Fictional plot holes (was: The Romance)

[Carol]

Eggplant wrote:
> I don't have the book handy but are you saying there is an actual DATE on the letter? I sure don't recall that.

Carol responds:
It's a thank you letter for the birthday present that Sirius sent Harry and can't have been written more than a few days after Harry's birthday, which we all know is July 31. And she states that DD "still" has James's Invisibility Cloak, so he must have borrowed it sometime in July rather than October.

Carol earlier: 
> > although the FC isn't specifically mentioned, DD has already borrowed James's Invisibility Cloak, which Dead!DD later tells Harry he borrowed a week before their deaths. 


Eggplant: 
> Did Dead!DD specifically say "a week"? By the way, I take anything Dead!DD says with a grain of salt because I'm not sure if the information came from Dumbledore or Harry's imagination.

Carol again:
Here are his exact words: "You have guessed, I know, why the Cloak was in my possession on the night your parents died. James had showed it to me *just a few days previously* <snip irrelevant stuff>. I asked to borrow it, to examine it." (DH Am. ed.)

We know, of course, that Harry's parents died at midnight on Halloween, so he should have received the Invisibility Cloak in October, not August, presumably at the same time he suggested the Fidelius Charm (according to PoA, a week before the Potters died).

I know that some people like filling the plot holes and explaining the inconsistencies, but my explanation is the same as the reason JKR still thinks (according to her website) that DD died in 1996 and Fred in 1997--JKR can't count and doesn't double-check dates and "facts" from earlier books.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still obsessed with the books. I just wish that someone had pointed out the errors and real or apparent inconsistencies before the books were published.

Carol, noting that there's also no logical reason for a letter written five years after Sirius ran away from home to be in his old room in his parents' house