Timeline for DH

[Alison]

No: HPFGUIDX 176966

Carol wrote :

> Actually, there's canon for the approximate marriage date as well.
> Voldemort tells Bellatrix during the DE meeting in chapter 1 that
> the "happy event" occurred "this week" (DH Am. ed. 9) and Snape
> says that Harry will be removed from 4 Privet Drive on "Saturday
> next" (3). "Saturday next," which can only be a few days away
> unless the phrase means "a week from this coming Saturday," turns
> out to be four days before July 31 (Harry's seventeenth birthday),
> which means that it's July 27.

Alison :

"A week from this coming Saturday," is what I would
interpret it to mean. If it were the coming Saturday, it seems more
likely that it would be expressed as exactly that or perhaps "this
Saturday". So I would take the meeting to have occurred between 1-2
weeks prior to 27 July.


Carol also wrote :

>So if the meeting occurs on, say, Wednesday (it can't be
> Monday as the wedding has occurred the same week), that date would
> be July 24 and the wedding date would be around July 22. Obviously,
> we can't be that exact, but it seems that the Lupins were married
> in mid- to late July.

Alison responds :

You know, I never thought about interpreting the "this week" that
way, I had thought simply that it occurred in the last seven days.
But I agree your interpretation makes much more sense. So I would
also agree that the meeting most likely took place on either
Wednesday or Thursday. (If it were a Friday, then I would expect
Snape to refer to the date Harry is moved as tomorrow week).

So I would bring your dates forward to be one week earlier, putting
the wedding on 15 or 16 July. But I agree there is probably still
some margin for error up to a week either way, depending on exactly
how those two phrases are interpreted.


     Alison (madammilliemarsh)