So a link was posted on discord a short while ago to the page of Barry Winkle, and it has caused me to revise my thoughts on the canon population of wizarding Britain.

Now this only comes from the movies, so if you don't consider them to be canon its irrelevant. However, there's nothing that I can think of in the books that specifically contradicts it. And thats how I tend to approach whether something from the movies is canon.

If wizards can live to 755 then the population will be substantially larger than previous estimates which I think are generally agreed to be somewhere between 10k and 20k.

Even if he's an outlier, the way a muggle living to 110 is today, that would still indicate your average wizard living into their 500s.

On top of that, 30 million are expected to attend. Assuming he's widely travelled then that 30 million is spread over a number of countries, but would still largely come from the UK I would think. Even if only 10% are from the UK, that still puts Wizarding Britain at over 300,000 in population.

Any thoughts? And if the country really does have that size of population, then how does that change what you would expect to have seen in canon?

And to stave off the obvious comment, yes I know that JK sucks at maths and that her world building never accounts for actual numbers. But this is what we're presented with in canon, so its an interesting discussion to try and pin down a number.

 

I reject this, along with all other movieverse figures.

Logically, 300,000 in Wizarding Britain makes no sense at all.

That's the population of Cardiff, being served exclusively by two 'small town' size shopping districts.

Diagon alley would be rammed. Imagine the queues outside Gringotts if 300,000 have to physically go there to collect their money. Or how busy Madam Malkin must be, handmaking clothes for 300,000 with just a couple assistants.

Assuming 300,000 and a 700 year average life expectancy, even Ollivander is churning out 450 wands every year to flog to firsties.

There can only be 300,000 in Britain wizards if most of them live, work and shop almost exclusively in the muggle world, and even then you have the question of schooling (again, 400-500 11 year olds every year).

I'd handwave this as Daily Prophet exaggeration and it was maybe a couple hundred thousand attendees total. Journalistic standards don't seem to be a thing in HP afterall and what venue would allow a party of 30 million? Even Glastonbury only pulls in 200,000 or so.

 

300 000 sounds like a lot to me. The "all the wizards and witches he has ever known" part makes it sound like there could be ghosts included, but they are supposedly rare as well. Phrased differently it might have been that he's invited plenty of muggles, but that reads very specific.

 

I don't think the population is nearly that large, but I'm pretty sure Ollivander is stated to be the best wandmaker, and Madam Malkin is stated to make the best robes. Book 6 mentions Twilfitt and Tattings, another clothing shop, and there are most likely more little wizarding communities around the island, wherein people make their own clothes. I don't think the population of the island is best measured by the few businesses with which Harry deals in the few places he visits, but rather by the student body of Hogwarts, which was where fans derived the conservative estimate of 10-20 thousand.
With the entire United Kingdom containing roughly 57 million in 1991, I genuinely don't understand how half of them could be wizards and the whole operation remained secret. Sure, pure bloods may not have birth certificates, but actual pure bloods are supposed to be a minority, and the 30 million mentioned in this article are just the ones attending this man's birthday. If there were thirty million wizards in the United Kingdom that had something to do with the muggle world, then unless you were some sort of hermit, you would know people who never used a telephone, television, and had a weird way of dressing.
Another part of this article that seems kind of silly is the idea that this one wizard lived for 755 years. Elphias Doge was clearly on his last legs in 1997, and he was around the same age as Dumbledore. I really don't get how you could have white hair and a wheezy voice at like a hundred and then last another 650 years. That just isn't how aging works. If people lived for five hundred years on average, then the Philosopher's Stone would be unremarkable, as would the lifespans of Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel.

 

I doubt those 30mln were all supposed to be Brits, @Silirt.

Non-canon source says Dippet (Headmaster before Dumbledore) was about 300 years old. I do agree that living for centuries makes the Philosopher's Stone obsolete, but I think 300 years for particularly long-lived witches and wizards isn't outrageous. Dumbledore, a good bit past 100, was perfectly spry until HBP. My headcanon is that magic folk live about twice as long as muggles.

