A Bunch of Numbers on House Population and Points

I wouldn't really know all the details of this to some obscure degree, I'm not Rowling. But Hogwarts Houses are generally evenly split, at least by the movies and by, in some degree, the books, with the first Sorting in the series, where we learn the names of Harry's fellow first years.

For the record, there are not too many of them.
Among the Hufflepuff for that year is Susan Bones, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Zacharias Smith, Hannah Abbot, and Ernie Macmillan.
For the Ravenclaws, Lisa Turpin, Mandy Brocklehurst, Terry Boot, Anthony Goldstein, Kevin Entwhistle, Michael Corner, Isobel MacDougal, Stephen Cornfoot, and Padma Patil.
For the Slytherins, Draco Malfoy, Gregory Goyle, Vincent Crabbe, Daphne Greengrass, Theodore Nott, Blaise Zabini, Pansy Parkinson, Tracey Davis, and Millicent Bullstrode.
And, of course, for the Gryffindors, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnegan, Lavender Brown, and Parvati Patil.

For the sake of saving you some effort, that's 5 Hufflepuffs, 9 Ravenclaws, 9 Slytherins, and 8 Gryffindors in Harry's year.

I guess it's hard to find nice people?

That's a total of 31 students in Harry's year. Now, Harry was born right at the end of the war, and Voldemort fell suddenly, so there would be less people in his year and very likely an influx the year after his - Luna, Colin Creevey, and Ginny's year. We don't know any of the other years well enough to analyze the difference, but I'm going to assume that the average student population is 40 in a year, or 280 students in all of Hogwarts. Yes, 280.

That's stupid tiny. And if in 1 year, there are 40 new magical humans in Britain, then in 100 years, there are 4,000. That's um...rather pathetic. Now, there are immigrants (and emigrants), mixed in with the numbers, as well as deaths from the odd circumstance (like Basilisks, wars, accidents, disease, the TriWizard Tournament, etc. etc.) which means this number is lower than the magical people born, but the population is, hopefully, increasing.

But with only 10 people in a House...well...let's use some Slytherin student as an example. That student is likely one of five people of that sex in their year in their House. If they want to find someone near their age with similar interests, let's say two years older or younger, leaving 20 possible students in their House that they could potentially date. 80 across the four houses. If a 7 year age gap isn't a huge issue to witches and wizards, which it probably isn't, then that's 140 students of the opposite sex in all of Hogwarts to pick from, and very reasonably, that student would dislike about 3 quarters of them. Or half, if they're Hufflepuff.

While, yes, students don't have to be confined to other people who use magic, leaving them with the absurd number of people in the British Isles, which seems to be somewhere in the 50 millions - or 25 million again, for opposite gender, and then a much smaller number for people near their age.

But with this all into consideration, it's not much a wonder why magicals would marry so soon after they graduate, and why people who aren't married soon after said graduation likely won't be married period.

Really. We don't know the marriage ages for most of the characters in canon, but Harry's parents married straight out of school, while we know Neville's parents were well acquainted at least at the same time. Snape's parents married fairly young from what I can recall, and Draco's were also very likely married younger as well.

I say this to give a sort of gravity to life at Hogwarts, but also to exemplify my text topic, House Points.

I'll keep the entire house population of 7 years to an average of 80 people, just to be liberal about it.

At the end of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (or Philosopher's Stone), the Houses were at about...
"In fourth place, Gryffindor with 312 points, Third place, Hufflepuff with 352 points. Second place Ravenclaw with 426 points. And in first place, with 472 points, Slytherin House."

Hold back the rant. Hold back the rant. HOLD BACK THE RANT.
Dumbledore is for another time.

But I'm going to assume those numbers are fairly on par with what they should be, which means between the 250-500 points range for each house, with a difference of about 160 points between first and last, although I'll shrink that a bit to 120, due to Snape's Slytherin favoritism and subsequent Gryffindor hatred.

I'll also assume each House starts the year with some positive number of points, because I doubt the hourglasses that count and display points would be able to display negative objects, and Snape was, jokingly or not, saying he would give Gryffindor -70 points at some point. That would be 70 points below the baseline number, like, if they start the year with 100 points by default, then loosing 70 points would still be like being -70.

I guess.

If the default is 100 points, then throughout the year, the average point gain is 290.5 for each House. If the people in a House numbers 80...each student only earns 3~4 points in a year. Hmm...

