I think you're being a bit too literal with your interpretation, Sesc. You're excluding a lot of possibilities. Just because Ron never got around to listing all the classes they had that day - perhaps because the conversation diverted to another topic - does not necessarily mean that they only have the one class.

Similarly, in the "We don't have Potions til Friday" case, do we actually know what day it's on? It's possible that the first day of school that year landed on a Wednesday, so they could have Potions on Monday and Tuesday as well. And we can't look at the real world calendar to know what day it was, because we already know that the HP world doesn't match up to the real world calendar e.g. the timing of the full moons in PoA is not correct.

 

Everyone needs to remember JKR sucks at maths and you can't trust any of her numbers.

---------- Post automerged at 17:53 ---------- Previous post was at 17:52 ----------

Trying to reconcile any of her numbers is an exercise in futility.

 

Also, quoting canon as a firm foundation for a Hogwarts timetable implies assuming that JK wrote one and always took care to stick to it throughout six books. Hell, maybe she did write one - for first year, when she had to come up with classes and all that jazz. If her concern was to come up with timetables for the entirety of Hogwarts, things would be different. Anyone who's ever tried writing a Hogwarts class schedule knows that it's impossible to do with only one teacher per subject.

Unless of course they're all using Time-Turners, but in that case someone would have noticed that there seem to be multiple Snapes around. Unless Dumbledore goes around obliviating students when they start suspecting something.

I tried to do it once, and settled for writing a single timetable, copied it for all seven years and shuffled some things around to give it an apperance of being logical.

 

Sesc, do you need the timetable for a fic or something? Or is it just curiosity?

 

One possible explanation is that there's a two-week timetable, so they might not have every lesson in the same quantities or time slot every week.

 

The flying lesson(s) and latter the apparition lessons show Hogwarts will occasionally offer specialised instruction beyond the normal lessons. It makes me wonder, were there other short run lessons on specialised subjects we just never heard of? If so, what kind of things were taught.

 

• 1st year - broom handling
• 2nd year - personal grooming (obviously Hermione missed the practical as she was petrified)
• 3rd year - sexual awareness, presented by each Head of House (Harry was absent due to Dementors interfering with a Quidditch match, but Ron told him afterwards that he was better off not thinking about it, nor asking McGonagall for a make-up lesson)
• 4th year - 'Dance well enough not to embarrass the school'
• 5th year - first aid and wound care
• 6th year - On Death and Dying and Apparating
• 7th year - on-campus = guerrilla warfare; off-campus = remedial fairy tales

 

I'm not sure if Hogwarts offers sexual awareness classes lol. The Muggleborns would have got it age 10 in primary school anyway, so that leaves the Pure-bloods to get educated by their parents.

In any case 3rd year seems far too late for such a class... by that time a good proportion of the girls will already have had their first period.

 

I was thinking that they normally didn't have one, but that the presence of Dementors laying siege to the castle prompted a 'refresher' on pregnancy prevention.

 

Because depression makes you horny?

I'd give a 'sexual awareness and what are considered bad touches' class the year Lockhart is there.

Also: does anyone else have a smiley replaced with a huge 'Click and discover imageshack' box?

 

You're assuming they knew how Lockhart had manufactured his reputation. Besides, Lockhart was the one teaching Personal Grooming.

As for 3rd year, having the Dementors around heightened tensions, added a sense of foreboding and kept most students inside whenever possible. People during such hardships tend to let their hormones take control, leading to fighting and/or fornicating.

Closer to topic: I found it odd that the broom classes were held during the week rather than on the weekend. It prompted McGonagall to not only be dragged out of her class to discipline Harry et al, but also to interrupt Oliver Wood from DADA over the matter.

 

This is actually a very good point. One of the schools I mention in my above post, Gordonstoun, operates on a 2 week timetable. So its definitely feasible that it would apply to Hogwarts.

And it really would help clear away a lot of the inconsistencies.

 

The problem with two-week timetables is that they're a fairly modern contrivance, at least in UK schools, where they didn't become fashionable until the last decade. While that doesn't preclude Hogwarts from having such a timetable, it does feel rather jarring that it use such a contemporary method.

Personally I'd prefer a solution that the timetables are like Hogwarts' staircases - they move around.