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.
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.