Aging

[erisedstraeh2002]

No: HPFGUIDX 57883

Christine asked: 

> So my question is, if they live twice as long, shouldn't their 
> bodies take twice as long to mature/get old/whatever as Muggles' 
> bodies?  And if they don't (as I suspect they don't b/c both hit 
> puberty at the same time), then do they age exactly like Muggles 
> until they're 90 or so and then just stay in the 90-year-old body?  
> Or do they look 150 when they're 150?

Now me:

Well, we don't know for sure, but here's what we have to go on:

When Harry goes back in time through Riddle's diary, he sees  "...a 
tall wizard with long, sweeping auburn hair and beard...Harry gaped 
at the wizard.  He was none other than a fifty-year-younger 
Dumbledore."  (CoS, Ch. 13)  So since Dumbledore is currently 150 
years old (according to a JKR interview), this would mean that at 100 
years of age he still had auburn hair.

But when Harry falls into the Pensieve at the time of Karkaroff's 
trial:  "Yet it couldn't be that long ago...the Dumbledore sitting 
next to him now was silver-haired, just like the present-day 
Dumbledore." (Ch. 30, GoF).  This trial is apparently soon after 
Voldemort's fall, which would have been about 13 years prior, or when 
Dumbledore was around 137 years old.  Which suggests that 
Dumbledore's silver hair appeared somewhere between 100 and 137.

Ch. 30 GoF also states that Harry observed at Karkaroff's 
trial: "Unlike Dumbledore, Karkaroff looked much younger; his hair 
and goatee were black."  Unfortunately, since we don't know 
Karkaroff's age, it's hard to deduce much from this other than the 
fact that he aged considerably in the past 13 years.  Although the 
stress of being a Voldemort traitor could have been a driving force 
in his recent aging.

~Phyllis