Hagrid’s professional experience and Weasley’s age group – again

[nkafkafi]

Several weeks ago we had a discussion whether Hagrid became gamekeeper
immediately after he was expelled, or was he apprenticed first. This
question turned out to be connected with Molly's and Arthur age, which
is never explicitly mentioned in canon. The full discussion was in posts:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1455
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1458
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1470
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1465

If you don't feel like looking it up now, the dilemma in brief is that
Hagrid, in those rare occasions when he mentions the subject, creates
the impression that he became the gamekeeper immediately after he was
expelled, but Molly remembers Ogg, who was "the gamekeeper before
Hagrid". This forces us to choose between two optional interpretations:

A. Hagrid's was indeed gamekeeper from the beginning and this implies
that the Weasleys are in his and Tom Riddles's age group (around 70)
or older.

B. Hagrid neglected to mention that he was first Ogg's apprentice for
several years. In this case the Weasleys can be younger than Hagrid by
approximately the number of years that he was an apprentice.

There's of course always the third option: JKR got her dates mixed up
again. I don't like this option (although I was forced to resort to it
in the past) so I was glad when I recently came across some evidence
for option B. This is by Tom Riddle who, when bragging about framing
Hagrid in the Chamber of Secrets, says:

(CoS, Ch. 17 p. 312 US)
"Only the Transfiguration teacher, Dumbledore, seemed to think Hagrid
was innocent. He convinced Dippet to keep him and train him as gamekeeper"

This "train him as gamekeeper" suggests, IMO, a period of
apprenticeship. Tom might be lying, of course, but I don't see any
particular motive for him to lie about this. Since evidence for option
B come from two different books, CoS and GoF (in which Molly tells us
about Ogg) I think we can conclude that Hagrid's biography in JKR's
notebook includes a period of being an apprentice of Ogg, and as with
Dean's background or Flitwick's roots she just never got around to
tell us about it. This means the Weasleys can be 60 or even 50 years old.

Neri