[HPforGrownups] Re: Why Harry Potter cannot be set in 1991-?

[Troels Forchhammer]

No: HPFGUIDX 79364

At 04:06 30-08-03 +0000, Steve Vander Ark wrote:

> >> it. Harry Potter, as worked out by the fans, is set in 1991, due
> >> to the deathday cake.
>
>The date on Nick's cake is the only specific reference to a year for
>the series, that's true.

Depends on what you mean by 'specific', I guess, but I don't
agree. Not even the Deathday cake is unambiguous, and there are
certainly a lot more information that contradicts that dating.

The quote doesn't say Playstation, it says computer. Of course there
>were computers in 1991. I know, I had one.

The quotation most specifically /does/ say PlayStation. I don't
know if this is changed in the Scholastic/Levine version, but
the Bloomsbury edition has Dudley chucking his PlayStation out
of the window (HC 3rd printing w. wrong wand-order and 8th
printing PB w. correct wand order).

<snip>

>The timeline she approved gave Harry's birthdate as July 31, 1980.
>It is now considered to be officially correct.

Hardly ;-)

Considering the amount of products which Rowling has 'approved',
and the internal inconsistency in these (e.g. the Wizard Cards),
there is, to be frank, no value in that approval, IMO.
The only information that I can consider canonical is information
that /originated/ from Rowling herself - and the DVD ROM Timeline
didn't do that. Furthermore the description of the glass ball
containing the Prophecy is, IMO, interesting. Rowling carefully
quotes everything written on that glass ball ad verbatim, /except
the date/! Had she actually adopted the dating from the DVD
Timeline this would have been the obvious place to put the year
of Harry's birth. As this isn't so, it is my opinion that this
is deliberate and that she intends the books not to be dated with
respect to specific years (perhaps she don't want us to be guessing
at which events in the real world whe might want to be a result of
the wizard war - or the reverse causality, for that matter).

I have just made a new version of my timeline essay available at:
<http://www.hogwarts-library.net/reference/Harry_Potter_timeline.html>
In this I discuss this issue in far more detail than here.

The important point to me is to present the data in such a way as to
allow people to make their own choice (even if I do present my own
conclusion), therefore the main part of the effort is put into the
investigation and presentation of the data.

/Troels