More Potter Puttering

Something else that caught my attention in Deathly Hollows was the inclusion of hard dates for the series. The gravestone for James and Lily Potter puts their date of death at 10/31/1981. Harry was roughly 15 months old at the time, and he went to Hogwarts when he turned 11, meaning the books take place from fall of 1991 to spring of 1998. Apparently Rowling dated the books based on when she first started writing them (by her account in 1990) rather than when they were published (she finished writing in 95, it was first published in 97).  I wonder why: to my knowledge there are no other references to real world dates in the books, and I think the default assumption of the readers was that the books were occurring "now", rather than "seven to ten years ago". 

I don't mind it, because it's one more nail in the the "Obvious 9/11 imagery"  theory that some American reviewers advanced after Order of the Phoenix - because remember, even though she grew up in Britain during the 60's and 70's with the Troubles, she must be writing about the United States, right?

That does bring up some secret history concepts, however - given that the wizards mask their activities in Muggle events, how much of our modern history is covered in theirs? We know that in 1945 Dumbledore battled Grindelwald, a central european wizard of the dark arts who had been busy conquering the world.  OK, so there's World War Two. Voldemort's rise to power was in the 60's - 70's and focused mostly in England: how much of that was covered by the Troubles? I'm not sure whether I want to really approach this when I offer a Harry Potter game next prospectus, but it is interesting to me.

And thanks to

cmdr_zoom for this spiffy new Neville Longbottom icon. Kicking ass and taking names since book 5.