Why don't they have basic english and maths classes? You'd think those would be important fundamentals for wizards. Actually, Snape's surliness makes perfect sense. He's had to grade essays written by people with fifth grade level composition skills (if that) for twenty years who show basically no improvement in writing over seven years. It'd be enough to drive any teacher mad!
I may post on the Wizarding economy sometime: it just couldn't work. JKR I think said the wizarding population is tiny, a few thousand. Based on an assumed size of 280 children in Hogwarts (7 yrs * 4 houses * 10 per house-year) I ran through the math one time and came out with prob 4000-5000 wizards in the UK/Ireland, inline with JKR's numbers.
So we know maths isn't her strong point. But there's absolutely no way the wizarding economy as described could function with that few people, particularly an economy almost entirely divorced from the muggle world. Either they'd be much more integrated in muggle society, probably relying on muggles for things like food production and most goods. Or there'd have to be a lot more (prob on the order of ten times as many) for the society to function as independently as described.
Harry's sexuality is a bit odd, I think. I never got the impression that he and Cho had some hot and heavy make-out sesion, either. Ron seems much more typical for a teenage boy, from laughing at Harry's kissing woes to, at least initially, enjoying all the attention from Lavender. Blustering in a somewhat obnoxious way about his younger sister's own interest in boys. Harry's got none of that. Even after he starts lusting after Ginny it's still as if he barely even considers girls as girls. Only ever thinks about Ron, Hermione, or Ron/Hermione when it's shoved in his face and he can't possibly avoid it (Lavender, Krum's confrontation, the Yule Brawl and Party Invite). It's like he'd prefer a world where everyone was asexual, including himself, or where they were forever eleven years old.
Hmm, maybe there's a reason Harry never quite clicked with me in terms of ship-fic.
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I may post on the Wizarding economy sometime: it just couldn't work. JKR I think said the wizarding population is tiny, a few thousand. Based on an assumed size of 280 children in Hogwarts (7 yrs * 4 houses * 10 per house-year) I ran through the math one time and came out with prob 4000-5000 wizards in the UK/Ireland, inline with JKR's numbers.
So we know maths isn't her strong point. But there's absolutely no way the wizarding economy as described could function with that few people, particularly an economy almost entirely divorced from the muggle world. Either they'd be much more integrated in muggle society, probably relying on muggles for things like food production and most goods. Or there'd have to be a lot more (prob on the order of ten times as many) for the society to function as independently as described.
Harry's sexuality is a bit odd, I think. I never got the impression that he and Cho had some hot and heavy make-out sesion, either. Ron seems much more typical for a teenage boy, from laughing at Harry's kissing woes to, at least initially, enjoying all the attention from Lavender. Blustering in a somewhat obnoxious way about his younger sister's own interest in boys. Harry's got none of that. Even after he starts lusting after Ginny it's still as if he barely even considers girls as girls. Only ever thinks about Ron, Hermione, or Ron/Hermione when it's shoved in his face and he can't possibly avoid it (Lavender, Krum's confrontation, the Yule Brawl and Party Invite). It's like he'd prefer a world where everyone was asexual, including himself, or where they were forever eleven years old.
Hmm, maybe there's a reason Harry never quite clicked with me in terms of ship-fic.