[HPforGrownups] When do werewolves change?

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 53942

On 18 Mar 2003 at 23:29, Maria Gromova wrote:

> You know, maybe she mixed these things up on purpose, so that it would be
> impossible to say which year it is. Dorothy Sayers made so with the tides,
> which are important in one novel of hers, so that you can't calculate which
> year or place it is. The people on the LordPeter mailing list can't make
> head or tail of the dates in Sayers' novels just like this, and it is
> commonly accepted she did it on purpose. The tides are connected with the
> moon, of course, so one more parallel.
> Maria.

We also need to examine what alternatives there are. I just did a quick check for every 
year since 1980, to see when there was a full moon or a near full moon on June 6.

1982, 1990, 1993, 2001

2001 is the only year since 1980 when the moon was truly full on June 6 (ie, 100.00% in 
phase), the other years it was at at least a 95.00% totality on that date.

When we consider we have other information from the books from dates, basically it 
becomes clear we can't perfectly resolve JKRs calendar and come up with a date that is 
compatible with all the evidence. That may be deliberate, or it may be accidental - but 
the point is, if we take the moon evidence as gospel, we then have to ignore other 
evidence. Setting the dates basically comes down to two things, it seems to me - 
deciding which evidence we consider most important and, if possible, looking for which 
dates have the *most* evidence behind them.

>From memory, the only really clear date we have in the books in terms of a year is 
Nick's deathday party - we know it's been 500 years since that happened (and it's an 
anniversary celebration and seems important to Sir Nicholas so we're not likely to be 
dealing with 'roughly'  500 years, and we see 1492 as the originating date for the 
anniversary. That really seems to me (and bear in mind, that I like messing around with 
the astronomy of Harry Potter, so I wish it worked (-8 ) a lot clearer than when the full 
moon occurred in a given year.

Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200

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