Rosier, Rookwood, Snape's gang of Slytherins

[Peg DiGrazia]

No: HPFGUIDX 144742

Christina wrote:
  <<(OotP, Scholastic, page 114)
"I haven't seen her [Bellatrix] since I was your age, unless you count a glimpse of her coming into Azkaban."

<<A lot of people take this to meant that Bella was two or three years older than Sirius, and the last time he saw her was when she graduated from school.  That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, however, when you factor in the new information from HBP.  We now know that Bellatrix is the oldest Black sister.  Even if Andromeda was just a year younger, she'd be (at most) two years older than the Marauders, making her (at most) 38 in OotP.  Assuming that Auror training takes a minimum of three years, Tonks can't be any younger than about 22 when we meet her in OotP.  That would mean that Andromeda would have had to have had Tonks when she was 16.  Now, is that completely unrealistic?  Not really, but Sirius's comments about the tapestry suggest differently:>>

Peg now:
  I think that a lot of the discussion on this sort of topic tends to be based on canon comments being taken a bit too literally.  When Sirius uses the phrase "since I was your age," I doubt that he's thought it through that thoroughly ("Hmmm...  Let's see...  Harry just finished his fourth year, and I was in my fourth year when Bella graduated, and so this happened when I was his age...")  To me as an adult, when I'm speaking off-the-cuff, it's much more generalized ("I had been at Hogwarts for a couple of years when Bella graduated, and Harry's in the middle of his schooling, and so this happened when I was his age...")  Unless I specifically work it out mentally, "your age" is a phrase I would use when telling the same story to my 12-year-old niece or to my 17-year-old niece.  If Sirius is referring to when Bellatrix graduated from Hogwarts, I think she could still be five or six years older than he is.  
   
  Peg, realizing that she is the same age now that the marauders are in HBP, and so it would make sense for Lupin to dump Tonks and marry her instead.