Charlie problem?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 170516

Tandra wrote:
>
> Ok I saw this in someones post and I don't know what they are
referring to. It was in the context of timing mess ups that JKR has
made Can anyone help me out? .  Thanks
>
Carol responds:
Since the post in question was mine, I'll explain what I meant. On the
one hand, "the legendary Charlie Weasley," who "could have played
Quidditch for England," is supposedly only three years older than
Percy. (At first, JKR had him being two years older than Percy, but
changed it so he would no longer be at school.) That being the case,
Charlie left Hogwarts just before Ron and Harry entered it. His age is
not actually referred to in canon, but we have Bill's remark in GoF
that he hasn't been at Hogwarts for five years. (So, oops. I guess she
forgot to move his age up one year as well.) According to the Twins (I
forget which book; I think SS/PS), Gryffindor hasn't won the cup since
Charlie left. (That would be last year, boys!)

On the other hand, Gryffindor hasn't won the Quidditch Cup for seven
years as of SS/PS (and seven years again in PoA, IIRC, but let's not
complicate things). So if Charlie Weasley really is just three years
older than Percy, Gryffindor somehow managed to lose the cup for all
seven years that he attended--but they must have won it before he
came, or it would be more than seven years. Not only would Gryffindor
have Charlie, who could have played for England, playing as Seeker for
at least five of those years and possibly six (he wouldn't have played
as a first-year, unlike Harry), they also had Oliver Wood as Keeper
for the last three or four years (he's a fifth-year as of SS/PS) and
the Twins as Beaters for at least the previous year and probably the
last two. They also had two of the same Chasers for at least the last
year, and yet Oliver hopes that they have "a better team than last
year." A better team than Charlie Weasley, Oliver Wood, the Weasley
Twins, Angelina, and what's her name? That team lost the Quidditch
Cup, and a team with Charlie on it lost for five or six years running,
yet Gryffindor won the Cup the year before Charlie came to Hogwarts?
It does not compute.

And there's the additional problem of his parents' ages: on the one
hand, they left Hogwarts and got married at the start of Voldemort's
first reign some ten years before Harry was born; on the other hand,
the gamekeeper was not Hagrid but "a man named Ogg," yet Hagrid had
been training as gamekeeper since he was thirteen and would at the
time they left Hogwarts have been around forty years old. (And Filch,
whom we know to have been in his current position at least since
MWPP's fifth year, was apparently not at Hogwarts yet, his predecessor
being one Apollyon Pringle. I can see Filch being hired immediately
after the Weasleys left, but I can't account for Ogg.) 

Carol, for whom "the Charlie Weasley problem" is indicative of JKR's
difficulties with simple arithmetic, otherwise known as "Oh, dear. Maths"