Dates in QTA/FB (was have books in hand)

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 14244

Heidi wrote:

> > S
> > P
> > O
> > I
> > L
> > E
> > R
> > S
> > P
> > A
> > C
> > E
> > If dumbledore is alive tto writ book intros in 2001, then does 
that 
> mean he
> > survives the end of book 7?
> > And if the charity is "in harry potter's name" and not memory, 
does 
> that
> > mean he does too?

And Snuffles wrote:

> I think it must do because he 'is a triffle reluctant to allow the 
> book to be reprinted' (FB) which seems to suggest that he was 
> consulted

I got all excited about the two worlds (ours and theirs) coming 
together, not least because of the above point (I'm not too worried 
that Harry will die, but I am about Dumbledore).  Major date problem, 
however: 

Assuming that QTA was yanked from the library recently (I know 
they're just being cute with the 3/11 return date, but let's say it's 
3/11/00 to allow some printing time <g>);

and also assuming that another joke with the signout dates is that 
this book goes out *constantly*--no year-or-more gaps with this one 
the way there are with titles such as Advanced Arithmancy--

then C. Diggory took it out well after 1995.

???

This would seem to bear out the theory, recently proposed by someone 
on here (sorry, can't find it even though it was a recent post), 
that "now" is 2001 for us but 1995?6? for the HP world.  In which 
case we have to treat the forewords as being written in the months 
after GoF, i.e. 1995-96, and can't draw any conclusions about who's 
alive in 2001.

I thought we could solve the whole thing by saying C. Diggory is a 
different C. Diggory--maybe Cedric had a several-years younger 
brother or sister?  Or proposing the Cedric-becomes-a-ghost (who- 
still-loves-Quidditch) theory.  But we also have O. Wood on there and 
he hasn't been around since 1994...

Maybe there are lots of copies of QTA in the Hogwarts library so that 
there *are* long gaps between each of these signouts, in which case 
O. Wood could've signed it out in 1994, C. Diggory in 1995, H. Potter 
in 2001 even though there are only a couple dozen names total.

Or maybe this copy got retired in 1996 and has been sitting on the 
storage-room shelf with H. Potter 3/11/96 as the most recent patron.  
That still seems to leave long gaps between signouts though.

Confused,
Amy Z