Depending on who you ask there may not be that many eras, but when you include every single version and sub-era people suggest, I've got a total of seventeen eras. Now obviously that's a lot, but this ranges from the Founders Era (starting in 850) to the Cursed Era (ending in 2010). Also keep in mind that you don't have to use a version with that many eras, I use a more succinct version with only eight eras because some of them get really small (the Founders era really only contains ten characters, for example, so I tend to combine several different eras to make one massive Historic Era) and there are also sometimes massive chunks of time where there aren't really any characters born then that we can easily name. It'll mostly be fill in the blanks for certain lineages, not really any actual characters.
Specific Version:
Founders Era: 850-950
Peverell Era: 1080-1250
Haunted Era: 1330-1785
Strange Nobles Era: 1785-1835
Goblin Era/Rookwood Era: 1835-1855
Legacies Era: 1855-1870
Phoenix Era/Dumbledore Era: 1865-1880
Fantastic Era: 1880-1895
Forgotten Era: 1895-1925
Riddle Era/Knights of Walpurgis Era: 1925-1935
Lost Era: 1935-1950
Muses Era/Pre Marauders Era: 1945-1955
Marauders Era: 1955-1965
Mystery Era: 1965-1975
Golden Trio Era/Lightning Era: 1975-1985
Awakened Era: 1985-2000
Cursed Era: 1995-2010
Condensed Version:
Historic Era: 850-1785
Goblin Era: 1785-1855
Legacies Era: 1855-1880
Fantastic Era: 1880-1925
Riddle Era/Knights of Walpurgis Era: 1925-1950
Marauders Era: 1950-1965
Golden Trio Era/Lightning Era: 1965-1985
Cursed Era: 1985-2010
Timeline of various events under the cut.
First is the founding of Hogwarts. Then you get the Peverell's making their deals with Death, and contained within the Peverell Era is also Nicolas Malfoy because he's one hundred years after Ignotus Peverell's son, but also one hundred years before Nearly Headless Nick, and there's no one else anywhere near him, and I needed to shove him somewhere. He was closer to Lolantus Peverell, so that's where he was put. The Haunted Era is called that because it's mostly full of Hogwarts ghosts and various ancestors of important families. Isolt Sayre, the founder of Ilvermorny, is also part of this generation. This whole group is what I dubbed the "Historic Era" because none of the individual eras really have that many characters and they're all so spread out I found it easier to just group them all together.
The strange nobles is a reference to the fact that this era mostly contains various people from the Black and Lestrange family trees, as well as a few other political figures, ghosts and shopkeepers, but it is more than halfway full of just Black and Lestrange people. Pretty immediately after is the Rookwood Era, which is the Hogwarts Legacy equivalent of the Riddle and Marauders Eras, full of parents, villains, staff members and various other background characters, also sometimes called the Goblin Era to reference the Goblin uprising. I mash this all together into the Goblin Era because, again, they're pretty small individually, and having an entire era for just two families felt a little absurd. Also a lot of Goblin Rebellions happen during this time.
The Legacy Era and the Phoenix Era have such a heavy overlap because the Dumbledore siblings really aren't that much younger than the Hogwarts Legacy cast. Like Albus Dumbles is in his first year when the main cast is in their seventh year, that's how close they are. So there's very much so, no point in separating them, and since the characters mostly come from HL I figured it made more sense to call it that than Phoenix, even though Dumbledore is more of a staple character.
Fantastic Era is when Fantastic Beasts takes place, as I'm sure you've guessed, and the Forgotten Era is the years between the Scamander's and the Riddle's, but they're another case of not having much of a clear gap in where one ends and another starts, so I found it easier to just combine them. Like, Vinda Rosier is not that much older than the Gaunt's or the Potter's, so why are we bothering to keep them this separate? Obviously some of the Forgotten Era characters are children when Fantastic Beasts takes place, but then you have to add Callidora, Cedrella and Charis Black to the Riddle Era if you're that hung up on them all being adults. I do understand the desire to keep these ones more separate, but generally the Forgotten Era is just so empty on it's own and already could contain a lot of Fantastic Beasts major characters so I do tend to combine them.
The Riddle Era is exactly what it says on the tin, this is when Voldemort and a lot of his Death-Eaters plus some staff and shopkeepers would have all been students. There is a level of fluidity between Riddle Era and Marauders Era stemming from the fact that only four main groups of Death-Eaters are given an age, (Knights of Walpurgis, Azkaban Quartet, the Bronze Trio's parents and the Gang of Slytherins) and very few Order Members are given an age. So this era could be way bigger, but because people tend to put most of the Death-Eaters and Order Members in the Marauders Era, it consequencially ends up being really small, as does the Lost Era, which is just a hogdepodge of characters too young to be Tom's classmates but too old to be Marauders Era (Ewan Ward, Ethan Parkin, Bilton Blimes, Miriam Strout, Kellen Carrion etc.) and I find it easier to just combine it with the Riddle Era, because otherwise it ends up really empty, as is the theme. Lost Era is also during that period when Tom Marvolo Riddle is transitioning into Lord Voldemort more perminantly, so they're the ones experiencing the most uncertainty pre-wizarding war.
Muses Era was a name I saw posed for the pre-Marauders Era, and while I appreciate the level of separation, and the way it kind of fixes the issues with the Lost Era, this means that characters like Bellatrix, Molly, Arthur, Lucius, Andromeda, Amos and Ted (and Narcissa and Evelyn depending on how old you make them) stop being considered Marauders Era, and I fear the Marauders fandom wouldn't be happy about that. Great solution, I think it makes sense, but the majority of the fandom doesn't use it, and I don't see it becoming common use any time soon. This era would be for the early Death-Eaters though, and perhaps the formation of The Order of the Phoenix in it's earliest stages would be involving this era of characters. Of course, it deals with that same issue of being on the cusp of the first war, and people will tend to just take the second half and combine it with the Marauders Era as the blanket era for the first war and when it occurred.
Mystery Era takes place between the first and second war, and Jacob actually isn't included because he's a student during the first war, so he meets that mark for being in Marauders Era, but the Mystery Era starts pretty immediately. This generation gets combined with the Golden Trio Era for obvious reasons, since it contains Bill and Charlie Weasley and a lot of people want to include all of the Weasley siblings in one era (does admittedly feel pretty weird that Septimus and Tessie Weasley are in completely different eras) and they're obviously dealing with the aftermath of the first war, which is what the majority of the main series is doing anyway, so it makes sense to combine them even if it does make a behemoth of an era. The plot of Hogwarts Mystery is very Pretty Little Liars, honestly, which is probably an accident, but that plot somewhat wraps up and then immediately Harry is at Hogwarts causing issues so there's no break between events like there would be in previous eras.
I'm going to need to explain FBCWW, because it's a game that takes place before/around HPMA, but it's not got much in the way of a plot and it's mostly about Harry Potter's Ministry coworkers, with a few kids sprinkled in here and there. There's only really four next gen characters that come from this game, Albert Bellchant, Eustace Fawley, Janice Pepper and Hugo Pepper, and they're all on the older end of Next Gen, with Albert and Eustace being older than the main HPMA cast, so it's kind of a confusing game to place, but this is about where I'd put it, even if it has no era of it's own.
HPMA is largely about the aftermath of the second war, with a lot of characters having various evil schemes to do/retrieve things, and even revenge schemes from scorned purebloods, such as Yubert Thorne's murder attempt on Minerva McGonagall. It's not finished, so there's no clear plot at the moment and the main cast are only one year older than Teddy Lupin, with multiple characters being younger, so there's not really any point in separating HPMA from the Next Gen when they overlap way more than any other vaguely separate eras do. They're also another case of being so small it's pointless, like I think even with combined numbers next gen might have the smallest pool of characters for any era.
The confusing part of this is that HPWU takes place around the same time Albus and Scorpius are starting their first year, so you've got The Calamity plotline immediately after the whole HPMA plotlines, which takes place at around the same time as FBCWW and then just when they think they're free from fucked up schemes Cursed Child fucking happens. The Awakened/Cursed Eras are really just four plots from a million different source materials wearing a trench coat, so it's a little difficult to explain. HPWU also doesn't really introduce that many next gen characters, only Addison and Melody Fawley, Cereus Greengrass, Augustus Pye and Nienna Robins, but also people seem to get their maths mixed up with these characters a lot and I've seen people put Augustus Pye in the fucking Riddle Era, as if this ninety-year-old man is a Healer TRAINEE whose still freshly learning. Like, come on, you guys are really going to say an elderly person is so new to his industry he's not even a fully qualified Healer yet? Be so for real. I do think the confusion comes from people not knowing when HPWU takes place though, but uh, Harry is Head of the DMLE and Demelza Robins's daughter is an Auror (no matter what maths you do Nienna ends up being a teen pregnancy case, we think the writers didn't realise how young Demelza was, but oh well it's canon now), plus the game came out in 2016, so it only makes sense it's set in 2016. Especially since it's main villains are mostly younger than Harry but fully trained and some of them even have kids.
Then the Cursed Child fuckery happens and I'm not even going to try and explain that plot (they keep shortening the script and changing it anyway) but yeah, the Cursed Era is a combination of five different plots all trying to make sense of each other and mildly conflicting, while also having the smallest list of characters, (minus the Historic sub-eras because they don't really have much in the way of a full plot), and that's why it took multiple paragraphs to explain.
WJATS FIREKEEPER AND CAN I PLZ KNOW MORE ABT THE CHARACTERS TOOOO
RAAAAHHH HELLO, I LOVE GETTING ASKS
OK SO!!!!!!! OMG I LOVE FIREKEEPER.
what firekeeper is:
a ship between frank longbottom and fabian prewett (two of the muses era characters
why:
cause, i wanna, louis likes, art is fabulous, also such a sick concept, we rily need more fics and art
the muses era:
a group of pre marauders characters (by a couple years) including: august olivander (an oc made by the basic founder of this fandom, can never remember their name) florien fortescue, alice longbottom (or fortescue as we use) the prewett twins, fabian and gideon, frank longbottom, zoya (forgot the last name), hestia jones, and sybil trelawny,
i think i got everybody there
PLLLLLSSSSSSSS IF U WANNA HEAR ABT MY FRANK HCS PLLLLLLLLLLLSSSSSSSSSS ASK
I HAVE SO MANY. I RUN THE FRANK BLOG AND HES MY FAVORITE OF THE MUSES CHARACTERS
