Hermione's ages

[Barb]

No: HPFGUIDX 28007

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., jonathandupont at h... wrote:
> 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. 

Despite the seeming-similarity between GCSE's (formerly O-levels, I 
believe) and O.W.L.s, and between N.E.W.T.s and A-levels, I don't 
believe the wizarding school system has been rigidly based upon the 
British version.  There are enough differences between the wizard and 
Muggle worlds that I hardly think they would concern themselves with 
conventions important to non-wizards.  The wizarding world also 
changes very, very slowly.  I think the similarities in tests are an 
in-joke JKR provided for British readers, and she's probably also 
harking back to her own days in school.  (<aside> She identifies with 
Hermione and JKR was Head Girl, so let's just assume we know that 
Hermione will be as well.</aside>)

At any rate, there a couple of other possible reasons for why 
Hermione might be born in September of 1980 rather than 1979:

1) She could already have been slightly ahead in her Muggle school.  
Given her academic prowess at Hogwarts, this is hardly a leap.  It 
fits with her character perfectly.  Hogwarts is probably in the 
practice of sending acceptance letters to any magical child who will 
turn eleven during the calendar year, and if the parents prefer to 
wait a year for a child to begin, so be it.  This would be "Hogwarts 
Deferred Acceptance."

2) She could have received her letter and (hopefully) a visit from 
McGonagall or Sprout or someone else reassuring and non-threatening 
to introduce the Granger family to the idea of the magical world and 
Hermione's place in it despite Hermione still having one more year to 
go in Muggle primary school.  The Grangers might very well have 
decided to send her to Hogwarts anyway because a) Hermione is very 
bright and probably had already read all of her texts for the 
following year of school in the first week of summer holidays; or b) 
Hogwarts does not seem to place much store in students learning 
Muggle things such as world capitals and French irregular verbs and 
quadratic formulae, so Hermione forgoing her final year of Muggle 
school would hardly seem a loss to McGonagall/Sprout, who would urge 
the Grangers to let her begin her magical studies immediately.

3) JKR might not have had any contact with school friends with 
birthdays after September 1 and may not have been aware that this was 
the cut-off.  I know many people who have children with spring and 
summer birthdays who did not know/understand why I was trying to get 
my daughter into first grade last year although she wouldn't turn 6 
until September 9.  They didn't HAVE to know, and so they didn't.  
This could just be a JKR oversight, and those have happened before.  

Given that the cut-off in our local school district has changed in my 
relatively short lifetime from January 1 to September 1 and the slow 
rate of change in wizarding society, I find it doubtful that there is 
a September 1 cutoff for Hogwarts.

--Barb