New Wizard of the month on JKR website and her amasing math skills ;)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 177617

Alla quoted from the Wizard of the Month section of JKR's website:
> >
> > Harry Potter
> > (1980 - )
> > The Boy Who Lived, only known survivor of the Avada Kedavra curse
 and conqueror of Lord Voldemort, also known as Tom Riddle. Harry 
Potter joined the reshuffled Auror Department under Kingsley 
Shacklebolt at age 17, rising to become Head of said department in  2007.
> > 
> > 
> > Alla:
> > 
> > So, I had been saying all along and will continue to do so - that
> JKR multiple math inconsistencies do not bother me one bit.... 
Unless it will majorly put me out of the story.
> > 
> > And I am sitting here and blinking. I was pretty sure that
epilogue is set up in 2007. Does it mean that Harry fathered his
oldest at 15??????? OR is epilogue set up later and I confused myself?
> > 
> > I have a suspicion that my math skills are much worse than JKR's
> 
> Geoff:
> I'm not entirely sure it is Maths skills which are at fault!
> 
> Harry turned 17 very close to the beginning of DH and I reckon that
the defeat of Voldemort took the action well into the following year
of 1998. I rather doubt that Harry joined the Aurors on the following
day so I suspect he must have been at least 18 before that happened.
> 
> We have already calculated that the events of the epilogue occur in
> the summer of 2017 when Harry is 27.
>
Carol adds:

Actually, he would be 37, not 27, on September 1, 2017, so he'd have
been about 24, possibly 23, when his older son, James, was born. (I do
think it's significant that he's 37 in the epilogue, the same age age
Lupin and Snape at the beginning of DH. He, Ron, and Hermione are
living the normal life denied to MWPP, Snape, and Lily.)

JKR has said elsewhere that Harry returned to Hogwarts to finish his
education. If so, he could have joined the department at earliest at
age eighteen, and, unless he's an exception to the rule, would have
required three years of training after that. (Given his performance
against Snape in HBP and his failure to master nonverbal defensive
spells, I think he would need that training.)

So, in 2002 at age twenty-one (almost twenty-two) he finishes his
Auror training, and in 2007 at age twenty-six or twenty-seven
(depending on whether he's had his birthday) he becomes head of the
department, after only five years of actual experience. Maybe we
should stop calling him the Chosen One and start calling him the Boy
Wonder. (I know; the nickname is already taken.)

Carol, who thinks that JKR is a little too fond of Harry and perhaps
overestimating his abilities