Tom Riddle and history

[Geoff]

No: HPFGUIDX 191065

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bart at ...> wrote:

Miner:
> > I'm not sure if I have the subject line right but there was something
> > I thinking about. I was thinking about Tom Riddle and his ideas about
> > muggles and although we get a good history of Tom in the Half Blood
> > Prince, still I wonder if Tom Riddle went to Hogwarts around the time
> > of World War II?

Bart:
> Time to pull out one of my favorite things to say in this group:

> "There are 3 kinds of people in this world. Those who can count, and 
> those who can't." - J. K. Rowling

> Although there have been a number of very good attempts to reason this 
> out, matching timelines in the Potterverse to Ourverse timelines is kind 
> of like figuring out how Dr. Watson received his war wound in the 
> Sherlock Holmes novels. They tend not to match up.
 
> Given that, the math shows that yes, Tom Riddle was in Hogwarts 50 years 
> previously to the 1990's, so Muggletime (assuming that WWII did take 
> place in the Muggle version of the Rowlingverse, as we have no 
> indication that it did) does show that it was during WWII.
 
Geoff:
I see no reason why JKR should change real world events because there is 
really no need to, since the real world impacts so little on the Wizarding 
World.

The opening of the Chamber of Secrets took place in Harry's Second Year 
which places it in the 1992/93 academic year; if this was exactly 50 years 
after the previous opening - which it might have been symbolically, then 
that was in 1942/43, certainly during World War II.

Tom Riddle was a prefect so was either a Fifth Year or more likely in the 
Sixth Form which puts him in one of three school years(!) which makes him 
anything between 16 and 19 at that time.