Did Rowling give Harry’s birth date w/year or the year of his parents’ deaths anywhere in the series before book 7? I was very surprised to learn that Harry was born two years before me!
On a related MPSIMSish note: When I read books 1-3 I always imagined Ron & Harry dressed the way that my little brothers did at 11-12, in early nineties style jeans and t-shirts (very different from early 2000s jeans and ts). I was happy to find out that my sartorial imagination was not off target.
The only glaring continuity error I noticed (though I’m sure there are others) is between books 2 & 5. I noticed this as soon as I read book 5 when it first came out, and again when I re-read the books just now (hope The Sonoran Lizard King doesn’t mind my jumping in with this).
In book 2, Percy (a prefect at the time) takes five points from Griffindor when he catches Ron coming out of Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. Later, in book 5, it’s made very apparent that prefects cannot take points from houses, because that’s a benefit Umbridge’s Inquisitorial Squad gets that prefect do not. So which is it? It’s tiny, but jumped right out at me.
I think it was something along the lines of “prefects can’t deduct points from other houses.” That stops all the prefects from getting into a point shaving war, but still allows them to punish rulebreakers in their own house.
Ron, Neville, Hermione, Harry, Dumbledore, Crabbe, and Tom Riddle (unwittingly) each destroyed a Horcrux, in fact. Five Gryffindors and two Slytherins.
I don’t think so. I was surprised to find it so fixed in time, when before it could really have been anywhere from the 50’s to the 80s, Muggle time. (No mention of cell phones, for instance. or wait. Didn’t Dudley have an electronic video game?
OK, the Potters died in Oct. 81. So the Books happen, roughly 91 to 98, or about 5 years behind the first publish date. If the Muggles are co-temporal, they should have cell phones and the internet. Neither are mentioned.
Early in book 7, Harry spends some time reminiscing about how when he was a young boy and the Dursleys all went out somewhere, he would race upstairs to play games on Dudley’s computer. So even without the specific date reference, that would place Harry’s childhood in the early 80s at the absolute earliest.
In Chamber of Secrets, Harry & Co. are invited to a party to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Nearly Headless Nick’s death. The date is given as 1492. So the series has been fixed in time since the second book.
According to one of the fansites, they are re-editing the books to get rid of such errors. For example in the first edition of Philosopher’s Stone, Nearly Headless Nick states that he has been dead for “nearly 400 years”. In more recent editions, it has been changed to “500” to match Chamber of Secrets.
I think Nick just lost track of a century, easy to do when you’ve been dead so long. Like no one ever mis-speaks in real life.
If that’s all we have, JKR did an excellent job with continuity.
Robert Parker once threatened to have me thrown out of a book signing for asking how Spenser could reminsce about his mother, several times, and then tell Susan his mother died at his birth.
I think, too, that Umbridge de-powered the prefects some, to make her goon squads stand out more.
On the timing issue, I’ve heard that there was an error in the days of the week: In the first book, Harry’s birthday is said to fall on a Saturday, when it would actually have been a different day that year.
Two questions:
Do you have a really comfortable reading chair? I certainly hope so.
For those of us who got bored after book three, can you give us a spoilerized quick run-down of what happens? Like, really quick - who dies, which main characters turned out to be good guys/bad guys, and anything else that might be relevant?
There is another (minor) continuity error.
In the “Goblet of Fire”, the last couple of spells Voldemort had cast appear in supposed reverse order.
However, Harry’s father appears before his mother’s spirit appears. Actually, since Voldemort killed him first, he should have appeared last. A minor quibble on my part.
(Yes, I re-read the books too)
Rowling said that was a mistake on her part in the initial publication from what she called ‘late night writers fatigue’. It was corrected in later editions.
What color are Ginny’s eyes? I always thought that they were green (red hair/green eyes like Lily) but in Book 6 or 7, Harry notices that they are “brown, like her mother’s”. In book 7, her room is off the first floor (second to us in the US). I was just rereading book 2, though, and her eyes are “bright green” and her room is off the third landing.
Also, we acknowledged that Hermione’s 11 OWLs were an error as she only took 10 courses but in book 2 both Bill and Percy had 12 OWLs. Since Hermione needed a time turner to take 12 classes, does that mean that both Weasleys had time turners?
perhaps ginny has hazel eyes? my mum’s mostly looked greenish-brown, but in certain lights and wearing certain colours, her eyes would look jewel tone emerald green.
In Book 7 there were many references back to the earlier books. Which ones did you catch?
To start you off:
Book 1 - ‘The wand chooses the wizard’
Book 2 - The basilisk
Book 3 - Pettigrew
Book 4 - Mad-Eye’s eye.
Thanks, Chronos and Darth Sensitive. Both of those make some sense, but I saw no evidence of either in the books. I guess it might just be an oddity.
I smiled at one point while reading book 7, when Ron was doing something dumb and Hermione snarled at him, “Are you a wizard or not?” I thought it was a fun little throwback to the first book, when Hermione is freaking out about the Devil’s Snare and Ron yells the same thing at her. Kind of full circle.
Also we finally get to meet the ghoul in Ron’s attic, first mentioned in book 2.
I was surprised at all the little throwbacks to seemingly insignificant things from the first book.
Don’t forget that the spell that Ron uses to shut off the whomping willow is the first spell we ever see them learn (wingardia leviosum (?sp)).
Yes, JKR was masterful at that. She even made good use of a single throwaway reference to Grindelwald on Dumbledore’s wizarding “trading card” from Book 1, developing a very in-depth backstory to G’s and D’s relationship for Book 7. (Incidentally, NPR just had a story yesterday about the little Swiss town of Grindelwald, which is dealing with a nearby glacier melting).
I guess I’d like to ask the OP, having now read all seven books in one go, what overarching themes and dramatic arcs did you most notice?