I’ve heard it mentioned a couple of times that the events of Order of the Phoenix happened in 1995 (or was it '96?) I can’t find anything anywhere that explicitly mentions a year in any of the Harry Potter books.
The only clue I know of is that a date is occasionally paired with a day of the week (like Friday, October 30). But this doesn’t fit the timeline that some people seem to have agreed on…
In the second book, HArry and his friends attend Nearly-Headless Nick’s 500th death-day party. ON his cake it says he died on Halloween, 1492, making the date of the party 1992.
So, HArry’s school years at Hogwarts are as follows:
Year One: 1991-92
Year Two: 92-93
Year Three: 93-94
etc.
Based on this information, we can also figure out that harry was born in July, 1980.
:smack:
Thanks, arisu… that’s one less thing to worry about.
I’m a bit annoyed by that method of year determination. In Stone, Nick said “I haven’t eaten in nearly 400 years”. Then that is contradicted in the next one. The thing is, Rowling didn’t really care about how long he’s been dead or anything like that. What year the books take place in is unimportant.
Besides, in Goblet, Playstation is mentioned in passing as a possesion of Dudley’s. The Playstation did not exist in 1994, which is the year it would have been were Nick’s Deathday Party a good indication of what year it was.
Does that account for the Gregorian calendar change?
I thought it took place in the present. Why else would they have Nimbus2000 and Nimbus2001 brooms?
Also in the fourth book (I think), it mentions that Dudley has a Playstation.
The posters at Yahoo’s Harry Potter for Grownups have gone over and around and through this subject about a million times. I mean–they even got out the astrological charts when the centaurs started talking about Mars being “bright tonight.”
Conclusion? The dates just don’t line up. If you go through the book and line of the days of the weeks with the specifc dates mentioned, they don’t correspond with any (“real”) recent years. (One date might match, but a second date listed in that same book won’t correspond with the first date, etc.)
I think that generally in HP fandom the date on the Deathday Cake is accepted as canon, and anything that contradicts it is a flint.
So JKR isn’t good with numbers. Don’t even get started thinking about how many students attend Hogwarts. (JKR has said in an interview that it’s about 1000. Huh?)
1000? So 250 in each house? Wow. Dunno bout that.
Muggle calendars don’t match Magic calendars.
Easy.
Based on past experience, I know that, for some people, this is the equivalent of saying that Jesus wore wading boots and that I’m going to get flamed. The fact of the matter is, however, that Ms. Rowling is an outstanding storyteller but only a fair author.
Her continuity, for example, is lousy. This isn’t necessarily a big defect, especially in a one-off children’s book. However, it can be a real problem in a continuing series. She attempts to drop clever hints and foreshadowings into the story, which is a good thing. However, there are so many amateurish continuity errors that you often can’t tell the difference between a tantalizing hint of things to come and mere sloppiness. In one instance, (GOF) they actually had to change the ending of the book – after publication – to fix a continuity error that could, apparently, have threatened the plot in a later book. There really is no excuse for this given that GOF was such a big publishing event.
I think the problem is that normal authors have editors to smack 'em around and keep them in line. After the first book, however, it is hard to imagine an editor imposing any sort of discipline on Ms. Rowling. As long as she keeps cranking them out, they wouldn’t dare risk upseting her. On the contrary, they’re probably busy dropping hints about Harry getting accepted to wizard college.
1000? Doubt THAT - based on Harry’s Gryffindor class (which, I think, had about 12 kids in it) as the average - that gives us 48 new kids a year, 7 years worth of students gives us about 336.
(of course, I’m just pulling these numbers out of my ass…)
OF course, someone could just freeze frame one of the big Feast scenes in one of the movies, and count… 
Exactly. And then Harry will go to a Quidditch match with “hundreds” of students cheering in the stands. When he goes into the Great Hall for his O.W.L.S test, there are “more than a hundred” desks. At the Yule Ball there are 100 tables that seat 10 each. (Going from memory on that one…my books are packed away at the moment.)
But in his classes, there’s normally twenty desks, earmuffs, crystal balls, etc. That implies 10 students per house per year. (Although we only have the name of 8 Gryffindors for Harry’s year.)
I guess one theory might be that Harry’s class is unusually small…the opposite of the baby boom. When he and his classmates were born, Lord Thingy was at the height of his powers. Maybe he went around and killed a bunch of kids Harry’s age, trying to find the one mentioned in the prophecy. Maybe people didn’t want to bring kids into that kind of world.
Or maybe JKR is simply bad at math, or just flat out doesn’t care.
Frankly, I don’t care either. Still love the books. But it’s fun to hash this stuff while waiting for the next installment.
I’ll try to find the interview where JKR made the “about 1000” quote and link to it here.
I get a giggle out of people who try to make facts out of fantasy.
Harry Potter’s fun! Read, enjoy, marvel, get lost in it.
Then go analyze Shakespeare and Orwell.
Lithium:
“2000” was used in the mid-1990’s to mean “futuristic” well before the actual year 2000. Oracle’s product “Developer 2000” predates the year 2000 by at least four years (that’s when I first encountered it professionally) 2001, naturally, would be the next generation after that regardless of the actual year.
Possibly, but you are still using circular-logic to prove a point, i.e (your theory is not necessarily true).
Anyway, until Rowling gives a more blatant date I am sticking with my own theory.
As far as the student numbers go, well there would have to be 36 students per year in each house to make 1000. This is possible because in most British schools the year and house is divided into sets, you have maybe 3 sets. Set 1 is the smart class, and set 3 would be the tards.
I was listening to book three on audio book a few days ago, and I realized something no one has brought up. Kids only have classes with other kids in their houses and year, right? Unless there’s a double class with another house.
Since Hermione took classes Harry and Ron didn’t, and there was zero explaination of her being let into another’s house’s class despite the fairly good explaination of how she took those classes, it seems to be that there must be other classes kids in a house could take at the same time (also, if you drop divination, there’s another class out there you take instead of having a free period). Now, if someone could only figure out which house the kid who told Ron she never missed one of those classes she took with him was from…although, given the double classes, there’d only be a 50-50 chance of it supporting my new theory. 
Indeed. Whenever a TV show or something had to make an impressive sounding product, it would always be the “(product) 2000!” I took the Nimbus’ name to be something along those lines rather than a date (i.e., I don’t think there was necessarily a Nimbus 1999).
I loaned my copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to one of my daughter’s playmates, so I can’t check. Perhaps someone will be so kind as to do the honors: When Uncle Vernon is driving the family all across Britain trying to dodge the letters from Hogwarts, Dudley begins to whine about wanting to stay in a place with a television, and he mentions the day of the week, and the television show he doesn’t want to miss. This is Harrys reminder that the following day (July 31) is his birthday.
My Muggle calendar shows July 31, 1991 fell on a Wednesday, but I can’t shake the notion from my brain that Dudley was calling July 30 a Monday. Am I right, and this is just another of Rowling’s sloppy errors? I already know that Chapter One of that book is screwed up, because Halloween Night, 1981 didn’t even come close to falling on a Thursday. . .