Hey Lexicon Steve! was: Protection for EVERYONE at Hogwarts

[elfundeb2]

No: HPFGUIDX 89947


> Carol wrote:
> See the Timelines at the Lexicon:
>  
> There is no place in this time frame for a romantic relationship 
with 
> McGonagall.
> 
> 
> Erin:
> In other words, the Lexicon timeline is not set in stone, and 
there's 
> no reason that McGonagall couldn't have been as little as two 
years 
> ahead of Tom Riddle.  Maybe liking slightly older girls is one of 
> the "strange likenesses" Tom and Harry have in common. :-)
> 

Debbie:

While I think the Lexicon is wonderful, and have nothing but 
admiration for its keeper, I have to agree with Erin on this one.  
We really have no idea what JKR meant when she said McGonagall 
was "a sprightly 70".  As Erin pointed out, this could have been 
intended to be her age at the end of GoF as easily as the beginning 
of the first book.

Perhaps even more importantly, this is not something she wrote in 
the books. Interview statements, IMO, are not as reliable as what 
she wrote into the books.  With the written word, she has time to 
reread, rethink, rewrite, and have it reviewed before it is 
published.  In an interview, OTOH, there is no time for any of these 
things.  She is asked a question, and it is answered.  I doubt she 
had time to think through her answer first.  Even if she did, 
numbers and dates don't seem to be her strong point.

Seventy is the kind of round number that gets tossed out in an off-
the-cuff response (as is Dumbledore's stated age of 150, which she 
offered in the same breath), and I don't think we should necessarily 
interpret the statement as her being *exactly* seventy at a 
particular date she was thinking of.  To me, it's a ballpark number 
meaning she was 70 at some point in the series - and so was Tom 
Riddle.

The possibility of a past McGonagall-Riddle SHIP is not a new 
theory, and it's my favorite explanation for a number of apparent 
oddities in McGonagall's portrayal, starting with her refusal to 
celebrate Voldemort's downfall in the very first chapter of PS/SS 
and including the odd fact that she began teaching at Hogwarts in 
mid-term, in December of 1956, which definitely suggests that she 
may have arrived at Hogwarts in need of protection.

Debbie