So I had this all written out and then my internet crashed and this post didn’t save........ so ugh. Here we go again, probably missing some of the thoughts I had the first time.
Anyways, I used http://www.mrinitialman.com to compare the heights of some of my characters! (It says size comparison but that’s not exactly accurate, since you only put in a height and it has the corresponding size on a default proportion. Ideally I could toggle that, since characters like Harry or Hamza or Viv are definitely skinnier than average, whereas Ernie or Mira are much broader.) But this is the layout of my Auror characters! Or rather, the 1998 Auror trainee team.
Out of this dozen right here, only Auror Ava Proudfoot was fully trained at the time of the war. She became head of the Auror office somewhat by default, but she was absolutely well-suited for the job and shouldering all of the responsibilities. It came about by default because she was quite literally the sole Auror who was not A) dead (like Tonks *sniff*, or many others who fought on either side of the war), B) survived but in Azkaban for choosing to side with Voldemort (obviously like Yaxley who only appointed to the DMLE in the first place to have a loyal Death Eater in charge of the Aurors and other law enforcement. But other Aurors in fact willingly cooperated with the Death Eaters, like even Proudfoot’s predecessor as head of office, Gawain Robards, who prior to Voldemort’s coup had mostly opposed him but did an about-face in loyalty when it became the easy choice to support the brutal regime - and he wasn’t alone, a number of Aurors and trainees did this and were then imprisoned for their crimes), or C) in the case of the loyal who still opposed Voldemort and were lucky enough to survive the war, they stepped up to fill now-vacant positions that were so critical to try to rebuild their society (the example obviously being Kingsley Shacklebolt, who was promoted to Minister and did a fantastic job of both undoing the damage done by the ministry completely serving Voldemort, and all of the systemic problems that their society had which perpetuated the war in the first place. A few others were also in this situation though, Kingsley just being the most prominent). Proudfoot became the obvious choice to remain in the Auror Office and rebuild it so they could be ready if a tyrant ever tried to take over again. Proudfoot had lost a lot in the war, but she agreed to this position and she became the leader of the Auror Office. Her most important task, obviously, was training all these recruits. In terms of immediate action for the end of the war, like arresting remaining Death Eaters or rounding up the Dementors so they could not harm anyone, not to mention any risk of new threats that presented themselves before there was a team of trained Aurors once again, a separate task force was also formed to begin this now. Luna, Neville, and Ginny all joined this, since this was guaranteed to be temporary and then people could eventually pursue their preferred career paths after the task force wasn’t needed. To help with this timeline, Proudfoot made a way to condense the Auror training period as much as possible, down from the standard 3 full years to somewhere between a year and a half and two years, depending on where the candidates were in readiness. For these new Auror recruits, Proudfoot wanted to make sure people who were doing it would be willing to commit for the long-term, and sustain the Auror Office for years. Anyone who did want to help in the aftermath of the war in similar work to Aurors, but in more short-term capacity, instead went to the task force instead of going through a multi-year training process.
Hamza Shafiq and Mira Hart were already partway into their training in the war, but not fully qualified Aurors (Hart had just over a year remaining, and Shafiq almost two years). Just as Proudfoot was the last remaining qualified Auror in the office, the two of them were the last of what had actually been a decently large batch - Hart was part of a large group that began training right after the Second War was openly begun in 1996, and Shafiq in fact left school before finishing his seventh year and sat the NEWTs over winter break to start training sooner, as he wanted to start training to stop the Death Eaters as soon as possible. While in the official Auror training both obviously had more experience than the new arrivals in May of 1998, there were many of the practical skills where the nine who fought in the Battle of Hogwarts were equally matched. So, in some lessons and drills, all eleven trainees would be taught together, whereas in others Shafiq and Hart continued on their own.
For the nine who entered training after the Battle of Hogwarts, eight of them began within a few weeks when Kingsley began looking for candidates - Ron, Harry, Dean, Lavender, Susan, Ernie, Padma, and Blaise. The ninth, Vivienne Beauregard, didn’t join for several more months in fact, due to the fact she was recuperating from her extensive injuries in St. Mungo’s until late autumn. She also needed to then convince Proudfoot and Kingsley Shacklebolt to approve her candidacy, since unlike the others who had all been in seventh-year, she had been only in her sixth. She successfully made her case of how Ron, Harry, and Dean had only had a few more weeks of lessons in their sixth years than she'd had, though, and none of the three of them had had any of their seventh, so their suggestion that she return to Hogwarts to finish that last year before beginning training was just unnecessary. Once deciding that like the other survivors of the Battle of Hogwarts whose NEWT requirements would be waived, Viv did not need to actually sit her NEWTs and began the Auror training in December of 1998. She still needed to continue much of her physical therapy and recovery during the process of training, but they worked out a way for her to do so due to Viv’s fierce insistence. She scoffed at the idea she “had to learn to walk before to run” - both figuratively and literally. Viv was still using a cane to walk around the day she showed up for her first training, and declined the offer to sit out on running rounds.
If I’d had room for one more person, I would have included Priscilla Wagner, since she’s the last Auror who began her training without taking the NEWTs because she was instead qualified by her fighting in the battle. However, the other nine out of the ten of them had actually been of age when they fought in the battle and Priscilla had no chance of joining when she was only in her fifth-year and hadn’t yet taken the OWLs. So, although I think of her and Viv as joining around the same time as the non-immediate recruits but still joined before the next batch from 2000 or so who had actually had to qualify the official way, it is pretty doable to break up the group by those who were in Auror training in 1998, and those who weren’t (Priscilla joined well into 1999).
So yeah, here’s the Auror team! Far more commentary here on the backstory of the dire situation the department was in when the war ended and my OCs in this, but I can go into why each of the 8 canon characters accepted the offer to join the Aurors at another time. The post is less about just the height comparison, but oh well! Making the image helps me know what 5′2″ next to 6′1″ actually looks like, and decide that my mental image of characters and guesses of their heights is fairly reasonable. And while making the image helps me, talking about each character represented in the silhouettes is probably more helpful for anyone else to care about any of them!