Hermione's age revisited.

jodel at aol.com jodel at aol.com
Mon Jun 2 22:19:24 UTC 2003


No: HPFGUIDX 59179

Alon states:

<< Note the wording: 'the people who ARE TURNING 11'. Seeing as term starts 
at the 1st of September, Hermione's birthday is the 19th of that very same 
month, and McGonagall seems likely to send the Hogwarts-letters in the summer 
(yes, the letters are sent 
suspiciously close to Harry's birthday, but it also makes /sense/ to send 
acceptance-letters in the summer before enrolment) Hermione would have been 11 
already when she recieved the letter, and would in fact turn 12 a mere two weeks 
after start of term according to the 1979-proponents. It just doesn't make 
sense to me... >>

Yes, except that this gets shot down *if* Angelica Johnson is in the same 
year as the twins. She turns 17 in October and they don't turn 17 until the 
following April. They were born in *different calendar years*, how can they be in 
the same *class* year if all the kids born in a given calendar year start 
school the same year? 

Does it ever say that Angelica is a 6th year or are we just assuming that? If 
she is a 7th year there is no problem.

However, and more to the point, by October, Cedric Diggory has turned 17 and 
is able to put his name in the Goblet. And yet he *is* refered to as a 6th 
year. This does not make sense unless he either started school a year later than 
normal due to ill-health or some other factor, or if he had to wait a year in 
order to start school because he hadn't turned 11by the time the school year 
began. 

Given these two examples, plus Hermione, we have an ireconcilable 
contradiction on our hands. The only way to reconcile it is to assume that one or the 
other statement was an error and the problem is to figure out which. 

(Marcus Flint was stated as being 6th year in the first book, but this has 
since been corrected to 5th year in order to have him still in school in PoA.)

So. Either the cut-off date is September first, children in a given class 
year were born in either of two partial calendar years and someone who ought to 
know better wasn't paying attention when they state Hermione was born in 1980, 
or Cedric Diggory was a 7th year rather than *6th* (which is beginning to 
resemble the use of the term "20" for the degree of credibility it carries.)

-JOdel




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