Hermione Granger's birthday

[Josh Warren]

No: HPFGUIDX 108882

"romulusmmcdougal" <romulus at h...> wrote:
> > Regarding Hermione Granger's birthday -- September 19th.
> > Did you know that September is "the seventh month"?

"iamvine" <eleanor at d...> wrote:
> Trelawney tells Umbridge earlyish in OotP that she's been working 
> at Hogwarts for "nearly sixteen years", leading to the theory that 
> she was engaged the year before Harry's birth, but after the beginning 
> of the school year - i.e. just before Hermione was born.


If it was exactly 16 years, the hiring would have been done on the 
same date, the calender year before Harry was born, Y-1, as OotP is 
calendar years Y15-Y16. However, the comment is "nearly" and if 
Trewalney was hired _after_ the date of her comment, but before 
Hermione's birthday, I don't have the book, but you're looking at a 
window of less than 18 days max (Express rolls on Sept 1). At that 
point, you'd round off to 16 years even. Not to mention, that if 7th 
month was referring to the current month, the prophecy could be 
coaxed that way... like the 2nd prophecy, referring to midnight of 
the current day.

To me, nearly would imply either a little bit of self-promoting 
rounding (it was really just over 15 years, thinking early summer) or 
she was hired at some point in the middle of the school year... like 
around Christmas.

Of course, if Hermione is younger than Harry (I think the majority 
assumption), being born Sept 19, Y0, not Y-1, then the theory could 
hold. However, iamvine's (what is that name, Krum's imitation of 
Harry?) other objections still hold, although if you're going to play 
with Roman numerology, anything after the 15th (the Ides) was 
labelled as the number of days before the start of the month (Kalens) 
and corresponded to the lunar calendar's waning of the moon from full 
to new (dying in a literal sense, just leaving open "as [it] dies" 
being the moment of death or the slower process leading up to it).

While I could see JKR going goofy over the Sept=7 thing, the pre-
Julian calendar introducing the 11th and 12th months is much older 
than Hogwarts itself (715BC versus ~1000 AD), and I think the modern 
numeration would hold, even in the archaic WW. :)

...oh, and there are evidently many other prophecies (aisles and 
aisles in the DoM), and I'm sure a few might have described Sept-Dec 
as the Nth month, providing further basis for DD to discount 
September.

Josh