By Patrick Dixon

Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry is far and away the premier educational establishment in the British magical community, perhaps even the world. The most noteworthy witches and wizards of history all began their careers and/or reigns of terror bustling through the temperamental stairwells of Hogwarts.

It’s no wonder so many students move on to prosperous careers in the most respectable sectors of society – the curriculum is unparalleled. Students are mentored by Hogwarts alumni who understand the level of magical proficiency that the world demands of them, exposing them to practical life hacks and mortal danger in equal measure. A Hogwarts Graduate is ready to dive broom-handle-first into the workforce with a laundry list of options to choose from, only a fraction of which are included here. Since the entire magic-wielding United Kingdom only sees about 40 job candidates emerge from Hogwarts per year, employers are positively starving for young professionals.

However, not every spell casting young adult in the British Isles has a lofty career waiting for them after graduation. Awaiting the less fortunate scholars of the world is a life of discrimination and hardship. Some children turn out to be squibs and others are home-schooled, but we’re not talking about them. We’re talking about the students that didn’t get in to Hogwarts. They almost certainly exist, and here’s why.

Hogwarts is Way Too Selective

Whether it boils down simple pretension or the fact that student selection hinges on the inscrutable whims of magical stationary, the simple fact is that Hogwarts only admits about 40 new students every year. Tackle the math any way you like – this guy pretty much nails it – or just have a look at the picture below.

And avoid the temptation to imagine yourself as one of them.

Four Houses, multiplied by 70 students apiece, equals a yawning fortress that is completely underutilized. Hogwarts Faculty or the Ministry of Magic could easily scrounge up some young bodies to fill out those cavernous halls, but they don’t. There are students in the United Kingdom who are in dire need of a magical education, which should be a massive concern in a society that functions entirely on magic all the time. Exactly how many students are banished to the chilly highlands and forced to stare longingly through stained glass windows while the Harry Potters, Neville Longbottoms, and Justin Finch-Fletchleys of the world have all the fun? Tough to say, but we can start by examining the wizard population as a whole.

The Wizard Population is Deceptively Large (As Is This Point)

Instead of delving into the speculative census data regarding the entire magical population of the United Kingdom, and because more studious minds have already taken care of that for us, the numbers can tell you that if Hogwarts houses 280 students then…complicated math…the population should be hovering around 4,000. A number, by the way, that the photographic data fails to support.

Wait, now you’re just substituting speculative census data for speculative photographic data, you’re grumbling. First and foremost, welcome to Graphic Nerdity, internet reader! Thank you for taking the time out of your porn rummaging to browse our modest page. We pleased you’re invested in this post enough to voice your objections. Secondly, yeah, of course we are. The site is called Graphic Nerdity, not Mathic Nerdity.

The Ministry of Magic is without a doubt the largest employer of witches and wizards in the United Kingdom, as evidenced by the fact that nearly every employed character apart from Hogwarts staff seems to work there.

Pictured: 90% of the characters in the Harry Potter series.

You immediately notice the the throngs of people. Now, consider this is a small section of the main floor of a massive, multi-level facility. Now take note of the office windows in the background. How many employees do you figure work here? 500? 1000? More?

If it’s anywhere north of 1000, you’re taking about more than 20% of the UK’s total population cramming themselves into toilets on their morning commute. That’s like Wal-Mart employing 63 million Americans, or, to be phrased more dramatically, the combined population of Canada and Australia. If you entertain the thought that the entire population is greater than 4,000, the idea that 1,000+ wizards can work for one organization seems more reasonable. More so than the idea that the Ministry is hoarding every able-bodied adult who isn’t retirement age like Pokemon.

During the battle for Hogwarts, a small force of beleaguered students, professors and Ministry refugees mounted one last stand against the sprawling armies of Lord Voldemort in a veritable who’s who of the wizarding world. The Dark Lord’s combined forces of Snatchers and Death Eaters – or Snatch Eaters – most likely consisted of local belligerents, as the Second Wizarding War was of the civil variety. Let’s have a roll call…

Pictured: The entire wizard population of England.

When the Snatchers made their way from the clothing section at Value Village to the Forbidden Forest, they had roughly 1,000 soldiers in tow. Now how about about those Death Eaters…

AKA Slytherin alumni.

Voldemort’s entourage is just as vast, and decidedly better dressed. We’d estimate that about 2,000 evil bastards laid siege to Hogwarts that night. If we’re working with a population of 4,000, then one would conclude that half the wizards in the UK are either seasoned murderers, aspiring murderers, or the kind of people who are willing to give murder a try before they come to any conclusions. That’s more than a little unsettling, but it’s also a little unlikely.

