Back to the cursed DADA-job

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 166498

Bart wrote:
> I'm not crazy about the idea of attaching Muggle dates to the HP
books, especially since I don't recall any actually being used in the
canon (the source, I assume, is from JKR interviews). Because of the
time stretching because of the less than 1 book/year schedule, I
prefer just using internal references. "Zero points" could be, for
example, Harry Potter's birth, the attack on GH, the beginning of book
one, and, of course, the current book. Also, note that from CoS, we
know that Riddle was using "Lord Voldemort" at age 15. So we don't
really know how long TR was openly operating as LV before he became
considered to be a theat, and when ANYBODY outside of Tommy's circle
(including DD) found out that he was Voldemort. 

Carol responds:
We have at least one definitive date in canon: Nearly Headless Nick
died in 1492, and his 500th death date is October 31 of Harry's second
year, which would make his second year 1992-93. And since Harry was
born on July 31 and is twelve years old at that time, he must have
been born July 31, 1980, which places Godric's Hollow on October 31,
1981, exactly fifteen months later.

We also have the Riddle murders occurring fifty years before the
opening of GoF (admittedly, fifty could be approximate) and the dates
on Riddle's diary being fifty years before CoS (probably more exact
since Tom is sixteen in the diary and the framing of Hagrid seems to
occur only a short time before the Riddle murders. And the Riddle
murders occur some time after Frank Bryce returned from World War II,
placing them pretty clearly in the 1940s. If fifty years is correct
for CoS, then the framing of Hagrid takes place in June of 1943. And
the defeat of Grindelwald occurring in 1945 is unlikely to be
coincidental with regard to either WWII or, more important, Tom Riddle.

We also have canonical ages for certain characters other than HRH (for
example, Lucius Malfoy is 41 at some point in GoF, IIRC), so it's
possible to calculate an approximate birth year for him based solely
on canon evidence. 

I can find the Nearly Headless Nick reference on which everything else
is based if necessary.

Bart:
> As I said, I don't think she had "nobody's lasted more than a year
in over 2 decades" in mind until OOP at the earliest. Or,
alternatively, she never did the math. 

Carol responds:
In any case, she certainly has not two but four decades in mind as of
HBP. I wouldn't be surprised if she never did the math ("We haven't
won the Cup since Charlie left" would mean "We haven't won the Cup
since last year" if Charlie is really three years older than Percy,
entirely inconsistent with not having won the Cup for seven years, as
is stated in both SS/PS and, IIRC, PoA. Evidently, in her mind, if
Charlie is seven years older than Harry, as she originally envisioned
him as being until someone informed her that he'd still be in school
if that were the case, then he must have last won the cup seven years
before--when he was about eleven (or twelve) himself. It's the kind of
logic you have to be somewhat math-deficient yourself to understand.
Or you have to believe that the legendary Charlie Weasley, who could
have played for England, somehow never managed to win the Cup, even
though Gryffindor hasn't won since Charlie left, which involves the
sort of Doublethink George Orwell described in "1984.")

Let's just say that neither math nor consistency is JKR's strong
point. Nevertheless, as I said in another post, it is possible to work
out a kind of logic for a DADA curse/jinx that has lasted forty years
and which is, unfortunately for Severus Snape, still very much in effect.

Carol, who was talking to her mother as she typed and hopes there are
no stupid blunders in this post as a result of her divided attention