Harry Potter question

[dr4b]

I don't follow the fan sites at all, so I just realized something weird while thinking about it on the bus this morning, and I'm sure this has come up elsewhere: if in every year at Hogwarts there are 40 kids, 5 per gender per house (and is this true? maybe not), you have to wonder who the fifth guy was sharing a dorm with Sirius, James, Peter, and Remus. and wouldn't it have totally driven them nuts?

Unless, of course, there were more than 5 per year then, maybe if there were 8 or 9, then the four of them would have had a room to themselves or something.

I also have to wonder what the heck it must be like being the other kids in the same room as Fred and George Weasley. Oh man. Well, I guess they're friends with Lee Jordan, but... well, we never hear of any others, so hm.

Comments

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

JKR being bad at math reminds me of her unfortunate comment that the US would, of course, have "their own school." Singular.
There's a basic lack of comprehension of differences in scale there.

[zaph.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's possible - there should be only about 40,000 wizards and witches in the US, so a single school would be reasonably big, but certainly no bigger than some high schools I've seen.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Right, a 5:1 population ratio. Is it practical to have just one school for a place the size of the US, though? The state I live in, Oregon, is as big as England all by itself.

[damienroc.livejournal.com]

Why not? It's clear that the wizarding world is far more adept at making distance insignificant.

[genuinekfc.livejournal.com]

Although that works both ways. I know of several Americans who bemoan her low number of minority characters, but the UK has a very different racial makeup than the US.