quidditch league) >>

When this came up before GoF and its publicity interviews, I started
with the estimate that they need a minimum population of 16,000 to
22,000 (call it 20,000) to have as much economy and institutions as
indicated in the books. (Muggles would need more people than that to
have so many businesses, but the wizarding folk have magic to make up
the difference: their businesses don't have to be more than paying
hobbies). From that, I figured that there must be 1000 Hogwarts-age
students to maintain a population of that size, so I felt very 
pleased when JKR said there are 1000 students at Hogwarts (which she
had already said was the only wizarding school in Britain). Similar
indeed to your estimate that 1000 students -> population of 15,000 if
they had Muggle lifespans.

But I have come to admit that the depiction of Hogwarts in canon
really is the depiction of a school of around 280 students; despite
the idea of crowds Hufflepuffs, double Herbology of Gryffindors and
Hufflepuffs put out *twenty* sets of ear muffs. People have come up
with different theories of where are the other 700-some students?
Someone, IIRC Lexicon Steve, suggested that the ones who aren't
magically powerful enough to get into Hogwarts went into
apprenticeship for non-prestigeous careers instead. Someone, IIRC
Steve bboy_mn, suggested that Hogwarts was the only School of
 Wizardry ie up to NEWTs level, and the other kids went to Schools 
of Magic (terminating at OWLs level). My own theory is that Hogwarts
is a multi-campus school like University of California. The original
campus, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at Hogwarts Castle,
is called "Hogwarts" like UC Berkeley is called "Cal", and other
campuses are called by other nicknames, but legally they are one
school and Dumbledore is Headmaster of the whole system. I figure 
that the top 280-some students get invited to Hogwarts at the Castle
and the others get invited to the other campuses -- "top" involves
being listed in a sequence that takes account of amount of magical
power, length of wizarding pedigree, social status of the family and
political influence of the family -- ie maybe Crabbe and Goyle are
there because Lucius Malfoy said so. I wonder if Dumbledore takes the
Sorting Hat around from campus to campus to have the same four Houses
at each campus, or do the extra campuses have different Houses?

Kneasy wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/82276 :

<< As to two children being involved, we know because DD told us. Who
told Voldy? How would he know, unless he had a line into the WW
Hatched, Matched, Dispatched office? Does he know that Neville is a
possibility? There is no evidence that he does. >>

I have long imagined the wizarding world has so small a population
that all birth notices, engagement announcements, wedding
announcements, and death notices are published in the newspaper. It
could be a section of the Daily Prophet, but for my own purposes I
prefer to believe that there is a separate paper which exists only to
print such notices, the Wizarding Register.

Salit slgazit wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/82108 :

<< The second point is that we know that Voldemort is immune to death
in the normal way. If he gets put on suspended animation again, how
long will it be before he finds another way of capturing Harry or
perhaps will even figure the hole in his original scheme >>

Voldemort is no longer immune to death, as Deirdre Woodward said in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/82191 . In the
re-embodiment soup scene of GoF, he said: "But I was willing to
embrace mortal life again, before chasing immortal. I set my sights
lower -- I would settle for my old body back again, and my old
strength. I knew that to achieve this -- it is an old piece of Dark
Magic, the potion that revived me tonight". I've always thought that
was the reason for the gleam in Dumbledore's eye: that Voldemort was
mortal again.

Eric Oppen wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/82029 :

<< I've had a theory for some time now that Lord V. is actually a
front-man for someone else. A lot of his behavior just doesn't make
much sense. If his goal is immortality, wouldn't it be smarter/better
/less hassle to just replicate Nicholas Flamel's work and make his
_own_ Philosopher's Stone? >>

In RL, the Philosopher's Stone can be made only by spiritually
advanced people, people who are pure of heart. Voldemort doesn't
qualify. Your point still stands, because he *had* made himself
immortal before he threw it away by attacking infant Harry Potter.

<< Instead, he wastes endless energy persecuting people whose 
ancestry he doesn't approve of (got some issues, don't we, Tommy?)
 and stirring up perfectly avoidable trouble. If, OTOH, his goal is 
to Rule The Wizard World, again, his actions don't make sense. He
lashes out in ways that anybody above about the age of five would 
be able to tell him will make enemies spring out of the woodwork,
devoted to hunting him down. If his goal's revenge, why not
specifically target the people who actually hurt him? >>

Diary!Tom told his goal in CoS: "a name I knew wizards everywhere
would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer
in the world!" His goal is to be feared by all wizards. It's an 
insane goal (you can't eat it, drink it, get a massage from it, f**k
it), which fits, as Voldemort is clearly insane. He wants revenge on
every Muggle and every wizard and quite possibly every other living
creature in the world. 

