Hermione's ages

jonathandupont at hotmail.com jonathandupont at hotmail.com
Sat Oct 20 17:22:40 UTC 2001


No: HPFGUIDX 28004

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Ebony" <ebonyink at h...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., Vicky DeGroote <degroote at a...> wrote:
> > Emma Watson was 10 y/o during the 
> filming of PS/SS, maybe this was importtant JKR that it be a 
younger 
> girl playign Hermione just for this reason?
> >
> 
> 
> You're right IMO, Vicky.  *All* the evidence save the British 
Muggle 
> education system itself points to Hermione being 10 upon starting 
> Hogwarts.  I spent the summer studying the British educational 
system 
> when this question came up and asked my tutor if it was possible 
for 
> a child to begin school early or to be accelerated at some point.  
> His answers seemed to allow for exceptions to be made.

But isn't Tom Felton 13 - and nobody's suggesting that Draco's been 
held back 3 years (on a slightly OT note can I just mention how 
relieved I am that they're using about the right age actors - I 
suppose they have to at about 10 - this relief has been brought by 
the discovery that in the new "Smallvile" TV thing, a 15 year old 
Superman is being played by a 24 year old man... just a bit stupid 
that...). 

Anyway, back to the topic - what are these seemingly obvious to 
everyone else reasons why Hermione has to be younger than Harry? To 
go with Occam's razor or whatever its called - the simplest 
explanation is probably the best one. From everything we've seen (the 
school year starting on Septemeber 1st and so on) Hogwarts does 
follow the British school system. Would they really know how bright 
Hermione is anyway? And, another point, maybe the reason she knows so 
much is because she's been preparing for this for so long - she's got 
herself very psyched up, so to speak, and tried to learn as much as 
possible. 

(On another matter - I don't personnally believe that they just send 
a letter to muggle students and expect them to turn up. At the very 
least they'd need someone to come and see them - this didn't happen 
with Harry, because as far as the wizard world knows, he isn't a 
muggle).

> Even so, again that's the Muggle 
> side of things that postdates the wizarding by just about a full 
> millennium.
> 
> --Ebony AKA AngieJ

But again, the starting on September 1st thing (and the suspicious 
way that OWLs and NEWTs arrive in exactly the same years as GSCEs and 
A-Levels) suggest that Hogwarts has adapted to match the British 
school system at large. Saying that though, I don't really see them 
going to all the trouble of looking at a muggle's primary school 
record and deciding to move them up a year (which is BTW very rare, 
and up to the parents - not to say that pupils can't be in a year 
above for most of the school, but they normally double a year to stay 
down - the British schooling system is weird (my own path was 1, 2, 
2, 4, 5, 5, 6)).

So, to conclude, unless there's a good reason that I've not seen (and 
I don't she doesn't seem mature counts) I don't see any reason to 
bend the rules of the HPverse specifically for her.

Jon

PS
Just a small request for everyone - but can you try not to quote 
complete messages (and the digest introduction) after you've said all 
you want to say. Half the digests are just lines with > at the start 
of them now.





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