 

I'm sorry but you must be pretty silly to believe the tabloid trash the Daily Prophet prints. Do you also believe Muggle newspapers that claim 'Aliens stole my Husband'?

For those who don't know, this particular claim comes from the 14 August, 1991 edition The Daily Prophet, and written by a certain Andy Emunbgey who I am informed was a most unscrupulous sort (deals with Goblins don't you know and worse the French). Why, I remember reading that issue myself and commenting to my friend at the sheer silliness of the claim. Needless to say, this claim falls apart under any serous scrutiny. It is massively out of line with the ages of other wizards we see and considering the source can safely be ignored. /joke

 

The presumption of the thread is that they were Brits, meaning there were that many magic Brits, which is what I was contradicting. Dumbledore was best buddies with Nicholas Flamel and had the Stone in his possession for many years. I suspect he drank some of the Elixir of Life, though not enough all at once to where he would have to explain his sudden rejuvenation. Evidently, he didn't give any of it to anyone else, but it was supposed to be hidden.

 

@Sesc I think the only way around that would be to argue that the population has been artificially culled by multiple wars, and maybe some nasty dragon pox (thats what killed James's parents and Lucius's dad as I recall).

 

My first opinion is that it comes from the movies, even worse a movie prop, so any time it raises a worldbuilding question the answer should be "meh, it's not canon, don't bother thinking about it".

My second opinion is that any number above 10 is inherently non-canon because I'm not sure JKR's math powers have progressed beyond that. I'm still surprised she hasn't somehow botched the number of Horcruxes.

More seriously, I don't think you should take "30 million are expected" as "30 million will come", but as "30 million invitations have been sent, one for each person he met in his life, including the dead ones (not just the ghosts)". As someone said, there is no single venue that would accommodate 30 million people (even if half were ghosts), and the world Cup (100 thousand for reference) was already described as a logistical nightmare, so having actually 30 million expected is implausible to the extreme.

In addition, there were around 5.5B inhabitants in 91, so 30 million wizards in the world would mean around 1/180 of all humanity having powers, and that's if he met literally everyone alive on Earth. That would make the 300 thousand figure for England the minimum (because he can't have met everyone on Earth, he hasn't met Harry for example).

 

1) Well, we don't really know if the PS or Flammel is that special. In fact, it took Harry quite a while to even find his name in anything or get anyone to recognize it. For reference, he wasn't in "Greatest Wizards of the Twentieth Century" despite the fact that he operated with Dumbledore IN the Twentieth Century.

2) We don't really know the ages of everyone in Magical Britain and due to the near-constant war-time, it can be assumed that most of the oldies died off before they could live to a ripe-old-age.

3) What would be different about it? Already they're quite mentally different from regular muggles, along with the fact that they have time-turners.

 

It could work. If the modern day wizarding world had a similar fatality rate as the dark ages. People with a life expectancy of about 70 if they lived past their 20's kind of thing, but because most don't the overall life expectancy is actually like 35.

In wizarding terms what with wars that can kill you no matter how far away from the battlefront you are, spells that can go horribly wrong, beasts like dementors and dragons and nundus that'll murder you, incurably fatal magical diseases etc it's not that much of a stretch.

What lends credence to this is that I can't recall anyone in the HP-verse dying of old age...ever. There are the Flamels who may eventually pass on once their "affairs are in order" but that just might mean that they don't have a cure all for the fatal magical diseases anymore. Then there's Ignotus Peverell who "Greeted death like an old friend," but that could just mean he got tired of living and walked into the ocean for all we know and Binns who fell asleep one day and never woke up but he may have had Super African Sleeping Disease or something. Unless there's an obscure family tree reference somewhere. Everyone died from wars, or diseases or magical mishaps. Maybe wizards are actually immortal in terms of aging, who knows?

