harry potter - How many students attended Hogwarts?

While re-listening to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (audiobook), I noticed that after Sirius tried to get into the Gryffindor common room, and everyone goes to the Great Hall, Dumbledore only creates hundreds of sleeping bags, implying less than 1000 students. Is there any way to know how many students attended Hogwarts, or how many students are in each house?

Answer

This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.

J. K. Rowling once said in an interview that

there are about 1000

Yet, this analysis concluded that there are around 280. This count is based on what the films show.

You can also try this reddit thread which discusses this question.

Finally though, I'll paste a small part of this interview here. These are J. K. Rowling's own words:

Then I've been asked a few times how many people and because numbers are not my strong point, one part of my brain knew 40, and another part of my brain said, “Oh, about 600 sounds right.” Then people started working it out and saying, "Where are the other kids sleeping?"

So the answer is somewhere between 280 and 1000, but the common number seems to be the lower.

Comments

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