Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (novel)/Headscratchers

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Lupin - richest poor guy ever?

 * In the first scene with Lupin, we see his battered briefcase which says 'Professor R. J. Lupin' in peeling letters. If he's never been a professor before, the letters of 'Professor' shouldn't be peeling, even if the case and the original name were worn out. Continuity error, but it annoys me just the same. How did no one notice that?
 * Maybe it was a gift from James and Lily. "Here, mate, you're exceptionally clever, you should go profess things." Or perhaps he was a professor at Muggle schools—the prejudice against werewolves in Wizarding culture presumably wouldn't extend to Muggle culture. Or maybe his father was a professor and had the same initials.
 * I'm pretty sure Lupin says in a later book that he's been tutoring Muggle students, perhaps that was still the case.
 * Maybe it was an old briefcase and just the letters were new, but they were the cheap stick-on kind so they were already peeling off.
 * Or maybe it just was a new but poor-quality briefcase?
 * Or a poor-quality, secondhand magic briefcase, which changes its lettering to match its owner's name.
 * Along that vein, Lupin almost certainly knows enough transfiguration to change the lettering on an old briefcase.
 * Maybe he possesses a sort of Murphyonic field that eventually causes a state of tidy shabbiness in all the objects around him.
 * Or maybe he stole it from some other Professor R. J. Lupin.
 * More seriously, he might have been named after a relative, or simply shared the same initials. Maybe the case belonged to a relative.
 * This might not belong under this heading exactly, but whatever, here goes. In the scene where Harry and Lupin are walking in the woods, Lupin suddenly has a walking stick. So is it like a hiking-in-the-woods walking stick, or a lycanthropy-induced-leg-pain walking stick? I think he might have been limping a bit, but I really can't remember. And it seems fairly consistent with the fact his face was all scratched up for about half the movie and then got a bit better: he keeps getting himself injured quite badly and it just goes away without much comment... yeah, I just want to know so I can be sure of how much of a woobie to consider him.

Shapeshifting vs. laws of physics... FIGHT!

 * Just one question about the shapeshifting: where does all the extra flesh go? Law of conservation of mass, after all.
 * You're expecting magic to conform to the laws of physics?
 * Looking for logic in a man transforming into a rat, or any element in a fantasy novel for that matter, is kind of a moot point. Hell, in this universe the common thirteen year-old can turn teacups into turtles, i.e. give life to inanimate objects.
 * Yeah, In a World of flying broomsticks, teleporting people, and all that, a person shrinking down to a rat didn't fuss me that much. The only thing that bothered me was that in the movie, Peter Pettigrew came back in clothing (I think he was naked in the book), and when he turned back into a rat, the clothes didn't go with him. If they're gonna do something like that, they can at least be consistent about it.
 * No, I'm fairly sure he had clothes in the book.
 * There is a fascinating theory on this (about Odo's shapeshifting abilities) in the Star Trek: Millennium novels. I think it's in book 2 or 3.
 * Please explain further, not everyone likes and has access to Star Trek Millennium novels.
 * It posits that Odo shifts the extra mass into another dimension via using it to create four dimensional shapes.
 * If it's any use, in the Animorphs books, when the kids shapeshift, their extra mass goes into something called "Z-Space" IIRC, and this becomes a minor plot point in one of the books.
 * I actually read a fic that dealt with this stuff before. It was an AU where Harry was raised by atheists, called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
 * Which has its own Tropes page now.
 * Easy one. A Wizard Did It (literally)!
 * The mass goes where Vanished objects go; into Nothingness, which is to say, everything.
 * And, of course, the one who deciphered that riddle is the Transfiguration professor. Brilliant.
 * A better question, I think, is how Peter Pettigrew was fully clothed (in the movie) when Sirius and Lupin changed him back into a human in the shrieking shack. Later when he escapes, he transfigures right out of his clothes and into a rat. So....where did his clothes come from? We don't actually see Sirius transfigure so we don't know what happens to his clothes, but he, too, is fully clothed when he changes back into a human. It is especially frustrating with Peter Pettigrew, because his clothes are clearly shown to not be attached to him anymore in any way shape or form, but he will presumably have them again when he returns to human form.
 * Seeing how Prof. McGonagall also transformed together with her clothes, it appears that Pettegrews turning into a rat and leaving clothes behind was just a movie blunder.
 * Alternate possibility: Professor McGonagall is more skilled at the animagus transformation than Pettigrew is, so she can take her clothes along while he doesn't quite get it right. Which would only make sense, she's decades older than him and the second-best authority at Transfiguration in Magical Britain (Dumbledore is the first), while Pettigrew is consistently described as an unimpressive loser by wizarding standards.
 * I'd rather think that when a wizard animagi transform into an animal, the clothes they're wearing transform along with the rest of his/her body.

