Harry Potter addendum

Well, I will concede that I was wrong about Neville being Harry’s third cousin, once removed. I took a look at a copy of the Black Family Tapestry that had dates on it and used a few logical clues that were in the book and figured out that Harfang Longbottom could not be Neville’s great-grandfather. Most likely, he is Neville’s great uncle, a brother to his grandfather.

Probably the most fun way of determining this was to treat it as a logic puzzle. Neville was born in July 1980 (one day before Harry) and his father and mother were both aurors. Auror training takes three years upon graduation from Hogwarts and information from Mad-Eye Moody in OotP strongly suggests that Frank and Alice were already well-established and popular as aurors by the time they were killed (most likely in 1982). This suggests they were at least 21 and probably older than that when Neville was born.

In HBP we are told that Neville’s grandmother failed her Charms OWL, as was observed by Prof. McGonagall. Prof. McGonagall started teaching in December 1956, per OotP, so if she were observing Augusta as a teacher, Augusta would have had her OWLs in 1957 at the earliest, placing her graduation in 1959. For Frank to be 21 in 1980, Augusta would have had to give birth to him the same year she graduated, possible, but unlikely.

Given the way Neville’s grandmother is described, she seems to be about the same age as Prof. McGonagall, which would place the two of them right around the same year at Hogwarts. Rowling has described Prof. McGonagall as being in her 70’s and she has also stated as having no memory regarding the Chamber of Secrets being opened (1942-43 school year). In fact, given that she had no memory of Tom Riddle at all, it is likely that she graduated around 1938-39 or so, before Riddle came or after his first year.

Knowing a person’s OWL results (especially fails) indicates closeness in age; such that we might guess that Augusta and Minerva were possibly even in the same class. Thus, we might surmise that Augusta also graduated in the late 1930’s, marrying Mr. Longbottom sometime in the 1940’s. Frank was probably born around 1950 or even a little later given his status as a prized only child that Neville must emulate. This would make Frank nearly 30 when Neville was born.

Augusta would then have been born sometime around 1920 and one might surmise that her husband was also born around this time. No dates are given for Harfang Longbottom, but Callidora Black was born in 1915. At only 5 years older than Augusta, it seems likely that Callidora married the older brother of Neville’s grandfather, unless Augusta has a taste for much younger men and I don’t particularly buy that argument.

Some might speculate that there were at least 3 brothers, given that Neville frequently mentions a great-uncle Algie (probably Algernon). However, Algie’s surname is never given. He is portrayed with the air of a slightly crazy old bachelor. No evidence is given, but my own gut feeling is that rather than being Harfang and Mr. Longbottom’s brother, I think Algie is Augusta’s brother who lives near or with his older sister now that her husband has passed away. One can easily imagine Augusta deciding that Neville needed a practical male role model in addition to the ideal of his father that she would give him and invited her brother to visit regularly.

Now, all of this won’t amount to a hill of beans in the last novel, but it does make for fun logic problems.

Speaking of the last book, Mrs. X and I are waiting patiently for our copy, which will be delivered on Saturday sometime. She gets to read it first as she is the faster reader and can take advantage of times when Toddler X is napping to forage ahead. I’ll get to read it after that, although I do at least get to read the table of contents to speculate on when it arrives. We are also filling out our speculation sheets as was forwarded by Mrs. X’s brother. Most are pretty straightforward, but it will be amusing to look at our “predictions” in comparison to what actually happens.