Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
Gryffindor would be easiest to adjust because they have a guardian who can see and interact, so all McG has to do is tell the Pink Lady that one student will be communicating with written words instead of speech. Flitwick is also looking into changing the eagle knocker to accept written questions. These were the two houses McG thought Hazel was going to be Sorted into, not Hufflepuff.
That was a line directly from the books, as was all of Dumbledore's speech. And no, she won't get in trouble for talking to people in the hallways. It was more of a no fighting rule.
So the issue with how many Hogwarts students there are, and how it impacts the population of Wizarding Britain, is an interesting one. I take the stance that at least in Harry's year and all the years already present in the first book, there are 250-300 (40 in his year, 7 years to fill, 280). This actually isn't too much for the staff already present; I have a 7-year school schedule I created that has classes of ~20 students each, and everything fits together without any teachers having to teach overlapping classes. I even gave them one administrative period per week to catch up on their grading! Admittedly I scrapped all double classes that were mentioned in the books and took the position that they would go to each class 3 hours per week much like university, but with those underlying rules it works out nicely if I do say so myself.
What matters more is how this impacts the population of Wizard Britain. JKR estimated the total population to be roughly 3,000, which I find far too small. Especially considering the size of the Ministry. We know that there was a "Ministry task force of five hundred" people organizing the 1994 Quidditch World Cup and that did not deplete the Ministry of all its other services. Even if they contracted out half the work to people who normally didn't work at the Ministry, it still requires several hundred people to work in the Ministry. Let's estimate 500 total just to give us a round number to work with, although it is likely an underestimate. 1/6 of the population working directly for the government? That doesn't track.
Even if it is amusing to think about Fudge and Malfoy being so puffed up and proud about being the most important people in a small town.
No, my estimate is that Wizard Britain has to be at least ten times that, probably more along the lines of 50-100k. Still small, fewer people than all but the least populated county in the UK, but I think a better number to support an actual national population. It isn't like they will have an issue with space considering so many of them live in demiplanes/pocket dimensions.
Now what does that do to the number of school children? Let's pick an average lifespan for wizards of 100 years, not unbelievable considering Dumbledore was supposedly in his 110s or so and there were still witches alive who had been adults when he was a child. If we have 50-100k total population and assume that they are just replacing themselves, 7% should be in school during the Hogwarts range. That's 3.5 to 7 thousand kids, way more than we see any evidence for within Hogwarts itself.
My solution? Hogwarts is not the only magic school in Britain. It is the best, the most prestigious and competitive and comprehensive, but still one of about ten schools total. The children of the rich and powerful make up most of their students. You want a good job in the government? You had better hope you can get into the very few non-legacy seats they have per year, both for the name on your diploma and so you can rub elbows with the future elite whose patronage you'll need to climb the ranks.
Changing things up in this way also gives me some sociologic pressures to explain some of the behavior we see in canon. Most of the population would be the children and grandchildren of other wizards, Purebloods who have no connection to the Muggle world even though they aren't pompous self-styled quasi-lords like Lucius Malfoy. Where do the Muggleborns go to school? Mostly to Hogwarts, especially during Dumbledore's tenure as headmaster when it grew to basically all of them. It provides the best opportunity to pull them away from their Muggle families and push them entirely into the magical world where they "belong". What do you think the rest of the population thinks about that? How many people think they could have gone to a better school if there weren't so many Muggleborn around? How many people blame the Muggleborn for the lack of societal advancement available to them?
How many people quietly tell themselves, "The Muggleborns are taking jobs away from good, hardworking Purebloods"?
If you are starting to feel a creeping sense of dread right about now, don't worry. That's normal. NOW we see why there was no public outcry against Voldemort's takeover in book 7. Most people went along with it. Most people had their lives be completely unaffected. They were being promised a better life once the "undesirables" were gone, and they believed it because it fit with their own prejudices and assumptions.
In that case, I apologize. It did feel a bit like being told that Hazel needed to tell everyone her life's story all at once, and by not doing that I was twisting her into a lying liar.
Hazel quite frankly doesn't understand how important she is societally to Wizard Britain. After eight years of constant degradation by the Dursleys, her sense of self-worth is distorted. Especially her value to other people. The idea that anyone would have a problem with her going off and doing her own thing is still new, and even when the werewolves made a bit of a fuss they still went along with it. She therefore concluded that while it might not be "normal", it isn't a problem and no one's concern but her own.
Thankfully it's unclear how great the wizards' international tracking abilities are, and Hazel spends a lot of her time outside Britain. And if they tried to tie her down to one place… I feel like that's a situation many readers are looking forward to.
The way I picture it is that it is more passive than directed probes. It's more a net of awareness, and even that isn't the best comparison. The point is that the mechanics are different; a brush, not a spear. So did Dumbledore feel something? Probably. Did he recognize it as Legilimency? Maybe, maybe not.
Did he know it was Hazel doing it? Absolutely not. She is a natural, passive Legilimens. She doesn't need eye contact, a wand, nothing. There are no tells that she is listening to your thoughts other than reacting to what you think but don't say. Even that can be explained away as her just being insightful and good at reading people.
Plus, this IS something she intentionally hides due to her time with the Dursleys. She knows telling people that she can read minds would be a Bad Thing.
Meanwhile I don't think it would be something he would routinely check. He has no reason to do so. It hasn't made a peep in ten years, so while he might have – MIGHT HAVE – checked on a semi-regular basis the first few years, he is confident that all is as it should be.
After all, he has three full-time jobs. Even if he half-assed all of them, which I honestly don't see a good Dumbledore doing, that is still 1½ jobs. He doesn't have the time to go looking for problems to solve. If everything looks on the up-and-up, his attention will be focused on something else that actually needs to be dealt with right now. A blood ward monitor that is behaving itself and sitting quietly on the shelf doesn't qualify.
I certainly didn't TRY to phrase the potions comment in a way that was secretive. Sally-Anne asked a question about classes, so neither Hazel nor I thought the source of information was relevant to the answer. The writing comment she was evasive on, I'll admit to that, but I felt her in-character reason for that was reasonable. She was hungry and didn't want to get into that long of a conversation right at that moment. Plus, something I tried to make clear but may not have been successful with, she Does Not Do Well with crowds of people. She spent the entire walk to the Sorting Hat wanting to run away, and then even with everyone's attention off her she still was feeling overwhelmed to the point that psychic overload was causing her physical pain. That does not lead to being a great conversation partner.
There was also an out of character reason I didn't want to get into Hazel's spark-writing. This chapter had already taken too long for me to write and post as it was, and it tried to get away from me several times anyway. Throwing all THAT in was more stuff I just didn't want to put to the page right now, but I had to address it in some way because not having Cedric be surprised would have been LESS believable.
Oh, the Hufflepuff first years were doing some scattered meet-and-greet. Not as an entire group because of where they were all sitting, but some. Hazel just wasn't taking part in it. Some of that was because it took place during dessert, same as the Gryffindors did in canon, and she was feeling sick to her stomach on top of her headache. Some of it was the desire to finish this chapter I mentioned above.
And some of it was because I already have a scene planned for more of a get-to-know-you conversation with the first-year Puffs so I just didn't think about including it during the dinner scene when I can see it further down in my notes. (Next chapter, ironically.)
