Harry Potter At College

Let's Crunch Some Numbers

So the Ministry of Magic (M.O.M.) keeps pretty tight wraps on how many wizards there actually are in the world. I'm not entirely sure why they do it, maybe because it's really small and they're afraid we'd feel outnumbered and in danger if we knew how many more muggles there were than wizards. Maybe there are a lot of us and they're afraid that the muggles would find out how many there are and we'd have a war on our hands. That last option doesn't make as much sense though.

God has given us a few tidbits as to how many there may be, but they're inconsistent. She's told us that there are around 800 students at Hogwarts, a number consistent with when I went there, but also there were only 40 students in my class, which is about 30% what we'd expect from a school of 800 with seven classes. God's also let us know that she imagines there are around 3,000 wizards in Great Britain, but the Quidditch world cup stadium could hold around 100,000 people, and that doesn't add up. Point being, most of us don't really know how many of us there are. It's a very confusing existence, but then again, that's college. You can find a great academic article about the whole thing here: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Wizarding_world.

Now, there are around 11 wizarding schools, they don't really say it but these are actually the equivalent of high schools. All of these high schools empty into one single wizarding university. Does it have a name? No. It's just called "The University,"  and it's massive. They don't tell us how many students go here either, but I'd guess it's around 10,000. We also actually use technology here. Which is weird. Going from parchment and a quill to a laptop and a tablet is a weird adjustment. But it's also way more efficient. I guess technology can rival magic in some ways.

Also, magic is used with abandon here. All the hall monitoring and people monitoring and magic monitoring that went on at high school? Gone. Dr. Whatever doesn't care one iota what you're doing with your wand during your free time, they have magic research to do and classes to teach. You want to skip class and go smoke Weasley Wonderbombs behind the greenhouses with the other addicts? Knock yourself out. Literally. High school was a stable, maintained environment for learning and development. This is not. Here, butter-beer (The alcoholic kind) literally is flowing from the walls, narcotics are sold at the cheapest prices on earth, and the only reason anyone uses magic is to fix the mistakes that you made using magic last night.

Of course there are those who use this as a time to thrive, but this blog is not about those people. Most people's lives devolve into a long string of bad choices right around the time they graduate from Hogwarts. Do I make bad choices as well? Yes. Yes I do. Let's get rolling.