I just started to read DAGGER AND ROSE By Perspicacity again, when I stumbled across this passage.

Sirius:

"Albus, this isn't just learning a few runes!" He hesitates. "Look, it's elementary dueling, the kind of thing that, when I taught at the Academy, we expect them to know going in. We haven't even started on basic tactics. He's far behind where I thought I could get him by now. I mean, you said he was good and he's James's and Lily's kid, so I sort of expected something special, but if Harry were to face a real Death Eater..." Sirius shivers.

It isn't the first time, that Sirius and/or James are portrayed as super-elite ex-Aurors or something along those lines, but it always manages to drive me up the wall, because it wasn't possible for them to become Aurors.
They finished Hogwarts by the age of 17, maybe 18, in the middle of the first war and while James was busy having a kid and getting killed, Sirius was arrested a short time after that.
Just to get to the point, it is stated, that James and Sirius were born 1960 and both were either killed or arrested in 1981.

I don't think they had the time to become Aurors !!!

 

I disagree really. Three years is plenty of time to become Aurors straight out of school in a time of war. Training would most likely be sped up during war, not slowed down. I don't think they 'were' Aurors, but I disagree that it isn't possible. That's like saying three years wasn't enough time to go into combat after being drafted during wartime in our own history.

 

Wasn't it stated in canon that becoming an auror meant another 3 years of training? Or was it just repeated by enough fanfics to make me think so.

Anyhow, at their age, the best they could've been was a rookie auror, not someone you'd send to teach others.

 

Yeah - when Aurors are introduced to canon, the three years are mentioned. Though indeed, during a time of war, the time might be shorter. If there was anything that might be called "war" at all.

I think it was more like the few bits we see in HBP - some, or even several people got killed, the Ministry answered with some arrests and that was it. For what did you need the Order of the Phoenix if the Ministry did its job?

 

You waded through that pile of dross and this is what set you off? Really?

There's any number of ways you can rationalize this: Have the Academy at that time be an accelerated course, given the war going on and the probable shortage of Aurors. Have them be rookie Aurors. Or, in the case of this AU story, tweak the canon ages for the Marauder generation. Just imagine them a few years older and the whole thing is a non-issue.

There's little generational overlap in canon, so it doesn't really change the story any to tweak the timeline this way. (I've never understood why, if wizards are hale and spry well into their hundreds, they should feel the compulsion to pop out kids at 18, anyway).

 

Fuck you man. Daggers and Rose is the shit. Someone like you could never understand. :awesome

Because he's a horny teenager?

 

I'm pretty sure that the wizarding world just plain doesn't have contraceptives.

Rowling made relationships in the books a tad romanticized; first loves last forever, get married right away and stay together forever. Is there a single mention of divorce in the series?

In her PG-rated world, I imagine people only ever screw one another within marriage, and as soon as marriage happens, babies are expected to be shat out.

Is she Catholic, by any chance?

 

Let us not forget that Mrs. Zabini was widowed three times, and it was implied she had killed all three for their wealth.

 

As I said:

It isn't the first time, that Sirius and/or James are portrayed as super-elite ex-Aurors or something along those lines, but it always manages to drive me up the wall.

Canon/James and Sirius are already portrayed as somewhat "wicked", IMO there is no need to make them even more badass.

I know, this is a bit meticulous, but whenever I read stuff like that, I can't refrain from rolling my eyes.

 

Seven times.

Also, I'm a bit meh on the subject of James or Sirius being Aurors, rookie or no. They're mostly dead during most stories, so unless it's relevant to the plot... Meh.

 

You have to remember though that, for all her greatness as an authoress, she really is terrible when it comes to writing romance: her examples are terribly unrealistic, and a lot of fan fictions do a better job than her when it comes to that aspect of her world. The epitomes of this are clear; Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione.

That being said, in the wizarding world, couples tend to marry and then pump out sprogs a lot earlier than in the muggle world.

I'm not sure that Sirius' and James' careers were mentioned in canon, so for all we know they could of been Aurors or even professional porn stars or strippers.

Also, in many aspects, the wizarding world is very inferior when compared to the muggle world, and it does not help that most -if not all- wizards are so arrogant to automatically assume that they're superior to muggles just because of their ablility to use magic. It is a testament to their ingrained arrogance.

 

Actually, it was 7 times:

A "famously beautiful witch" who "married seven times." Each of her wealthy husbands died a mysterious death, leaving her a lot of gold (HBP7). Blaise Zabini's mother.

Yeah, any guy would have had to been fucking nuts to go after her after her 3rd husband died. Either that or she was very liberal with her usage of amortentia.

edit: ninja'd by Matt.

 

Seven times? Damn, one hell of a gold digger.

@Sesc. Will this devolve into another muggles v. wizards debate?

 

Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had their kids at a fairly young age, if I got the math' right with the Weasley children's birthdates. Fleur and Bill had their children straight after the war (and I get the feeling that they only put off having kids straight after the wedding due to the war and the threat of Voldemort).

Lily and James had Harry in their very early twenties, as did the Longbottom family. (I think they were around 22 when they died?)

Although it is common for couples in real life to have children that early, the common age for people to have a family seems to be in their mid-to-late twenties, not their late teens/very early twenties.

To me, it seems to be a common trend in the wizarding world to have children at a very early age, and them being adults at 17 -not 18- seems to be a bit of a 'push', although that's just conjecture on my part.

Oh? There are advantages to both, but to me it seems that wizards seem to be behind on the times compared to muggles on both the social development and the technological development front.

While wizards -granted- can cast 'jack-of-all-trade' spells from their wands from the harmless (charms) to the most terrible (curses, unforgivables), muggles have independently developed means that rival or even surpass wizarding ways, although they do have to use different equipment for each task (a disadvantage compared to having everything contained inside of a wand, to be sure).

Would a protego shield charm stand up to a hailstorm of 9mm bullets, or just magical energy? What about weapons with a heavier caliber? Would apparition at the last second save a wizard from being incinerated by either a nuclear or a conventional, high powered thermal explosion? Would a horde of inferi be able to survive against a single soldier with a flame thrower, or a napalm drop? Would St Mungos be able to treat wizards exposed to either radioactivity or chemical/biological attacks, with them either being roasted alive at the microscopic level or with their organs being liquified slowly by a malicious virus/microbe?

Let's also not forget that muggles outnumber wizards dramatically: wizards are right -to a small degree- to fear the muggles.

 

^ And there's his opinion. So maybe not on your(Sesc's) account, but others seem to disagree.

Lesson: Rebutting one man's belief that wizards are better/worse than muggles can lead to another debate.

 

Well, this has a ridiculously simple explanation: The children were born in a time of war. I think Mr. Weasley even mentions at one point that she and Arthur got married early because of the war. War always decreases age of marriage, as far as I know.

 

Yeah, that does make more sense, actually, heh.

I don't want to start a debate, to be honest; aside from this not being the thread for one, I have trouble articulating my points/evidence. I simply suck at it.

 

Sesc: Think just about everyone in the Epilogue and you'll see how romanticized her definition of a 'magical' marriage is, what with even Draco and Astoria having their little sprog hopping onto the train at the same time as the Trio plus Ginny's kids. The only counter-argument that I know of, Mrs. Zabini, is the mother of a Slytherin Pureblood. By JKR's definition, that's just about everything wrong in the world if you exclude the not-evil-enough Draco. This doesn't give much evidence to the contrary of Rowling having a 'first-love for life' archaic idea of marriage.