Tickes family

The **Tickes family** is a non-canonical wizarding family mentioned in *The Family Clock*; they are known for their many watchmakers and run Jas. W. Tickes and Sons. The Tickes family is famously neutral in conflicts, selling watches to all sides, and have only abandoned this stance twice – in both cases after family members were killed by followers of Grindelwald and Voldemort, respectively.

## Family history

According to family history, the Swiss muggle watchmaker Johannes Montreschmitt wanted to emigrate to the Americas to escape one of the Habsburg wars (probably the War of the Polish Succession 1733-1735, see below) but had to have a tooth pulled shortly before disembarking and was thus unable to make the immigration clerk understand his name (a mix of French and German meaning 'watchmaker'); he got so mad that he grabbed the slip of paper and went back to his ship – except it was the wrong ship and he ended up in London, where the immigration clerk merely looked at the American paper and noted him as *Myron Tickes*. Johannes, now Myron, resigned himself to his new name and set about to learn English. Two years later he married the widow Fiona Gardner, née Worthing, and adopted her son Ian; after three years came James and after five more John. James enrolled in the Army, but died in a war in America (presumably the French and Indian War 1754-1763, see below) when he was 22. John, meanwhile, got a Hogwarts letter and even competed as a Triwizard champion in 1762.

John had a son, whom he named *James Worthing Tickes* after his brother and his mother, but who was more commonly known as James Tickes II. He learned his grandfather's trade (it is not known if John did) and founded Jas. W. Tickes and Sons in 1789; he must have had some sort of hold on the Ministry, because on 16 December of that year, the day before the granting was outlawed, he was granted a license to modify muggle artefacts. However, he did not live long after that, and his daughter Jamesina Worthing Tickes (named so by his widow to be able to use his license) seems to have been born after his death. Whether he actually had the sons mentioned in the company name is not clear, but after this there has been a James Worthing Tickes in every generation except the most recent, where we again have a Jamesina (called Jamesina Tickes IV because over the years two women named Jamesina have married into the family, but she is only the second Jamesina *Worthing* Tickes).

James Tickes IV, who was most likely a grand-nephew, or possibly a grandson or a nephew, of the first Jamesina, was still running the company during the ”conflict with Ireland and England” (presumably the Irish War of Independence 1919-1921), but not by the time of the war with Grindelwald (1939-1945). If the ordinal of the most recent James Tickes (X) correctly indicates the number of generations having passed, James IV was likely around 90 to 110 years old in 1920; however, there may have been cousins or in-laws outside the main line who were counted as well (see calculations below).

Dumbledore seems to have been contemporary with James Tickes VII (or possibly VI), since he can recall him getting out of detention in first year and the time frame involved makes it unlikely that he himself was a teacher at the time. The James in question would then have been born in the early (or possibly mid-) 1880s, which would fit well with James VII. (On the other hand, he is said to have gotten the detention in question for combining a ball point pen with a quill for ease of writing, and while a patent for a ballpoint pen was filed in 1888, it took at least fifty years more before the functional and reliable pen we know today was introduced, not to mention widely circulated. But by then it would have been James IX, not VII, and quite possibly a story Jessie would have been familiar with.)

James Tickes IX was killed by one of Grindelwalds men in 1943, leaving the shop in the hands of his mother Jamesina Tickes III (née Switch) and his sixteen-year-old brother Myron, who dropped out of Hogwarts to take care of business; their father Ian Tickes III was confined to his bed for medical reasons and died within the year. Jamesina was an auror, one of the first female ones in Britain, and after this actively hunted Grindelwald supporters in her free time.

Myron had two sons, James and Gardner. James married the Irish muggle-born Siobhan McArran, who became an auror like her grandmother-in-law; they had a son Ian and a daughter Jamesina, but in 1979 the family was attacked by death eaters and both Siobhan and Jamesina III were killed. For the next nine years James suffered from clinical depression, spending in total about two years under constant watch at St Mungo's to make sure he didn't kill himself and otherwise carefully monitored by the Tickes house elf Dixie. She, however, died in 1988, at which point Siobhan's friend and auror mind healer Sarah Whipkey suggested an experimental treatment largely based on modern muggle medicine. In order to avoid the lengthy red tape involved in getting the permits needed to make a proper study – or the very real possibility that she might not get them at all, since the traditional healers did not understand what she was doing – she married him and began the treatment in secret. While initially the marriage was merely a convenient fiction, as the treatment progressed and James got better feelings began to develop and in 1994 (or possibly early 1995) she had the twin sons Robby and Davy.

## Timeline calculations

The first James Tickes died fighting for George III, who only fought two wars in America. Given that James Tickes II received his license in 1789, it can hardly be the American War of Independence, so it must be the French and Indian War, fought 1754-1763. James was 22 when he was sent to war, and John seventeen, and they were both born "within ten years" of Myron's arrival, meaning that must have happened between 1727 and 1736, and the only Habsburg war during that time seems to be the War of the Polish Succession (1733-1735), narrowing it down to those three years, meaning that James went to war sometime between 1760 and 1762. John graduated from Hogwarts at about the same time the news of James' death reached the family, so the death itself most likely happened in the Spring the year after he went to war. John, meanwhile, participated in a Triwizard Tournament when he was seventeen – the same year James was sent off – which was held every five years until 1792, meaning that it must have been in (the fall term of) 1762. Thus, John seems to have been born in the mid-to-late 1745/46 scholastic year and James in the 1740/41 school year, and Myron left Switzerland in 1735.

