Hogwarts Prefects – Harry Potter Lexicon

Prefects are students who accept some responsibility for maintaining order and discipline at Hogwarts.

There are a number of Prefects from each house: two from each house, chosen in August before the start of their fifth year. They are under the jurisdiction of the Head Boy and Girl. Prefects have some special privileges, including the use of their own private bathroom and a separate car on the Hogwarts Express (although they spend part of the journey on the train policing the corridors).

Percy Weasley was made a Prefect in his fifth and sixth years, then made Head Boy in his seventh year. Ron and Hermione were Gryffindor Prefects in their fifth year.

The following students are known Prefects:

Gryffindor:

Lily Evans (almost certain, see commentary below)
Percy Weasley
Bill Weasley
Ron Weasley
Charlie Weasley
Hermione Granger
Remus Lupin

Slytherin:

Draco Malfoy
Pansy Parkinson
Lucius Malfoy
Tom Riddle

Hufflepuff:

Hannah Abbott
Ernie MacMillan
Teddy Lupin
Cedric Diggory

Ravenclaw:

Padma Patil
Anthony Goldstein

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Etymology

Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin praefectus, from past participle of praeficere to place at the head of, from prae- + facere to make

First Known Use: 14th century

from Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prefect)

Notes

Was Lily a Prefect? Good question.

There is nothing that specifically says that Lily was a Prefect. But from 1997 through 2005, there WAS canon proof, and that's when this list was originally written.

Back then, all the canon we had available told us that the Head Boy and Girl were chosen from the Prefects. So since Lily was Head Girl, according to the canon available at that time, she would have had to have been a Prefect.

However, in book five we learned that James was not made a Prefect, while all the way back in book one, we learned that he had been made Head Boy. This was an inconsistency and fans all noticed it immediately and wrote about it.

Rowling addressed this inconsistency by adding this in chapter 6 of book six:

The day after this rather gloomy birthday tea, their letters and booklists arrived from Hogwarts. Harry's included a surprise: he had been made Quidditch Captain.
"That gives you equal status with prefects!" cried Hermione happily. "You can use our special bathroom now and everything!" (HBP6)

She was retconning to make it possible for James to be made Head Boy because he was Captain of Quidditch. Lily wasn't Captain of Quidditch, of course, so the fact that she was Head Girl still makes it ALMOST certain that she was a Prefect -- but it's not 100% certain because that new canon from 2005 suggested that there might be other things which qualify someone to be a Head Boy or Girl. No other position at Hogwarts seems like a likely possibility, but that option is now on the table.

So there isn't specific canon proof any more, but there is "historical" proof, if you will. It's seems very likely that JKR intended for only Prefects to become Head Boy and Girl until she found it necessary to revise canon to match later books. In other words, what we're seeing here is a lovely example of how Potter fandom's interaction with Rowling helped shape the details of the books. Another example is where Rowling wrote the pronunciation of Hermione's name into Goblet of Fire because fans were constantly writing and asking her. Sites like the Lexicon had pronunciation keys for readers because we received those same sorts of questions. (No, you don't pronounce the T at the end of Voldemort ...)

The relatively few inconsistencies in the books are truly a testament to Rowling's skill as a writer and the way she could keep the entire saga so clearly in her head as she wrote over many years and almost a million words. She and the editorial teams at Scholastic and Bloomsbury did use the Lexicon as a reference back then (they didn't have their own internal canon 'bible' in those days, they just used the Lexicon), but mostly she could rely on her own thorough, intimate knowledge of her world.

It's worth including this quote from the MuggleNet/Leaky Cauldron interview:

"... once the book is published I rarely re-read. A funny thing is when I do pick up a book to check a fact which I obviously do a lot, if I start reading then I do get kind of sucked in myself and I may read several pages and then I put it away and go back to what I’m doing ... Therefore there are thousands of fans who know the books much better than I do ..." (TLC)

That was and still is very true. It's been a privilege to be part of that knowledgeable fan base for the past two decades. --SVA

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Editor: Steve VanderArk