the Weasleys

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 42406

I tend to agree with Penny's exploration of the subject in the main. 

Arthur & Molly's ages are still up in the air, although her suposition (late 
40s/early 50s) seems pretty likely. So far Rowling hasn't given us anything 
like an actual date to hang the exact ages of their particular generation on. 
My own gut feeling tends toward the likelyhood of Arthur being just about 50 
and Molly anything up to 3 years younger. 

Molly and Arthur were almost engaged in establishing their family all during 
the first war with Voldemort (Ginny was born the year of Voldemort's fall, 
after all) and I've always felt, from the extremely "personal" tone to their 
hostility that Arthur and Lucius Malfoy were the leading Gryffandor/Slytherin 
rivals of their time, (was Arthur Weasley another Hogwarts Head Boy?) much as 
Draco and Harry are now.  And as James and Snape were in the Marauder's era. 
(Another reason why I don't believe for a minute that Lucius was at Hogwarts 
at the same time as Snape. Snape would not have been able to conduct that 
kind of public rivalry if there was a Malfoy in residence. The Malfoys do not 
LIKE for other people, not even other Slytherins, to draw more attention than 
they do. If anyone is going to carry on a public feud with a prominent 
Gryffandor while a Malfoy is at Hogwarts, it will be the Malfoy. After all, 
the Malfoys do not take second place to anyone. At least not at Hogwarts... )

It is dificult to extrapolate Molly and Arthur's ages without knowing what 
ages the older two boys are. And this is also a bit awkward to determine.

I don't offer any simple justification for the conflict between Bill's 
statement that he had not been back at Hogwarts for 5 years, which was made 
three years after Oliver Wood's statement that Gryffandor hadn't won the 
Quidditch Cup for 7 years when Charlie was the Seeker, given that Bill is the 
elder of the two (Bill and Charlie). But Ginny's statement about Bill at 
Hogwarts narrows the gap of possibilities even further.

Unless, as someone suggested, Charlie was only Seeker during his first years 
on the team, having grown too stocky to excell at that position once he got 
his growth. But Bill made his "5 years" statement at the beginning of Harry's 
4th year, which makes one suspect that Bill's last visit might have been 
after his own graduation in any case. 

So. Kicking the statements that we DO have around; Seven years before Harry 
and Ron's first year, Charlie was the Gryffandor Seeker. I doubt that a 
Quidditch head like Wood would have been mistaken in this. When he was 
Seeker, he would have been at least a 2nd year (given that Harry was the 
youngest team member in a hundred years when he was drafted for the team in 
his 1st year). And, since that year was the LAST year that the Gryffs took 
the Cup, it was amost -- but not absolutely -- certain that it was the last 
year that Charlie played that position. (Although it is just as possible that 
he COULD have earned his "legendary" status as a Seeker through brilliant 
play in games that Gryffandor did not win. I am surprised that no one seems 
to have mentioned this, but I've not been on the list long, and this could be 
an old thread.)

Taking the suggestion mentioned above; that Charlie may not have played 
Seeker after he got his growth, but went on to play some other position 
(Keeper?) and to captain the team for his later Hogwarts years. If we could 
tentatively say that Charlie graduated the year immediately before Harry and 
Ron started Hogwarts. This would have made that last year that Gryffrandor 
took the cup Charlie's 2nd year. (And suggests that Charlie had his growth 
spurt at about age 13 which is awfully early but possible.) In this scenareo, 
Bill could very well have graduated the year before Charlie, five years 
before Harry and Ron's fourth year. Making him 19 or 20 at the time of PS/SS 
as Penny stated.

This particular scenareo compresses the births of the Weasley kids into the 
shortest possible time frame that fits the known facts, with one year between 
Bill and Charlie, and three between Charlie and Percy.  And with nine years 
between Bill and Ginny, Arthur and Molly's marriage would have been at least 
ten years before Voledmort's fall, but possibly not a great deal more than 
that. Arthur and Molly seem the type to have been more likely to delay the 
wedding until they could afford to think of starting a family, than to marry 
and then delay children, until they could afford them. This would put the 
lowest end of Arthur and Molly's ages at something like 40 around the time 
the series begins. 

This seems a little too low. But it does *just* fit with the latest likely 
marriage date for Molly and Arthur, if someone has a theory that requires it. 
The Willow was planted (after Molly's lime at Hogwarts) just about the year 
that Voldemort began his first rise to power. Which acto Dumbledore was 11 
years before he fell.

Working backwards from one of Rowling's statements in an interview which I 
think took place around the time Goblet came out, Snape at that point is 35 
or 36. At that point Harry is only a couple of months shy of 15. Therefore 
Snape was 21 or 22 at the time of Voldemort's fall. We already know that 
Snape was in the same academic year as James Potter, and more to the point, 
Remus Lupin. At the latest, the Whomping Willow was planted the summer before 
Remus Lupin started his first year at Hogwarts. Voldemort's fall took place 
4-5 years after Snape and the Marauders graduated from Hogwarts. Therefore 
the Willow was planted some 11-12 years before Voldemort's fall, which took 
place late in the year that Ginny was born. 

I suggest that Arthur and Molly certainly got together at Hogwarts, but that 
Arthur is a year or two the elder, giving him a year or two to establish 
himself and to begin to advance far enough in his career to be able to 
contemplate supporting a wife and family by the time Molly graduated. But 
there is no certainty that they DID marry as soon as Molly finished school. 
Events may have intervened. I'd opt for a 2-3 year lag between Molly's 
graduation and the wedding at least. Possibly up to 5. But there does seem to 
be a good deal of probability of the wedding having taken place around the 
time the Willow was planted. 

In the course of the series, we have also been handed the suggestion of a 
rather distressing backstory concerning the Weasleys. 

Early in the first book, Malfoy makes some slur about always being able to 
recognize the Weasleys by their shabbiness, red hair and large families. 
Malfoy is only eleven at that point and there is no indication that he has 
ever met any of the Weasleys personally. He got that comment somewhere, and 
the most likely view is that he was parroting his father (yet another 
indication of a shared history between Arthur and Lucius). And yet, Harry has 
spent part of almost every summer since then at the Burrow and has never met 
any Weasley apart from Molly and Arthur and their children. And whatever 
mentions of cousins that we have had from Ron are rather few and far between. 
I tend to think that the Weasley clan may be one on the ones which took heavy 
casualties in the last war, and it is his own family that Arthur is trying to 
recreate. I rather think that they quite deliberately intended to start their 
family immediately, once the knot was tied. And although we may never 
actually get any info on the subject, there may have been a lost infant, or, 
more probably a miscarage in that 3-year gap between Charlie and Percy 
(assuming the compressed birth years scenareo).

And I also think that one of the reasons that Arthur's extended family were 
targeted so heavily is that they are known to be close to Dumbledore. And not 
just on a philosophical or political plane. I also suspect that there is a 
family connection somewhere. Given the fact that both Arthur and Albus are 
upholders of the concept of meritocracy, neither is likely to refer to it, or 
would dream of trading upon it, and the kids may not even know it exists (I 
postulate that the connection is at least four generations back from Arthur). 
But you will notice that Molly and Arthur are some of the very first people 
that Albus turns to when it is known that Voldemort has returned. And the 
degree, even if not the type of eccentricity displayed by both Albus and 
Arthur (as well as physical descriptions of Dumbledore when compared to that 
of various Weasleys leads me to suspect that his mother may have been one) is 
also pretty suggestive. And if this is the case, from Voldemort's point of 
view, what would you expect to be his answer to any family which has produced 
the likes of Albus Dumbledore?

-JOdel