The Trouble With Time-Turners

 * Why didn't Snape see Harry and Hermione twice on the map when he uses that to find everyone? And why didn't he also see Peter Pettigrew listed if he saw everyone else?
 * He didn't see everyone else, he only saw Lupin going down the passageway to the Shrieking Shack. He didn't see Harry, Ron, Hermione, Pettigrew, or Sirius because they were all off the school grounds when Snape saw the map, in the Shrieking Shack or in the Forbidden Forest.
 * Ok, let's try this again. I have the following scenario in mind: after the kids tell Dumbledore the whole tale in the infirmary, he travels to the past, conceals himself, sneaks to the Shack, and waits. After the company emerges from the passage, Lupin and Pettigrew morph, Pettigrew darts to the forest... and Dumbledore nails him, unnoticed by the kids! Even if the most powerful wizard in England is somehow unable to catch a rat, he could've taken an owl or a cat with him. This wouldn't have broken the past in the least, since Pete's post-escape fate was unknown anyway. Thus they'd have Sirius acquitted and Voldemort's return postponed or prevented altogether, and at Dumbledore's discretion, he could recruit Pettigrew to his cause and sent him to find V when it suited him (i.e. when Potter was properly informed and prepared). Are there any flaws with this plan, or did Dumbledore just conveniently "omit" this opportunity for the sake of plot propulsion?
 * To my knowledge, they only had one Time Turner, and it was Hermione's. Harry and Hermione had to go back to save Buckbeak, since Dumbledore presumably knows it already happens. Besides, your plan basically involves a centenarian wandering around a forest occupied by a hungry and out-of-control werewolf and dozens of Dementors looking for a rat that knows the forest infinitely better than he does. Without getting caught, seen on the Marauders' Map, or being even the slightest bit late in returning to the castle. Dumbledore is powerful, but he's not God.
 * The delight of time travel is that it allows you to Take Your Time, both in the present and in the past. D could meet H&H from their quest, ensure that Black successfully escaped, see Fudge off, calm Snape down, then borrow the Turner from Hermione (and maybe Cape from Harry), go to the Shack and use the Turner to go, say, ten minutes before the company emerges from the Shack. After that, it's all technicalities. A magic rat-trap, an owl, a cat - I flatly refuse to believe that THE Dumbledore wouldn't think of something to catch a single puny rat (remember, he had time he needed to prepare in the present). So nope, he wouldn't have to wander anywhere, there was nobody to look at the Map at that moment and he had nowhere to be late to. I still see no flaws in the plan.
 * First of all, just as a general point, the entire message of the way the Time-Turner was presented is that it doesn't allow you infinite chances to take as much time as you need and then go back and fix it—there's a time frame that has to be adhered to very punctually, and if you press your luck too hard, you will see or be seen by someone you're not supposed to and this will fuck everything up. Using it multiple times in the same area on the same night is just asking for trouble. Secondly, to address your specific concern, Dumbledore would never have been able to capture Pettigrew after the fact because it manifestly had not happened in the timeline as it originally stood. He certainly couldn't have done it the way you're describing, after Harry and Hermione had already freed Sirius, because if he'd had Pettigrew that whole time, then they could have proven Sirius's innocence and there wouldn't have been any need to break him out of Flitwick's office, and H&H's whole mission would have become a pointlessly risky and stupid waste of time. And if he'd done it instead of sending H&H anywhere, how would he have covered it up adequately? It would have looked to everyone like he'd talked to Sirius and listened to Fudge and Snape insist his story was nonsense/lies and then checked with H&H [at which point he would have borrowed the Time-Turner and gotten his past self out of the way and done his thing and arrived back inside the castle (all without being seen) and had to fake the entire previous three conversations wherein he didn't yet know that Sirius was innocent] and then suddenly piped up with, "By the way, Minister, I have Peter Pettigrew alive and Stunned in my office, and no, you can't ask how I knew he was alive or on the grounds or when I caught him or why I didn't mention this before, but why don't we question both him and Black and see if we can't get to the bottom of this?"
 * First. Unlike H&H, D, being the freakin' Headmaster, obviously didn't have to worry about being caught on the grounds or gone missing for some time, and, being the freaking Dumbledore, he could easily conceal himself from casual eyes (including his own). And as for the Map, D didn't know about it. Second. I don't see a problem with D catching Pete behind the scenes just like Buckbeak was rescued behind the scenes. Third. H&H obviously had to go to the past because Harry had to save himself from Dementors, as it had already happened. After they return, D could borrow the Time Turner and go back himself. Again, no problem. Finally, with D being one of the most respected people in Britain, I see no problems in explaining the matters to Fudge in as many details as desirable. (something to the sound of "Cornelius, if you somehow failed to notice, you and your ministry have fucked up TWICE already: twelve years ago, when you nailed an innocent guy and now, when one of your fucking Caspers nearly ate my student. How about you quell your curiosity and I make sure they don't sue the collective guts out of you? That's great, I always knew you were a reasonable man deep inside.") Not that he couldn't tell the truth, I think. Again, no problem.
 * How would you know if Dumbledore could disguise himself from Dumbledore? He can see through Invisibility Cloaks by sheer virtue of being awesome. Even Mad-Eye needs a magical artifact to do that. Moreover, Dumbledore sent Harry and Hermione back in time to save Buckbeak because he knew that they'd gone back in time to save Buckbeak. Dumbledore knew that he didn't go back in time to catch Pettigrew, or at least assumes that he didn't, because he's seen no evidence of it. Third, there was a fucking werewolf out there. He knew that Harry and Hermione would make it through okay because they'd already made it through okay; he didn't know that about himself. Fourth, he didn't know where Peter had gone. Even if he was standing just off to the side of the screen waiting for Wormtail to scamper up to him, he didn't know what Peter did in the original timeline that would now be changed because of Dumbledore. What if Wormtail distracted a single Dementor, making it slow down a few seconds? What if that one Dementor would have given Harry or Sirius the Kiss before Time Travel Harry could cast the Patronus? You don't muck around with time travel. You just don't.
 * (New troper to the conversation here) Dumbledore had well over a decade to study that specific invisibility cloak (so you don't know that he wasn't using a magical artifact that allowed him to look through that specific cloak, or at least tell him where it was and who was under it), and Mad-Eye was, which I hope will excuse his lack of seeing through invisibility by virtue of being awesome. Dumbledore didn't know that he hadn't gone back in time to catch Pettigrew until he never went back in time to catch Pettigrew, or at least until Pettigrew showed up elsewhere a year later and Dumbledore knew that going back would be futile. He couldn't have changed anything that he knew had happened, up to however accurately he thought he had interpreted the information he was given (which, succinctly, was that everyone survived except the fencepost, Lupin ran off, and Wormtail went somewhere towards the forest). Until a year later, he almost definitely didn't know that Pettigrew was still free, and he knew roughly where he was to have been in rat form. Not going back to locate and catch Pettigrew was prioritizing for time, which is a bit of a silly thing to do when you've got a time machine that works like the time-turner, or can easily borrow one. Unless Dumbledore had information that made him feel it was better to let Pettigrew get away (such as that the direction he ran would take him straight into a colony of acromantula, and that Pettigrew doesn't know what acromantula smell like or had a slight head cold, or that that specific werewolf or werewolves in general were impervious to anything he could quickly use to non-lethally neutralize it without attracting the attention of everyone on the grounds), it's just an example of a time-travel induced Idiot Ball (and if that's not a trope already, which I think it was at one time, it should be).
 * Dumbledore specifically had knowledge that Harry and Hermione went back in time and everything turned out okay for it. Thus, it was safe for him to send them back. He did not have knowledge as to whether or not he went back, and thus it was unsafe (and phenomenally illegal) for him to go back himself to capture Wormtail. And if he doesn't catch Wormtail the first time he goes back, he'll have to either try again or let it go. Every time he doesn't catch Wormtail increases the chances for him to get caught by himself or someone else. Finally, we know that there can't be a way to non-lethally neutralize a werewolf, otherwise the Wolfsbane potion wouldn't be such a big deal. They wouldn't have had to stick Moony in the Shrieking Shack; they could have just sat him down near sunset, Stupefied him (or whatever) and kept at it until daybreak.
 * Funny thing is: he DIDN'T have such knowledge. He'd sent H&H to the past BEFORE they returned to him and reported their success. At best, he could guess it when he saw that the Hippogriff was gone. He told H&H to go to the past because it was a right thing to do. Next, what some people forget (or don't get) is that the time line is invariant - i.e. there is only one way the events ever happened or will ever happen. Remember, in the "normal" course of events (without time travel) Harry would've been killed by Dementors, but it never happened, although in that moment he had no idea that he was going to travel to the past and save himself. This means that in any particular moment, the space-time continuum "knows" what will happen in the future and how it might alter the past. This means that if D decided to go to the past, in that very moment of decision-making he would've already existed in the world where he traveled to the past. Nothing would've changed and could be changed because it had already been changed. Dumbledore-2 could've sent Dumbledore-1 a note of success or even appear in his office with Pettigrew in a cage - it doesn't matter. The success was guaranteed because H&H succeeded, even though D would've been there near the Shack, and he would've been there in the past because later he would decide to go to the past.
 * Agreed! Plus, Dumbledore seems like the least likely person to freak out if he saw a future version of himself walking around. The only reason that really makes sense for sending H&H is that, like so many things he had them do/allowed them to do, he wanted to make sure they'd gain the experience they'd need down the road (for example, because of his time-traveling, Harry is finally able to do the Patronus charm, which factors into the plot many, many times later on).
 * Next, on the exact technicalities of capturing Pete. For the love of Abaddon, Dumbledore is the freaking Dumbledore! THE headmaster of the school and THE most powerful wizard in the world! Who was going to "catch" him? No, seriously, who?! Himself? That's ridiculous - what do you think he would've done, blasted himself? As for the capture, he didn't need to neutralize Lupin, he didn't even need to be there in person - just place some area-effect spell that stupefies everything rat-sized or something like that, then take a broom, make yourself invisible, and over-watch the scene from above like a good strategist does. Done.
 * "If Dumbledore had just used a magical spell that has never been used in the books that I just made up on the fly, he'd have succeeded! Come to that, in Back to the Future, why didn't Doc Brown just use the Make-Marty's-Parents-Fall-In-Love-Machine that I just decided he must have had in his garage?"
 * Right. I mean it's not like the series was the biggest offender of New Powers as the Plot Demands EVER. And it's not like the characters used "spells that have never been used in the books" all the effing time. But for the most powerful wizard in the world to contrive an area effect rat-trap? Yep, that would've been a colossal Ass Pull, all right.
 * Yeah. It would have been. Even if a reasonable person might assume that the spell exists somewhere in the no doubt millions of charms and jinxes that have been developed over the years, why would Dumbledore know it? "Because he's Dumbledore, he's the shiniest bestest wizard that ever was," blah blah blah. Every bit of magic we've seen him use, there's a reason he would have learned it. Mastering a rat-catcher spell for no apparent reason is kind of weird, though. He's not a rat-catcher. He's not an exterminator. He's not a zoologist. So basically Dumbledore would show up at the last minute with the rat in tow saying, "Wait, Minister, fortunately I have captured the real culprit with a bit of magic that I learned for what is no doubt a very good reason during my adventures some years ago. Allow me to conveniently resolve the plot." And finally, do we ever even see any area effect spells get used in the books? Certainly, places get charmed, but they're generally specific addresses: Hogwarts, James and Lily's house, the Burrow. As far as I recall, it's never been "a patch of land about fifteen meters by twenty meters, provided there's a rat in it."
 * Gee, I dunno, why would a guy who runs a magic school, who used to be one of the most senior professors at a magic school, who is widely considered to be the most experienced and knowledgeable person in the entire world re: magical education, be expected to know about any magic spell in common use? I have absolutely no idea. (And yes, a rat-catching spell would be "common use"; pest control is a basic household necessity.)
 * He wouldn't even need a specific rat-catching spell: "Accio Scabbers" or "Accio Pettigrew" would have worked just fine. It's mentioned that H&H&R didn't use this because they didn't learn it until the next book, but it seems fairly certain that freaking Dumbledore would have a working knowledge of this very common and very useful spell.
 * First. HE. HAD. A. TIME. MACHINE. He had all the time in the world to prepare (already explained it above). Learn a rat-catching spell. Invent a rat-catching spell. Consult any number of qualified rat-catchers, zoologists, exterminators, name it. Get himself an intelligent rat-catching creature (hint: Hermione and Harry both own one). Second. No, basically D would show up with demorphed Pettegrew in shackles, Sirius would be acquitted, and V's resurrection would be averted, and then hardly anybody would care how he did it. Finally, yes, yes we do see area-effect spells. The age-detecting spell that protects the area around the Cup in GoF. The protection charms Hermione casts on their camping grounds in DH. V's Taboo, that covers the whole of England (if not the whole world).
 * As it is now, they won, more or less. Wormtail got away, yes, but Sirius escaped the clutches of the Ministry, everyone avoided both the Dementors and the werewolf. They didn't know that Peter would raise Voldemort at that time, so your point about Voldemort's resurrection being averted is invalid because it's not an argument Dumbledore could have made in his own defense (which, given that time travel is illegal, he would have had to make, and your situation creates the very obvious and notable existence of at least two Dumbledores). Finally, Harry and Hermione were effective in their time travel because they created a stable time loop: they avoid creating a situation that would keep them from going back in time in the first place. If Dumbledore goes back, makes it obvious what he did, and then takes away his past self's reason to travel back, I don't know what would happen. I'm leaning towards unpleasantly, however.
 * OP: Yes, they did know, they heard the prophecy. No, D wouldn't have to make arguments, 'cause acquitting a wrongly accused is much more endearing to the public then allowing a dangerous criminal to escape, so Fudge would hardly nitpick, and even if he would, D could always act mysteriously and pretend he went after Pettigrew and captured him without any time travel, cause he's just that awesome (worked all the other times). No it doesn't, cause who the fuck was supposed to see future-Dumbledore in the Forbidden Forest at night (needless to say, the Time-Turning was to be done right there)? Finally, if Dumbledore decides to go to the past, it means he's already been there and everything has gone fine. Nobody can change the past - it has already happened with all the possible alterations in account.
 * There is the possibility that Dumbledore had seen the second version of Harry and Hermione running around at some point. If he knew there were two versions of them running around, then, since he knows about the Time Turner, he concludes that they had gone back in time. If they had gone back in time, he wouldn't have been able to use the Time Turner until they had already gone back. When they were back in time, he was with the Ministry representatives so he wouldn't have been able to leave and go get the Time Turner off them. And the first thing that Harry did when he saw Dumbledore again was tell him that Sirius and Buckbeak had escaped, so Dumbledore would have been unable to change that sequence of events.
 * Yes, all of that is most likely true, so? Sirius and Buckbeak were fine, there was no need to change anything on their affair. We're talking about capturing Pettegrew after he escaped from the heroes at the Shack - it doesn't interfere with any other events, that's what makes it so easy.
 * Does it mention in the books how far out the Hogwarts anti-apparition wards go? This troper had just presumed they were close enough to the edge for Pettigrew to get outside and apparate away while the dementors were after Sirius and Harry
 * Dumbledore didn't want to kill Pettigrew. Simple. It's made obvious in the books that Dumbledore likes to believe the best of people, and he probably hoped that Peter wouldn't do what he thought he was going to do.
 * Who said anything about killing? Capturing Pettigrew was a matter of proving Sirius was innocent. And then, of course, the bastard was going to Azkaban, but I dare you tell me he didn't deserve it.
 * I think you guys are missing something. Going back in time and getting caught by a normal person wouldn't bother Dumbledore, and the only reason they advise against meeting yourself in the past is that it messes things up if you don't know about time travel. Dumbledore, on the other hand, being Dumbledore, has probably known about time turners since they were invented.
 * The psychological ramifications are a huge problem, though, because while you!present knows where you!past is, you!past only knows that he or she has just run into someone who appears to be you. Even Dumbledore can't go around assuming that anybody who looks like him and knows some random password is him from three hours in the future, and never telling another person is useless with Legilimancy.
 * But knowing where he was will allow him to avoid himself.
 * Someone mentioned this before, but the intelligent time-traveling wizard/witch will make sure to invent a unique "code spell" that only he or she would recognize, before the time and date to which the wizard/witch will time travel. That is, he/she will cast the spell in the event that he/she runs the risk of running into his/her past self (because of the code spell, the wizard/witch's "past self" will already be forewarned). Anyone can take advantage of the Stable Time Loop this way; no problem at all if one is prepared.
 * I think I have a good explanation as to why Dumbledore didn't go back in time to stop Pettigrew. On the night the whole climax happened, he might actually have had his mind on catching Pettigrew and clearing Sirius's name. However, he decided to (like a reasonable person) ask Harry about the details of the whole ordeal and decide how best to approach the situation and when to get Pettigrew. So, what happened the next time he was talking to Harry without others listening in on them? Harry told him Trelawney's prediction. Dumbledore knew that Trelawney is capable of a true prophecy, so he already knew that the timeline was set on him NOT catching Pettigrew, and so any attempt was doomed to failure due to the Stable Time Loop and You Can't Fight Fate nature of time travel.
 * Well, the prophecy didn't set any time constraints, did it? "The faithful servant shall set forth to seek for his master"? Sure, he shall, for about ten seconds before he's nailed. "The Dark Lord will rise again"? Why not, let the reformed Pettigrew bind him into flesh, so that Aurors could immediately grab him and stuff him into the deepest pit of Azkaban until all the Horcruxes are destroyed and Harry dies.
 * Has nobody ever considered that Dumbledore doesn't want to clear Sirius' name? Dumbledore wanted Harry to stay with his blood relatives until his 17th birthday so that he'd be perfectly protected. He didn't want Sirius to die, but he also didn't want Harry to live with him, so he simply let Wormtail get away.
 * Of course we have. And the conclusion was that denying an innocent man his long-deserved chance to clear his name and live a normal life, denying a kid the chance for the long-deserved happiness, and, oh yes, facilitating in Voldemort's resurrection and therefore all the innumerable casualties it is bound to lead to in order to protect that kid from enemies who are all dead, disembodied or imprisoned, instead of explaining to him why he should stay with Dursleys, makes DD an even bigger douche and moron than all other alternatives.
 * To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised at all even if Dumbledore had all of those in mind back in Book 3. To be fair, Voldemort WAS going to come back to power at some point, regardless of whether Wormtail was captured or not. If so, casualties don't even need explanations. As for Sirius, too bad - there are bigger things at stake than one man's innocence. Harry Potter? Sure, he might not be as happy as he would hope, but at least he'll be alive, which is important, because in Dumbledore's Batman Gambit, Harry WILL and MUST end Voldemort. And what do you mean his enemies are all dead, disembodied, or imprisoned? Voldemort may be "less than the meanest ghost" and some of his followers may be imprisoned, still others are all waiting and biding their time, waiting for the second coming of Good Ol' Tommy. Given how crucial Harry Potter is as the key to Voldemort's permanent death, as well as some of the light shed on Albus Dumbledore's personality in Book 7, none of these is news to me.
 * Believe it or not, in Lego Harry Potter, there's a part in the Shrieking Shack stage where Lupin and Sirius construct a mouse trap for Pettigrew. But presumably it only works in the Shrieking Shack because it was a much smaller area.
 * The shock of seeing your past or future self has been credited in-universe as the source of tragedy and therefore time travel is a very risky deal. But if Time Turners are so much a fact of life in this universe that they hand them out to 13 year old girls to help them attend classes, why would anyone be that surprised by it? Especially when other forms of creating body doubles exist so openly (like Polyjuice Potion)?
 * They wouldn't. Hermione is most likely blindly repeating what Prof. McGonagall must've told her, and Harry doesn't question her, because he's an idiot.


