9 Infamous Movie Plot-Holes (Solved By Fans)

The Plot Hole

In the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling mentions that there are 1,000 students attending Hogwarts, which would mean roughly 143 students, give-or-take, in each of the institution's seven school years.

But on sight alone there doesn't appear anywhere near that number of students in Harry Potter's (Daniel Radcliffe) year, and with Rowling ultimately coming up with a list of just 40 students in Harry's year, why is the number so damn low?

The Solution

In 2016, Tumblr user marauders4evr plugged up the discrepancy quite perfectly - and unsettlingly - by suggesting that the Hogwarts Class of 1998 had considerably less students than normal because they would've had to be conceived when Voldemort's (Ralph Fiennes) reign of terror was at its peak.

It's reasonable to deduce that amid the chaos of Voldemort running riot, the wizard birth rate took a brief hit - either due to death or parents not wanting to have kids during such a tumultuous period - which was reflected years later by the smaller class size.

Considering that in our very own recent reality, the pandemic severely impacted birth rates around the world, there is precedent for such an idea, and given the relative scarcity of wizards, a catastrophe could be enough to dent class sizes temporarily.