[HPforGrownups] Re: Weasley ages...

[Sherry Garfio]

No: HPFGUIDX 47704


Scheherazade wrote:
> Ooh, I can tell this is gonna start a thread, but before we go off on
> this tangent.  PLEASE! tell me where the Weasley's birth order is stated! I
> become more and more convinced daily that Charlie is the older son.

Andrea replied quite definitively:
> Sorry to disappoint you, hon, but COS says very clearly, "Bill was the
> oldest Weasley brother.  He and the next brother, Charlie, had already
> left Hogwarts." ("At Flourish and Blotts", p.46 US paperback)

Amazing how this group works - this problem occurred to me as well last night
while I was rereading GoF.  The one point in Scheherezade's original post that
has not been addressed yet is that Bill mentioned not having seen Hogwarts for
5 years ("The Third Task", p. 535 UK PB: "'It's great being back here,' said
Bill, looking around the chamber... 'Haven't seen this place for five years. 
Is that picture of the mad knight still around?  Sir Cadogan?'")  This is
toward the end of the 1994-95 school year (June 24, 1995, to be exact), so
assuming Bill is being exact here, he last saw Hogwarts in 1990.  This is where
I also said "Huh?" because he couldn't have been a student there 5 years ago if
he's the oldest and Percy has already graduated, unless the older Weasley kids
are much closer together than we think, and maybe Charlie stopped playing
Quidditch before he graduated and therefore graduated less than 7 years before
Ron started (okay, now I'm just confusing myself <G>).

Now, notice he says he hasn't *seen* this place for 5 years.  I extrapolated
from the years Scheherezade gave and found that the 1989-90 school year that
Bill is referring to would have been the year Gred and Forge started, so maybe
he visited then.  Bill would have been 22-ish, but maybe with all the bank
holidays they have in the UK, he was able to take the time off, or he could
have visited on Gringott's business (collecting the Stone, maybe?  No, let's
not start that again <G>).  Couple this explanation with the ones others have
provided for Ginny's exceptional memory, and the inconsistency conveniently
dissolves.  Also, it's entirely possible that Ginny remembers her family
*talking* about Bill's years at Hogwarts, and has assembled these memories with
her very tenuous real memories of those years to come up with what seems to her
to be her own memories.

To quote Grey Wolf, hope that helps.

Sherry


=====
"The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers."

      -Dave Barry, "Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn"

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