Questions

Since Hagrid stepped into the hut and told Harry he was a wizard, Harry had innumerable questions to ask. Hagrid seemed quite agreeable to answer, but there was a lot he didn't know and couldn't honestly answer. By the time they spent about an hour on the train to London, Harry thought he'd run out of questions he dearly needed answers to. Well, there were some more questions to ask, not so urgent but possibly even more important, if he wanted to know and understand what he was going to face soon after leaving the train.

"Hagrid, can you answer some more general questions about…" he looked around to make sure nobody could hear him and dropped his voice a bit, "...the magical world?"

Hagrid scratched his beard. "Not sure I know enough, but I'll answer whatever I can." It was evident that he didn't want to disappoint Harry but didn't want to give wrong answers either.

"Well, let's start with the simple questions. How big is it? I mean, how many people are… you know?" Harry still tried to refrain from the word 'magic'. Ten years with the Dursleys had some effect, you know.

Hagrid sighed. "Not sure I know. It's quite big, fer sure, but I don't have any numbers."

Harry frowned. That should be a simple question. His school books mentioned the population of the British Isles as well as the four main parts and all the major cities. Since the Dursley only bought well-used books for him, the numbers may have been slightly out of date, but not by much. He tried to tackle this in a different way.

"Do you know how many students are at Hogwarts?"

Even this simple question needed quite a bit of contemplation. "Well, let's see. Each year has roughly ten students per house. Times four houses that would be… forty per year. Times seven years… about two hundred and eighty. Blimey! I thought there were at least four hundred students!"

Harry sighed. He would have liked a more knowledgeable guide for his first encounter with this strange world. Still, he could question some more.

"Are there any other schools for magical children?"

Hagrid shook his head. "None. I think there were a few, mainly for the less talented children, but they closed about a century ago. Not enough students to keep them going. There are some families who tutor their children at home, either the ones too poor to pay tuition or ones that can afford to pay for highest-class tutors. Not many, though."

Harry was quite fast with his math. He thought that with Hagrid's lack of knowledge, he should consider these numbers as a minimum. To be more practical, he thought he might consider Hogwarts to have three hundred students and about fifty out of Hogwarts. That meant about three hundred fifty total population between eleven and seventeen, or fifty per year. That sounded way too small. The school in Little Whinging had about fifty children per year and had to divide them into two classes, but Little Whinging was a really small town, and it also had another school, on the other side of town. Could there be so few wizards and witches in Britain?

He tried to tackle the problem from another aspect. There were quite a few human traits that were rare enough to be observed in one out of a thousand or even one out of ten thousand. For Magic to be kept secret, it had to be rare enough, or everybody would have known somebody magical. He wasn't sure how big the British population was, but the number forty-four stuck in his mind. He knew that was the international code for Britain, but it also seemed to be the British population, maybe a few years back. Just to be safe, he took it as fifty million. Now, if one out of ten thousand was magical, that meant… only five thousand magical people in the whole of Britain. Could that be true?

Hagrid certainly didn't know. He had to ask some other questions to complete the puzzle. "Hagrid, what is the life expectancy of regular witches and wizards?"

Judging by Hagrid's bewildered expression, he needed to rephrase his question. "How long do witches and wizards normally live?"

Hagrid understood that. He still had to think about the right answer. "That's difficult to say, you know. Some die quite young due to accidents or wars, but normally, magical people live twenty to forty years longer than muggles. That may also change by family. The Prewetts, although numerous, usually didn't live much longer than sixty years, nor the Blacks, but Potters, Boneses and some others could easily reach one hundred and fifty. Unfortunately, the war didn't allow that. Dumbledore is already one hundred and thirty and is still in full power, both magically and physically."

Harry gave it a bit of consideration. "So, would it be right to say that the average wizard or witch can expect to live to roughly one hundred and twenty?"

Hagrid thought a bit and said, "Yea, sounds about right."

So, Harry thought, with roughly fifty each year, multiply by a hundred and twenty… that would give roughly six thousand magical people in Britain. This coincided nicely with his previous calculation.

Harry's thoughts wandered. He thought about his visit to the zoo, not too long ago. He didn't count the visitors, but he had an impression there were more than a thousand there at the time. He then thought of the mall he had once visited, only to carry all the shopping back to the car, of course. He hadn't counted the people there either, but he was sure there were at least two thousand, judging by the queues at the cash registers in the bigger shops. Could the whole Magical Britain be so small as to fit in a single mall with room to spare?

The idea made him chuckle, attracting Hagrid's attention. "Anything funny?" he asked.

Harry shook his head. "I just calculated that the whole magical population could easily fit in a single muggle building. It seems funny to me."

"That can't be possible!" Hagrid said indignantly.

"Why not? Have you seen the size of some malls or train stations? Even the small one where we boarded this train can easily hold the whole Hogwarts population, I'm sure."

It took Hagrid some deep thinking before he nodded reluctantly. "Come to think of this, it looks like you're right. Well, all the students fit inside a single train when going there and back, and it's not quite as long as some trains I've seen."

For some time, Harry relaxed and just watched the views through the window, yet his mind kept busy.

They were approaching another station, in the middle of a small town. Harry noticed the shops, all seeming to concentrate near the train station. He then gave it a thought and understood. The small population didn't need too many stores and it was more effective for the stores to form a cluster, allowing the shoppers easier shopping and some potential alternatives, in case they couldn't find what they wanted at their chosen store. He wondered what the shopping Hagrid was taking him to do would be like. With such a small population, there couldn't be too many shops, or the owners won't get a living out of it. Come to think of it, even the existence of a magical bank was a surprise. The banks he'd read about had at least a million customers each. How could a bank be profitable with only a few thousand clients? He just had no idea.

The Leakey Cauldron was quite crowded, so Hagrid said, but once Harry got over his unexpected "Celebrity" status and took a good look, he saw only about twenty people and even fewer tables. He had once opened the door to a small pub in Little Whinging (By mistake, of course. He was just trying to hide from Dudley and his gang.) and it was much larger than this one.

Gringotts seemed quite impressive, at first glance. Harry took a second look at it. There were only four teller positions, widely spaced, and no waiting line in front of any. The end walls were covered by large mirrors that reflected the teller positions, making it look like there were at least several tens of them. Harry thought it was a clever trick. The tellers looked quite bored when he first saw them. They perked up a bit at seeing Hagrid and Harry coming in, but one was enough to serve them. The others resumed their bored expression, waiting for customers.

Visiting his vault brought some more questions, ones he was sure that Hagrid would be unable to answer. There was simply too much gold there! If the magical population was so small, how could his ancestors accumulate so much gold? Had they traded with the muggle world, maybe even had their main business there? That could work, he assumed. He didn't know enough about such stuff to even make an educated guess.

The rest of Diagon Alley proved to fit his expectations. Oh, the things the shops sold were beyond his imagination and he could spend hours just watching the different shop windows, but the number and sizes of the shops fitted a very small town, just as he had estimated. Hagrid was proud to point out that "Each of these shops uses some space-extending charms, so the shop is much larger inside than what it seems from outside."

They were still small shops, though.

He only met another customer at Madam Malkin's robes shop, and he was sure it was mainly due to that snotty boy antagonizing whoever tried to serve him. Otherwise, the shop fit nicely into the pattern he had noticed: it was quite small, had only the owner and one temporary aid working there and the prices, although they seemed high compared to the clothes his aunt bought for Dudley, didn't seem to give enough living even for a single person. He started wondering how these shops could even function with so few customers.

Harry was especially intrigued by the wand shop. The peeling gold letters over the door read "Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C." A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window. Harry thought that no respectable muggle shop owner would allow his shop to look so bad. Well, it looked like magical people used different standards. He wasn't sure he liked it.

The way Mr. Ollivander acted, scaring them first, then showing suspicious knowledge about him, didn't make Harry feel any better about it. Then came the process of finding the appropriate wand. It took close to an hour. Harry thought that this could not be a viable business. According to Hagrid, there were less than fifty new students each year – the main buying force for new wands unless some lost their wands or damaged them. They all bought their wands during August, maybe the end of July too. What would Ollivander do for the rest of the year? Would the price of three or four wands suffice for covering his living expenses for a month? This didn't seem likely. The man must have some additional income or he'd starve to death.

Harry didn't like the idea of going back to his aunt and uncle, not by himself, at least. Hagrid thought of just leaving him after he boarded the train home, but Harry convinced him otherwise. "I've never ridden the train alone and when with my aunt, she didn't allow me to ask any questions, so I'm not sure I can find my way without your help, especially with all these packages."

Hagrid sighed. It was evident that he already wanted to go back, but he couldn't dismiss Harry's worries. "Alright, I'll come with you and make sure you reach your family…"

"My relatives. They can't be family, the way they treat me," Harry quickly corrected.

"Fine… I'll bring you there and make sure they treat you well. Oh, before I forget, here's yer ticket fer Hogwarts," he said. "First o' September – King's Cross – it's all on yer ticket."

Harry was glad that Hagrid would bring him back to the Dursley's (He was sure they were back home since Vernon didn't like sleeping anywhere else, even when he was on some business trip.) Harry was sure that they would leave him alone for the rest of the summer. At least he hoped so.

He then had a look at the envelope and took out the ticket. He frowned at the platform number. "Hagrid, how can I find platform 9¾? All the platforms I know are marked by whole numbers."

Hagrid seemed uncomfortable for a moment. "Oh, I thought I've already explained that. You see, there's a wall between platform 9 and platform 10. Muggles can't pass through it, but magical people can walk through it, and even push their luggage through, with no obstacle at all. Just walk as if there's no wall there, although some prefer to run straight at it. They say it's more fun that way."

Harry nodded. He would make sure to write it down as soon as he could, so he won't forget it during the month he still had to wait.

Looking back at his day, he felt quite content. He had an interesting trip, saw many new things, bought what he needed (although he might have liked to buy some more, but with Hagrid at his side that didn't seem right,) and Hagrid even made sure he had a proper lunch and dinner, and also gave him some ice-cream. Some of the questions he had were answered, although he didn't like some of the answers, but the more he saw, the more he learned, the more questions he had. He only hoped that he would be able to find enough answers when he reached Hogwarts.