 * 1)Only Harry ever heard the book 3 prophchery (remember Hermione leaves Divination FOR GOOD before Easter)
 * um it says in the book that MC Gonagall had to say a bunch of things to get the MOM to give it to Hermione

The psychic shopkeeper

 * In POA, when Harry went into Flourish and Blotts for his school books, why did the manager assume he needed a "Monster Book of Monsters"? Harry was fairly small for his age until he hit his growth spurt in book 6, so he probably looked eleven or twelve. And besides that, he never even said that he was taking Care of Magical Creatures.
 * Maybe, just maybe, because the shopkeeper recognized Harry "The Vanquisher of Voldemort" Potter? But I might be wrong there.
 * Care of Magical Creatures is one the core classes, like all the other classes started 1st year. Students can't drop core classes like Charms and Magical Creatures until after OWLs. It's the electives they start taking in 3rd year, like Divination, that they can drop early. (Because they don't have to take them in the first place.)
 * No, Care of Magical Creatures was an elective, and they only started it in 3rd year. Harry and Ron picked Care of Magical Creatures and Divination because Ron heard they were the easiest to get good marks in.
 * Possibly he's thinking, "I've seen that kid in here buying schoolbooks a couple years before, he must be here for the fucking goddamn bloody stupid Monster Book of Monsters and so I will hate him with all my might." I don't think it's meant to be, "Oh, this clerk must be psychic!", it's just that he's having a bad day.
 * Yeah, after all the crap he's been going through with those books, a pessimistic attitude is unsurprising. Probably everyone of student age who walked in the door made him think "Christ, I bet they want that damn book, too."
 * Why are people assuming that different years have different books? Perhaps 1st-4th years all use that book.
 * I have a better question: why weren't the books strapped right after printing?
 * The same reason copies of the Invisible Book of Invisibility didn't have ID stickers and Lockhart's books were classified as nonfiction: Because it's cheaper to not strap them, and any decent mythozoologist will know to stroke the book's spine on the first instant of seeing the book. Also, Flourish and Blott's is a third-party distributor, and the more copies get destroyed after delivery to the shop, the more copies F&B must buy to keep up with student demand.
 * Care of Magical Creatures is not a core class, though. It's started in the third year when students sign up for it. That's why we don't actually meet Professor Kettleburn before Hagrid replaces him in book 3.
 * Speaking of psychic shopkeepers, how does Rosmerta, the barmaid from the Three Broomsticks, know what drinks the teachers and Fudge were waiting for in Po A? They never order any; they just walk in and sit down, whereupon she starts asking which of the drinks are for which customer.
 * Probably, it's not the first time they drink there and she knows their tastes. Besides, is there even a choice? The only beverages ever mentioned are butterbeer and firewhiskey.

BURN THE WITCH!

 * Right on the first page of the first chapter, we see the topic of Harry's history essay, 'Witch-Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless - discuss', and an extract from his textbook 'A History of Magic'. There are so many things wrong with section this that I'll go point-by-point:
 * There were no witch hunts of note in the British Isles in the 14th century [nothing significant, really, until the 16th]. I could understand the assignment covering continental Europe, but I would somehow expect that part to be mentioned.
 * When there were witch hunts in the British Isles, witches were seldom burnt [burning being a punishment for treason] - they were hung, or executed by other means; but burning was far more common in Germany, France, Italy, and so forth. Furthermore, in England, it was not uncommon for a condemned witch to be hung and then burned - so bad luck with your Flame-Freezing Charm, there.
 * If a person was being executed via burning at the stake, they were burned to death. To a crispy, charocoal-y death. How exactly would protecting oneself from the flames fool the watching crowd when, oh, the victim a) failed to suffocate from the woodsmoke, and b) wasn't getting even a little charred? The only solution that comes to mind is Apparation, which is... hardly subtle.
 * I agree with all of these points, and have one more to add. This type of mentality reflects the latent anti-Muggle bias in wizard society as a whole (the kind that doesn't actually end in attempted genocide). The witch-burnings were 'pointless' because the witches themselves were supposedly able to escape being burnt to death. The whole way these attacks are presented in Real Life is as cruel, ultimately hysterical and panic induced murders on other people who were not witches. They are presented in Real Life as being 'tragic' and 'misguided', but the fact that wizards consider them 'pointless' because the witches themselves were able to escape harm really detracts from the actual results of the witch-hunt hysteria, which resulted in numerous people being tortured and executed in a variety of horrible ways. But the wizards weren't hurt by it, so it was all pointless.
 * Well, technically, it was. They were trying to kill witches and apparently never succeeded. While also being tragic, misguided, ect. there was no reason for it. Innocents weren't killed along with witches because it wasn't an effective way to kill the witches themselves. The fact that their anti-Muggle slant possibly is why they don't sound very sympathetic to the Muggle victims doesn't change the fact that it did not serve its purpose and so was a pointless attempt to wipe out magic.
 * There was no reason for it, huh? In real life maybe, but in the Potterverse, seeing how in the end of the XX-th century the very few open-minded wizards are struggling to introduce a freaking bill to protect Muggles, and also seeing all the nice little pranks wizards play on us, it's not hard to imagine the state of affairs in the Middle Ages. In a nutshell, I wouldn't be surprised if the Black Death and other maladies were, in fact, the work of Dark Wizards. So yeah, I'd say Muggles had all the reasons they needed to hunt witches.
 * On top of everything else, it must be noted that the real-life victims of witch hunts were mainly accused of consorting with Satan to gain their powers. This is rather different from Potterverse witches, who are born with magic powers and don't seem to interact with deities of any sort. Within the Potterverse, the witch hunts might easily have been misunderstood by wizards as an attempt to eliminate wizardry from the gene pool rather than to punish initially-non-magical individuals for the "crime" of becoming magical. Come to think of it, that very accusation is made against people in Book 7!
 * Seeing how dim-witted the wizards of the present are, I wouldn't be surprised if some Middle Age witches did partake in satanic rituals, either expecting an boost of power, or just for the blood orgies.
 * It's not like it'd be the worst thing that was going on back then.
 * I have a response to the 'there were no witch burnings or hunts in England.' It's been a while since I read the book but does it specify anywhere that the Witch burnings he's writing about are English? I don't know about American schools but UK students learn about history from other cultures all the time, primarily German and French, so it doesn't seem that out of place that he might well be writing about the burning of European Witches. Of course, if it specifies English witches then my argument doesn't work...

The Trouble With Time-Turners 2: Electric Boogaloo

 * This book introduces Time Turners, a device that controls time and is kept within the Department of Mysteries. Even entering the Department of Mysteries without authorization will get you a nice fat prison sentence. So it raises serious questions as to why the Ministry of Magic entrusted a 13-year-old-girl with the most powerful magical artifact ever crafted for a completely mundane reason.
 * Hermione explains that McGonagall wrote various letters attesting to the Ministry that Hermione was a model student and wouldn't use it for anything but getting to her classes. (If you didn't know by this book that Hermione is Lawful Good and majorly opposed to breaking rules in all but the most extreme circumstances, you're hopeless.)
 * So what? It doesn't matter that she's Lawful Good and the best student in the class. It's hard to believe that the Ministry would give out such a powerful device in order for a student to take classes for the same reason that it's hard to believe that a real world government would loan an elementary school student a nuclear bomb for a science fair project. Besides, she's not completely Lawful Good anyway; she broke rules plenty of times in the previous two books in order to get to the Stone and into the Slytherin Common Room.
 * The fact that Time Turners exist—not just one, but many—implies that there is a reason to use them. And the Ministry probably has a list of what those reasons are. Besides, this was the Ministry of 1993, back when the official party line was "Give Harry Potter special treatment." It's possible that all the letters she wrote got rejected, until McGonagall wrote directly to the Minister and said, "Harry's biffle wants to take a few extra courses, give us a hand, won't you?"
 * Biffle?
 * Best Friend For Life. BFFL. Biffle. There you go.
 * Also, it's a pretty large leap to assume; Time-Turners are kept in the Department of Mysteries, trying to get into the Department is a big no-no; therefore, having a time-turner is a big no-no. There is a LOT more stuff in there then just the Time-Turners that are reason for keeping people out.
 * Not a large leap at all. The device pretty much allows you to alter the world as you see fit and there’s not even a 1% chance a ban on them isn’t in effect. “All the special letters” and “On behalf of Harry Potter’s best friend” explanations might work for her getting a hold of one, but it certainly doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t even regulate it.
 * Actually, the book seems to somewhat imply a self-enforcing Stable Time Loop rule, given that an entire shelf of them exists in the Unspeakable department and, as was mentioned in the argument above, you don't mess with time if you can actually mess up time. The laws of the universe and magic most likely wouldn't allow it. Now, logic dictates that Hermione's warning to Harry about revealing himself to... himself was mainly dumbing it down for him, as a clever witch like Hermione would have come up with a signal in case she ever did run into herself accidentally, if that was possible. More likely, if you try to tamper with time, by, say, using a Time Turner to go three hours back, spying yourself in Hagrid's hut, and bursting in wand blazing to kill Ron's rat, the fact that that hadn't happened in the timeline would make you blow up and anything you did go virtually unnoticed.
 * There's a plan that some armed forces in England do, which is basically that the armed force in question will pay a student's university fees in exchange for the student being in the employ of that armed force (that is, if they're still the kind of person that's suitable for the armed forces). Maybe it's like that? Hermione got top grade in everything - if you could provide a student like that the means of being able to take - and hopefully still excel in - every lesson on the Hogwarts curriculum, then wouldn't she at least owe the Ministry for providing her the means of taking all those subjects? If they could get a student who passed literally every single subject that Hogwarts provided, then the Ministry of Magic would probably want to sink their claws into them as soon as they can, so giving Hermione a time turner would be a pretty good way to get her on their side.
 * WMG: Hermione herself appeared to the relevant Ministry bureaucrat, holding the device up. So they had to give it to a "previous" Hermione to ensure the Stable Time Loop.
 * Ack, that made my brain hurt.
 * Other theory: McGonagall wrote letters to the Ministry that the school needs them. God knows why the Ministry would give time-turners to a school, but y'know, highlighting the important points might help. Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, blah blah, we need 'em. She wrote numerous letters, with every one making Fudge giving in a little more. When she finally has one, she gives it to Hermione without the Ministry knowing. A little un-McGonagall, though.
 * I know it's fantasy, but they under explain things. She says, don't change anything. Well, by displacing air and taking up *space*, you're changing things. By stepping on grass, you're changing things. Changing space and time using a body that technically should only exist in another point in space and time . . . and how can you be several seconds/minutes/hours *older* than the time that you're physically existing in? Shouldn't the universe implode or something?!
 * But if she went back in time, then she has always existed at two points in space in the same time period (as due to her going back in time there is no "timeline" where she wasn't there) and therefore any air displaced etc was always displaced.
 * It's a Stable Time Loop. Their future selves were already there the first time around, before they had traveled back in time. There have always been two versions of Harry, Ron, and Hermione running around between 8:55 p.m. and 11:55 p.m. on June 6, 1994; there has never been a timeline in which they did not go back in time then.

