Harry Potter by the Numbers: How big is the magical world anyway?
In today’s age, it’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t heard of Harry Potter. Seriously, I challenge you to go find someone who, without joking, has not heard the name Harry Potter before. A lot of people have read the books, and it’s easy to discuss the series with others. One of the more interesting Harry Potter debates I’ve had is about the size of the school. J.K. Rowling has thrown a few numbers out, but her math is notoriously unreliable, and the numbers themselves are inconsistent. Furthermore, can the estimate be applied to the magical community as a whole? How many wizards are there in Britain? In the world?
We’ll start with the simple question: how many students does Hogwarts hold at any given point in time? There have been many attempts to deduce this number, and it seems to me that almost everyone has a different approximation. I have my own approximation as well, which I’ll explain later, but first, let’s look to the obvious source for the answer to this question, J.K. Rowling herself.
The problem with this solution is that Rowling is rather inconsistent with her numbers in interviews, as mentioned earlier. In an interview with Scholastic on 16 October 2000, J.K. Rowling states that there are around a thousand students at Hogwarts. In a later interview in 2005, Rowling says that her initial reaction is that 600 students sounds right, but for it to accurately match the magical world, that number should be higher. Regardless of Rowling’s varying estimates, there are many contradictory statements across the books which provide different estimates of the population.
Personally, my estimate for the number of students is around 280 students. The logic behind this is pretty simple, it’s really just ten students per house per year times four houses times seven years, but here’s an explanation if you don’t believe me. Across the series of books, J.K. Rowling introduces us to eight Gryffindors in Harry’s year. Five of them (Harry, Ron Weasley, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan, and Neville Longbottom) are male, and three are female. An argument could be made that Rowling only names the male Gryffindors because they share a dorm with Harry, and there are therefore more unnamed Gryffindors in Harry’s year. However, when, as a first-year, Harry and the others are shown their dormitories, Rowling explicitly states that there is only one male and one female dormitory.
“Percy directed the girls through one door to their dormitory and the boys through another. At the top of a spiral staircase — they were obviously in one of the towers — they found their beds at last: five four-posters hung with deep-red velvet curtains” (Philosopher’s Stone, “The Sorting Hat”).
Note the singular word dormitory, and the fact that in no way did the boys separate to go to different rooms after going through their door. They marched up the stairs to a room with five beds, which fits with the five named male Gryffindors mentioned earlier. As Harry never enters the girls’ dormitory (as a matter of fact, boys are denied entry by the stairs, which turn into a slide), it’s a safe bet to say that there are a few unnamed Gryffindor girls in Harry’s year who are simply not named due to their irrelevance to the plot of the series. To keep a gender balance, let’s say there are two such anonymous girls, making a total of 10 Gryffindors in that one year. Taking a look at the only other Hogwarts house which is relevant enough to name its characters, this seems an accurate guess.
Slytherin, generally characterized as the “evil” house of the series, also has eight named characters throughout the series (five boys and three girls, once again). Make it ten students to account for more anonymous irrelevants and from there the estimate is simple. There are four houses at Hogwarts, meaning that every year has around 40 students, sticking with the 10 students per year per house. Hogwarts teaches seven years, so the school should have around 280 students.
Let’s consider the effect here on class size. Throughout the series, we often see classes combined with another house, particularly Potions with the Slytherins. However, other subjects, like Herbology, are shared with the Hufflepuffs (Prisoner of Azkaban, “Grim Defeat”), and Care of Magical Creatures with the Slytherins (Prisoner of Azkaban, “Talons and Tea Leaves”). According to this model, that would be a class of 20 students, which is definitely manageable for the professors at Hogwarts. J.K. Rowling’s 600 student estimate would have the double classes at around 42 students.
While you could definitely argue that a lesson of 42 isn’t outlandish, consider the subject matter taught. Sure, if you’re teaching algebra, that’s doable. Even if you teach History of Magic, it’s still more doable. But these are subjects like Herbology and Potions. In Herbology, the students deal with plenty of dangerous plants, and it would be practically impossible for Professor Sprout to monitor these 42 students as they all dealt with moderately dangerous plants. Teachers would need smaller class sizes to ensure safety at Hogwarts, what with all the magic that could go awry. In all fairness, Hogwarts never does seem all too concerned about safety, considering all that goes on in the castle, but there would be considerably more accidents if there were 42 students all doing potentially dangerous magic at once. As it is, we already see Neville Longbottom get into plenty of unfortunate accidents in class, which would only be amplified by Professor Snape having to watch 42 students.
What does this mean for the rest of the magical world? According to this estimate, there are 40 wizards in each age group in year intervals. So how many year intervals of wizards are there? J.K. Rowling has said that wizards have longer life spans than Muggles, and nothing in the magical world contradicts this. Dumbledore’s birth year is 1881 according to Pottermore, and Harry’s first year starts in 1991, which would make Dumbledore 110 years old. Dumbledore does seem to be on the older side, but let’s not forget that his brother, Aberforth, is still living. At Bill and Fleur’s wedding, Rowling also introduces Elphias Doge, another childhood friend of Dumbledore’s, and Ron’s aunt Muriel, who is 107 in 1997, both of whom are quite healthy (Deathly Hallows, “The Wedding”). Grindelwald, Dumbledore’s friend turned enemy, is still alive in prison in 1998, and shows no sign of dying before Voldemort kills him (Deathly Hallows, “Malfoy Manor”). However, the oldest (not immortal) appearing character is Bathilda Bagshot, who watched Dumbledore grow up, making her a fair deal older than Dumbledore.
Rita Skeeter interviews Bagshot sometime in 1997 (the end of sixth year, the summer, or the beginning of Harry’s seventh year). Muriel, the town gossip, reveals to us that Bagshot is “quite gaga these days” in that time though, so she is perhaps reaching the end of her lifespan (Deathly Hallows, “The Wedding”). She was an adult when Dumbledore moved to Godric’s Hollow at age 9, though it is never specified how much older. She has good relations with the Dumbledore parents, which means they are probably similar in age, so we’ll say that Bagshot is around 20 years older than Albus. This means that Bagshot lived for about 140 years. There’s no indication that her 140-year lifespan is not normal, so for the sake of this analysis, we’ll assume that 140 years is around a normal lifespan. If there are forty wizards per year interval, and 140 year intervals in wizards, that means there should be around 5,600 wizards in magical Britain in 1991. In 1991, the total population of the United Kingdom was 57.42 million people, making the magical population extremely small (around 0.01 percent of the population). Then again, is this so unbelievable, when the only jobs we see in the magical world are professors, healers, government officials, and shop owners?
It’s certainly not too unbelievable at all, and there are even numbers to back it up. The International Statute of Secrecy, a law that made exposure of the magical world to Muggles illegal, was made worldwide first in 1689 (Deathly Hallows, “Godric’s Hollow”). Let’s assume the wizard population of the world at large has constantly comprised 0.01 percent of the population. The world’s population in 1689 was around 575,320,000 people, which would mean around 57,532 wizards in the world. The Statute was largely in response to the worsening wizard-Muggle relations, and such a number is definitely enough wizards for Muggles to start noticing.
Using this information, there are some statistics for today’s world that can be derived. There are now about 6,602 wizards in magical Britain if the population grows at the same rate as the Muggle population. In the United States, there are 32,570 magical people, if around the same fraction of the population is magical. The world, if the proportion still applies, contains about 753,000 wizards today, and that number just keeps increasing.