Harry Potter nerds only

[TheAnswerIs42]

Dear Dragon Lady and C is For, etc:

How old was Alice Longbottom in comparison to the Potters? I had a difference of opinion on this the other day. See, I figured, she and her husband were always talked about as great Aurors. Hogwarts + 3 years Auror training + enough time on the job to be known for that made her . . . I don't know, 25-30 when they had Neville. But someone else told me I was wrong and that the Longbottoms went to school with the Potters/Sirius/Remus etc group. It seemed to me like I only remembered them all saying they knew the Longbottoms from the Order.

Ideas? I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong, since I haven't read the books in a long time. The only thing I could do was read online wiki and lexicon stuff, and they didn't say anything about their ages.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

I assumed they were about the same age as the Potters, because their children went to school together. I realize that sometimes people have children late, so maybe they were a bit older. Heck, maybe they were older, and the Potters were older.

Although (crap I forgot Neville's grandma's name) I always pictured at 65 (let's assume in the first book), which would make her 54 when Neville was born, yes? So, assuming she had her first kid at... 23? Not ridiculous, right?, that would make Neville's parents 31, which would make sense, what with the auror training, etc. that they had to go through--graduate at 18, 3 years of auror training until 21, and 9-10 years in the interim to make a name for themselves.

[C is for]

I once wrote a story where Alice and Frank were two years ahead of James and Lily. But that was mainly for plot convenience, they were likely a few years ahead.

But they were still friends! They were in the Order together.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

in relation to the Potters, I would assume the Potters were a little younger (like 4-5 years), although I'm just making that up off the top of my head. But if you're writing fanfic, you can do whatever you want, right?

[Unit of Energy]

I didn't think that we were ever given an age for the Potters either. I really should ask my sister, but I always imagined that the Potters were around their mid to late twenties. Of course that may be because my parents didn't get married until then, so in my mind that is the right time to have children.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Indeed. Although I see the Potters married at about 24 or 25.

[Gimgimno]

I always assumed they were a few years older. The emphasis on their knowing each other from the Order made me think that they didn't spend any years together in school where they could've gotten to know each other (assuming they were Gryffindors too, which I think they were). So 6, 7 years older is what I always thought.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Which, I think, corroborates what I said: Lily and James were 24ish when they had Harry, and Alice and Frank were 30ish.

[NerdGirl]

Yeah, I think Alice and Frank were a few years older. So they were at Hogwarts at the same time, but not in the same class.

[TheAnswerIs42]

Actually, we were given ages for the Potters, because Harry went to their headstones. They were both 21 when they died, nearly 22. So they were 20 when they had Harry.

So . . . yeah, suprisingly young there.

But it looks like you guys all were in my boat with the Longbottoms. I had that written in my story, and my beta "corrected" me that they were the same age as the Potters. To me, that's just not possible, since the Potters were SO young. They would barely have time to finish Auror training before they were tortured to insanity.

[Dragon Lady]

The Harry Potter Lexicon doesn't list any ages for Neville's parents. (http://www.hp-lexicon.org/wizards/longbottom.html) If they don't have an age, there is no age given. Period. These guys scour all of the books and all of the extra info J.K. Rowling puts on her website. (She keeps her calendar updated with birthdays, even if they're not listed in the books. That's how we know (I think) that the Weasley twins were born on April 1. Go figure.) Also, I have no recollection of them being at Hogwarts with the Potters, and I just relistened to the books recently. I think Gio's guesstimate is pretty sound.

[C is for]

Here's a Harry Potter question for all y'all.

Portraits can interact with people around them -- Dumbledore would chat with erstwhile headmasters, the Fat Lady would scold late-coming Gryffindors -- but photos don't talk. Could they still recognize who was viewing them and act accordingly? My instinct says no; the photo has captured them at a moment in time and they don't do anything besides that. But I'm reading a story where a photo of little twelve-year-old Ginny won't look at Harry (who is looking at the photo) because she was so shy back then.

What do you think?

[TheAnswerIs42]

I vote no. And fan fiction sure does have a lot of opinions on what photos can do. Some people have pictures that change over time, so characters look at each other differently in the picture as the current versions change their opinions.

But to me, the idea of a photo is a moment frozen in time. They aren't charmed to contain a part of that person, like a portrait. They are charmed to move. So, to me, they act like the person at that moment acted, forevermore.

I'm not sure we have enough evidence in the books to speculate more than that.

Anybody else?

[Dragon Lady]

I agree that they're frozen in time. Otherwise Wormtail probably would have been hiding in the original Order of the Phoenix picture, wouldn't he? He'd probably be scared of Harry. Or, if we're saying that he'd still be frozen in time, but able to recognize people and act accordingly, he wouldn't have been so scared of Harry, but I'm pretty dang sure he would have been scared spitless of Moody. I highly doubt, at the very least, that he'd still be sitting between the Potters.

But I do think they are charmed to contain a part of that person. When Collin takes a picture of Lockhart and Harry, Harry's photo-self doesn't wanna be in there. Percy's girlfriend hides under her frame when something spills on her photo. Percy walks out of his family photo after the family's big row. (Though, maybe that's argument that photo selves do react to current events and are not frozen in time.)