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The “Harry Potter” Worldbuilding Detail that Haunts Me

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Sometimes, the worldbuilding (or lack thereof) in the Harry Potter series makes me want to scream.

I was born in small-town Alabama. My family lived in a community known as “Frog Pond” (try finding that on a map), described as “just outside Center Star, which is just outside Killen, just outside Florence, an hour West of Huntsville” and was part of a Christian denomination best known for self-isolation and for its members marrying young to have swarms of (homeschooled) children.

Which is to say, I know what it’s like to be in a community like the British magical world: tiny, insular, and scattered. I have suspicions that Joanne Rowling…might not.

 

population density comparison maps of the US state of Alabama compared to the United Kingdom. In the map of Alabama, the vast majority of area is green, meaning that these areas are home to fewer than 100 people per square mile. A few very small portions of the map show a density of up to 5000 people per square mile. About half of the UK map area shows a population density of fewer than 201 people per square mile, and the other half of the UK shows much higher population densities, including several spots of over 12,000 people per square mile.

Image credits: MapSof.net and Nicholas Brill

 

I’m not the first to play the numbers game with the wizarding world, but from my perspective, it’s clear that the series’s author is from a densely populated country and never realistically thought through her imagined world.

Hogwarts is, we are meant to believe, the only wizarding school in the UK – and apparently, one of three in all of Europe. Though the author later claimed Hogwarts has about 1000 students, she originally imagined (and the narrative supports) about 40 kids in each graduating class, adding up to only about 280.*

I can easily imagine a community whose school has about 40 students per class. My graduating class had 38. One community I know well boasts a high school that graduates around 90 students yearly, making it roughly double the size of Hogwarts. What is this town like? Small. An estimated 900 people live within city limits. It has a grocery store, a dollar store, two gas stations, a handful of small businesses, and one streetlight. The whole county has a population of about 15,000, spread over 700 square miles, and three high schools.

If Hogwarts – with 300 students – is the only wizarding school in the UK, then the British-Irish wizarding world is tiny. Let’s generously assume that every witch or wizard in Britain lives for 150 years, adding up to 6,000 magical people. That’s 1% the size of the population of Wyoming.

Now, finally, we get to the big question. This is the thought that keeps me up at night, the reason I started writing this article in the first place, and the justification for all this math: how could there possibly be an entire professional Quidditch league in Wizarding Britain?

There are 13 active professional Quidditch teams in the British-Irish League. If none have coaches, staff, or reserve players (sorry, Oliver Wood), that’s still 91 people playing professional Quidditch at any given time. 1.5% of the entire regional wizarding population. If all those Quidditch players are between ages 18 and 60 (being generous – the average retirement age of [Muggle] pro athletes is 30), then 5.3% of all “young” magical adults play professional Quidditch.

Remember, Hogwarts is the only wizarding school in the region. Every player in the British-Irish Quidditch League must either have attended Hogwarts or immigrated. If, at minimum, nearly a hundred people are playing Quidditch professionally, then on average, two students graduating from Hogwarts will join a professional team every year.

So why would playing professional Quidditch be all that impressive? Why isn’t it a realistic career path for any student with an aptitude for flying? Why would Horace Slughorn brag about his connection to one professional Quidditch player, if his decades-long career means he taught most of the current players?

How does a community of about 6,000 scrape together enough fans for an entire sports league? Who watches the games and pays the players? If the magical world reflects the muggle world, then about 40% of wizards follow Quidditch and each team has about 185 fans total. The average pro game can’t possibly draw crowds larger than those at Hogwarts matches. Are there enough squibs and muggle relatives to double the number of people allowed to watch Quidditch? Do goblins and House-elves buy merch from their favorite teams? The town with one stoplight has no professional sports teams, much less a whole league. That would be absurd! It’s just not feasible for a community so small.

It’s equally ridiculous to imagine a community of 6,000 whose members don’t all know each other. People in my little town live their whole lives here. When the mayor announced that a man known as “Peanut” passed away, I may have been stifling giggles, but the people around me moaned about how his granny used to teach their Bible classes, and didn’t his cousin Patty just get bad news on her ultrasound? Most of them know the names, addresses, and family trees of half the county.

After years of small-town life, the wizarding world’s lack of realistic community dynamics is striking. Don’t they talk to each other? Where are everyone’s extended family and childhood friends? If the entire adult population works daily to maintain Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, Diagon Alley, the Ministry of Magic, and a professional sports league, then who is left to enjoy those things? And how do they not all know each other?

Maybe we can construct plausible in-universe explanations for all of these issues, but the simplest answer is obvious: these books were written by someone without experience living in a community like the one she was writing about, and she didn’t consider the implications of her world-building choices.

And so, dear reader, this is why the British-Irish Quidditch League haunts me endlessly. Can you save me from this nightmare? If you can help me make sense of it all – or if you just want to commiserate – please leave a comment.

* If you stick with 1000, the distant worldbuilding makes more sense, but the immediate narrative breaks. How can there be 1000 students if Harry’s year has only 40? The classes above and below would average 160 students. Can Harry’s class be so drastically smaller than average? Is Harry the most useless narrator ever, to have noticed such a small percentage of the people he sees every day? How could Hogwarts function with as few as 13 instructors for 1000 students? It’s more logical to assume 1000 was wrong, and 280 is closer to the truth.