to think Hogwarts is actually a really small school?

[FlutteringButterflie]

I watch the film earlier and realised in Griffindor in Harry's year there were only 5 boys and 3 girls. There are 4 houses so probably about 40 pupils per year.

7 years, so about 280 pupils - not really that many when you think about it.

[geek]

Checks in to the HP quiche

I love how the FF makes up all these back stories for all the minor characters.

Not much in the way of ICT either. I don't think I've seen a computer there. Just tomes and grimoires. Mostly enchanted ones too.

Does anyone know if Lavender died?

I'm guessing that she did

I'd always assumed that there were more pupils at hogwarts that just weren't mentioned specifically in the books.

I also assumed that muggle born kids go to normal primary schools, and wizard born kids are home schooled. Although, doesn't Fleur Delacour's much younger sister Gabrielle attend Beauxbatons, so maybe other schools work differently? (Or am I confusing book and film?)

Magic and electronics don't mix. Magic tends to blow them up.

Hermione says something about it at some point.

Well, maybe they did mermaid but he went to some local primary with his cousin.

LaFata: Me too, I have read some amazing ones over time. One brilliant one set in Marauder Days was the Shoebox Project, which had beautiful illustrations to the story but they stopped hosting it at some point so now it's lost, or the illustrations are at least.

I read it frequently until a few years ago when FF.net changed it's review section to americanised dates and were complete cunts to me when I queried why they had after 8 years of English-based (politely via email and then via twitter when they ignored me!) and they started taking down stories willy nilly. Some of my longer series were taken down for no reason, lost all of my reviews, I was very angry about that especially as my computer with them on has long gone :(

given there are 10 students in each year in each house, that makes 70 pupils in each house. How do they all fit in the rather snug Gryffindor Common room?

I think that Hogwarts survives on Ministry subsidy and alumni donations. Remember as well that they do not need a large support staff as they have slaves house-elves and magic means you can do everyday tasks much quicker.

Pastoral care seems to be mainly down to heads of houses and quite patchy I would think. Dumbledore seems mainly to deal with issues of politics rather than having a great deal to do with the students.

I think the theory that Harry's year was v small due to the first War seems reasonable.

Other parts of the HP world: There must be a system of taxation to support the Ministry. I think that St Mungos might be a private hospital where you have to pay for care. Certainly the policing (Aurors) and government are state funded. Azkaban is likely state-funded as well. Dementors probably do not draw a salary since they benefit from the pain of the prisoners and will not get hunted by the Ministry while staffing the prison.

Free enterprise and commerce is alive and well with many small businesses. There are a couple of shops which have more than one premises but no big chains are mentioned. The only non-human run business is Gringotts which is run by Goblins but does have some humans (and perhaps other species) on payroll. In my opinion it is likely that Gringotts has links with Muggle banks in order to cater to the needs of magical folk that do business with Muggles. It is also likely that they have strong links with other magical banks overseas also possibly Goblin run.

FF.net went nuts at one point, you probably got caught up in that Pixie.

Have you looked at Archive of Our Own? I volunteer for Organisation of Transformative Works, which runs AO3.

Oh and the answer in HP universe to 'how do they...?' is...magic!

I really like the ones about Slytherins. I like to think there are some good ones rather than just being predestined to be evil when they grow up.

It was pointed out somewhere, maybe Cracked, that people must be very trusting in the wizarding world. After all, do something to someone and don't want them to remember? Cast a spell to make them forget.

Even in the books not all Slytherins are evil. Snape turned out all right and there was nothing wrong with Horace Slughorn apart from favouritism and a bit of healthy cowardice. He and many other Slytherin students fought the Death Eaters in the Battle of Hogwarts.

Tee: Never heard of it, I drifted out of the FF world when I left FFnet. It seemed that the quality of stories was getting shoddier on all of my previous haunts by the point, it used to be that a story over 50,000 words was always going to be good, but then people realised that the longer their story got, the more people would read even just the first page so they would get more hits. Will check it out though as I fancy getting back into it again, I have a few half written ones still on my antique hard-drive

Gringotts has to have links to the muggle banks, much like the PM knows about magical existence, the higher ups in the banks must know about Goblins!

AO3

Lots of fandoms, lots of really really good fic.

Ohhh I LOVE this thread! So glad I'm not alone!

Haha! I have already found one of my old favourites from FF.net on there still posting stories

This thread has made my evening :)

Lots of writers abandoned FF.net for AO3.

I always assumed that there were more students that you just don't hear about in the books/films. Why do you think that Lavender died?

Electronics and magic don't mix. That does come up at some point. I think hermione mentions it in goblet of fire.

Euphemia

I'm rereading the Harry Potter books at the moment. I used to write a huge amount of fanfiction, and read them when I wasn't... God I was such a geek.

Enjoy the rest of the thread. Doesn't seem to matter what I say now.