Is the Weasleys' poverty their own fault?

 * The Weasleys are depicted as lacking money, to the point that they originally sent their youngest son to school with an unsuited wand (that is, possibly defective, as it is said that the unicorn hair is nearly sticking out). So why is it that when they win money, they spend it on a trip instead of something practical? Yeah, it's nice that they got to see one of the older brothers, but he could have easily visited them, since there's only one of him.
 * I think this is part of the reason behind the whole "Weasleys are evil and stealing Harry's money" thing in Fanon. If you have easy access to a large sum of cash, when you get a unexpected windfall, you don't mind spending it on luxuries. But, it was kinda dumb of them.
 * There's no evidence that they didn't use it on things more useful, because just that year, they bought Ron a new wand, which is a necessity. Just because they suddenly got a lot of gold doesn't mean they're going to use it all on brand new products (case in point: Ron's dress robes). And why not go visit their brother? They needed a break. They're so poor, they probably don't even go out all that often. And that fanon theory about the Weasleys stealing Harry's money is stupid. Harry is always shown wanting to help the Weasleys out, but he knows they'd feel like they're depriving him of his rights.
 * This is fairly realistic; a big reason many people remain in poverty after having been born in it is because they are bad at managing their money. Witness all the people in real life who win the lottery and blow it in a blaze of spending glory within a few years at most. In particular, seeing money as something to spend on frivolous luxuries rather than something to save and invest for monetary returns is a common and serious failing.
 * As I said above, fanon is using this as evidence for the "Evil Weasleys" things. Little facts like that aren't gonna stop them. Their minds are made up. I never said that it was bad that they visited their brother. Just that given their lack of money, there are smarter things they could have done with it.
 * Alternate theory: The Weasleys are very good at managing money, they just don't have a lot of it. Molly is a stay at home mother and Arthur's job is not the best paying, yet somehow they are able to raise seven children in what seems to be a fairly nice environment. Yes the children go without luxuries and they make their pennies count by having things like hand-me downs, but the number of times they are described as eating well, and obviously having enough to get by, suggests they are actually good with their money. They get a windfall and buy their son a new wand, who's to say they don't replenish other much needed items at the same time, and the trip to Egypt is entirely done once they are sure they have enough to get by. The Weasleys aren't poor because of their own choices, they continue to get by because they know exactly how far you can stretch the value of a galleon. When you don't have many galleons coming in, why waste them on robes when you have perfectly good hand-me-down robes, and food is obviously a better purchase for a large family?
 * Remember, this was a few months after Ginny was taken to the Chamber of Secrets. That would be traumatizing. I remember hearing somewhere that Bill was her favorite brother, so maybe the Weasleys went on the trip for Ginny's sake.
 * Also, when your youngest child has just been exposed to a cursed artifact, and your oldest child is an expert in cursed artifacts, its hardly unreasonable to take her on a trip to visit him. Indeed, an entire subgenre of 'The Weasleys/Dumbledore were so negligent in not having Ginny checked out by an expert after the Diary incident!' fanfic can get knocked on the head here—Bill is such an expert, and clearly he spent the summer checking her out. And however expensive the trip to go visit him was, the consultation fee for an expert Curse-Breaker they weren't related to would likely have been much more expensive.
 * The Weasley's own their own home, managed to keep nine members clothed, fed and schooled, buying supplies for each child each year, had pets, have recreational brooms and did it all with only one person bringing in an income and at a moderately paid job at that. I'd say that's impressive myself.
 * Presuming the Ministry of Magic pays comparable value to Civil Service scale, Arthur makes a fairly decent living even as a sub-department head of an obscure office. Of course, they're also paying seven tuitions for the Wizarding World equivalent of Eton, meaning that either Hogwarts gives one hell of a tuition discount for Ministry families or else their money-managing skills must be truly remarkable.

That Maddening Marauder's Map

 * If Hogwarts has 1000+ people in it, how is the Marauders' Map even readable, with all those names floating around on it at once?
 * IIRC, Harry does mention being unable to spot a name once or twice (Draco's in HBP, I think). Besides, the castle is big and Harry usually uses the map to look for teachers at places he's not supposed to be and all that, so I think it's plausible.
 * Ahhh, but Harry only doesn't see Draco's name because Draco is in the Room of Requirement, which has magically concealed him.
 * Yeah, that's true, but he makes mention of it being hard to be sure because he can't make his name out from the crowds near the Entrance Hall, etc.
 * In my mind, the map works like maps in most computer games. You can zoom in and out and move it around to focus on the part you need to focus on.
 * That can't be, because if it could do that, then Harry would have had no doubt at all when he couldn't find Malfoy on the map. Also, bear in mind that when Harry's actually using the map to get around and avoid people, it's mostly at night, or other times when the corridors are mostly deserted.
 * How did Fred and George know how to operate the Marauders Map? If you need the specific phrase "I solemnly swear I am up to no good" to turn it on and "Mischief Managed" to switch it off, how did they find out what the phrases were? The only theories I can come up with are 1) They tried as many different passwords as possible until they got the right ones, or 2) The map realised that the twins were mischief makers on par with its creators, and that they were deserving of knowing the passwords.
 * In fact, those are both Word of God (more or less), from this interview. So there you go!
 * Basically, they spent a long period of time trying different phrases at random, and the closer they got to being correct, the more the map would reveal itself.
 * It could also be that "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good" isn't the exact phrase needed, but it's close enough to use the map. It's totally unrelated, but it reminds me of DuckTales (1987), when the Gizmoduck suit was activated by shouting "Blathering Blatherskite!" The actual password was just the second word, but the guy who wore the suit didn't know that.

The Worst Protection Plan Ever?

 * Let's recap the marauders' plan for Potters' protection, shall we? They announce that Sirius is going to be the Keeper, but then secretly swap him for Pettigrew with the reasoning that the cowardly Wormtail is the last person the Death Eaters would suspect of being the Keeper. Thus V's conjectural spy in their midst will be misinformed, the DE'll waste time chasing the wrong guy, and even if they get him, they can't make him break the Charm. A sound plan, isn't it? Actually, no, it's downright stupid, because SIRIUS STILL KNOWS WHO THE REAL KEEPER IS. Their master plan's only gain was that instead of two stages: "capture Sirius - kill Potters", V'd have to complete three: "capture Sirius - capture Pettegrew - kill Potters". The plan would make sense if, for example, somebody erased knowledge of Pete's involvement from Sirius' mind, Code Geass-style, or if Sirius scrammed to Australia.
 * Maybe he WAS planning to scram abroad, but the Potters were killed too soon after the event. Also, Sirius has said he would rather die than betray his friends; presumably, even if tortured, or threatened with death, he would not have given up the location of Pettergrew, or the fact that he was the real Secret-Keeper. So it was supposed to be at least as safe as the original plan - they still had to find and break Sirius, but then they had to do the same with Wormtail.
 * As they say: "The only safe way to preserve the secret - is not to know it." Information extraction techniques are not limited to torture and death threats - there are also Veretaserum, Legilimency (which V is VERY potent in), and the Imperius Curse, and even though they can be resisted in theory, you can't guarantee that you'll manage to. And let's not forget about the "nauseatingly endless possibilities" of torture by proxy. My point is that there was a gaping flaw in the plan which could be easily avoided if they'd just erased the information from Sirius's mind. The fact that they didn't think of it bugs me.
 * Going with the whole secret keeper train of thought. It says in the book that at one point, Dumbledore offered to be the Potters' secret-keeper. Why in the world did they not take him up on it?!?!?! Dumbledore is one of the most powerful wizards in the world, and it was well-known that Voldemort wouldn't dare to cross him. Sounds like an ideal secret-keeper to me.
 * Evil Dumbledore...?
 * Somewhere at that point, Sirius had a major break out with his mother and was disowned. Perhaps James wanted to cheer him up by showing such deep trust.
 * They may have thought that Sirius and Wormtail, being unknown Animagi, would be easier to hide in plain sight.
 * It was mentioned in the Three Broomsticks that Sirius planned to go into hiding himself. Maybe he was going to do whatever it was he was planning to do on November 1, figuring that Voldemort wouldn't have caught up with him yet. Didn't he imply that Peter ran straight to Voldemort, meaning that the charm hadn't been in place for long?
 * Hiding from somebody who can irreversibly curse a frigging school position, expose and strip of wards anyone who mentions his name, and track his quarry across several countries, seems a rather shaky idea to me. Unless, of course, it is possible to provide the same level of security as the Fidelius Charm does, but without third person involvement (otherwise it's just Turtles All the Way Down). But in that case, they should've just used that method for the Potters themselves.
 * He only gained the power to remove protections any time his name was spoken after he took over the ministry in DH.
 * He only used that power afterward. It doesn't mean he didn't have it, maybe he just didn't see the point of using it - he already knew where Harry was, but the wards in his home and in Hogwarts could've been impervious to the spell.
 * They wouldn't exactly be planning on having either of their friends get caught. But even so, it still adds protection in the form of time if nothing else, as well as giving them more warning. If Sirius was the SK, and was in hiding, they might not know he'd been captured till Voldy came knocking. This way, if they suspect something may have happened to Sirius, they can double down the protection on Peter, and if he vanishes too, they know to get the hell out of Dodge ASAP.
 * It seems that a lot of the topics on this page come from people expecting others to think and behave rationally in dire situations. "James, Lily, guess what? The most dangerous, evil, murderous wizard in the world has just decided that your infant son has to die. Alright, now, if you'll just stop screaming and crying for a couple seconds, we can come up with a plan to make sure your baby boy isn't horribly murdered among your own fresh corpses."
 * Yeah, something like that. That is, of course, if you firmly insist that two brilliant wizards and relatively battle-hardened veterans, who'd already escaped death by V's hands thrice, would pee their pants at the news that he might, *gasp*, try it for the fourth time.
 * Voldemort wasn't out to kill them a fourth time, he was aiming for their baby. That'll panic quite a few parents, I'd guess.
 * If dropped upon them unexpectedly, yes. But they knew Voldemort would be coming, they just didn't know when. This is a situation in which experienced fighters would come up with something called a 'contingency plan' and rehearse it. "OK, if Voldemort somehow breaks the Fidelius and boots the front door, I'll chokepoint here while you grab Harry and the escape portkey there, and..."
 * Now that I think of it, why the hell didn't they just hide Harry in Hogwarts? You know, the only place that Voldemort didn't have access to even on the brink of his victory? And before you start saying about how it's unfair to other kids, other kids are not explicitly on V's "to kill" list, and neither they are prophesied to defeat him.
 * It's unfair to the other kids because it makes them targets for collateral damage or hostage situations.
 * Care to elaborate?
 * Not the troper who originally answered, but if Voldemort's after Harry, he obviously wouldn't mind gathering all of his followers (keep in mind, he had quite an army back in the day) and storming the castle. Which puts pretty much everyone in Hogwarts in danger. Particularly students who can't duel.
 * Seeing how Hogwarts is the domain of his arch-nemesis Dumbledore, not to mention a place of great magical power, I guess he'd want to do it anyway at some point. On the other hand, it was said that even on top of his power V feared Dumbledore. So no, I don't think it'd make much difference.
 * Basic strategy, "If you can see it, you can kill it." If an opposing force has sufficient power (which Voldy did back then) and knows where your assets are, it can destroy them. Your best chance is to make sure the enemy can't find your assets.
 * Consider the Fidelus charm: It hides a location to all except those who know the secret. Only the secret keeper can tell others the secret. How on earth did Dumbledore (and possibly others, including Hagrid) NOT know Peter was the secret keeper? Peter had to, at some point, tell them where the Potters lived, or else they wouldn't have been able to show up immediately and pick up baby Harry.
 * My only guess is that the Fidelus charm can be prepared beforehand. Like, Dumbledore does the spell and then he tells the Potters that they can indicate the secret keeper by pointing at him with their wands or something. That's the only way he wouldn't have been present when Sirius convinced the Potters to make Wormtail the keeper.
 * Maybe because two of the spell casters had just died?
 * It was stated that Peter was not always the Secret Keeper, as Sirius noted he suggested the "switch". Rather, Sirius was at first, and most likely gave the location to those who knew in order to enforce the lie (remember, it was implied that they knew there was a spy in the Order). Then Peter was swapped in as the "real" Secret Keeper while Sirius was made a decoy. This does not excuse, however, making the real deal the cowardly Peter instead of the powerful and well protected Dumbledore.
 * Why not make Harry the secret keeper? If they manage to get a hold of him the charm’s already failed also, it’s not like he’s going to be leaving the house. Why doesn’t James just make his wife the secret keeper or vise-versa? I never understood why the secret isn’t kept within the soul of the person you’re trying to protect.
 * I always thought that the Fidelis Charm required one to put trust (hence the name) in a person outside of the place one dwells. That is, a person can't become Secret-Keeper of a place they live in. Why? I don't know, maybe that's just the way the charm works. It's magic after all.
 * Well, that would make a perfect and rather poetic sense, but for the fact, that it's exactly what they did in Deathly Hallows. No excuses, no explanations, just an off-handed remark, that yeah, a resident of the house under FF is the Keeper, and, of course, no stunned realization and the following "Well, why the hell didn't my parents do the same?!!!" from Harry.
 * I think you're mistaken, can you tell me where in DH it says that?
 * The house where they stayed after escaping from the Malfoy Manor. Bill Weasley was the Keeper, and he lived there. The same with the house of aunt Muriel and Arthur as the Keeper.
 * I could be wrong but I thought Bill was the Secret Keeper for Arthur and vice versa.
 * Nope.
 * It would be incredibly stupid to make Harry the secret keeper as a baby would be unable to tell anyone anything. He wouldn't even be able to tell his parents so, assuming they were even inside the building at the time, if they ever went out for any reason they wouldn't be able to get back in. Plus, it's likely that the secret keeper has to understand the secret to be able to keep it.
 * Which is why in the following sentence it was suggested that Lily or James could be a Keeper.
 * But the charm was placed on Lily and James, not the house they lived in. You can't be Secret-Keeper for yourself, because you'd tell everyone about yourself by simply being somewhere. That, of course, doesn't forgive the fact that James could have been Keeper for Lily and Lily for James, then One of them be keeper for Harry.
 * So you mean that since James and Lily are the subject of the secret, they will not be sensed in anyway by those not in the secret; and they could be walking around the town without being found by the Death Eaters? Then that brings the question why Sirius didn't get the Order to put Fidelius Charm on himself to escape the ministry rather than hiding in foreign places?

