Werewolves/ Lupin etc.

[kiricat2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 43915

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "mitchbailey82" <MITCHBAILEY82 at H...> wrote:

> Does anyone else get the feeling that Lupin is older than James,  
> Sirius, Peter and the rest of the students in his year?  I only say 
> this because of the line in POA when there in the
> shrieking shake and Lupin says:
> "But then Dumbledore became headmaster ... he said that as long as 
> we took certain precautions..."
> Its the BUT THEN that I'm interested in - it sounds to me that when
> Lupin came of age to go to Hogwarts that Dumbledore wasn't 
headmaster 
> and so he wasn't allowed to go to Hogwarts BUT THEN Dumbledore 
became
> headmaster and he was allowed to go. 

Like a lot of JKR's chosen words, more than one interpretation can be 
made.  And this explanation would work. One could assume that whoever 
was Headmaster before Dumbledore would never have considered letting 
a werewolf student attend.  But, then, Dumbledore becomes Headmaster, 
and having a broader, more tolerant view of people, allows Remus to 
attend.  My reading of the sentence in question has always been that 
Dumbledore became Headmaster in the nick of time, just as Remus 
turned eleven or approached his eleventh birthday, and Remus' parents 
were told that he'd be allowed to attend Hogwarts.

If your reading of the line is correct, and Remus was a year or two 
older, would that matter to the plot?  I can't think of anything off 
the top of my head that would make an age difference significant 
between Remus and J/S/P.  If there's no real significance, then I 
don't know why JKR would bother setting that up.

Marianne, tired and unable to think