Under age magic - just wondering?

[jelly92784]

No: HPFGUIDX 188341


Carol:

More precisely, Gryffindor supposedly hasn't won a Quidditch match for seven years as of SS/PS (and again, seven years as of PoA!), yet the "legendary Charlie Weasley" who "could have played for England" was Gryffindor's Seeker for several years, perhaps as many as six, and one of the Twins, IIRC, says in SS/PS, "We haven't won since Charlie left."
 
All well and good if Charlie is considerably older than his next brother, Percy, and has been out of school for seven years as of SS/PS, but JKR has Bill, who is two years older than Charlie, remark in GoF that he's only been out of Hogwarts for five years, and JKR said in an interview that Charlie was two years older than Percy, which she later changed to three years when someone pointed out that he'd have been at Hogwarts the previous year (when Harry and Ron were ten) if that were the case.

So either Charlie is about nine years older than Percy (and Bill is eleven years older) or the stint as Seeker of "the legendary Charlie Weasley" exactly coincides with the seven years that Gryffindor *lost* the Quidditch Cup to Slytherin.

Janelle:
The "Charlie Weasley problem" has bugged me, too.  A while ago I made a timeline based on what is said in the books themselves (it's helped me work out lots of little mysteries!) and this is what I've discovered for sure about this one, followed by some assumptions made based off of those facts:

*Slytherin won the HOUSE cup in 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991
    ("Slytherins have got the cup for six years in a row!"(SS-124))
    ("The idea of overtaking Slytherin in the house championship was wonderful, no one had done it for seven years"(SS-221))
*Gryffindor wins the HOUSE cup in 1992 (The end of Harry's first year), 1993, and 1994

*Slytherin won the QUIDDITCH Cup in 1991
     ("flattened in that last match by Slytherin"(SS-152))
*Gryffindor won the QUIDDITCH Cup in 1986- when Charlie Weasley was on the team, and in 1994 (The end of Harry's third year)
     ("Gryffindor hasn't won for seven years now"(CS-143))
     ("We haven't won since Charlie left"(SS-153))
    
Who won the Quidditch cup in all the other years when Slytherin won the house cup is not specified other than not being Gryffindor.

>From those dates it's clear that Charlie's last year at Hogwarts had to have been 1986, which means that his first year was 1979 (assuming that he attended all 7 years)

Now, we know from their birth dates on their gravestone that James and Lily would have started at Hogwarts in 1971 and ended in 1978.  Since no mention is ever made of Bill having ever met them- I'm assuming that he must've started school after they left.  For that to be true, however, Bill would have had to start school in the fall of 1978, the school year immediately following James and Lily's last, which would make Bill only a year ahead of Charlie in school.

Percy didn't start school until 1987, so he was never at school with Bill or Charlie which makes both of them significantly older than him.  This is the only logical explanation given what we know from canon.

As far as Bill saying he left five years ago as of 1995, I want to point out that he doesn't say that's when he left school- he says: "'Haven't seen this place for five years'"(GOF-616).  That puts his last visit to Hogwarts back in 1990- maybe to visit Percy and/or the twins, who were all students there at that time?

Sorry if this is confusing- just trying to point out the timeline according to canon- not according to what Jo says in interviews.  We all know that there's no way those comments are ever going to make sense!