Wizarding Timeline (was: Re: Dragon over London...)

[Dave Hardenbrook]

Geoff:
>But the books, which are the source material for the films, do 
>reference the dates.
>Although they do not specifically tie into the real world, since they are
>contemporary, it's rather interesting to try to see which parallel 
>real world events
>were occurring.

Dave:
This goes back to the problem I've always had with the "Offical" 
Lexicon timeline, because there *is* one set of "real-life" events 
that can be tied to the books -- The phases of the moon.  And the 
fact is, there was no full moon on June 6, 1994!  (PoA, "Hermione's 
Secret")  I've confirmed this with astronomy software.  In fact the 
moon was almost *new* on that date!  You have to jump ahead to 2001 
to get a full moon (or near enough that Remus could have conceivably 
transformed) on the right date, unless you want to assume a typo in 
the date on Buckbeak's Execution order.
Now many will argue that the date on Harry's parents' tombstone is 
irrefutable. But what if the Wizarding calendar is, for whatever 
reason, a few years off of ours.  Perhaps the climax of PoA *did* 
happen in 2001 (our time), when there was a full moon on the right 
date; then Harry was actually born in 1988, and Voldemort was 
defeated in 2006 (the year before DH comes out), and, coming back to 
the film, the London Eye seen from the back of the dragon makes sense.

Some may object that this means now that in books 1-5 Jo is writing 
about the future, but she's doing that in the Epilogue anyway, unless 
Voldemort was actually defeated in 1988 (Muggle Time).
Dave


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]