Entry tags:
update
having chatted some with
ellen_fremedon, done a little more math, and recalled some more details, i retract the earlier claim that bill weasley could have been in the same year as james and lily potter.
in the first place, it's mathematically unlikely or impossible -- ginny can remember bill being at hogwarts, so he can't have left much more than eight years before harry and ron got there (ginny being a year younger than ron and probably not remembering much before she was two-ish), and james and lily can't have been that young. if they had harry when they were eighteen (which is absolutely the lower limit), they'd have left twelve years before harry got there -- and it's more likely that they were closer to twenty. so bill may have been a first year at hogwarts in james and lily's final year, but even that's not for certain; he may have missed them altogether.
besides which, of course -- and shame on all of you for not pointing this out to me [g] -- james potter was head boy, and so was bill weasley. so they couldn't possibly have been in the same year, even if all the math i've just done is (as ron would say) rubbish.
in the first place, it's mathematically unlikely or impossible -- ginny can remember bill being at hogwarts, so he can't have left much more than eight years before harry and ron got there (ginny being a year younger than ron and probably not remembering much before she was two-ish), and james and lily can't have been that young. if they had harry when they were eighteen (which is absolutely the lower limit), they'd have left twelve years before harry got there -- and it's more likely that they were closer to twenty. so bill may have been a first year at hogwarts in james and lily's final year, but even that's not for certain; he may have missed them altogether.
besides which, of course -- and shame on all of you for not pointing this out to me [g] -- james potter was head boy, and so was bill weasley. so they couldn't possibly have been in the same year, even if all the math i've just done is (as ron would say) rubbish.

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You're right about not knowing that they were in Gryffindor, but I'm sure they were. JKR has to have *something* in mind with the different houses and their prejudices, but I don't know what she's going to do with it.
I'm with you on canon, incidentally. The books, and nothing else. She's said some interesting things in interviews, but I'm waiting to see how it all fits together in the books.
71 more days! Yay!