Finally, there is the 1994 Quidditch World Cup. At capacity, the Quidditch Trillenium Stadium can hold 100,000 spectators, all of whom are presumably wizards.

Wizards who saw a hell of a lot more action than we did.

According to the numerical data referenced earlier, the worldwide wizard population is about 350,000. That would mean one-third of the magical people on the planet attended a game of quidditch, which, holy merchandise. Think about that for a minute – one third of the entire wizarding world dropped what they were doing, booked time off work, closed up their shops, left their homes and their countries, and rode a portkey to Scotland to watch men ride around on brooms for twenty minutes. At that was just the finals. You’d have to think that quidditch fans are just as excited about the rest of the tournament. They formed a makeshift tent community outside the stadium specifically so they wouldn’t have to return home. Did the wizarding world come to a grinding halt for two weeks? Or is there a more likely theory to explain why so many witches and wizards were able to attend the Quidditch World Cup?

We think so. There is s strong likelihood that the wizarding world is much larger than we were initially lead to believe. Under that assumption, we can reason that the students of Hogwarts do not comprise the United Kingdom’s entire magical adolescent population. Since the overall population is larger, the 11 - 17 year-old demographic is also larger, and that means…

Many Young Wizards Don’t Go to Hogwarts

It’s your eleventh birthday. You know that today is the day you receive your Hogwarts acceptance letter, just like all your little magical friends did. Only it never comes. Weeks pass and you still haven’t received your letter. It slowly dawns on you that the most prestigious wizarding school in the UK wants nothing to do with you, and you have no idea why. Your friends are too busy collecting their supplies for the upcoming year that they no longer have time for you. Your parents tell you not to worry, because there have been many great wizards who never went to Hogwarts, though they aren’t able to name any.

This is the problem that dozens, if not hundreds of 11-year-olds face every year. Those who are left out of the Hogwarts 40 are left with very few options. There's home school, if being a socially awkward recluse is your thing. There’s Muggle elementary school, which will do nothing to help you control those involuntary and disastrous magical outbursts (that aren’t puberty-related).

The Ministry of Magic is charged with the all-important task of keeping the magical world under wraps, and letting angsty minors blunder their way through the Muggle school system unsupervised is a potion for disaster. Naturally, the Ministry has examined this problem and developed an alternative measure for sustaining the wizarding way of life while simultaneously cutting down on the reported cases of random student immolation.

The Wizarding Public School Theory

In England they’re known as Community Schools. Here in North America we call them Public Schools. Whatever you want to call them, the term generally refers to a state-funded school system. While the Ministry of Magic takes the education of wizards very seriously, it’s hard to imagine them approaching public school with the same zeal. Funding would be offered, but not very much, and all of it given begrudgingly. Public schools are a painful necessity in this world. Students aren’t nurtured as much has they are contemptuously swept under the rug until they are legally required to fend for themselves at age 18.

Wizarding public schools are most likely in the middle of a desnely populated city, hidden beneath a third-rate cloaking device like a fumigation tarp or construction site hoarding. Some type of enchanted transportation service would be provided, albeit on a much smaller scale than the fabled Hogwarts Express.

If they’re lucky.

Compared to Hogwarts, public schools are relatively bare-bones. There are no fickle staircases that send students adventuring down hitherto uncharted corridors. There is only one stairwell, and it may or may not be inhabited by a troll.

The curriculum is a whole different can of worms, which, as it turns out, is one of the few ingredients the school can afford to supply for their potions class. Most courses are taught by Azkaban parolees using textbooks so old that much of the text is still in Latin. The Transfiguration program is by far the most problematic since most students and faculty lack the necessary skill to transfigure objects back into their original form, resulting in more than one student being irreversibly converted into tableware.

Public school graduates aren’t any more prepared for professional life in the wizarding world than the ones who are home schooled or any of the stragglers left dwindling in the Muggle school system. They will have nevertheless learned a few tricks that will prove useful for a life of skullduggery, like bootlegging spell books or cutting floo power with baking soda.

The unfortunate truth about the public school sector is that no one is groomed for greatness. The lucky ones have the distinction of being background characters in the stories of witches and wizards who actually matter. The rest are so inconsequential they wouldn’t even appear on a Marauder’s Map. These academic casualties leave behind no legacy. Instead they go on form a decidedly abject lower class of society, skulking away to the shadowy places of the world, condemned to live among the wretched and forgotten.

Knockturn fucking Alley.