Surprises at the Shrieking Shack

 * Apologies if this has already been discussed, but towards the end of the third book, Sirius, Lupin, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Pettigrew, and (unconscious) Snape leave the Shrieking Shack. It is well past nightfall—we see this both when they leave and later, when Harry and Hermione revisit the scene. Moonrise has come and the night is upon them. And yet Lupin has not transformed! He only does so when the moon comes out from behind a cloud. We've seen on other occasions that he transforms during the full moon regardless of whether or not he is directly in the moonlight—otherwise, how would he transform in the Shack when he was a kid? Being a werewolf wouldn't even matter if he could just stick it out indoors. So... why does the position of a few clouds suddenly matter? (Other than the obvious answer, of course.)
 * Perhaps he would've transformed anyway later, and the direct moonlight only accelerated the process.
 * I've always said that if I ever get bitten by a werewolf, then I'm going to invest in a very wide-brimmed hat and wear it every night. This book is by no means the first (or last) time that looking at the full moon as it passed from behind a cloud is when the transformation hits. I'm starting to think that's the real trigger, and the only thing that causes werewolves to transform is a lack of proper planning and foresight.
 * Uhm, hello? He transformed inside the Shack.
 * Speaking of which... couldn't they just, you know, stun or petrify Lupin? I don't recall anybody saying werevolves were invincible to magic. Grayback was hexed quite a lot in the later books. Now that I think of it, didn't it occur to somebody to petrify Lupin every time he was about to transform?
 * That'd be rather painful, wouldn't it, being Stunned/petrified again and again?
 * First, "again and again" was just once a month; second, where did it say that either of those was painful at all; third, being locked in a room in wolf morph was already extremely painful; finally, we're talking juvenile security here. And anyway, my prime question is, why didn't the Trio and/or Sirius stun him after they left the Shack.
 * The trio didn't learn to stun until the next book; it's my belief that JKR didn't even invent Stupefy until the next book. As for Sirius, he and the other Marauders never stunned Remus before, they always transformed to keep him company. That was the point of them becoming Animagi in the first place. And when describing his past, Remus says that when they had adventures exploring Hogsmeade during the full moon, "there were near misses, many of them." This implies that Padfoot and Prongs had to hold Moony back from attacking people before. Sirius probably figured that doing what he had always done would still work. The only problem was that he hadn't had a decent meal in twelve years and James wasn't around to help him out this time.
 * The kids did learn Petrificus Totalus in their first year.
 * Casting Petrificus Totalus on a stubborn 11-year-old is a different story from casting it on a slavering werewolf who's gunning for you.
 * Let's see: you point the wand at it, you say the words, it's petrified. Frankly, I don't see the difference. Especially if you do it while it's busy transforming.
 * Are you sure that making someone unable to move while their body is deforming and growing in size is a good idea? I always assumed that Petrificus Totalus worked by paralyzing the target's muscles, and if those muscles are trying to deform into an entirely different creature... it just sounds liable to cause serious injury. I don't think that Sirius or the Trio would be willing to risk it. The point for stunning him AFTER the transformation still stands, though.
 * Conjure shackles, like the ones Lupin put on Pettegrew earlier, or a sturdy net, just to keep Remus from lunging at them immediately after morphing. When he's done, petrify him. And before somebody starts crying "hindsight" or "you-want-the-characters-to-be-perfect-fallacy", please consider, that this is by no mean the first time they encounter such situation, and what I suggest is NOT rocket science, but something that took me five minutes to come up with. They had years to think of the solution.
 * At the Shrieking Shack, before the group leaves, Lupin comments that it would be best to revive Snape later. But there's no reason for this. They could have revived Snape right then. He would have been angry, of course, but he wouldn't have had a wand and would immediately see Pettigrew and would know immediately that Sirius and Lupin were telling the truth. The only counter to this argument is that they didn't expect Lupin to transform and Pettigrew to escape, but it still seems like a good idea to have a witness who isn't a convicted murderer or a werewolf.
 * It's called "bounded rationality". People are not always able (or willing) to think straight. When you meet your old friend who escaped from prison and turned out to be innocent, you kind of forget about other things.
 * No, it's called "contrived plot device", aka Idiot Ball. For the whole duration of the scene in the Shack, Lupin seems very cool-headed and composed, he doesn't look agitated or absent-minded AT ALL. I can buy that he forgot all about the potion, when he saw Pettigrew's name and it became irrelevant, but his decision to keep Snape unconscious (remember, he didn't just forget - he said that they shouldn't wake him up) indeed makes no sense.
 * Actually, they sort of knocked him out for a reason: He was holding them at wand point raving about how cool it would be to feed Sirius to the Dementors and how everyone else should just shut the hell up. In other words, he was being dangerous and unreasonable. If they'd woken him up there, then he would have been on them immediately doing the same thing again. If they'd have gotten to the castle and woken him up there, then they would be able to safely explain the situation to him after Sirius had his name cleared.
 * How exactly would he have been able to do "the same thing again", when he was tied up and wandless?
 * All he needs to do is shout for help once they're on the school grounds and bring people (maybe even Dementors) running. Just use a silencing charm, you say? So he's immobile AND silenced by magic now... which is different from being unconscious how? Looking at the situation WITHOUT hindsight (in other words, not knowing for a fact that things go to hell in a handbasket), why WOULD they care if he sees Peter an hour earlier than he would once they all reached the castle?
 * He wouldn't need to shout because having seen Pettigrew he'd have no choice but to admit that Sirius was innocent. Thus they'd only need to keep him tied up only until that. As for why they'd want to do this, please consider this. A convicted mass murderer is entering Hogwarts with an unconscious tied up Potion master in his tow...I'd give him about ten meters in until the first staff member they encounter casts something nasty (up to AK) on him or just calls the Dementors.
 * Lupin has just found his old friend who he had thought betrayed his best friends but now finds out is innocent. Harry is getting to know his godfather, a man who can take him away from his horrible aunt and uncle. He doesn't want Snape ruining it all by being at first accusatory and then snarky.
 * Right. On one hand we risk the newly innocent Sirius be killed or fed to Dementors by the first person who sees him strolling into Hogwarts with unconcious Snape in tow. On another we risk Snape being snarky. What a poignant and biting dilemma
 * It's not logical, and 'snarky' is probably the wrong word, more like abusive, possible violent and vicious. And they aren't expecting things to go badly, they are too happy at how everything would work out. In hindsight, I bet they all regret not waking him, but people who have been through a lot of stress, and then suddenly get very happy, are not at their most logical.
 * HOW. How the hell was he supposed to be "abusive and possibly violent". No, seriously, i'd honestly like to see at least some resemblence of a plausible scenario. So, he sees Peter Pettegrew in the flesh, he hears his testimony (obviously, during all this he's kept wandless at best, at tied up at worst), and...then what? What is he going to do? As for all the "they are too happy", gimme a break. Ok, Harry and Sirius maybe, they are both idiots. Ok, Lupin BIG maybe, but Hermione? Did V lend her his favorite ornate Idiot Ball for the occasion?
 * When Sirius confronts Lupin, Wormtail, and the Trio at the Shrieking Shack at the end, he says that the other Death Eaters at Azkaban knew that Wormtail was the traitor. While they obviously wouldn't tell the good guys that, why wouldn't Snape know? And if Snape knew, the rest of the Order would presumably know too.
 * In the next book, Karkaroff says that "we never knew the names of every one of our fellows", so apparently not all the Death Eaters knew that Wormtail was the spy. It seems Voldemort didn't trust Snape and apparently Lucius Malfoy (since Draco also thought Sirius was the spy) enough during the first war to let them in on it. I'd imagine that the Death Eaters in Azkaban who knew it was Wormtail were the Lestranges. The fact that Sirius knew the Death Eaters hated Womrtail implies that the prisoners can communicate with each other, so maybe the Lestranges spread the word of Wormtail's betrayal around until all the Death Eaters in Azkaban knew it.
 * In the Shrieking Shack, why is no one suspicious that there is a knock on the door, and no one is there when it is opened? The place is supposed to be haunted, but everyone in that room knows it really isn't, and they don't care at all. Plus, they all know about the Invisibility Cloak (assuming Lupin and Sirius have already seen it) and it would be safe to assume someone stole it, but no one reacts in the slightest. It doesn't make any sense.
 * They had other things on their minds at the time. And even in the wizarding world, old houses creak.
 * Do the doors in the wizarding world also open and close without any reason? Ok, they do in general, but this particular one shouldn't, which both Sirius and Lupin knew.

