Re: Ted Tonks was a Bad Boy

Trond Michelsen wrote:
> nystulc@xxxxxx wrote:
> > Brent Braten wrote:
> >> Oh, lay off the numbers. JKR has already said that she is not a
> >> mathematician.
> > You are rather boring. You are also, in effect, arguing that
> > JKR has made a mistake. This is a rather disrespectful
> > assumption, since there is no evidence that a mistake has been
> > made.
>
> JKR has demonstrated that she doesn't really know the exact age of
> her lesser characters.

She does not need to know the age of every minor character, in order to
avoid mistakes, contradictions and errors in the book themselves.
Deliberate vagueness is a perfectly valid strategy to avoid error. And
there is no evidence that a mistake, contradiction or error has been
made here. The evidence DOES however very strongly suggest that
Andromeda was very young when she had Tonks, though of course it does
not establish her exact age.

> When asked about Charlie Weasley's age, she said he
> was two years older than Percy, which meant he should have been at
> Hogwarts in the first book. She later corrected this to three
> years older than Percy, which still makes no sense based on the
> information in Philospher's Stone.

Well, this, of course, does not establish a mistake, error, or
contradiction within the books themselves. But even if it does
establish an error, it only establishes one mistake. It does not
prove, as you seem to believe, that everything she ever wrote was in
error.

> If she doesn't know Charlie Weasley's age, do you really think
> she's spent any time considering how old Nymphadora Tonk's mother
> was when she got pregnant?

I do not know what she has or has not considered. Neither do you.
However, I do know that the evidence suggests that Tonks mother was
very young. If she has not considered it, then she may consider it
later, and may (or may not) come to the same conclusion I did. Either
that, or she will come up with another plausible explanation that is
consistent with the published evidence. In short, I assume she will
try to avoid contradictions and errors. I assume, like any good
author, she cares about details (though she may lose track of some of
them sometimes).

So far, she seems to have succeeded on this issue, despite your attempt
to assume that she has already failed. There is no contradiction yet.

.

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