Connecting the dots

[nkafkafi]

> Kneasy:
> You  want to argue with the Lexicon, then go right ahead.
> Tom's time frame has him as born in 1928 and the school year '44-45
> was his final year at Hogwarts. Do you have evidence to dispute this?
> If yes, I'm sure we'd all like to hear it.

Neri:
Far from me arguing with the Lexicon. On the contrary - I'm arguing
from the Lexicon. If you'll look at the Lexicon's time line:
http://www.hp-lexicon.org/timelines/main/timeline_1900-1950.html 
you'll see that Tom's last year at Hogwarts is listed as "Y-45
(1945)". Y-45 means 45 years before Harry was born (that is, story
internal time). The RL year 1945 is given in parentheses. There's a
very good reason why Steve Vander Ark bothered to convert all the
dates in the Lexicon's timeline to story internal dating. As he
explains in 
http://www.hp-lexicon.org/timelines/essays/timeline-facts.html
the whole synchronization of the story's timeline with the RL timeline
depends on a single detail: the date on Nearly-Headless-Nick's
deathday cake. Not only this synchronization cannot be corroborated
anywhere else in the books, but there are contradicting clues, and the
NHN dating itself is problematic, as explained in more detail in
Troles Forchhammer's essay in the Lexicon:
http://www.hp-lexicon.org/timelines/essays/timeline-mapping-tf.html

Steve also notes that JKR could have easily settled this matter
several times in OotP but pointedly didn't (I'm quoting): 

'One of the best examples is the date which was on the little card by
Harry's prophecy. Instead of just giving the date, Rowling writes that
the date was "sixteen years earlier." Why didn't she write "1980"?'

JKR lists all the times and dates that are known to be important for
the plot in story internal time. For example, Tom's releasing the
basilisk happened "50 years before" the year of CoS. So if it turns
out that the NHN dating is off by (say) two years, nothing terrible
happens except that Tom's last year at Hogwarts, for example, will be
listed in the Lexicon as "Y-45 (1943)" instead of "Y-45 (1945)",
meaning it's still 45 years before Harry was born, but actually in
1943 – two years *before* Grindelwald was defeated. The dates that JKR
lists using absolute RL dating are mostly for adding color - this
international convention of warlocks in 1567 or that goblin rebellion
in 1748. In this sense, JKR listing the year of defeating Grindelvald
as "1945" not only makes it difficult to synchronize it with the
story's timeline, it also suggests that defeating Grindelvald is a
detail of the second type, and not something important for the plot.  


Neri