The points system would be tremendously flawed if points started at zero and you couldn't, in fact, go into negative points - negative matter again -, and it seems this is the case, as Gryffindor had 0 points in Harry's 5th year, and I'm certain Gryffindor would have gone into the negatives if they could have been.

If Snape had really been joking when he said Gryffindor would go into the negative 70 points, and he probably was, vindictive as he is, then the average points would be 390.5 points per House, with a 4~5 points per student over a year number.

But, imagine that, at the very beginning of the year, you could do whatever and suffer no drawbacks in house points for your actions, if there isn't a default point value.

We know that, aside from Dumbledore's weird sudden point awarding, most points are only gained in small numbers: 1, 5, 10 points, but infractions of the rule take out more points, with 30 and 50 points being fairly stable for the rule-breaking that Harry and Co. do all the time. This all leads out to mean that, for one, Gryffindor students are probably getting points all the time for odd things to make up for all those "negative points" that are happening.

Ultimately, that means that, especially in Gryffindor, students are earning more than their 3~5 points a year, with some students earning none, and some, like Hermione, likely earning the bulk of those.

This just further proves that the points-earning shenanigans by Dumbledore in first year was horribly unfair, and I'm not going to argue the logistics of that entire situation, so shush.

But if a student only has to earn 3 to 5 points a year, then awarding points should be a much more legitimate affair than it normally is, even considering over half the students earning none of those points - forcing the rest to earn 6 to 10 points. Well, if just a right answer or some correctly done homework or something earns points, as we see in the books and movies, than some serious point loss is happening. In Gryffindor, assuming they don't earn very many points because, well, do you really expect them to, on average, get homework points?...but assuming that, they likely are where they should be with all the points with not only what Harry and Crew loose, but Neville's potion accidents, among other things.


But we know what sort of mischief Gryffindor is up to in order to lose enough points to end up at 312 while earning enough through the occasional academic and Quiddich game...what about the other houses, especially Hufflepuff, who is in 3rd place?

It doesn't really make any sense to me that Hufflepuff, earning probably more points than Gryffindor and committing less punishable acts in general could really end up at third by a decent margin. It could be that there just seems to be less Hufflepuffs, but even if there are on average, say, 50 less 'Puffs, that's well, that's less trouble they can get into.

So House Point numbers are a bit inaccurate, I'd say, but I don't really care enough to go count all the gains-losses in the books. That, and I don't actually own all the books. So sue me.

But I did read all of them, no worries.

Back to House Population for a moment.

We have seen Diagon and Knockturn Alley, so we know that a good number of magicals are employed there. Added to this are the large number of doctors - excuse me, Mediwitches and Mediwizards - at St. Mungos, the shop-owners at Hogsmeade, the British wizards and witches working abroad, whether in curse-breaking for Goblins, or on dragon reservations in Romania. Even farther are the teachers at Hogwarts, authors and writers like Lockheart or Bagshot, and the hordes and hordes of Ministry employees as Aurors, Unspeakables, shuffling paperwork, secretaries, and Department Heads, as well as the professional Quiddich players, students, housewives like Molly Weasley, and the people who don't even have jobs like Lupin likely did for quite a while...

So there are a lot of people, an awful lot more than the 4,000 I came up with earlier. Heck, even 40,000 seems too small for this, and that's 100 times more magicals flying out of Hogwarts in 100 years.

This means that I'm wrong, I'm right and magicals just do like a trillion things at once, or there are a lot, lot more witches and wizards than I thought there was in a single year.

But if there are way, way, way more witches and wizards, that lowers the point threshold per student even farther, meaning that there must be some serious trouble-making at Hogwarts or...

Or, I don't know.

I don't even know.

But think what you want to think, I just gave you the numbers.

- Shiizumi Valé; WillowEye10329, signing off.

Hogwarts House Stereotypes

I watched a video by The Carlin Brothers, and in it, one of the brothers stated that he was Sorted into Slytherin, and that he, among other things, gets people to look at him like he's evil or bad or malicious or something, despite him clearly not being so.

The point of that statement is to bring up the point of the stereotypes on the Hogwarts houses. I'll list each house, what it stands for, and what other people think of it, generally:

House	Positive Qualities (Stereotype)	Negative Qualities (Stereotype)
Gryffindor	"Daring, Nerve, and Chivalry"; bravery, strength, will	N/A
Hufflepuff	"Just, Loyal, Patient"; hardworking, kindness	Considered boring, lame, uninteresting, and/or talent-less; the left-overs
Ravenclaw	"Wise, Ready of Mind, Wit"; smart	Considered boring or know-it-all-like, friendless,
Slytherin	"Cunning"	Dark, evil, bullies, mean, unkind, selfish, etc.

This just doesn't seem equal, does it? Gryffindor is considered the "best" house by many, and while most of this is because it is the house of the main character, but also because the only characters who really share any negatives about the house are the characters we disliked for all/most of the series, like Draco or Snape. We tend to avoid negatives about the Gryffindor house, even when the flaws are glaringly obvious.

Every house has good and bad, and remember, not every person in, say, Slytherin acts the same way. Hermione, for example, is very much like a Ravenclaw, or how Neville is very much a Hufflepuff, while Harry was, supposedly, a good Slytherin, at least for a while. Therefore, even if the stereotypes were fully true, there are people who are a mix, which, by the way, would prove the stereotypes wrong by themselves.

Gryffindors are arrogant and impulsive and prideful, as Snape and Draco say. An expanded list of the positive qualities of the house would include loyalty as well, but not only does that seem entirely untrue, as Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor and betrayed his friends (while Sirius, a Slytherin raised Gryffindor, did not) and Ron didn't believe Harry hadn't entered himself into the Triwizard Tournament for most of the fourth book, despite having known each other for years by that point.

Stereotypes, by their nature, are often incorrect.

Now, of course, not to say that all stereotypes are always incorrect, obviously,

A better table for the general house qualities would look like this:

House	Positive Qualities	Negative Qualities
Gryffindor	Courage, Willful, Fun, Loyal, Chivalrous, Quick-Thinking	Impulsive, Arrogant, Prideful, Stubborn AND Gullible (Intolerance)
Hufflepuff	Fair, Kind, Friendly, Dedication, Helpful, Honest, Accepting, Forgiving	...Gullible, Easy to Take Advantage Of?
Ravenclaw	Wise, Knowledgeable, Quick-Thinking AND Strategic, Accepting, Curious	Passive, Unfriendly (?), Overly Blunt
Slytherin	Clever, Ambitious, Perceptive, Determined, Focused, Strategic	Manipulative, Dishonest, Arrogant, Prideful, Unfair, Stubborn

It's about as close as I can get. After all, we don't really know any non-Luna (who is just exceptional in all ways, really) Ravenclaws or just, like, any Hufflepuffs at all. Or not-horribly-disliked Slytherins.

For the record, by "Stubborn and Gullible" for Gryffindor, I mean that they easily fall into a set thought or belief and won't budge from that thought no matter how unreasonable it is. By "Quick-Thinking and Strategic" in Ravenclaw, I mean that they are ready to tackle a problem, and can often answer things quickly, but they are far better at planning before-hand, like they will have a battle strategy before they fight, but if it goes wrong, they often won't be able to come up with another plan quick enough, contrary to Gryffindors, who can think far faster and make short-term plans and goals.

Like levitating the troll's club in Harry's first year.

I might be biased. I am Slytherin after all, a Slytherin that is a hair's breath away from a Hat-stall as a Ravenclaw. But believing that all Slytherins are bullies like Draco (and Snape, too, who is far too aggressive a teacher, despite his "good" intentions) and that Gryffindors are all just fun-loving heroes with positive goals is stupid, honestly.

Remember how at some point, someone remarks that there wasn't a Dark Wizard (from Hogwarts) that wasn't in Slytherin? Yeah well, sorry, but uh, Peter Pettigrew was pretty bad. We don't know what House Barty Crouch Jr. was in (although probably Slytherin, judging by his determination to get out of Azkaban and then again to help Voldemort). Lucius, Narcissa, and Draco all defected from the Death Eaters as Slytherins, and Snape himself (I will write a whole debate around him) was very likely a "good guy" in terms of the war, for being a spy. On the reverse side, Dumbledore was originally a believer in Grindelwald's mantra (he still uses the man's phrase "for the greater good"), which although doesn't make him a Dark Wizard, the ideas would have been considered dark.

This is similar to the "Is Voldemort Good?" debate I put up and the one about what makes Dark Magic "Dark". I'm saying as well that a Dark Wizard was likely originally defined by a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff, perhaps, which already lends that statement (also probably said by a Gryffindor) towards the bias side of the scale.

But, please don't judge so bad, whether Hogwarts houses or ethnicity or whatever, just...don't.

--Shiizumi Valé; WillowEye10329; signing off.