I must be on a "lost causes" kick this year ( Read more... )

I'm trying to piece together some muddled thoughts about wizarding population and society. This comes in two parts: concerning the population of wizarding Britain and Hogwarts, and concerning whether we can find wiggle room for non-Hogwarts educational options ( Read more... )

The recent Pottermore blurb about Durmstrang says, "Durmstrang once had the darkest reputation of all eleven wizarding schools, though this was never entirely merited." IOW there are 11 wizarding schools worldwide. I find this number surprisingly small, considering that the magical population served by Hogwarts comes from a population of roughly 64 ( Read more... )

Sometimes it's fun to poke at the wizarding world and see which bits of their economy Harry never suspected. This is an entirely un-serious look at where all that parchment comes from.

Harry Potter and the Case of the Missing Goats

Okay - I confess; I joined Pottermore, out of sheer curiosity. I want to know if, by any strange chance, I will sort to Slytherin, and also what sort of wand I get. Still, some things struck me at once (I've spent about 20 minutes exploring the first chapter ( Read more... )

I've been playing around some more with numbers to try to estimate the percentage of muggle-borns in the wizarding world, and one of the problems I've run into is that I can't decide how many wizards and witches there are overall. I've read two excellent essays on the matter by Jodel and Whitehound. Jodel estimates that there are between 3600 and ( Read more... )

In some interview, J.K. Rowling apparently said that Britain's wizarding population is roughly divided into 25% muggle-born, 50% half-blood, and 25% pureblood. However, while JKR may have said that 25% of witches and wizards are muggle-born, this is not what she has actually shown in canon. ( Read more... )

Having recently become a grad student after a couple year's hiatus, I have been looking back on the Harry Potter series with new eyes, especially after all the crap I went through to get funding ( Read more... )