underage magic, fifty years ago

[Steve Vander Ark]

No: HPFGUIDX 18135


> > > When voldey murdered his father he was a "teenage" boy, does 
that 
> > > mean he was underage??? 

If he was underage, and if there was a law at that time, I don't 
think we can judge the enforcement procedures for that law by what we 
see happen to Harry. The law seems to me to be practically 
unenforceable -- how do they know that the spell-caster was the 
underage person at that address, for example? More than likely, mom 
or dad do the enforcing. In Harry's case, however, the Ministry is 
monitoring VERY closely. They want him protected from Voldemort and 
his supporters and they know that an instance of magic in a Potter-
related place where no magic should be would be a dead give away. I 
think that part of the protections set up by Dumbledore involve close 
monitoring of Harry's actions when he's away from school, and that 
includes magic use.
 
> > It's hard to say.  We just don't have an exact enough date either 
> for 
> > the murders or for Voldemort's birth.  He was a fifth-year 
student 
> > fifty years before CS, which puts his birth at around 1927, and 
the 
> > murders took place fifty years before GF, which puts them around 
> > 1944.  That would make him 17 the year he killed his family--
> probably 
> > the summer after his 6th or 7th year.  But both of those "fifty 
> > years" are likely to be approximate--no one ever says "The 
Chamber 
> of 
> > Secrets was opened exactly 50 years ago" or "Exactly 50 years 
ago, 
> > Frank Bryce was accused of murder." 

This is an important thing to note. None of the dating we use is 
exact, or practically none. However, by working from a basic 
assumption of date, we can construct a logical, internally consistent 
timeline that helps put things in perspective. The timelines in the 
Lexicon all work from the assumption that we take the dates literally 
as given, not because they "have" to be that, but because without 
that assumption we couldn't place anything on a timeline at all. It 
does require some adjusting here and there to make the events fit the 
real calendar (I had to add a day at the beginning of PS/SS, for 
example, in order to make the stated days of the week fit the actual 
ones) but it does at least give us a structure to work with. It's 
clear, though, that JKR made no attempt to match the details in her 
story with any actual calendar.

Steve Vander Ark
The Harry Potter Lexicon
timeline-lovers heaven
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon