Hermione's birthday

[Susan Atherton]

No: HPFGUIDX 48222

<<Ali wrote:
I personally still believe that Hermione is a year older than Harry,
and the sentence about 2 "13 year old wizards" is a FLINT. I wonder
if JKR would ever admit to this though!>>

Me: I've always thought ever since I read that that there's a much simpler
explanation than all this is-Hermione-a-year-older stuff - how often do you
hear parents refer to a bunch of kids from the same class as "fifteen year
olds" "ten year olds" etc etc when they know there are some people in the
class who are eleven or fourteen? Hell, my parents and grandparents used to
round up my age all the time - if it was getting close to my birthday,
they'd start calling me ten, which my nine year old self would naturally
fume at ;)

I think Dumbledore expects people to be eleven in first year, even though
almost all will be twelve by the end of the year, and so on. Because Harry
and Hermione are both in the third year, he says "two thirteen year old
wizards" because it rolls off the tongue much easier than "one thirteen year
old wizard and one fourteen year old witch".

And of course, it's not out of the question that he wouldn't actually know -
I mean, he might know Harry's birthday because of his involvement with Harry
at a young age, but it's perfectly feasible he doesn't know when Hermione's
is - the man would have 280-1000 kids to keep tabs on, and McGonagall's the
one who keeps track of the age thing!

Personally, I think Hr is the oldest, because in England (dont' ask me about
Scotland though!!) anyone whose birthday falls before Aug 31 is year one,
but Sept 1st onwards is year 2. You have to be the right age on day one, and
after that it doesn't matter. So Hermione would have turned 11 three weeks
after the previous year had started - she would have been ten when
McGonagall sent the owls out for that year. She would have JUST missed being
the youngest in Cho Chang's year, the '93 crew. So by the time it came
around to Harry turning eleven, McGonagall had sent the owls out to the next
year's flock, which Hermione was included in, because she was still 11 -
this was in July 1994. She then turned twelve three weeks after the start of
PS, thirteen three weeks after the start of CoS, fourteen three weeks after
the start of PoA - although the MAJORITY of students were still 13 - fifteen
three weeks after the start of GoF, and she's sixteen now. Oooh, which makes
Ron her toyboy... but I'm not getting into the shipping thing too!

Susan
(who is now on post number two and is getting increasingly braver after a
few weeks of reading)