I always assumed, when reading the original books, that other British magical schools existed and Hogwarts just happened to be the best of them. The society as presented simply doesn’t make sense otherwise, even accounting for the fact that wizards seem to live significantly longer than Muggles and don’t seem to have many more kids.
It does take some handwaving (how would Hogwarts choose which magical children to send its acceptance letters to?), but not as much as fitting what looks like some pretty robust commerce and a rather heavyweight bureaucracy into a population of at most thirty thousand or so (less, if you extrapolate from class sizes).
not as much as fitting what looks like some pretty robust commerce and a rather heavyweight bureaucracy into a population of at most thirty thousand or so
I assumed that ~ 50% of wizarding adults were employed by the Ministry alone. Sounds just like the pointless bureaucracy you’d expect wizards to create.
Commerce, yes. That’s much more difficult to explain. Even more difficult to explain is the existence of specialised journals like Transfiguration Weekly. You’d need a European wizarding population of ~ a million at the very least. (And I’m probably underestimating.)
More importantly, how do you extrapolate from the class sizes? How are different age groups distributed in the population? (Not knowing the math sucks.)
ETA:
I always assumed, when reading the original books, that other British magical schools existed and Hogwarts just happened to be the best of them.
In Deathly Hallows, the Ministry made it mandatory for every wizarding child of school-going age to attend Hogwarts. IIRC, Lupin noted at the time that “Parents could always educate their children at home if they wished.” Didn’t say anything about other magical schools.
We probably shouldn’t leap to the assumption that Transfiguration Weekly is a peer-reviewed journal with a large staff publishing results from multiple large laboratories. For all we know it’s churned out in a basement by an amateur enthusiast, is only eight pages long on a good week and mostly consists of photographs of people’s cats transfigured into household objects.
In Deathly Hallows, the Ministry made it mandatory for every wizarding child of school-going age to attend Hogwarts.
I’d forgotten about that; but then again, I formed most of my opinions regarding Potter canon when I was a teenager reading books 3 and 4. I was an adult by the time I got to Deathly Hallows, and I didn’t read it too closely.
I suppose Goblet of Fire could be said to imply wizarding schools are fairly rare, though; it never mentions any continental schools besides Durmstrang and Beauxbatons. The movies seem to imply that those are all-male and all-female respectively, which might in turn suggest more schools offscreen, but I don’t think the books do.
I don’t think the books directly suggest that there are Durmstrang girls (although they never claim that it’s a unisex school), but Beauxbatons boys are mentioned, particularly in the context of the Yule Ball.
I could be wrong here, but I definitely remember someone, maybe Hagrid, claiming early on that Hogwarts was, “the best school in magical Britain.”
That implies others. It’s entirely possible that newer magical schools without a history of legendary wizards and a past alliance with two other prestigious schools would go largely unmentioned in the original Harry Potter.
Hogwarts was referred to on a number of occasions in canon as the “best” wizarding school in Britain.
As long as it doesn’t directly bear on the storyline though, I wouldn’t trust J. K. Rowling to keep careful track of everything she’s already written; I suspect she had different ideas at different times of whether Hogwarts was the only wizarding school in Britain.
I’m not sure about that, if anything she’s put on Pottermore is to be trusted, she’s written an extensive off-page history for her world.
The most interesting example is what she’s written about the Malfoy’s. Evidently, the family made most of their money in dealing with muggles prior to the ministry instituting the laws regarding secrecy. Once it became politically favorable to distance a prominent family from muggle ties, the Malfoy’s put on a strong pureblood facade that caught on after a few generations.
That sounds plausible, but not necessarily contradictory, since she may have come up with that history after writing things in earlier books which conflicted with it. She didn’t seem to have outlined all the books thoroughly in advance (if she did, she certainly failed to set up elements like the Deathly Hallows very well.)
In the original books, Harry’s cohort was born ten years into an extremely bloody civil war. I always assumed birth rates were extremely low for Harry’s age group, which would imply that the overall population is much larger than what you’d extrapolate from class sizes.
Of course, the numbers still don’t work. There are 40 kids in canon!Harry’s class. Even if you assume that’s a tenth of the normal birthrate and the average person lives to 150, you get a wizarding population of 6,000.
In MoR, class sizes are around 120 (more than half the kids are in the armies, and armies are 24 each), which is still problematic—with the generous assumptions above, you get a population of 18,000. But MoR does seem to hint there are other magical schools: Daphne at one point wonders if it’s worth going to the same school as Harry just to go to the same school as everybody important, which supports the theory that there are other magic schools, but that almost everyone influential went through Hogwarts.
In the original books, Harry’s cohort was born ten years into an extremely bloody civil war. I always assumed birth rates were extremely low for Harry’s age group, which would imply that the overall population is much larger than what you’d extrapolate from class sizes.
In that case, shouldn’t we see evidence of a baby boom occurring immediately following the end of the war, probably in the form of the years after Harry’s being noticeably bigger than those that came before? canon!Harry is rather unobservant, but you’d think he’d have noticed at least that.
For Harry to notice it would require Rowling to have thought of it. Plus, since it wasn’t really plot relevant it would be something of a violation of Conservation of Detail.
Daphne abandoned all pretense of aristocratic poise and let her head fall to the desk with a dull thud, as she wondered whether going to the same school as all the other important families was really worth going to the same school as the Chaos Legion.
Given that they canonically keep tabs on underage witches and wizards with magic, I suspect that they judge based on some combination of how magically promising the prospective student appears to be, what their social connections are (are they related to any highly placed individuals who graduated from Hogwarts?) and possibly some sort of affirmative action for muggle born students.
Actually the ministry has a trace spell, evidently, on the whole of magical Britain. Magical misdemeanors from underage wizards go largely unpoliced in all magical households, explaining the fact that several familys, such as the Malfoys and the Weasleys have sent children to Hogwarts who openly acknowledge having learnt spells outside of Hogwarts.
You may recall, once the ministry was in Voldemort’s pocket, the trace was used to track down underaged wizards not in Hogwarts.
I’d always supposed Hogwarts worked in conjunction, or possibly with special permissions, from the ministry to use the trace to send letters to children who had performed slight magical acts, such as Harry phasing his cousin through the glass at the snake exhibit.
I always assumed, when reading the original books, that other British magical schools existed and Hogwarts just happened to be the best of them. The society as presented simply doesn’t make sense otherwise, even accounting for the fact that wizards seem to live significantly longer than Muggles and don’t seem to have many more kids.
It does take some handwaving (how would Hogwarts choose which magical children to send its acceptance letters to?), but not as much as fitting what looks like some pretty robust commerce and a rather heavyweight bureaucracy into a population of at most thirty thousand or so (less, if you extrapolate from class sizes).
I assumed that ~ 50% of wizarding adults were employed by the Ministry alone. Sounds just like the pointless bureaucracy you’d expect wizards to create.
Commerce, yes. That’s much more difficult to explain. Even more difficult to explain is the existence of specialised journals like Transfiguration Weekly. You’d need a European wizarding population of ~ a million at the very least. (And I’m probably underestimating.)
More importantly, how do you extrapolate from the class sizes? How are different age groups distributed in the population? (Not knowing the math sucks.)
ETA:
In Deathly Hallows, the Ministry made it mandatory for every wizarding child of school-going age to attend Hogwarts. IIRC, Lupin noted at the time that “Parents could always educate their children at home if they wished.” Didn’t say anything about other magical schools.
We probably shouldn’t leap to the assumption that Transfiguration Weekly is a peer-reviewed journal with a large staff publishing results from multiple large laboratories. For all we know it’s churned out in a basement by an amateur enthusiast, is only eight pages long on a good week and mostly consists of photographs of people’s cats transfigured into household objects.
I’d forgotten about that; but then again, I formed most of my opinions regarding Potter canon when I was a teenager reading books 3 and 4. I was an adult by the time I got to Deathly Hallows, and I didn’t read it too closely.
