Weasley's and that age gap.

[Simon Branford]

No: HPFGUIDX 1670

"Having been lurking for a long time I am emerging from my corner of the UK
to ask for help with something that is puzzling me."

Welcome, from an already emerged UK person. At the moment I am involved in
the process of writing the FAQ's based on the Yahoo group message archive.
As I have the Weasley FAQ, excluding Ron, to write I should know something
about this.

"I have worked on creating a timeline using the books, Steve Bates lexicon
etc for the Weasley family. According to my amateur calculations based on
Charlie Weasley being 18 when he left school and that being the year
Gryffyndor won the Quidditch Championship. IIRC (I've lent my copy - stupid)
it says in HP & PS circa 1991 it has been seven years since Gryffyndor has
won. Therefore Charlie Weasley must have been born in 1966, with Bill
sometime previously. The next Weasley is Percy who if he left Hogwarts at 18
in PoA 1994 must have been born 1976.

A couple of corrections are needed in here. In PS (Ch13) it is said that it
is seven years since Gryffindor have won the House Cup. It is in PoA that it
is said that it is seven years since they have won the Quidditch Cup (PoA
Chs12 & 15). This means that the ages of Charlie, and therefore also Bill,
can be reduced by 2 years. This gives the age of Charlie as 26 in GoF
(corresponding to being born in 1968). This corresponds to an age gap of
eight years. These eight years would then be 1968 to 1976.

This period would correspond to the some of the time when Voldemort was
gaining power, but interestingly still leaves Percy, Fred, George and Ron
being born while Voldemort was still gaining power. With Ginny being born
around the time of his downfall.

So did the Weasley's at first only want two kids and then decided to have
more. Or were there a few miscarriages, or other problems, in-between.

"I am puzzled. Please help put me out of my misery so I can concentrate on
studying for my PGCE which is what I should be doing now. I'm teacher
training and love the work in the classroom but I'm not so keen on the
theory, however necessary."

Oh dear - this may not happen. When a discussion starts around here it can
go on and on and then metamorphosis into many other different topics.

Simon (who needs to get back to writing these FAQ's)