 

That's because there's no such thing as 'dying of old age'. It's always one thing or another that kills you; you have no preset lifespan. Basically, as you get older, organs, tissues, and systems stop working because they wear out, and causes of death like cardiac arrest and seizure become increasingly likely and decreasingly easy to prevent and survive. Hence the term 'natural causes'. I can't recall anyone dying of being beheaded or having their organs cut out, but I think it makes more sense to assume they can die of those causes than to assume they can't.
Wizards are shown to age at the same rate as muggles. There is literally no reason to believe the rate of aging would be the exact same up until age 100, then they would never age again. When we see a wizard in canon who's over 100, it's either Dumbledore, who was research buddies with Flamel, or it's someone who is actively preventing the causes of death with potions and spells and shit. There is no Lifespano Extendo spell, because then the Stone would be unnecessary for Flamel and his wife to continue living.

 

Not to mention that 755 years equals to only 6,6 million hours, so he'd have had to meet 5 new wizards every hour day and night to get to that 30 million people

 

I've more or less settled on wizarding Britain having around 20,000 wizards in it. I feel like this is a good compromise figure drawing together a number of competing demands:

- Hogwarts should be small enough that its canonical depiction works.

- Hogwarts should be big enough that the figure of 200 Slytherin supporters given in PoA (the only book canon which states Hogwarts numbers) is ballpark correct.

- Wizarding Britain should be big enough that the size of the Ministry and the number of shops across Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade makes sense.

- Wizarding Britain should be small enough that it has a small town "everyone knows everyone" feeling.

- The global magical population being large enough that 100,000 attend the Quidditch world cup.

- Given that we know every wizard in Britain is invited to Hogwarts, the Hogwarts alumni population and the British wizarding population should not diverge too far.

My general strategy with population is to decide the number of wizards born a year, decide the average life expectancy of wizards, and simply multiple the two.

Life Expectancy

The best canon we have (which is to say, book canon) is the existence of Madam Marchbanks. Given that all the examiners we see in OotP were old, my sense is that Marchbanks would have already been quite old when she examined Dumbledore for his NEWTs - examining magic is not a young person's game. So let's say she was at least 40 when she examined Dumbledore, or 27 years older than him. That would make her around 150 as of OotP. At that point, although she is frail, she's still in work and still relatively mobile, indicating she's not on death's door. So she probably has at least another 10-20 years to live at that point - let's say she lives to 170.

I think that fits - Dumbledore himself, at 120, is still pretty spry, and in full-time, stressful employment. My sense is that Dumbledore is not anywhere near the end of his career. I'd say the "Muggle equivalent age" for Dumbledore would be someone in their early 60s - grey and wrinkled, but still mobile and quick-witted, in work and vigorous.

So even if we say Marchbanks only has a decade or two left to her, and even if we say that she's particularly well-preserved, I think around 140-150 is the lowest bound for wizarding life expectancy. This is backed up by the fact that Dumbledore's generation seem to be largely still around - Muriel and Doge are still alive, as is Grindelwald (and he's been siting in prison for 50 years).

Of course, we do see a lot of missing grandparents - no Potter grandparents, no Weasley grandparents. But I don't think our "sample size" of grandparents is anywhere large enough to reach any conclusion as to what is the norm, especially given that Harry tends to associate with families which tend to be the first in the fray when it comes to a fight.

So I generally say, for the sake of population estimates, that average wizarding life expectancy is 150.

Births/year

Let's talk lower and upper bounds.

I think the lower bound would be 40 Hogwarts students a year, where almost all children go to Hogwarts. So, say, 45 births a year, with 40 going to Hogwarts and 5 not.

