Old debate on Weasley Ages (was; Hagrid? Age?)

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 48663

Pip!Squek reminds us;

>>I don't see that that's a problem with the timeline. Tom Riddle in CoS says 
Dumbledore persuaded Dippet that Hagrid should be 'trained' as gamekeeper. So 
for Hagrid to be trained implied that someone else was gamekeeper at the time 
(to do the training). This was probably Ogg, who continued as Gamekeeper 
until Molly and Arthur's time. <<

Which is a clue as to just when Arthur and Molly might have been at Hogwarts.

I doubt that Ogg would have turned the job over to Hagrid before he'd been 
working with him long enough to be sure that he wouldn't flake out in an 
emergency.

Plus, Hagrid was still a *child* when he started training under Ogg. 
Apprenticships were traditionally seven years. Hagrid was expelled in June, 
1943. Going by the terms of a traditional apprenticship, the earliest that 
Hagrid could have taken over would have been around 1950. Which sounds a 
little early for Molly and Arthur to already be at Hogwarts.  (I've always 
pictured them as early baby-boomers, born right after WWII.)

Of course, we are also reasoning from very scanty information. Hagrid could 
have been Ogg's "assistant" for any number of years after finishing out his 
term as apprentice. The deal was to train him as Ogg's eventual replacement, 
not that Ogg was to step aside as soon as Hagrid was trained. (If 
Arthur/Molly/[Lucius M?] were born around 1945 they would have been the class 
of '63.) 

For that matter the reference was of Molly "recalling at length about the 
gamekeeper before Hagrid", and that was about it. Nothing in that sentence 
which either claims or implies anything other than that Molly came to 
Hogwarts before Ogg stpped down. Not even that he may or may not have done so 
durring Molly's time there. (It was an encounter with the caretaker Apollyon 
Pringle that left Arthur with marks he still has. Nothing to do with Ogg.)

-JOdel