The Ministry of Morons

 * From the very beginning of the book: Why is Harry trying to practice the Light Charm while still at the Dursleys? He is well aware of the penalties for underage magic, and had even received a warning the previous year because of Dobby's Hover Charm. Granted, it probably wouldn't be noticeable until he had mastered it, but once he had, he should have received a prompt owl from the Ministry of Magic, congratulating him on a well-mastered spell and inviting him for a brief chat with the Wizengamot disciplinary review board to tell them all about it.
 * Only in the movie.
 * This has been debated to death. I believe the favored explanation is that the spell wasn't powerful enough to show up on the Ministry's "radar".
 * Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it mentioned in the book that Harry is using a Muggle Torchlight to do his homework?
 * "Words of two 13-year old wizards will not convince anybody." Wat. Why the hell do they need to convince anybody when there are such things as Veritaserum and Pensieve? Ok, Dumbledore cannot just cancel Black's execution, but surely he can persuade Fudge to postpone it for an hour to conduct a small extra investigation? Fudge hasn't yet gone into his complete Jerkass mode, so there's no reason he would deny Dumbledore and Harry such a small favor. On the other hand, Snape's version of the story makes precisely zero sense, for why the hell would Black try and charm Harry into believing in his innocence instead of killing him? Even if we concede that he did... what, is there no way to detect the traces of mental incursion?
 * Fudge isn't as bad as he'll get later, but he's still stubborn, not terribly bright, and scared of Sirius. He doesn't see any reason to further test the innocence or guilt of a man who was apprehended for a well-publicized, public, and brutal crime twelve years ago—he just wants the whole thing over with. Also, both Pensieves and veritaserum can be tricked by a skilled wizard (and since everyone thinks Sirius is completely nuts anyway, it would be entirely in-character for Fudge to dismiss anything learned through those methods as delusions Sirius convinced himself were true).
 * Of course, that raises the question of what would happen if one of these methods were used on Harry or Hermione, both of whom are nowhere near skilled enough for there to be any doubt at this point.
 * But Snape said that Harry, Ron, and Hermione were probably Confunded, so that might mess with the evidence as well. As for why Black would do that instead of killing them, he's assumed to be pretty unstable, so maybe he actually believes what he's saying. Remember, there was a whole street full of witnesses to see him kill thirteen people and then just laugh about it. That's pretty strong evidence.
 * OP: That's exactly what I meant from the beginning - use the Pensieve/Veritaserum on the kids. Next, Fudge can be all the asshole he likes, but Dumbledore is supposed to be the freaking Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot! That's like what, the Head of the Supreme Court? Hell, he shouldn't even had to call any favors from Fudge - he should've had direct authority to postpone the execution in light of the new evidence! As for H&H&R's alleged Confounding by Sirius, again, are you telling me there's no way to determine for sure whether it happened? BS on that. Some magical CAT scan aside, just use Priory Incantem on the wand Sirius ostensibly used (and, of course, on the one he ostensibly had killed those people with, and do I really have to explain "crime investigation 101" here?).
 * The problem is that the Ministry wants to execute Sirius. He's the only criminal ever to escape - ever, and he has the reputation of being the most evil man in the country, with Voldemort supposedly dead, and having killed thirteen people with one curse. He's making them look bad, and having him Kissed will make them look better. So if the wand doesn't give the murders up, then he stole another one after he escaped—which is honestly probably true anyway, being as Hagrid got his wand snapped just for being expelled, so you can't tell me that Sirius got to keep his in a safe place after being convicted of murder. And it doesn't show the Confundus Charm? Maybe he has an accomplice, or he has multiple stolen wands. Again, they want to arrest Sirius. They're in a desperate situation and they want someone to blame. They probably do genuinely believe that he's guilty, but they also probably don't want to dig too deeply in case he's not. What do they say to the world if he's cleared, "Oh, sorry, we destroyed an innocent man's life because we didn't give him due process of law. By the way, there's a real murderer out there, one who killed twelve people with a single curse, and he can turn into a rat, so he could really be anywhere. Also, Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew? We're taking back your son's Order of Merlin; it turns out he's not a war hero, he's a war criminal. Oops! Apologies for the mixup!"
 * Also, in HBP we find out that Dumbledore has sufficient skills to detect if someone's had their memory tampered with, and undo enough of the tampering to find out what really happened. Because he succesfully pulls that off with Morfin Gaunt, a guy who had been mindscrewed by Voldemort himself. Dumbledore was even starting the process to get the Wizengamot to reverse Gaunt's own Azkaban sentence before Morfin made the point moot by dying in prison.
 * Except for one detail: Sirius was incarcerated BEFORE Fudge became the Minister. That means he's got a perfect scapegoat in the form of the previous minister. All he has to do is make a public heartfelt speach about how much had changed under his sage rule, and how he's a vehement advocate of fair trial, and what a tremendous work had been done to get to the bottom of that particular case, and how the Boy Who Lived is so very grateful (Harry would hardly mind at that point) for the aquittal of his godfather, and how he'd personally see to it that no such transgression ever happens again, and blah blah blah. As for Pettigrew, see above. Him not being captured is an even bigger Plot Hole.
 * Dumbledore explicitly says he has no power to overrule the Ministry of Magic, so illogical as it may seem, Fudge does have authority over Dumbledore in this context, and wanting to take the easy way out of trouble is a pretty well established aspect of his character.
 * Just because Dumbledore says something doesn't mean it's true, or makes a tiniest bit of sense for that matter. Again, he didn't have to cancel the execution, just postpone it for an hour. For a man who managed to drive the Minister of Magic out of his bed in the middle of the night and to some dive to personally meet a 12-year runabout and ensure his safety, I'd say it shouldn't be too difficult.
 * I think that Dumbledore can be expected to know the duties and authority granted by the offices he holds. And what exactly are you referring to in the rest of your reply? The only part of the series that really sounds like what you're describing is when Fudge meets up with Harry in person at the Leaky Cauldron at the beginning of the book, which was on his own initiative, since he wanted to make sure Sirius hadn't caught up with Harry. Dumbledore didn't make him do anything.
 * Suuure, because that's what the Minister's duties consist of and because he has precisely zero subordinates he could delegate that crucial task to. But nevermind that, remember how in Book 5 D completely trashed the whole fabricated case against Harry in about 15 minutes, even after he fell out with Fudge, was stripped of all his regalia, and nearly declared a conspirator? "Cannot overrule" my ass.
 * At this point in the timeline, keep in mind that Fudge still likes Harry and sees him as, at the least, an important symbol—he'd want to check in on Harry's wellfare in person because if the Boy Who Lived gets murdered on his watch, that's not going to look good for him. No need for Dumbledore to be directly involved at all (and if D thought Harry was seriously at risk, it'd be much smarter and easier to go after him himself, rather than using a bumbling middleman like Fudge). And the Wizengamot situation you mention is apples and oranges—there, Dumbledore didn't overrule Fudge, he appealed to common sense and swayed the majority of the Wizengamot towards his and Harry's favor. That's totally different from getting Fudge himself to do something he really doesn't want to do, and in the time it would take to call the court (which itself would probably be difficult to do, since Sirius is, I remind you, an escaped felon who was convicted of a well-publicized and brutal mass murder 13 years ago), the Kiss would already have been performed.
 * D is The Chessmaster—he doesn't get involved personally but acts through middlemen (nobody says Fudge was the only one awake that night, he was merely the one with the easiest task). The appeal to the common sense of Wizengamot (or Wizards in general) was really funny, thank you. As for "getting Fudge to do something he really doesn't want to do", that would be what exactly? Postpone the execution for twenty minutes and take a look in the freaking Pensieve? Yeah, sure, Fudge would totally abhor that, especially if the most powerful wizard in the world and the most respected man in Britan kindly asked him.
 * OP: I admit, I oversaw one thing: Dumbledore couldn't begin acquitting Sirius until after the kids went back in time, because it had to happen in any case for Harry to save himself from Dementors. Not that it changes much. Afterwards, when all the rush is down, D could sit down together with Fudge, explain everything ("Yes, Minister, I sent Harry back in time to save himself and his godfather. Yes, I know that I wasn't supposed to. Well, maybe if your fucking Caspers didn't try to eat them and you weren't so stubborn, I wouldn't have had to! So do you really want to start putting blames?") and present all the evidences.
 * Now that I think of it further, they didn't even need to use the Pensieve - they could witness the scene in question with their own eyes. Use the Time Turner to go back before the events in the shack, make themselves invisible, set a "camera" inside, then gather up in D's study and enjoy the view. Sure, they couldn't interfere with the events, but they could see them!
 * One more thing that would prove so very useful to Sirius's acquittal was conviniently kept under the rag: Sirius's wand. Surely they'd kept it as the material evidence, right? Sure, Crouch didn't perform Priory Incantato on it because he was an asshole Hanging Judge. But why didn't D have it performed on it?
 * Because the Ministry would have snapped it. That's pretty much a given for a life-sentence in Azkaban.

Time-Turners v. Marauder's Map

 * Why did Lupin only see one Harry and Hermione when he was looking at the Maurader's Map in his office?
 * The Time-Travelling Harry and Hermione spent most of their time hiding in the Forbidden Forest, didn't they? Perhaps they were outside of the map's boundaries. Or maybe they were far enough away from the part of the map Lupin was looking at, and he didn't notice them.
 * Same reason Harry never noticed that there were three Hermiones running around at 9 am each day: if you're looking at the Map to determine where a specific person is, and you spot their name somewhere on it, you stop searching rather than check if their name appears anywhere else.

The Strange Case of the Vanishing Hippogriff

 * Why was Fudge (and, by extension, Lucius) so lenient about the escapes of Buckbeak and Sirius, seeing how they were in custody of Hagrid and Dumbledore respectively when it happend? You'd think charges of criminal negligence at the very least would be much to the point, especially since Lucius would be eager to compromise D's authority in any way and Fuge would be desperate for a scapegoat in the wake of the vicious ass-pummeling he was bound to receive from the mass media.
 * It's specifically noted that they waited until Fudge had seen Buckbeak tied up before releasing him so that Fudge wouldn't be able to think Buckbeak's escape was Hagrid's fault. If this wasn't good enough for Lucius, it's possible that, between the end of Azkaban and the start of Goblet, he raised a stink about it which never went anywhere.
 * And it changes... what exactly? The beast is still missing. If Buckbeak indeed broke free, as Hagrid suggests with completely inappropriate glee, it means that the tie was weak, which calls for accusation of criminal negligience at best and, of course, to immediate termination of his teaching duty (if you can't properly deal with one dangerous murderous animal, then what the hell are you doing teaching kids about them?) If the hippogrif was stolen, then it's Dumbledore who's in for some awkward questions, because the idea that somebody could sneak into the school grounds from outside just to steal the hippogriff, and moreover, choose the very precise moment that ACCIDENTALLY happened to provide Hagrid with an alibi, is far-fetched beyond all limits.


