Skip to main content

harry potter - How much older was Hermione after her third year at Hogwarts?


In her third year at Hogwarts, Hermione is given a time-turner so she can take more classes. Several of her classes are concurrent to each other, so she attends one class (for 1-2 hours) goes back in time, and attends a different class during the same time frame.



But from an aging point of view, she should age 4 hours in relation to the 2 hours everyone else ages. How much older should Hermione be relative to everyone else after using the time-turner for an entire school year?



Answer



For those of you who aren't going to make it to the end of this post, it comes out to a week (plus half a day).


It is not certain whether wizards using time turners "age" faster, but for the sake of the question let's assume so and see if we can quantify somewhat.


According to the Harry Potter Wiki, there are 12 classes she could have been taking (7 core, 5 elective), and she signed up for all of them (Chamber of Secrets, first American edition, p.252). Assume she was allowed to take all of them (reasonable, I think). After dropping two classes (Divination and Muggle Studies), Hermione was able to resume a normal schedule. We'll take that as showing that ten courses fills the time allotted for classes completely. Let's say that's six hours a day, five days a week. That would make three hours per class per week; the two extra classes would then add six hours a week to Hermione's age. We'll assume she didn't use the TT for extra studying time on top of that (though I'm not quite certain of that).


The students arrived at school on September 1st as always, and Hermione dropped Divination around Easter. I didn't quickly find the event in the book, so we'll assume it was Easter (April 3, 1994). Now, if I counted right on my calendar, that's 29 weeks for Divination. The Christmas holidays remove two weeks from that, and we'll say another week for reading and exam period, so we'll say 26 weeks for three hours a week, making the added time from Divination three days and six hours.


She continued Muggle Studies through the end of the year. The wiki page says that's in the third week of June, for a total of 40 weeks (again assuming I counted correctly). Take out the three weeks off before Easter, and another two for reading, exams, and results, for a total of 35 weeks doubling for Muggle Studies another three hours a week. This comes out to four days and three hours.


Adding this to the Divination time and the three hours she and Harry spent saving Sirius and Buckbeak, we get seven days, twelve hours. Therefore, the answer appears to be just over a week.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...
Post a Comment
Read more

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...
Post a Comment
Read more