How many kids in Harry's year? ( JKR's quote) WAS:Re: Harry's study habits.

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 139874

> "Cathy Drolet" <cldrolet at s...> wrote:
> 
> > JKR has specifically said otherwise.
> > That she created the 40 kids for 
> > Harry's year and that is what there is: 40.) 

Eggplant: 
> That's close but I don't believe that's exactly what she said. She
> said (shortly after saying there were 1000 students at Hogwarts) 
that
> she developed histories and well defined personalities for 40
> students, so naturally when she needs a student to do a bit of
> business or even just requires a spear carrier she would tend to use
> one of those 40, but that doesn't mean they are the only students
> there. She probably thought figuring out detailed histories for 1000
> students or even 145, would be excessive and a waste of time, 40 is
> impressive enough.  
> 

Alla:

I agree with you, Eggplant. This is not exactly what she said, IMO.

Here is the quote from July 16 Interview.


"JKR: Well, Hogwarts. All right. Here is the thing with Hogwarts. Way 
before I finished "Philosopher's Stone," when I was just
amassing 
stuff for seven years, between having the idea and publishing the 
book, I sat down and I created 40 kids who enter Harry's year. I'm 
delighted I did it, [because] it was so useful. I got 40 pretty 
fleshed out characters. I never have to stop and invent someone. I 
know who's in the year, I know who's in which house, I know what 
their parentage is, and I have a few personal details on all of them. 
So there were 40. I never consciously thought, "That's it, that'
s 
all the people in his year," but that's kind of how it's worked
out. 
Then I've been asked a few times how many people and because numbers 
are not my strong point, one part of my brain knew 40, and another 
part of my brain said, "Oh, about 600 sounds right." Then
people 
started working it out and saying, "Where are the other kids 
sleeping?" [Laughter.]  We have a little bit of a dilemma there. I 
mean, obviously magic is very rare. I wouldn't want to say a precise 
ratio. But if you assume that all of the wizarding children are being 
sent to Hogwarts, then that's very few wizard-to-Muggle population, 
isn't it? There will be the odd kid whose parents don't want them
to 
go to Hogwarts, but 600 out of the whole of Britain is tiny.

Let's say three thousand [in Britain], actually, thinking about it, 
and then think of all the magical creatures, some of which appear 
human. So then you've got things like hags, trolls, ogres and so on, 
so that's really bumping up your numbers. And then you've got the 
world of sad people like Filch and Figg who are kind of part of the 
world but are hangers on. That's going to bump you up a bit as well, 
so it's a more sizable, total magical community that needs hiding, 
concealing, but don't hold me to these figures, because that's not 
how I think."


So, at the very least we have the reason to doubt whether it is 40 or 
600, IMO.

Alla.