<< He could have a shadowy sponsor, someone who is ostensibly the
picture of pureblood respectability, who gave him the contacts he
needed to start or take over the Death Eaters (I rather like the idea
of the organization we know as "Death Eaters" having started out as a
relatively-innocuous wizards' organization, only to be taken over by
Lord V.) and provided him with the catchwords he needed to make sure
his suck...er, his _followers_ would follow him blindly. >>

JKR said in a recent interview that the Death Eaters used to be named
the Knights of Walpurgis. We don't know whether that was a relatively
innocuous group or something like the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Perhaps the Knights of Walpurgis was founded in a time of Muggles
persecuting wizards, with the intention of protecting wizards by
massacring ten Muggles for every wizard harmed by a Muggle ... 

Diary!Tom said he had always been able to charm people when he wanted
to (except Dumbledore) (which is a widely-reputed characteristic of
dangerous intelligent sociopaths) so surely he could have learned all
the catchwords he needed while he was at Hogwarts. Even *Harry* has
learned that there is a lot of anti-Muggleborn prejudice which is
seeking a leader. 

Diary!Tom mentioned having made useful friends at Hogwarts ... 
"useful friends" sounds like it could include contacts to the various
mages with whom he studied immortality ("the worst of our kind") and
to future Death Eaters. That as likely makes his "useful friends" his
tools as his sponsors. 
 
Lucius Malfoy is a valuable tool of Voldemort. Lucius Malfoy thinks
*he* is using Voldemort to seize power over the wizarding world, and
then Lucius will betray Voldemort by taking over. I wonder if
Voldemort knows that Lucius plans to betray him, and whether Voldemort
has good enough timing to trust Lucius until just the moment before
Lucius turns, then kill him. It seems to me that a fair bit of
Voldemort's behavior is not useful to Lucius, but Lucius does not
control Voldemort.
 
Pippin wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/82043 :

<< So I argue that all the Marauders must have been Occlumenses,
(Occlumentes?), and that they accquired this skill when they were
studying to become Animagi. We've long wondered about Dumbledore's
verbal arabesque, "not least keeping it from me" (quoting PoA from
memory) when he talks to Harry about Sirius being an Animagus.
Pip!Squeak speculates that it means that Dumbledore *did* know about
the Animagi. But I think what we are hearing is Dumbledore skating
around the thin ice of Occlumency; a subject he very much wanted to
avoid. >>

I don't buy it. If Lupin was such a good Occlumens, he could have
given Harry the lessons instead of Snape. 

I don't believe the Marauders needed Occlumency to conceal their
Animagery from Dumbledore. I imagine that Dumbledore only uses
Legilimancy on students on matters of great importance. Without
reading their minds, all he got was that they were engaged in some
exciting project of rule-breaking, which he probably assumed was the
usual practical jokes, "stealing" food from the kitchen, sneaking 
into the Restricted Section at night, making unseasonal trips to
Hogsmeade ... he does usually know a tremendous amount of what 
happens in the castle, and it has been speculated that the portraits,
ghosts, and/or House Elves report to him on what they see and hear. 
If the kids were paranoid enough, they could have concealed their
Animagic books, practises, potions, whatever, from the House Elves 
who clean their room by keeping them all in the Shrieking Shack ...  

Sandy ms*bead*sley wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/82275 :

<< I *still* want to know (I posted this before, I think, and it sank
without a trace) how Winky and Dobby got to know each other prior to
the World Cup scene where Harry encounters Winky and ends up talking
with her about Dobby. "But I knows Dobby, too, sir!" And Harry
(again, confound him) never asks, "How? Why?" How do those two know
each other, bound as they have been to different households? Other
wizarding social events? Ministry affairs? I'm that curious. >>

My baseless opinion is that there is someplace House Elves are allowed
to go hang out when their humans are all asleep and all the work is
done. That's where male and female House Elves meet each other for
courtship purposes, so they can get married and make new House Elves
for their humans -- this hypothetical place must have some private
nooks for the married couples to have conjugal visitation. (My theory
that sons went to the father's humans and daughters to the mother's
humans is damaged by Kreachur following his *mother*'s footsteps). 

Melclaros wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/82281 :

<< What I wonder about really though is why Phineas Nigellus uses the
term "Dark Lord". I never thought much about Dobby's use of it, and
Snape really *has* to use it, but Phineas? >>

Phineas Nigellus *must* have been a lot worse than his portrait to be
in the running for Hogwart's most hated headmaster ... there are a
thousand years worth of contenders. I don't think his perfectly
reasonable dislike of children and his adorably campy bitchy remarks
are enough -- he seems a perfect angel compared to Snape! Maybe, in
life, he served a Dark Lord, murdered certain students or teachers in
his Dark Lord's service, put others under Imperius to assassinate
their own parents for opposing his Dark Lord ...