Tonks's age: A possible solution RE: [the_old_crowd] Re: Snape the Half-Blood Prince WAS RE: Page-filler Lupin

[Eileen Rebstock]

> Pippin:
> Molly mentions that lots of people are rushing into marriage just like
> last time Voldemort was in power. So whether JKR specifically realized
> she had Andromeda and Ted marry quite young or not, she knows it's a
> feature of her world. 
> RL teen marriages where the partners are eighteen,
> and not poor or pregnant succeed as often as other marriages, so
what's
> the fuss? 

Oh, the problem isn't that Andromeda and Ted were in their teens when
Nymphadora came along, but that it's very difficult to make the timeline
work without them still being in school. 

Let me try to work it out.

July 31, 1980 - Harry Potter born 

September 1, 1991 - Harry Potter enters Hogwarts. Tonks not there.
Supposing her seventh year was 1990/91, she was seventeen at the
youngest that year. 

Which gives us a birthdate of August 31, 1973 at the very latest.

And yet supposedly MWPP left Hogwarts in June 1978. 

If Andromeda is the youngest of the three sisters, as the family tree
combined with "Will and Won't" would indicate, that means that if
Andromeda married and had Tonks after finishing Hogwarts, it'd be June
1972 that she'd leave school. 

Which would mean that unless Bellatrix, Narcissa, and Andromeda are
triplets, which would be a bit much, imho, the older sisters couldn't
even be at Hogwarts at the same time as Snape. Mind you, if they were
triplets we still have Sirius talking about Snape spending his school
days hanging out with a gang of Slytherins that are 17 years old and
gone within a year to his eleven years!

However, a possible solution has just occurred to me. Fear my retconning
skills.

Do we actually have any evidence that Tonks is seven years older than
Harry? The assumption is made because Tonks wasn't at Hogwarts when
Harry showed up. Yet if Tonks was not at Hogwarts at any time, she can
be a good deal younger. 

I'll quote Alec's private objection to me:
>Where else could she have gone? It does seem to have been the only
English >wizarding school, and Durmstrang probably wouldn't have taken a
half-blood. >Some wizards don't go to school at all, of course, and they
learn things at >home from parents, from family friends and from
textbooks, and they >probably learn at least as much as most people do
at Hogwarts - but they >probably don't make useful connections, and it
may perhaps be harder for >them to sit exams. Not that I think that
would make very much difference >most of the time, but I suspect that it
probably "does" make it harder for >them to get a Ministry job -
connections and examinations (and fitting a >pattern) are probably more
important there. What do you think?

Beauxbatons! 

The idea of sending Nymphadora to a school where she wouldn't suffer the
reprisals of Andromeda's large group of relatives might have been
important to Andromeda and Ted. Particularly if Andromeda remembered
very well the fate of fellow housemate (for Slughorn indicates all the
Blacks except Sirius were in Slytheriin) half-blood Severus Snape who
suffered hurt from both sides at Hogwarts. 

Any canon I've overlooked? I've got the feeling there likely is, but at
the moment, I'm luxuriating in my theory.

Eileen