What's in the Box?

[potioncat]

No: HPFGUIDX 177007

Random 832 wrote:
snip
> Would we honestly expect her to come up with so much as names for all 
of 
> a larger student body? This assumption that because she's only got 40 
> characters on the class list, that there's only 40 students in 
harry's 
> year, is unfair - it's as if saying "You didn't make a longer list, 
so 
> you're not _allowed_ to say that there's thousands of students"



Potioncat:
As Bart said, canon is contradictory on the numbers. We fans need to 
accept that maths is not important to JKR and they cannot be relied 
upon.

It would have been so much better if she had been more vague in 
numbers, added a few more teachers, and hadn't worried about 
characters' names and back-stories.

How you use the numbers will depend on your purpose. But to my mind, if 
you want to increase the numbers over the 40, you have to keep the 
ratio of known students to 40.  So, in NEWT Potions Harry's 6th year, 
we have at least 12 out of 40 students who scored E or better.