And back to... How Old Are Snape//James/Lily & co?

[Little lama]

No: HPFGUIDX 76064

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "psychic_serpent" 
<psychic_serpent at y...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Marci" <blackgold101 at y...> 
> wrote:
> > > Buttercup asks:
> > > 
> > > I must have misunderstood the interview, I thought she
> > > was referring to their ages in Book 1 as 35 or 36
> > > years old, which would make them  40 or 41 in Book 5. 
> > > Did she specifically say POA? Thanks!
> 
> Well, GoF had just come out when Snape was said to be 35 or 36.  
If he was 35 at the end of Harry's fourth year, he would be twenty 
> years older than Harry or born in 1960.  He was in the same year 
as MWPP, so they would also be born in 1960.  Lily could be in a 
> different year, but I personally believe she was in the same year.
> ...
> --Barb


Lama says:

If I can just chip in here, these reported ages for Snape and Co 
really bother me.  When JKR answered '35 or 36' to the question on 
Snape's age in an interview just after the release of GoF, most 
people assumed she was referring to his age at the time of GoF, i.e. 
the 1994/95 school year, because of the timing of the interview.  
But from memory, the question was posed and answered in a fairly 
general way which might possibly be interpreted as referring to 
Snape's approximate age at the beginning of the series.

Think about it... if Snape, James, Lupin and Sirius were, say, 35 in 
mid 1994 when GoF started and 36 in mid 1995 when it finished, they 
would have been born in 1959, and would all have been about 21 at 
the time Harry was born.  So in the three scant years between 
leaving school in mid-1977 at around 18, and Harry's birth in mid-
1980, James and Lily had found time to undertake the necessary 
training for and establish themselves in a demanding and challenging 
career, which they had also pursued for long enough to accumulate a 
large pile of money due to the special and arguably dangerous nature 
of their work (from memory, this was alluded to by JKR in one 
interview when asked about the reason why Harry had been left so 
financially well off); become active members of the original OOP in 
their spare time; and in their extra spare time, get married (by age 
20) and produce Harry - not to mention that Lily would probably have 
had to take a few months out from active duty due to pregnancy.  It 
all seems a bit hyperactive to me.

Meanwhile Snape in the same short time has left school to follow his 
own path of becoming an active Death Eater for long enough to firmly 
establish his credentials with the other DEs before becoming 
disenchanted with the whole thing at some point, secretly defecting 
to Dumbledore's side, staying there long enough to build up DD's 
trust, presumably taking the time to upgrade his occlumency and 
other skills essential for his double life under DD's tuition (or 
maybe Voldy's), and then spying for Dumbledore for long enough to 
expose himself to `great personal risk' (OK, that might not take 
long).  Again, quite a challenging schedule.  And that's leaving 
aside the development of enough emotional maturity (a quality that's 
often in short supply at age 19 or 20) to be capable of making such 
a momentous decision.  It's a frantic schedule that hardly allows 
him to have been a Death Eater for long enough to build up a truly 
satisfying legacy of lifelong guilt and repentance.

I guess it's still arguable that Snape might have been able to 
squeeze all his post-Hogwarts activities into this time span, but in 
James and Lily's case, I'm seriously unconvinced that three years 
was enough time for them to acquire all the life experience listed 
above – I think 4 or 5 would have to be the bare minimum for almost 
anyone to accomplish all that.  So I prefer to regard JKR's comment 
as being unspecific as to exactly WHEN Snape was 35 or 36.

And yes, I admit I would just like to think he was a touch older.