Copyediting Errors

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 157256

> Mike:
> How do we *know*? What is the evidence? We know he was sixteen when 
> he killed Myrtle because he told us he preserved his sixteen-year-
> old self in the diary. We can also backtrack 50 years to arrive at 
> Tom's fifth year at school. Where's the evidence that Tom killed the 
> Riddles *after* his fifth year?

Carol responds:
I forgot to include this bit of canon in my earlier reply:

"Fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer's morning, when the
Riddle House had still been well kept and impressive, a maid had
entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles, dead" (GoF Am. ed.
1-2). The narrator also refers to the incident as occurring "half a
century ago"(1). Either this figure, in both versions, is an
estimation, or Tom killed his parents exactly fifty years before the
beginning of GoF, in which case, he did it between his sixth and
seventh years, when he was seventeen, which would make sense because
he'd be legally an adult and free of the orphanage, and which would
still allow him to return for his seventh year and talk to Slughorn
about Horcruxes. But the description of Tom as "by no means the
oldest" of the group of boys is a bit confusing if he's a seventh year
since the oldest boy in the group could be at most three months older
than he is. (I think the description is meant to suggest that Tom, a
sixth year, is the leader of a gang that contains seventh years.)

Either way, whether he's sixteen, as he would be if the murders
occurred after Myrtle's death, or seventeen, as a literal reading of
"fifty years" would indicate, "in his sixteenth year" is an error if
it's intended to mean age fifteen. The "fifty years" in GoF takes that
statement farther from the mark, not closer to it.

Carol, hoping that Mike is satisfied now