Boy, you people read fast! It took me nearly 14 hours, almost non-stop, to finish! I didn’t finish it until 3 am Sunday. I saw on the countdown thread that a couple of you were posting at 1:30 Saturday am that you had finished it! How in the heck did you do that?? I barely had the book in hand by then (B&N was a mess here, too)! I LOVED this book. LOVED IT! I think I cried through the last 200 pages. Sacrifice and redemption triumph over bigotry and cruelty. Love and loyalty win over self interest and apathy. From the obvious characters right down to the Grey Lady. One of you said JKR joins The Inklings with this book and I totally agree. Epic, yet very personal. It’s not flawless, but it’s brilliant. I even love the sappy epilogue (does anybody think there is significance in 19 years? Strange number). I wish she’d taken more time with Snape’s death. I wish we’d seen Lupin and Tonks deaths (it was awful to just see them lying there side by side with the dead), wish Tonks had survived, wish Fred had survived. Loved the part where all the parents, townspeople and creatures came pouring over the wall to join the fight. Loved setting the dragon loose (can’t wait to see that in the movie!)Loved Neville pulling the sword out of the Sorting Hat. Loved the Marauders walking Harry to meet his death. Loved DD and Harry in Kings Cross (very Gandalf/Frodo). Really loved Ron coming back, the whole sequence at the lake with the sword; Harry digging the grave and figuring it all out; seeing Snape’s love for Lily (the doe was genius), then Harry vindicating Snape in front of everyone (the wand thing was brilliant, brains over brawn); Molly taking out Bellatrix (Neville couldn’t have done it. Ginny is stronger than any of the girls and even with three on one they couldn’t take her down). And I love that she didn’t answer every question in the epilogue. Leaves room for more, and I really want more! I hope she’s already starting on the next series, timed to come out right after the last movie!
That was a nice touch!
It's when the cicadas come out?
No wait, that's 17 years...
I've been thinking about that...
Harry is 17 throughout most of Book 7. Nineteen years later would make him 36. But wait! The Epilogue takes place in the fall, with students leaving for Hogwarts, which means Harry would have had another birthday, making him 37. Ginny would be a year younger, at 36.
Albus Severus is leaving for his first year at Hogwarts, at age 11. Ginny of course was also 11 years old for her first year, which means that Albus is departing for Hogwarts on the 25th anniversary of his mother's first trip to school.
It's sort of implied in the conversation on the train platform that young James is a year older than Albus, which means his first year at Hogwarts was 25 years after Harry's first year.
If you subtract twelve (James' age) from nineteen you get seven, the number of years between Voldemort's defeat and James' birth. Wondering what Harry & Ginny might have been up to, I did some figuring... allowing one year (roughly) from the wedding to James' birth, we can guess that Harry & Ginny were married no later than six years after Voldy's defeat.
If they both returned to Hogwart's to complete their studies, that's at least one more year, and possibly two if Ginny had to repeat her sixth year. If Harry took Auror training after that, that would have been another three years at least. That leaves a gap of two years between Harry becoming an auror and their wedding.
Here's some intriguing speculation: if Ginny also became an auror, and was still trailing Harry by a year, then we're only left with one year between the end of her training and the wedding.
Given Harry's fame, and the size of the Weasely family, I could imagine an engagement of at least one year for them to plan the wedding. Heck, a two year engagement wouldn't be hard to imagine... well, maybe it would be hard to imagine that either one of them would want to wait that long! But that pretty much accounts for the time between Voldy's end and Harry & Ginny's wedding.