Question: When exactly was "The Prank"?

[starfishstar]

Hello out there Harry Potter friends! I've been trying to figure something out, and thought I'd put the question to your collective wisdom:

Does canon ever tell us exactly when "The Prank" (Sirius telling Snape how to get past the Whomping Willow and thus nearly getting him killed by a transformed Remus) took place? I think I've seen some fic writers place it in the Marauders' 6th year, but is there evidence for that? I went back and checked in the book (PoA chapter 18) where Remus describes the incident, and he doesn't say anything specific about when it was. (In fact, he doesn't even say whether it was before or after the other Marauders became Animagi in their fifth year, so theoretically it could have been much earlier, in their third year or something!) Remus' bio on Pottermore doesn't say either.

This is for a story I'm writing about Remus and Sirius reconnecting and revisiting some of the demons from their past just after GoF/just before OotP (yeah, the whole thing of stepping back from one-shots for a while so that I can focus both on my long fic, and on original writing, isn't quite working... though I'm also working on the long fic, and on original writing... no wonder I feel so discombobulated lately!)

It's not essential to know this – I could just mention "when Sirius played the prank on Snape," as opposed to "when Sirius played the prank on Snape in their Xth year" – but it's something that's always niggled at me, and I thought maybe someone out there might know!

Comments

[huldrejenta.livejournal.com]

The hp-lexicon.org says "the prank" took Place in their Sixth year - here's this from Snape's timeline:

1 September: Begins sixth year at Hogwarts. Snape is 16 years old.

1976-1977 school year: Sirius tricks Snape into following Lupin through the passage beneath the Whomping Willow. James Potter, realizing that Snape would encounter a full-blown and very dangerous werewolf at the end of the passage, stops Snape from going through, thereby saving his life. Snape, much to his disgust, is indebted to James Potter because of this. Dumbledore calls this a "life debt."

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/timelines/timeline_snape.html

I feel it's more logical that it happened during their Sixth year, for reasons you've already mentioned.
I don't know how certain we can be that Snape's memories are purely cronological? Snape was not exatly in a very relaxed state when he retreived the memories to Harry, heh.

[starfishstar]

Huh! I wonder what hp-lexicon is basing that on. I generally trust them as very thorough, but if that's based, for example, only on the statement that Sirius was 16 at the time, then that's not really enough proof, because he easily could have been 16 for the second half or so of his 5th year...

I suppose Snape's memories might not be chronological, but all the rest of them do seem to be in order... Also, as stereolightning pointed out above, Lily and Snape's friendship ended completely when he called her a Mudblood (in the worst memory, at the end of 5th year), so that conversation where they're talking as friends and discuss the prank that happened "the other night" has to have come before the worst memory.

...Which, darn it, I totally agree, character development-wise, I want it to be in 6th year, too! But it looks like the evidence in favor of 5th year is pretty strong.

Then again, JKR is notoriously bad at keeping her math straight, so maybe we should feel free to interpret it as we like. ;-)

[huldrejenta.livejournal.com]

Then again, JKR is notoriously bad at keeping her math straight, so maybe we should feel free to interpret it as we like. ;-)

Absolutely!
There're several inconsistencies, and apparently some mistakes on birth dates and so on.

Another thing - even if The Prank happened before Snape's worst memories - that certainly doesn't seem good for the Marauders, especially Sirius and James - but we know very little about what really happened and the circumstances leading up to it. What we do know about the relationship between Snape and the Marauders we see mostly from Snape's POV, and while I do have quite a lot of sympathy for Snape as a character, he is more than able to be quite cruel himself even as an adult. Okay, this is totally besides the point, lol, and maybe it's just me trying to justify the actions of beloved characters ;) I really love the Marauders, and the people they grew up to be ;D

[starfishstar]

So true! And that's the wonderful thing about fanfic, we're free to interpret and imagine all kinds of background events we didn't get to see, which can color canon events in an infinite number of ways... :-)

[huldrejenta.livejournal.com]

Fanfic is a wonderful thing :)

I thought of one thing, though, but I don't have the books here now to confirm, so this is based solely on what I remember.

When Harry uses the Floo to talk to Sirius and Remus about Snape's worst memories he'd just seen, doesn't Sirius say that they were fifteen when it happened? Harry says something like his father was an idiot, and Sirius answers "of course he was an idiot, we were fifteen, we were all idiots" or something like that. And then in the conversation with Dumbledore in PoA, Snape says that Sirius was sixteen when "The prank" happened. If I remember correctly.

[starfishstar]

Ooh, nice detail! I don't have the books in front of me right now either, but I'm pretty sure Sirius refers only to James – that James was 15 at the time. Then again, apparently James has a March birthday, so by OWLs of his 5th year, he was already 16. Ugh, JKR math, whyyyyy?

(Okay, to be fair, Sirius is making an off-handed comment about something that happened decades ago, so it's realistic that he doesn't remember whether James was 15 or 16 at the time. Also, JKR was very much focused on making the point that James was (about) 15 then, and Harry is 15 now, so that's fair enough, too. But still, JKR math...!)

[huldrejenta.livejournal.com]

I agree that Snape's memories in DH may lean towards The Prank happening first.
On the other hand I do find it rather odd that JKR specifically says that at least some of the Marauders were fifteen during Snape's worst memories and that Sirius is sixteen when The Prank happened, if The Prank happened first.

Maybe this is just one of those things we won't know for sure until if or when JKR says anything more about it for instance on Pottermore.
And I've grown a bit weary about these revelations tbh, prefering to leave canon to be canon, and more so after the whole Ron/Hermione - Harry/Hermione-thing ;)