A Harry Potter fan has had a sudden and sad realization about why the Chosen One’s Hogwarts class was smaller than usual.
For years fans have always wondered about the number of students at Hogwarts, in part because it seemed it’d be difficult to hold a lot of students in each House’s cramped-looking dormitories.
J.K. Rowling said in an interview way back in the year 2000 that there were about 1,000 students at Hogwarts at any given time. Divide 1,000 students by 4 houses gives you 250 per house, meaning roughly 35 students per house, per year.
Now we enter the part of the theory that no one’s thought about before: Why did Harry Potter’s class appear to be smaller than 35 students in the book and movie? For example, this still from the movie shows about 14 or 15 students in Harry’s class when Percy Weasley led them to their dormitory:
And in the books, Rowling only names 35 students who entered Hogwarts the same year as Harry. Again, normally it’s 35 students per house.
If you set aside responses like, “Rowling left out 80 students because she wasn’t going to name all of them in the book, duhhhh,” or, “Filmmakers probably weren’t considering the number of students per House when they shot this scene,” then the theory actually makes a lot of sense — and it’s tragic:
All things considered, the theory is sound. Magical folk probably didn’t want to bring a child into the world during this difficult time — it wouldn’t be fair to the baby witch or wizard, since the adults didn’t know what was ahead for their community. Also, I doubt it’s easy to get it up when you know that this evil guy is out there.
J.K. Rowling may have to address the Hogwarts student count topic again, as it’s never been totally clear how the numbers add up. Then again, do they have to? It doesn’t really affect the story — unless you like to eat up theories like this one.
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