1979 or 1980?Edit

Seeing that Harry's date of conception lies around the end of October 1979, do we want to assume the possibility of Lily having gotten married after she got pregnant, or was at least two months pregnant before (or when) she got married to James? Because if we say that she got married in 1980, that's what we're saying; that Lily Evans got pregnant before marrying James Potter. I don't know what kind of backstory Rowling has for this as we also don't seem to have an exact date for the Pottermore information where the Dursleys refuse to attend this wedding, wouldn't it be safer to assume that they were married in the late summer/fall of 1979? For the most part, I interpret the new text Rowling gave us to imply that it was nothing but traditional between James and Lily (i.e., first comes marriage then comes the baby in the baby carriage, heh). ParryHotterHero 12:13, August 27, 2011 (UTC)

Dumbledore calls James Lily's "husband" in the flashback in DH33 in which Snape seeks protection for Lily. This scene had to take place in autumn 1979, because falling leaves and bare branches are mentioned in the description of the setting, and because JKR has stated the Potters went into hiding while Lily was pregnant. Thus, based on canon evidence, we can say that Lily and James' wedding must have fallen sometime between summer 1978 (when they left Hogwarts) and late 1979.

]I was just asking because the line read "The wedding of James Potter and Lily Evans took place in 1979 or 1980." The issue was resolved by the corrections that were made regarding the wedding, however--the Prophecy was made at the Hog's Head in 1980, and that's when Snape overhead it...so he heard it in 1980/relayed it to Voldemort/then Snape went running to Voldemort. It was after Harry was born and long after Lily had married James, so of course Dumbledore would refer to James as Lily's "husband" then. Rowling, unfortunately, was either wrong when she had stated that Lily was pregnant when they went into hiding OR the Potters went into a state of semi-hiding before they went into hiding WITH Harry after the whole Prophecy thing. Harry was a tiny egg still dividing in November and December 1979, and back then there was hardly methods to predict a baby's gender, so it would not have made any sense at all for the scene between Dumbledore and Snape to've taken place in 1979 (as Dumbledore refers to Lily's child as her son) and since Trelawney hadn't even been interviewed until 1980. The scene between Snape and Dumbledore happened in the (possibly late) Fall of 1980, and Lily was not pregnant then (regardless of what Rowling says in her interview). ParryHotterHero 13:39, October 1, 2011 (UTC)

In Deathly Hallows, it's strongly implied that Tonks and Remus had a "shotgun wedding," so it's not completely outside the realm of possibility that Lily and James did as well. But the timeline laid out above means Lily couldn't have been more than a few weeks along if that was the case. ★ Starstuff ^{(Owl me!)} 22:51, September 5, 2011 (UTC)