I suppose Goblet of Fire could be said to imply wizarding schools are fairly rare, though; it never mentions any continental schools besides Durmstrang and Beauxbatons. The movies seem to imply that those are all-male and all-female respectively, which might in turn suggest more schools offscreen, but I don’t think the books do.
I don’t think the books directly suggest that there are Durmstrang girls (although they never claim that it’s a unisex school), but Beauxbatons boys are mentioned, particularly in the context of the Yule Ball.
According to this, Durmstrang has girls as well.
I could be wrong here, but I definitely remember someone, maybe Hagrid, claiming early on that Hogwarts was, “the best school in magical Britain.” That implies others. It’s entirely possible that newer magical schools without a history of legendary wizards and a past alliance with two other prestigious schools would go largely unmentioned in the original Harry Potter.
Hogwarts was referred to on a number of occasions in canon as the “best” wizarding school in Britain.
As long as it doesn’t directly bear on the storyline though, I wouldn’t trust J. K. Rowling to keep careful track of everything she’s already written; I suspect she had different ideas at different times of whether Hogwarts was the only wizarding school in Britain.
I’m not sure about that, if anything she’s put on Pottermore is to be trusted, she’s written an extensive off-page history for her world. The most interesting example is what she’s written about the Malfoy’s. Evidently, the family made most of their money in dealing with muggles prior to the ministry instituting the laws regarding secrecy. Once it became politically favorable to distance a prominent family from muggle ties, the Malfoy’s put on a strong pureblood facade that caught on after a few generations.
That sounds plausible, but not necessarily contradictory, since she may have come up with that history after writing things in earlier books which conflicted with it. She didn’t seem to have outlined all the books thoroughly in advance (if she did, she certainly failed to set up elements like the Deathly Hallows very well.)
In the original books, Harry’s cohort was born ten years into an extremely bloody civil war. I always assumed birth rates were extremely low for Harry’s age group, which would imply that the overall population is much larger than what you’d extrapolate from class sizes.
Of course, the numbers still don’t work. There are 40 kids in canon!Harry’s class. Even if you assume that’s a tenth of the normal birthrate and the average person lives to 150, you get a wizarding population of 6,000.
In MoR, class sizes are around 120 (more than half the kids are in the armies, and armies are 24 each), which is still problematic—with the generous assumptions above, you get a population of 18,000. But MoR does seem to hint there are other magical schools: Daphne at one point wonders if it’s worth going to the same school as Harry just to go to the same school as everybody important, which supports the theory that there are other magic schools, but that almost everyone influential went through Hogwarts.
In that case, shouldn’t we see evidence of a baby boom occurring immediately following the end of the war, probably in the form of the years after Harry’s being noticeably bigger than those that came before? canon!Harry is rather unobservant, but you’d think he’d have noticed at least that.
Rule of thumb: canon!Harry notices nothing. Nothing. (Unless it’s plot-relevant.)
Harry never tells us anything about the younger students. Unless they happen to be called Ginny/Luna/Colin/Denis/Romilda.
For Harry to notice it would require Rowling to have thought of it. Plus, since it wasn’t really plot relevant it would be something of a violation of Conservation of Detail.
I’d forgotten about that quote.
For reference, it’s
Chapter 74.
Given that they canonically keep tabs on underage witches and wizards with magic, I suspect that they judge based on some combination of how magically promising the prospective student appears to be, what their social connections are (are they related to any highly placed individuals who graduated from Hogwarts?) and possibly some sort of affirmative action for muggle born students.
Actually the ministry has a trace spell, evidently, on the whole of magical Britain. Magical misdemeanors from underage wizards go largely unpoliced in all magical households, explaining the fact that several familys, such as the Malfoys and the Weasleys have sent children to Hogwarts who openly acknowledge having learnt spells outside of Hogwarts. You may recall, once the ministry was in Voldemort’s pocket, the trace was used to track down underaged wizards not in Hogwarts. I’d always supposed Hogwarts worked in conjunction, or possibly with special permissions, from the ministry to use the trace to send letters to children who had performed slight magical acts, such as Harry phasing his cousin through the glass at the snake exhibit.