The younger Myron was born in either 1926 or 1927, so his brother James IX would have been born in the first half of the 1920s (their parents married in late 1919). Meanwhile, Jamesina I was born shortly after 1789, so if James Tickes III to IX were all descended from her in a straight line of first-born children they would have been on average 19 years old when their first child was born – which, while possible, sounds unlikely for seven consecutive generations, especially compared to the two most recent generations averaging about 22. If, on the other hand, James Tickes III was the older brother of Jamesina (but unable to inherit the license due to not having the middle name *Worthing*), they would have been on average around 23 years old, and if he were her nephew they might have been around 21. (It is also worth noting that Jessie's rebuttal of Charlie's comparison to Lyon et Fils implies that the line of inheritance did not go through Jamesina I.) In both the first and the last of these three scenarios (i.e. son and nephew), his son James IV would probably have been born roughly around 1830 and so would have been around 90 years old in 1920, while in the middle one (older brother) he may have been born as early as 1910 and thus been around 110 years in 1920. Then again, if James VII was born in the early-to-mid 1880s, having his great-grandfather born around 1830 would give an average of *18 years* for those three generations, meaning that most likely either James III was the older brother of Jamesina I or there was at least one case of more than one James Tickes in the same generation. (The at least 47 years between John Tickes and Jamesina I might also point to her not being the first child of James II.)

## Family tree

Below is a possible rendition of the Tickes family tree, with dashed lines and italics marking conjectures not firmly based in published material. These are based on three main assumptions:

* James III is set as a nephew of Jamesina I, rather than a son (the company seems not to have been inherited through her line) or an older brother. If he were her brother, Jamesina would have been named so solely on the basis of James not having the middle name *Worthing*, which while possible seems less likely than the presence of an older brother named something else (likely *Myron* or *John*).
* James VI and VII, whom Dumbledore had trouble distinguishing even though one of them seems to have been a year-mate in Hogwarts, are taken to be cousins of similar age rather than father and son; together with the first point this also means that the average age at the birth of the first child is roughly the same (about 22 years) in the conjectural segment as between John and Jamesina I, and between Myron and Ian V. (With the obvious exception of James V, whose lack of a timely heir may have put the pressure on his brother to produce one.)
* Ian III, who was markedly older when his first child was born (roughly between 28 and 37 years, depending on when he and James IX were born, respectively), is taken to have been far from the immediate "line of descent" and therefore under less pressure to produce an heir. (This obviously changed, since his son ran the shop in 1943 and no other family members were available to take care of it while Myron finished his studies, but whether this was due to people dying young and without children, or simply not being very good clockmakers, is not known.) In this scenario, with Ian the younger son of the younger son, his father may have been named Myron; if he were instead the younger son of the older brother his uncle may have been Ian Gardner II.

Missing in this tree, since nothing is known about them other than that they existed, are Ian Gardner II (but note the alternative interpretation under point three above) and Jamesina II (who married into the family). There may also be an unknown number of Myrons and Johns, as well as daughters named something other than Jamesina (and indeed sons of other names may also be possible, as evidenced by Robby and Davy), and obviously wives of any man who had children.

## Family members

* Fiona Gardner Tickes, muggle wife of Myron I
* Gardner Tickes IV, uncle of Ian V and Jamesina IV
* Ian Gardner Tickes I, muggle son of Fiona, adopted by Myron I
* Ian Gardner Tickes II
* Ian Gardner Tickes III, father of James IX and Myron; died 1944
* Ian Tickes V
* James Tickes I, muggle son of Myron I
* James Tickes II, son of John, founder of Jas. W. Tickes and Sons
* James Tickes IV
* James Tickes VII
* James Tickes IX, brother of Myron, died 1943
* James Tickes X, father of Ian V, Jamesina IV, Robby and Davy
* Jamesina Tickes I, daughter of James I
* Jamesina Tickes III, née Switch; wife of Ian III and mother of Myron and James IX, died in 1979
* Jamesina Tickes IV
* John Tickes, muggle-born wizard and son of Myron I
* Myron Tickes I, a.k.a. Johannes Montreschmitt; 18th-century muggle ancestor
* Myron Tickes (numeral unknown), father of James X and Gardner IV
* Robby and Davy Tickes, twin half-brothers of Ian V and Jamesina IV
* Sarah Tickes, née Whipkey, stepmother of Ian V and Jamesina IV and mother of Robby and Davy
* Siobhan Tickes, née McArran; mother of Ian V and Jamesina IV, died in 1979

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 *The Family Clock*, Chapter 10
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 The Family Clock, Chapter 3
3. ↑ Ballpoint pen at *Wikipedia*
4. ↑ *The Family Clock*, Chater 26
5. ↑ *The Family Clock*, Chater 28