Impossible timetable

[grey_wolf_c]

No: HPFGUIDX 38367

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "nuriaobradors" <nobradors at h...> wrote:
> I'm starting to write a fanfic and I needed a more comprehensive look 
> on the school timetables. So I took PoA and started to analize it 
> looking for answers... and unless I'm very mistaken, it turns out 
> that either all teachers (or most of them) use timeturners, or there 
> are more teachers than canon states, or JKR simply failed to see an 
> impossible schedule. 
> 
> Usually, the kids have 2 classes during the morning, then Lunch, then 
> another class (perhaps 2?). After thorough reading, I could come with 
> the following:
<snip 1st day timetable>

This subject has been discussed several times since I joined. I've 
never joined (and therefore, this is actually my own theories, so they 
will probably have holes). First off, let me make four general 
commemts.
	1) Each "slot" takes more than an hour. If we assume that lessons 
start at 9 o'clock, than they would be eatting at 11 o'clock which is a 
bit too soon. (I like two-hour slots, which makes potions a torture)
	2) There are more than 3 slots a day, except maybe one day or two, 
like, for example, Wednesday. This would allow for two or maybe three 
slots in the afternoon. This is the French system, which takes us:
	3) There is no reason to assume that there are no classes on 
Saturdays (my father, who attended a boarding school, tells me that 
this was so in his school). Again, it fits with the French system, 
which has school on Saturday mornings (I think).
	4) JKR's rules of reality imply that, in any case, the nominal day 
of the week is one down from the real day of the week in our world. 
Check dates of PS: we are told that Harry's birthday (31st July) takes 
place on a Tuesday and, if it was 1991 it should've been Wednesday.

> Yet in PoA9 Snape asks the werewolf essay "for monday morning" 
> suggesting (and supported by PoA10) than Monday's schedule is the 
> same as Thursday. Hence it has no sense Snape's request for "monday 
> morning" since they complain about it to Lupin on monday afternoon! 
> And since he says they need not to write the essay, it's obvious 
> Snape didn't ask them to surrender it Potions.

One of my teachers always insisted that we had the work done by morning 
of the day he had to give it in, even if we only saw him at 3 o'clock 
in the aternoon. This was to encourage working the days before, instead 
of doing it between clases (which most of the people did, anyway)

<snip timetables>
> IMHO, it's more likely the last two have only 1 hour/week, while I 
> find it unlikely that two major subjects as Charms and 
> Transfiguration have only 1 hour/week. OTOH, I find 4 hours of 
> potions a little excessive, even in the complexity of the subject. 
> It's not unlikely, though, that all comes down to JKR's mistaking the 
> days of the week. For example, When Lavender cries for her dead bunny 
> between classes, the 16th of october...it was saturday in 1993

Look at notes 2) and 3). That should give you more play with the year's 
and clases hours, putting a few of the important ones in the afternoon 
slots. Oh, and note 4) covers the "Lavender crisis": in Potterverse, it 
happened in a Friday (even if ther ARE subjects on Saturdays). Finally, 
I've always though that you need long hours of Potions because of all 
the waiting that's implied in it: "wait until it boils", "wait until it 
turns yellow", that sort of thing. It used to go on for ages, the 
chemical labs.

> *BUT* it gets from tricky to impossible when it comes to analizing 
> the timetable from the teachers pov. It's simple mathematics: 4 
> houses per 7 years= 28 classes. (20 for the subjects starting in 3rd 
> year). How do you cram 28 classes in 15 class modules? Ok, they're 
> less than 28 actually bc some classes are paired with another house, 
> but this doesn't happen with ALL the subjects. Let alone Astronomy: 
> 14 classes (assuming they've paired houses for it) in 5 weekday 
> nights? Even having two classes the same night (like, one at 10pm and 
> the other at 11 or something), it's crazy.
> Any feedback's welcome!

The conclussion is that there is somehting very FLINTy about the 
timetables, but that's because JKR hasn't created enough teachers or 
has divided the school in too many clases: 4/year against some 
10-something teachers is just too many for too few.
 
> Nuri
> who, needless to say, in order to keep her sanity while writing her 
> fanfic, has only made up Harry's year and the OC teacher 
> timetables. ;-)

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf