Hey Lexicon Steve! McGonagall/Riddle SHIP

[Erin]

No: HPFGUIDX 89994

Erin:

Okay, move that back to two years.  I just read this:

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/timeline.html#Important

which talks about the Lexicon timeline versus the "official" timeline 
approved by Rowling on the CoS dvd, and down at the end of the page 
it states that the official timeline stipulates that the opening of 
the Chamber of Secrets actually takes place 51 years before the book 
CoS. 

So that makes Riddle 68 to McGonagall's 70 at the end of GoF.


 Carol:
> But a fourteen-year-old boy seems like a child to a seventeen-year-
old girl (though not necessarily the other way around). Look at the
> relative emotional maturity of Hermione and Harry/Ron in GoF. Yes,
> Krum is interested in Hermione (more than she is in him), but he's
> eighteen. Ron doesn't have a clue about the source of his own 
jealousy and Harry is still fumbling for words when he speaks to Cho. 
(Reminds me of a ten-year-old boy I know who thinks that the sign of 
being "in love" is having a stomachache.) Fleur, presumably 
seventeen, refers to Harry as "a little boy." I think that would have 
been McGonagall's attitude toward Tom Riddle in her last year at 
Hogwarts, if there is in fact a three-year difference. 

Erin:
Not everyone develops at the same rate, it's true.  But Rowling has 
shown that she is not adverse to relationships between students of 
different years. Krum/Hermione, Harry/Cho, Ginny/Dean, 
Ginny/Neville.  Even Bill/Fleur is a pretty big gap, though they're 
not students anymore.  Sure, Ron gets shot down, but there's no proof 
it's because of age;  Fleur appears to be scouting for handsome 
quidditch captains/former head boys. All-in-all, Rowling's record 
seems to be more in favor of the age gap than against it.

As for the relative emotional maturity of Hermione, Ron, and Harry, 
it seems to me that in this instance Riddle could easily be likened 
to Hermione.  He is described by Dumbledore as brilliant, after all.  
Hermione is brilliant, and considerably more emotionally mature than 
even the other girls in her grade and above (Lavender, Parvarti, 
Cho). Neither Harry or Ron can exactly be described as brilliant.  I 
reject the case of the ten-year-old.  Even ten-year-old *girls* are 
likely to think the opposite sex has cooties.  There's just too big a 
developmental gap to go comparing ten-year-olds and teenagers.

One reason Harry and Ron are so flustered is that they actually DO 
have these all these feelings.  Riddle as seducer/player wouldn't 
have that problem.  He could be smooth, secure in his role of perfect 
boyfriend.  It's easy to say all the right things when there are no 
messy feelings involved.


Carol:
Add to that that the "little boy" is in Slytherin and I can't see her 
being interested in him at all. Certainly she could not have married 
him at that point. He was not of age.

Erin:
Maybe there was some Slytherin prejudice at that point, but I can't 
help wondering if maybe it wasn't as strong as it is in Harry's time, 
after many of the DEs are known to have come from Slytherin.  I can't 
help wondering if perhaps Tom Riddle himself caused most of the 
prejudice that we see today.  If so, then it wouldn't have been 
present as strongly when he was at school, and would not have been a 
barrier to a relationship with Minerva.

And the theory is not that he married her while he was at school, it 
is that he married her after he turned 17/got out of school.

--Erin