45 births/year * 150 years average life expectancy = 6,750

On the other hand, I think an upper bound for the number of Hogwarts students/year is around 70, around 17 per house per year. That requires there to be multiple dorms per year - e.g. there would be another Gryffindor boy's dorm in Harry's year which is just never relevant enough to be mentioned. It also requires there to be multiple teachers per subject, unless you stretch things in an unsatisfactory way. While these things don't fit with the way the books depict Hogwarts, there are explanations you can use to justify it, and certainly there are JKR comments that she intended there to be multiple teachers, more students who just never get mentioned, etc.

That gives around 120 students total per house. If you say some alumni/Hogsmeade residents visit Hogwarts to watch the Quidditch, that puts you in a ballpark of 200 Slytherin supporters in PoA.

I think the upper bound of non-Hogwarts attendees is maybe 50% of the wizarding population. This requires lots of people to be home-schooled, community schooled, or go the apprenticeship route, but given that seems to be the international norm of wizarding education, with school attendance an outlier, I think that can be justified fine. It also works with Voldemort's decree in DH that all students had to attend Hogwarts - that only makes sense if there was a significant number of non-attendees.

So this upper bound gives us around 140 births/year.

140 births/year * 150 = 21,000

Personally, I prefer the upper bound figure. I think it fits better with the Ministry and the economy we see. It requires you to stretch your interpretation of Hogwarts a bit, but not to breaking point, I think.

And of course, on top of these 21,000 wizards, there are all the other magical species too. I think people too frequently forget how cosmopolitan magical Britain is. There must be thousands of goblins at least - maybe even coming close to the number of wizards. So I'd put the figure for the total British magical community which the Ministry rules at around 40,000 - 50,000.

 

There are actually other numbers in other books hinting at this.

In the same book we see that there are over hundred carriages transporting the Students from and to Hogsmeade

In Goblet of Fire during the Yule Ball there were also about hundred tables with a dozen seats each.

We also see that there are 31 Gryffindors in Harry's year, since he mentions that many to be in class at one point during Defense against the Dark Arts, which is a class the Gryffindors take without the other houses.

Overall this is fairly consitent with Rowlings estimate of about a thousand students.

 

I think those quotes aren't as strong as the direct POA reference. They're suggestive, sure, but they're not explicit in the way that an outright statement of numbers of a specific house is.

- POA number of carriages: less than useful because we don't know the capacity of the carriages, but even more so because it's entirely possible that there's an over-supply to permit e.g. students going on their own to take a carriage alone.

- Yule ball: less than useful because we don't know how many non-Hogwarts attendees there are.

- DADA class: I'm not sure it's ever stated that the Gryffindors take DADA alone as a rule, or specifically that they are taking the class alone in OotP. Certainly it's never mentioned that there's other students in there with them, but lots of things aren't mentioned. The whole "Hogwarts is larger than it seems" argument is premised on the idea that things like other dorms and other teachers aren't mentioned but still exist, so it would seem something of a self-sabotage to argue that if something isn't mentioned it can't exist.

 

We know from later books that at least 6(we only see Harry meniton the trio plus Neville, Luna and Ginny( fit into one carriage and at one point, so thats at the minimum room for 600 students, Hermione also worries once that if they dont hurry up the carriages fill up and they wont be able to sit together.

The majority of third year and below students didn't attend, so not much more than half of the Hogwarts students would have been there, and I seriously doubt the majority of people there owouldn't have been Hogwarts students. Even if you're very generous in your estimate non-Hogwarts attendees, you still end up with a pretty high number of students.

Not explicitly, but we do know that they took it alone in Prisoner of Azkaban(it's pretty clear when they face the Boggart), and which classess are taken with other teachers doesen't really seem to change over the years outside of N.E.W.T classess.

 

She also thinks that being expelled is worse than death, so...you could say she's slightly prone to exaggeration.

In CoS its made clear that Gryffindor have Herbology with Hufflepuff. In OotP and PoA its shown that Gryffindor share Potions with the Slytherins. And its in multiple books that the Slytherins and Gryffindors share CoMC.

So multi house classes is definitely a thing.