Author mistake, Maybe??

[plaidmouse]

No: HPFGUIDX 55513


graniteworks:
> > Did you ever notice that in HP&SS(#1) at the welcoming feast in the 
> > beginning when Harry and Ron first meet Nearly Headless Nick, the 
> > Gryffindor ghost, Nick states that he hasn't eaten anything in almost 
> > 400 years but in HP&CS(#2) Nearly Headless Nick has his 500th death 
> > day party? He seemed to have jumped from 400 years dead to 500 years 
> > dead in one year. Do you think that that is just a mistype or what??? 

  bboy_mn:
> 
> This collection of figures only does not work if you assume that
> 'deathday' is day of death. 
> 
> If dead people simple change their birthdays to deathdays then it all
> add up. 
> 
> Nick was 100 when he died, and it's been dead for 400 years; 100 + 400
> = 500, 100 years of life and 400 years of death. 
> 
> So we are merely assume that deathday is day of death, when dead
> people may simple be celebrating years of existance, and framing the
> aanniversary in the context of their current state of existance which
> is death.


But if he had been dead for only 400 years, since he died in 1492 (it
says that on the cake), then the book would have taken place in 1892.
I think that was just a mistake. Or it might have some significance we
just don't know about yet. Or it's possible that a ghost can still eat
the first hundred years after death (which would explain why there was
food at Nick's party: for the newly-dead) but I don't know why that
would be. Who knows?

Mouse