[HPforGrownups] More Questions (was Re: The timeline on the DVD *confirms* canon).

[Patricia Bullington-McGuire]

No: HPFGUIDX 55550

On Thu, 17 Apr 2003, serenadust wrote:

>  First, Hermione (because of her extreme precocity) is an extremely 
> rare exception to the UK practice of not admitting children to 
> school unless they are of age on Sept. 1.  If she has always been 
> the youngest in her class, then I suppose it would be consistent for 
> Hogwarts to admit her at the age of ten because she would have 
> received the same number of years of schooling as her muggle-
> born/educated peers.  However, the UK members of the list have been 
> fairly consistent in declaring that children who are underage are 
> never admitted early, so I have trouble buying this.

It may also be possible that Hermione started her education somewhere else
where admission standards are different, later continuing her education in
England and being placed in her grade because of her prior experience
rather than her age.  However, we haven't seen anything to indicate
Hermione has ever lived abroad for an extended period of time, so I don't
give this possibility much credence.
 
> Possibility two is that Hermione has had one less year of muggle-
> education than Harry and other muggle-raised children at Hogwarts, 
> but because she's so extremely brilliant, McGonagall went ahead and 
> sent her letter ahead of schedule.  There's nothing in canon to 
> support this, but there's nothing there to rule it out either.  

I lean more towards the second explanation, although I don't think
McGonagall would have had to make an exception for Hermione because of her
unusual billiance.  There is nothing in canon to suggest that Hogwarts
cares at all about the length or quality of Muggle education prior to
attending Hogwarts.  Students are assumed to know how to read and write
and do simple math when they enroll, but beyond that Muggle education
seems pretty much irrelevant. So I suspect the magic quill gives
McGonagall a list of students who are the right age and she sends off
their welcome letters without ever giving a thought as to whether the
muggle-borns have completed their muggle primary education or not.  The
decision as to whether the student skips his or her last year of primary
school would be left up to the parents, not the folks at Hogwarts.  There
may very well be other muggle-born students who missed their last year of
primary school as well.

> Hermione would have to have been aware of the letter and have gone 
> to get her school books well in advance of Sept 1 in order to 
> have "learned all our course books by heart, of course", tried out 
> several successful spells, and to have heard that "...it's the very 
> best school of witchcraft there is."
> It appears that Harry received his first letter approximately 1 week 
> before his 11th birthday which would put it at about July 23/24.  
> Why would Hermione get her letter so far in advance?

I don't think she necessarily did get her letter much earlier than Harry.  
Knowing Hermione, she probably rushed to Diagon Alley as soon as possible
after getting the letter and bought her books straight away.  We know
she's a voracious reader and highly motivated to learn magic, so I don't
doubt she was able to plow through all her textbooks in the six weeks or
so before she boarded the train.  In fact, I doubt she did much other than
read and practice spells during that time.  She could easily have learned
more than Harry simply because she was more eager to learn and not
hindered by a hostile family.


----
Patricia Bullington-McGuire	<patricia at obscure.org>

The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered
three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the
purely hypothetical.  They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each
nonexisted in an entirely different way ... 
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"