Aha! (was The British school system)

[hp_lexicon at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 28963

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "David" <dfrankiswork at n...> wrote:
> Sharon wrote:
> 
> > Pupils in Scotland 
> > follow a completely different format where the 
> > school years run from August to July, but the year you are in is 
> determined 
> > by the year running from January to December. This means that 
you 
> can have 
> > two pupils in one school year in Scotland who would have been in 
> consecutive 
> > school years in England.
> 
> If I understand you correctly, Hermione's eleventh birthday would 
> under this system fall in her first term at Hogwarts.
> 
> Lexicon, Steve?

If JKR was using the real life model of the school system for 
Hogwarts, it seems likely that she'd use the one in Scotland, where 
she lives. But we don't know. The only thing that the canon tells us 
is that Dumbledore refers to Hermione as being 13 toward the end of 
the 1993-4 school year, which would put her birthday in 1980. 
Everything else is speculation and there are good arguments on both 
sides. So for the sake of the Lexicon, I go strictly with what it 
says, understanding that JKR is the only one who can make it 
official. 

That said, I do think that 1980 makes more sense, and it's 
gratifying to hear this about the Scotish system. I'd heard that 
point made before, actually, but had forgotten.

So the Lexicon states 1980 (with explanatory text).

Steve Vander Ark
The Harry Potter Lexicon
which hasn't been updated enough lately, according to complaining 
email I've gotten 
*sigh*
Anybody wanna do a nice bio of Draco for me?
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon