The books - yeah, some of them are internally inconsistent. But if it's in the books then it's actually tied directly to the story - it's canon. It just needs explanation. According to my personal ranking, that is, material from the books trumps any other material, though it may need some serious explanation to fit with the other books. DH stuff I'll ignore if earlier book material contradicts it.
Population - the witch-hunts would have reduced the population that started Seclusion, yes. But that was centuries ago and since then magicals have been intermarrying almost entirely with other magicals - previously they would have been scattered, marrying with muggles far more. Meaning more non-magic children coming out of those mixed marriages. So the population ought to have climbed back up to near peak in the recent decades.
The old families dying out - that's ONLY a handful of pureblood families though. Tells us nothing about non-pure families. Which might be expanding.
A higher proportion would only give us 60-70 students a year if they'd already had the population bulk of Harry's time to build on. Which at the time of Seclusion they wouldn't have had anyway, if the violence was that bad, and pre-Seclusion the population of the entire British Isles, magical and muggle, was much, much less. So it would have had to be a *radically* higher proportion of magicals to muggles to get that sort of number back then. And we would then need to explain why that proportion dropped so sharply.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Gaah?
Date: 2015-09-21 05:59 pm (UTC)The books - yeah, some of them are internally inconsistent. But if it's in the books then it's actually tied directly to the story - it's canon. It just needs explanation. According to my personal ranking, that is, material from the books trumps any other material, though it may need some serious explanation to fit with the other books. DH stuff I'll ignore if earlier book material contradicts it.
Population - the witch-hunts would have reduced the population that started Seclusion, yes. But that was centuries ago and since then magicals have been intermarrying almost entirely with other magicals - previously they would have been scattered, marrying with muggles far more. Meaning more non-magic children coming out of those mixed marriages. So the population ought to have climbed back up to near peak in the recent decades.
The old families dying out - that's ONLY a handful of pureblood families though. Tells us nothing about non-pure families. Which might be expanding.
A higher proportion would only give us 60-70 students a year if they'd already had the population bulk of Harry's time to build on. Which at the time of Seclusion they wouldn't have had anyway, if the violence was that bad, and pre-Seclusion the population of the entire British Isles, magical and muggle, was much, much less. So it would have had to be a *radically* higher proportion of magicals to muggles to get that sort of number back then. And we would then need to explain why that proportion dropped so sharply.