[HPforGrownups] Re: How old is Voldemort?--Two different ages given!

[Barb]

No: HPFGUIDX 49283


"noir_l <noir_l at yahoo.com>" <noir_l at yahoo.com> wrote:
I was counting beginning in year one. So sometime during year one Tom discovered who he was and began looking for the chamber. He would be 11 (1st year), 12 (2nd year),....up to 15 (5th year--therefore searching for 5 years). 
 
Yes, but at the end of the first year of searching, he would probably be 12 (depending on when his birthday falls).  At the end of the second year, he would be 13, etc.  If he has searched for five years, while he would be 15 at the beginning of the fifth year of searching, assuming that his birthday falls before the end of the summer term, he would be 16 by the end of the fifth year of searching.  
 
It is, however, unclear as to whether Myrtle was killed before or after the summer of 1943 (if we assume Tom showed Harry events from that year through the medium of the diary).  If it was before the summer, then Hagrid was in third year when Tom was in fifth year, and so he would have been born in 1929 (two years younger than Tom); if it was the autumn of 1943, Hagrid could have been in third year when Tom was in sixth. (b. 1930).  The first scenario seems more likely, as, IIRC, Hagrid implied that he attended three years (or nearly three years) of school before his expulson, whereas the other scenario would have had him kicked out before his third year had barely begun.  (The other possibility is that he was kicked out early in his fourth year, so he attended three years and was kicked out "after third year" because it occurred early in his fourth.)  The other likely reason for this timing is JKR's fondness for "important" things to happen near the end of the summer term (which is how she has structured all of the books so far).
 
--Barb


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