wow that's really.... young .....

Yep, and I think it explains a lot of Sirius' immature/reckless behavior in OotP and attitudes toward Harry. He was locked up at 22 (or so) and spent the next dozen years under the influence of the Dementors and the next three on the run/in hiding. The main ways we mature are by interacting with other people, learning new ways to work with them, and taking on new responsibilities (a first job, first 'manangement' position, etc.) Sirius was deprived of both of those influences for those fifteen years, and was therefore basically still a 22 year old mentally and acted like it. There's nothing wrong with 22 year olds - I'm 23 myself! - but one would expect a person to be more mature at 32 or 42 than 22.

I had read somewhere that JKR stated that in book 3 Lupin is 41. Since he and the Marauders were all in the same grade at Hogwarts, that would make James & Lily 41 when Harry would've been 13, so they would've been maybe 27 or 28 when he was born. The actors they cast in the movie to play James & Lily were not young, so who knows????????

They were born in 1960, and died in 1981. They had him when they were twenty, nineteen at the youngest.

JKR made mention that Snape (who, incidentally was in the same year as the Marauders and Lily) was 35 or 36 at the time of Goblet of Fire. Working backwards from that, they died when they were 22 or 23, and had Harry 1 year and 4 months before that event.

well... 1 year and 3 months to be exact.. they did die on Halloween, right? and since Halloween is exatcly 3 months (this is the part where you let your mind wander freely, while i try to act like my math skills are very good, even though they stink like H/G and R/Hr pairings... no offense)

but i agree around 21 sounds about right... but who was older James or Lilly?

Woops... I was never terribly good at maths... thanks for correcting me on the number of months...

I don't know which one of them of them was older, but if parallels play as big a part throughout Potterdom as many believe, I reckon Lily was the elder.

I believe they were twenty-one when they died, twenty when they had Harry and nineteen when they got married. Dang, they were young.
Isn't that the cutest thing?

I think James and Lily were around 21-23 when harry was born

I think James/Lily was 20 or 21 were Harry was born

I dunno if it's been said already, but J.K. said that Remus, Sirius, Snape, and that lot would be 35/36 in the fifth book. So if you do the math (36-15=21), you get the age.

She said Sirius was around 21-22 when James and Lily died and as they're the same age, they were around 20-21 when they had Harry, Lily was about 19-20 when she got pregnant, so they probably got married when they were about 19-20.

For all those who have said 21 I agree.

L/J were so young when they died.

I know we’re talking about the books, but the actors in the HP movies who play L/J’s contemporaries are well into their 40’s (and I think Alan Rickman is 60!), so it’s interesting to see that the characters are so much younger than the actors who play them.

I read somewhere that they got married right when they got out of school so I'm guessing like 20-27 or something

Okay so the Snape-was-35 thing has been said already, but here's what I've calculated:

I read somewhere that JKR said that Sirius was 22 when he was captured by the Ministry November 1st(ish - I assume he figured it all out the day after James and Lily were killed), and that Lily and James were married right out of Hogwarts which means that James and Lily, allowing for earlier or later birthdays were at least 21 at most 22 when they died. Counting back, and assuming they were both 18 at the time of their graduation, that means they're 18 when they were married, 19 when Harry was conceived ;-J 20 when he was born, and 21 when they died, unless they had birthdays during the summer. I have a little excel spread sheet with all of this on it. Yes, I'm a geek and I love it!!

Fun fact: Harry was born July 31st, which means he was conceived around October 31st; James and Lily must have had a rockin' Halloween!

If you notice, Halloween always seems to be a trademark day for Harry. He was conceived around then, his parents died then, fought a troll then, accused of petrifying a cat then, chosen as a Hogwarts champion, etc.

In my opinion James was a Leo, so his birthday would have been in the summer. Lily, I'm still debating on what she would be. Not air and not water, but either fire or earth.

I'm thinking more along the lines of Earth or Fire: Here are the stereotypical personality types of Earth and Fire:

Aries: Scarlet O'Hara
Taurus: Professor Sprout
Leo: James/Ginny/Harry/Neville
Virgo: Hermione and Petunia
Sagittarius: Bill/Hagrid
Capricorn: Snape

I think we can rule out Capricorn and Leo.

I don't think she's a Scarlet O'Hara type, nor is she a Bill/Hagrid type. So that rules out Aries and Sagittarius.

That leaves us with either Virgo or Taurus. On the offhand I'd say that Lily is more likely to be a Taurean girl. It fits her personality too much. Taurus is kind, patient, humorous, adventursome (I believe the Taurean philosophy about love is that there is only one true love.... hold on: it's True Love only happens once. They are extremely romantic. And while they may be on occasion a bit conservative, they also can be a bit liberal as well.

~Salamon2

They were both 20. The inscribtion on their gravestone says they were born in 1960 and died in October 1981, 3 months after Harry's first birthday, so they were 20 when he was born.
That surprises me a little, I would have thought they were at least 21,too. I assume they were both Aurors (why would they have fought so often against Voldemort if they weren't ?). The Auror trainng takes 3 years. That means Lilly wasn't even fully educated when she got pregnant.

yeah i also did the math and found all that out to.....after i figured that out, it just hit me at how young they were! 19 at marrige, 20 at their son's birth, and only 21 at their deaths ...sorry i just HAD to put a tombstone after that last one....

Thinking about Lilly and James always makes me sad

I believe you are correct with their ages, I didn't know how it was calculated but I found the same information on a HP Timeline.