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

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 140050

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

> Potioncat responded:
<snip>
> Yes, she says she fleshed out 40 students for Harry's year, and it 
> appears she worked out a handful more for other years. It seems she
has a vague idea of a busy bustling school of young wizards. She
didn't work out the actual numbers, determine how many teachers she
needed, how many dormitories, whether the common rooms were big
enough, how the schedule would work and if all those kids could be
served meals in the Great Hall at one time. <snip>
>We have to be careful how we use numbers because JKR is not careful
with them. She says so herself.

Carol responds:

OTOH, we have twenty brooms for Slytherin and Gryffindor combined in
the SS/PS flying lesson, twenty pairs of earmuffs for the combined
Hufflepuff and Gryffindor Herbology lesson in the same book, very
close to forty students in the Sorting ceremony (Crabbe and Goyle are
skipped, but we know where they were placed). The Sorting Hat talks in
OoP about "quartering" the students, so we can safely assume that
Ravenclaw has at least roughly the same number as the other houses,
and surely there aren't more intellectually gifted Ravenclaws than
ordinary, hard-working Hufflepuffs. We're given eight boggarts (all
but Hermione's and Harry's, apparently) in Lupin's DADA class in PoA.
There's no evidence anywhere in the books until the DADA lesson in OoP
that there are more than forty students (including exactly ten
Gryffindors) in Harry's year (or any indication that other classes are
larger). 

I'll grant you JKR's ineptitude with numbers--there's no way that
Charlie Weasley can be two years older than Percy with Slytherin
winning the Quidditch cup for the previous seven years--but the
figures in the early books fit quite nicely with 40 students in
Harry's year. (I think JKR belatedly tried to make the numbers fit her
estimate in an interview of 1,000 students in the school. Think of the
workload that would create for the professors with only one teacher
per subject, even if only a small number of sixth and seventh years
take a given subject. The teachers of the core subjects--Potions,
Transfiguration, Charms, Herbology, and DADA--would be overwhelemed,
wizards/witches or not.

I would certainly reject the number of carriages (roughly 100--the
narrator, seeing with Harry's eyes, isn't actually counting--carrying
the students back to Hogwarts in OoP and the number of students in the
Great Hall for a banquet (again, surely inexact) and go with the forty
students she delineated, which fits the five Gryffindor boys in
Harry's year, the twenty brooms, etc.--not to mention that JKR has
promised to give the names of the two missing Gryffindor girls.

Forty "fleshed out" students in Harry's year times seven years
(roughly 280 students) and a faculty of roughly a dozen in a castle
that could hold many times that number--that's what the evidence adds
up to--with any numbers that contradict that figure chalked up to
JKR's lack of concern with such details. There is, in any case, no way
that McGonagall or Snape or any teacher could deal with *600* students
in Harry's year (times seven to encompass all years) even if the
evidence supported such an estimate.

Carol