Quidditch timeline Flint?

[rja.carnegie at excite.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 19399

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Florence" <fgcjnk at b...> wrote:
> 
> In Fantastic Beasts,

Nearly ;-)

> It states that "the year 1473 saw the first ever
> Quidditch World Cup..." and also that "The World Cup has since been 
> held every four years"
> 
> Well, OK, so they could have missed a few (for major wars etc.), but 
> like the Olympics may have kept to the schedule - ie: had an 8 or 12 
> year gap where some had been missed.  Unfortunately this leads to a 
> date of 1995 for the GoF event, which from Nearly Headless Nicks 
> deathday party should in fact be 1994. 
> 
> Now, the last bit of evidence comes in GoF when Bagman is 
> commentating.  He says... "Welcome to the final on the four hundred 
> and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup!"  Now this just has to be a 
> Flint.  If the cup started in 1473 and runs every 4 years, it would 
> only be the 129th Cup in 1995 if none had been missed.
> 
> I guess Bagman meant 122nd Cup and that somewhere after one of the 
> 'gaps' the actual year the event was held on moved back a year (so we 
> get 1994 instead of 1995).

Commentators.  What'll you do?  It isn't even the 422nd _year_ of
the World Cup - or of the "proper" World Cup since non-European teams
first played in the 17th century - and it's probably a bit too much
of a stretch to guess that the actual Cup trophy they play for was
first used 422 years ago, before which either there was a new trophy
each year or a trophy was used which was found to be a transfigured
small troll, which greatly spoiled the winning team's enthusiasm for
the customary rowdy celebration of drinking Butterbeer from it,
particulary once it had been de-transfigured.

My highly defective knowledge of the World Cup in socker indicates
that qualifying matches start a good while before the season of
finals (like, years).  Is it likewise with Quidditch?

I think that, like Star Trek, JKR has made up her mind that she
really doesn't want to worry about dates, and so she throws in
anything approximately right.  Likewise phases of the moon, for poor
old Remus Lupin - if JKR says it's full moon, it jolly well _is_
full moon.

But it occurred to me on first looking into Vander Ark's Lexicon
that the cat would be set amongst the Animagi by the suggestion
that perhaps the wizarding world uses a different calendar to Muggles
- perhaps the Julian calendar, perhaps one invented by Uric the
Oddball - for instance, so that astrology comes out right (sometimes).

It probably won't take long to "disprove" this, but if it annoys you
just for a few minutes then it's been worthwhile :-)  Communications
to wizards in the Muggle world (e.g. Harry's letter) will of course
refer to dates in Muggle reckoning - you don't catch me out _that_
easily - by the same method that's used to address Harry's letters to
wherever he's going to be by the time they gets there and also (let me
make another annoyingly stubborn suggestion) to change Lupin's
suitcase label to read "Professor R. J. Lupin" while he's got the job
and the title at Hogwarts.

Robert Carnegie
Glasgow, Scotland

"I read them all when I was seven and I hated them" - unnamed American
office worker on the Harry Potter books (www.dilbert.com, List of
Stupid Things Overheard)