 * Speaking of which... Buckbeak was supposed to be executed through beheading. With an axe. An actual metal axe. What. Macnair, are you a freaking wizard or not?!
 * I just assumed execution by decapitation had a ceremonial importance. The wizarding world is pretty into traditions.
 * Perhaps, it'd just make more sense in respect to state traitors or something. But when putting down a troublesome beast? Really? Hell, how are you even supposed to behead it? It's not like you can tell it to put its head on a block and lay quiet. It would most likely go berserk and lash at you, so in the end you'd have to take out your wand anyway to stun or petrify it. So why not just AK it? Simply too many troubles (especially in the movie, where Macnair even wears a freaking executioner's hood, for Khorne's sake!) for what's essentially a rabid dog.
 * Hippogriffs are magical creatures. Maybe they can't be killed by straightforward spells, or it takes a lot of effort to kill one with magic. So an ax, specially enchanted, is designed to do the job.
 * Hedwig was also a magical creature, but it didn't save her from an AK blast in Deathly Hallows. Also, if that was the case, you'd think Hippos would've been used more in battles (or at all for that matter). Now that I think of it, why weren't they used in the battle of Hogwarts? After all, AFAIR, Thestrals did partake in the fun, so why not these guys?
 * Hedwig wasn't a magical creature, she was an OWL. A particularly intelligent owl, sure (possibly from generations of exposure to magic) but not a magical creature in the same way a Hippogriff, Dragon, Centaur, Basilisk or Giant would be considered a magical creature.
 * What about a phoenix? In the Battle at the Ministery in OotP Fawks takes the AK for DD and explodes. He survives, but only because he's immortal.
 * Simple, semi-serious explanation: Macnair considers execution by magic to be too cold and impersonal. If he's going to kill, he's going to get up close and personal and finish the beast with his own physical strength and his trusty axe. It's not a proper execution if blood doesn't flow.

Fidelius Charm inconsistencies

 * How is it that Hagrid is able to come and get Harry after James and Lily are killed? If Pettigrew was the Secret Keeper, no one else should be able to see the location unless he told them. At first I thought it made sense for the Charm to break if its subjects died, but Harry was a subject of the Charm just as much as James and Lily and he was still alive, so why would the Charm stop working? If the Charm broke every time one person under its protection died, that would mean that Grimmauld Place would have stopped being Fideliused when Dumbledore died, because he was a member of the Order and therefore under the protection of the spell too.
 * The charm is cast on a dwelling rather than on its habitants. Perhaps after V's curse destroyed the house, the charm dissipated as well.
 * But the house wasn't destroyed- in fact, it's still there nearly two decades later. It just had a hole in the roof.
 * As James and Lily were in hiding it would be foolish for them to leave their house and do thing like shop or socialize so it would make sense for there to be a few people who would have been immediately told to facilitate such things. As the charm was Dumbledore's idea and Hagrid has his utmost confidence, not to mention being more than capable of defending himself against violent wizards, it would make sense for Hagrid to be told the secret. It would also explain why it was Hagrid who was sent to fetch Harry from the scene, Dumbledore was setting up the protection at the Dursley's, Sirius was tracking Peter and Peter was trying to run away so Hagrid may have been the only one available at the time.
 * As mentioned elsewhere on the page, the inconsistency is that if Hagrid or Dumbledore had been told the secret, then they would have known who the real Secret-Keeper was. Canonically, the only people who knew about the Sirius-Pettigrew swap-out were the Potters, Sirius, and Peter. Even Remus wasn't in on the loop.
 * Harry was able to look at Dumbledore's handwriting to access Grimmauld Place. Maybe Hagrid saw the Peter's writing and didn't bother asking who wrote it.

Is the Sorting Hat going senile?

 * Wormtail is a coward, no doubt about it. He hides behind powerful people, only is with someone when he thinks it's going to be a benefit for him... all of that would automatically makes him a Slytherin. So then, why on earth did he wind up in Gryffindor, according to Word of God?
 * 1) Peter couldn't be put in Slytherin, possibly because he doesn't have enough ambition, and there's no one for him to hide behind if everyone's looking out for themselves.
 * 2) He wasn't suited for Hufflepuff because he wasn't too loyal, as it turns out.
 * 3) He was not smart nor talented enough for Ravenclaw.
 * By default, he was put in Gryffindor, which also provided him a houseful of brave people for him to hide behind and mooch off of. Plus, it's possible he asked the Sorting Hat to be put in Gryffindor, as Harry did.
 * It's also possible the Hat gave him the benefit of the doubt, like he did with Neville.
 * Just because he possesses certain qualities doesn't mean he'll embrace them or won't ever change. Peter probably fancied himself brave and noble as an 11 year old but when theory was put into practice he found himself unable to sacrifice himself and sold out his friends instead. After that it was either be crushed by guilt or adopt a philosiphy of doing whatever he needed to.
 * Pettigrew wasn't completely devoid of courage. Infiltrating the household of someone who works for the Ministry must have required a certain amount of daring, and a complete coward would never have been able to go through with cutting off his own hand. Rather, he has nerve, but he never directs that nerve to anyone else's benefit.
 * So the defining trait of Slytherin is ambition, right? They're ambitious, power-hungry, somewhat selfish, self-centered, interested only in what will get them to a better positions. So why, in the name of all things good, is Percy Weasley, the absolute personification of arrogant ambition, in Gryffindor, when he is always described as being severely ambitious? I can only guess that he asked the hat to be put in Gryffindor so as not to shame his family, but still. Percy is the living incarnation of Slytherin House's traits, excluding the pure-blood mania. It makes a lot less sense than Peter, even, if the Hat gave him the benefit of the doubt. Percy would have HAD to beg for Gryffindor specifically, since he's got more traits from Slytherin and Hufflepuff than Gryffindor and Ravenclaw.
 * Gryffindor is thought of as being the 'best' house to be placed in. No doubt the Sorting Hat would suggest Percy be better suited for Slytherin but Percy asked for Gryffindor because he doesn't want to shame his family, and being in Gryffindor would get him some praise that being in Slytherin would not. This is probably the same reason Hermione was put in Gryffindor rather than Ravenclaw, not only did she ask, she knew Gryffindor was thought of as the best house.
 * It's also because, despite having the academic prowess that usually lands you in Ravenclaw, she values courage as far more important than intelligence.
 * These children are sorted at 11 YEARS OF AGE. This is really too early, as even Dumbledore muses at one point. Personalities change over time, particularly through puberty. The expectations and environments of the House the wizards and witches are sorted into probably help to shape their developing personalities, but there are other factors as well. In Percy's case, determined ambition was how he coped with the Twins' constant teasing. The Twins likely started with the teasing the first time he came home with good results, because he was a bit of a nerd, lacking the 'coolness' of older brothers Bill and Charlie.
 * All of the REALLY good Slytherins go into other houses so no one will suspect them.
 * The end of The Chamber of Secrets establishes that the choices of an individual matter more than his or her aptitude when it comes to getting into a house. Maybe Wormtail wanted to possess the "daring, nerve, and chivalry" of Griffindor House, and that was enough for the Sorting Hat.
 * Wait, if Gryffindor is the "BEST" house, then why is it that Slytherin had been the House to win the House Cup every year until Harry's firsty year? Seems to me that Percy was being thrown into an underdog house. And before you say something like "Gryffindor looks best on a resume", remember that Slyhterin housed the children of quite a few higher-ups in the ministry, so it was probably the Harvard of British Wizards.

The Trouble With Time Turners 4: Insert Title Here

 * So, we know from the rock-throwing instances that what people do when time travelling has already happened. So, if it's already happened, then how can you change anything?
 * After you are finished changing things, you will find that it has already happened. Time travel is complicated.

The Trouble With Time Turners 5: the missed class

 * This is something that always confused me. Why did Hermione miss the one charms class? She couldn't have forgotten, because as soon as she remembered that she missed it, she only has to turn the TT a bit and take the class. And even if she missed the class because she already missed it, it still brings up the question of why did she originally miss the class, and what's stopping her from going back and not missing it?
 * If she went back to take the class, Harry and Ron wouldn't have told her that she missed it and then she wouldn't have gone back to take it. And then they would have told her that she missed it and then she would have gone back, etc. Grandfather Paradox!
 * But why did she miss it in the first place? The problem with the above post is that if Harry and Ron hadn't told her, she still would've realized that she missed the class at some point, and immediately would have gone back in time to take the class. Unless there's some weird time-turner rule that makes it so she couldn't go back to the class, she shouldn't have missed it.
 * Uh, what? Harry and Ron did tell her and saying that she could have found out without them telling her doesn't change the reality that they did. That's like saying, "Why did Harry live with the Dursleys? If his parents hadn't died, he wouldn't have lived with them." Harry's parents did die and saying that they might not have died doesn't change the reality.
 * quote from the post above mine "[if] Harry and Ron [hadn't] told her that she missed [the class] then she wouldn't have gone back to take it" I said what I said to show that there is no Grandfather Paradox. The whole thing about Hermione missing the class probably should have just been removed as it didn't have much impact on the plot and there's absolutely no reason for it to happen in the first place. On it's own it doesn't make sense because it feels like there should be stopping her from not missing the class that doesn't involve circular reasoning.
 * She missed the class because she'd missed the class. It was too late, people had noticed and all use of Time Turner results in stable time loop so it means she couldn't just go back because she hadn't. Don't ask me why, that's just how time travel works in the Harry Potter universe.

The Trouble With Time Turners 6: The One with the Funny Title

 * Why was Hermione constantly bedraggled and exhausted from her extra courseload? She could take 3 hour midday naps with no issue at all.
 * Hermione tends to take the rules very seriously, at least when it isn't a life-or-death situation. Perhaps McGonagall told her she was only to use the Time-Turner to get to her classes and Hermione took that very seriously.
 * But getting enough sleep is essential for productive learing! Certainly McGonagall would foresaw that and made the respective concession.
 * No she couldn't. If anyone caught her when she was supposed to be in class, and actually was in class elsewhere, she's just blown her secret. She was raising enough suspicion just using it for getting to classes.
 * The teachers, including McG, were in on it. The solution is as simple as throwing a cot down in her office for Hermione to use while McGonagall is teaching. Considering they went to the extreme of allowing her time travel, something as simple as a secluded spot for naps seems like a completely harmless request. Doubly so since it was her fatigue that was causing her to slip up in front of Harry and Ron oftentimes.
 * Every additional time travel nap would make her age a few hours. Over the course of five school years that would have cost her at least a month of her lifetime. Maybe that's why she was only allowed to only use the time-turner for classes and nothing else, to not make her age more than necessary.
 * A month? Seriously? As opposed to all the damage the lack of sleep would've done (and did) her, a month doesn't seem such a step price.

Just leave him, he'll be fine
"Hermione: Hey, shouldn't we get Snape? Sirius: Nah, he likes lying around in the dark. He'll feel right at home here. Lupin: And it's Professor Snape, Miss Granger."
 * The scene with Lupine's transformation in the movie. Snape suddenly emerges from the Shack and...wait, does this mean those assholes just left him there, unconcious and probably injured? Why?
 * Probably happened something like this:


 * They didn't leave Snape behind. He was unconcious, and Lupin had levitated him to hover along at the back of the group. Presumably, in the process of getting Ron out of the tunnel with his broken leg, they left him inside out of the way. Once he woke up, he emerged ala Bat Out Of Hell.

The Trouble With Time-Turners 7: Hunt for the Blood Orchid

 * May I just ask... How old is Hermione? Think about it, she repeated about 4 hours of her life, every day, for a whole year...
 * 4 hours a day for a year is only about 60 days, so basically the same age as she seems to be to everyone else.
 * Even in the absolute worst case where she uses her time turner to go back 6 hours during every single day (including summer vacation) of a leap year, that still leaves us with 366 (days) * 6 (hours/day) = 2196 (hours) = 91.5 (days), or about 3 months. So, yeah, it doesn't make a noticeable difference.
 * On that note, Hermione has the power to make time out of thin air. She should have been able to get more sleep to counteract her additional classes and so not be as haggard by the end of the year.
 * This Troper always had a little pet theory that living days over during her third year made Hermione grow up faster than usual (and this was before the film, wherein she really did become hot). If the 60 days estimate is accurate, this might not make much sense, but then, Hermione is older than most of the people in her year, as she was born in September.
 * BUT the year before, she had been petrified for a couple months, presumably not getting older during that time, so it would cancel out nicely.

Boggling Boggarts

 * The scene where the students practice how to defeat a Boggart. The only concern Lupin seems to have is that Harry would "summon" Voldemort. No worries about kids with Abusive Parents? And having your biggest fear exposed to all your classmates really isn't a nice thing.
 * They are supposed to fend off real-life monsters, dark wizards, and demons, which takes some mental conditioning. If you can't step up to your jerkass parent, how can you be expected to step up to a Dementor? As for exposing their fears to the classmates, well, when everybody does it, it puts them on the same level, so it's fine.
 * Then again, most of these so-called "greatest fears" were quite silly: a mummy? an eyeball? a disembodied hand? Ron's was probably the only one that made sense, considering his history with spiders.
 * To be fair, this is a universe where mummies, floating eyeballs, and disembodied hands are all very real and very dangerous.
 * They are little kids. They can get some Adult Fear when they get older, like Molly's worst fear.
 * "I'm scared of mummies" is not on the same level as seeing drunken Dad unzipping his pants, dude.
 * Would it not be quite hard to abuse a kid who could turn you into a frog?
 * Still doesn't quite explain away the 'exposed to your classmates' angle, and also the abusive parents sort of fear. Even a little kid would conjure up that image. My only additional point was to wonder what a Boggart would do with a more abstract fear, like a fear of having your eyes put out or losing a limb. Would it just recreate an image of you, but missing the appropriate body parts? Molly's fear is of the death of people she cares about, but what about people with a fear of death as an abstract concept? JK's explanation that Voldie would see an image of his own dead body falls a little flat for me.
 * It would probably be different for every person. Voldemort, with all of his ego and dramatics, would probably find the image of him being dead frightening. Other people, they might simply see the Boggart as something killing them. If someone is afraid of being buried alive, the Boggart might envelop them and turn into a coffin. Someone who's afraid of getting their eyes ripped out might see an image of them getting their eyes ripped out, or the boggart might turn into someone with a knife pointed at their eyes. It depends on what would scare the person the most, I suppose.
 * If Lupin is to be taken literally, then Harry's worst fear is an abstract thing: fear itself. If that's the case, than it's been shown in the book how boggarts deal with an abstract fear.
 * This troper was likewise bothered that almost everyone's "greatest fear" is really a mere phobia. Molly's makes sense, and perhaps also Lupin's (although wouldn't he be conditioned to the full moon by now, and doesn't the wolfsbane potion make it far less scary?) But just because Ron is an arachnophobe doesn't make it plausibly his greatest fear. If I had to take a stab at it, I would imagine that it would involve something like the inverse of the glory the Mirror of Erised showed him, some moment of unspeakable and terrifying shame, like publically allowing Harry and/or Hermione to die. That's the sort of thing people fear in the back of their minds. Ron doesn't faint or run from spiders, they just freak him out a lot. So maybe… boggarts don't actually reveal a person's greatest fear so much as the scariest thing they've had to think about lately. Ergo, dementors for Harry and the moon for Lupin, rather than the things that ultimately make those things scary for them — reliving the death of one's parents, and becoming a monster that could slaughter innocent people. (And for Ron, spiders are really a shameful reminder of his place in the family hierarchy.)
 * This, mostly. The Boggart doesn't actually delve deeply into your mind to know what, exactly, would terrify you the absolute most, it just skims your brain a bit to find out what you're thinking about being afraid of. Or at least, that's how I always thought of it. Ron has a phobia of spiders, they were on his mind, ergo the Boggart turned into a spider for him. If the Boggart had turned into, say, both of Ron's parents with spiders pouring out of their eyes as they screamed at him he was a waste of a son and blood pouring from every orifice, that would probably scare Ron more than just one big spider the likes of which he'd already dealt with, but that wasn't what he was thinking of at the time.
 * Please don't describe things like that!!!!!
 * Of course, you're supposed to make it funny, which may have been a little difficult if it did turn into something of your description. Also, despite the name, arachnophobia is not technically a phobia.
 * Also... What? Spiders are a reminder of his place in the family hierarchy? Why would you assume this? Considering that more people are scared of spiders than any other animal (Even more than snakes). As for personal encounters, well... I am not entirely sure how much it would help me get over my own arachnophobia if a Giant Spider leaped out of nowhere and began strangling me trying to eat me.
 * No, being reminded of his insignificance is his greatest fear, as demonstrated by the Slytherin Locket in Deathy Hallows. Actually, now that I think of it, Ron should've encounter the exact problem that the OP raised: Boggart in front of him should've turned into an image of his brothers sneering at him and telling everybody how worthless and stupid he is, Harry and Hermione calling him The Load, or, even worse, his parents denouncing him in favor of Harry. Thank goodness Rowling copped out on this one!
 * Face it: Boggarts just don't seem to have much imagination. They go for the obvious scare, not necessarily the one that's grounded deepest in an intended victim's psychological hang-ups. The fact that they're rather easily confused suggests that they aren't clever enough to come up with the sort of intricate, custom-fitted imagery people are suggesting here.
 * Just how powerful is a boggart? A boggart impersonating a dementor gains its power to suck the heat and happiness from a person and show them their worst memories; enough to knock out Harry like a real one. It doesn't turn Lupin into a werewolf, however. Does that mean that Ron would have been poisoned by the spider if it bit him? And what if it faced somebody who feared black holes above all else?
 * The damage a Boggart does is completely psychological. Someone who fears dementors would only imagine their happiness was being sucked away by a boggart taking the form of one. Just like a claustrophobe isn't really suffocating in a small space; they just believe they are. Once the person being victimized by a boggart realizes this, s/he can say "Riddikulus!" and banish it with a flick of a wand.
 * It's possible that they know full well that abusive parents may appear and are hoping for it. It gets said parents exposed and then the school can intervene as necessary. That may not be how it works in our world but wizard world has it's own rules.
 * Yeah. like they interveened when Dursleys abused Harry! Oh, wait...
 * Nothing could be done in that specifc situation. Harry HAD to stay with them for the magial protection and they weren't going to change who they were. Any attempt to force the subject would have required either a constant wizard or witch on guard in the house (unlikely and likely a violation of a few wizard laws at that) or the attempt of threats or even positive cohersion which would just make the Dursleys become even worse to Harry once they were gone for bringing more 'freaks' and their magic into their homes. It's a unique situation born of necessity. I think we can all agree the Weasley's would have taken him in as early as his second year if they'd been allowed.
 * The Dursleys visibly changed their behavior towards Harry (giving him a bedroom instead of a cupboard) simply on the suspicion that wizards might be watching their behavior. Their abuse only started up again once a prolonged period of no consequences gave them the impression that the wizarding world didn't actually care if they abused Harry or not (which was, as it happened, the truth).
 * Heck, Dumbledore could have just gone "You're right, Vernon. Its entirely unfair for me to expect you to go to all the excess time and trouble of raising Harry, even if he still needs to live in your house. I'll just magically expand a set of rooms in your basement and Harry can live there, accompanied by his new full-time caregiver, my dear friend Hagrid. I'm sure they won't be a bit of trouble to you." We already know from Philosopher's Stone that Vernon Dursley does not want an upset Hagrid in his face, and of course Hagrid would love the job of being Harry's new bodyguard/minder. Dumbledore can move Filch out to groundskeeper or something.
 * Not speaking from experience here, but I still would not want everyone in my class to know if my parents used to abuse me in any way, even if that means my teacher would go and kick their ass.
 * One thing that the movie actually improved upon: Harry steps in-front of the boggart during DADA and is quickly overwhelmed by its Dementor form, which causes Lupin to quickly jump in-front of him. In the book, Lupin willfully approaches the boggart and it takes the form of the full moon, giving away a major clue that he's a werewolf, something that is in-fact frowned-upon by most of the wizarding world.
 * In his defence, he was doing it in front of a bunch of dumb kids, most of whom cannot make a logical conclusion to save their life, unless it blows a trumpet and waves a banner with huge neon letters at them. Besides, in the book, the boggart didn't look so explicitely moony - it was just a "shining ball".
 * Of course, later in the movie, they retain the book's line that he did it because he worried it would become Voldemort. So even while the original change made a bit more sense, the overall result is much more convoluted.
 * Hum, i think he may have talked to DD before to ensure no one with such abusive father/mother or such psychological problem, heck, even a conturbed childhood was to face the Boggart, but who knows?
 * This troper always presumed that Lupin just used a weaker Boggart that couldn't make a person's very worst ever fear. I know this theory falls flat with Harry and Lupin, but as I recall most of the other things the Boggart did were significantly less than what the Boggart did with eh dead Weasley's being shown.
 * Something's that always bothered me about Bogarts is the whole Ridikulus spell. The spell is shown as a "make things funny" spell, but the way it's shown in the books and movies, it seems that the spell allows you to impose your will on a living sentient creature, to change both it's form and it's actions. So is the spell like a combination of Imperius and transfiguration, or is the spell somehow limited to only funny things?
 * Presumably, the Ridikulus spell is limited to Bogarts. The Bogart is reading your mind, trying to dig out your worst fear. The Ridikulus spell basically forces it to take the one that makes you laugh instead. It's not the first time that a spell was created just to deal with a single threat, after all. (Expecto Patronum for the Dementors)
 * I don't think Expecto Patronum is a spell SPECIFICALLY created to deal with dementors. It seemed to work to many Dark creatures like a Lethifold

Harry and Ron's treatment of Hermione.

 * Harry and Ron's treatment of Hermione. In the last book, she literally almost died. She was in, for lack of a better word, a coma for months. The two things that cause her friends to turn on her were that: She argued there was no absolute proof her cat ate Ron's rat, which was true but did disregard his feelings, and that she tried to protect Harry by getting his broom confiscated, which as someone else pointed out wouldn't have been so bad if she had, at least, tried to talk to him about her fears, first. The fact they were angry doesn't bother me. The fact they saw the person who they had once saved, who had helped them twice save the school, who had been turned into stone for months, mentally falling apart and still kept their grudge does. Harry forgives her but refuses to have much to do with her due to his loyalty towards Ron, and Ron forgives her after he receives the apology he wanted. Even when he told her that they'd help her with the appeal, that wasn't forgiveness; that was him caring about Hagrid and feeling righteous anger towards Draco Malfoy. When she hugged him and broke down, explicitly saying she was sorry, he, then, said something to the effect of it being alright. And I don't recall either ever apologising for their overreaction to her mistakes. Pointing out a logical fact and trying to protect a person in a misguided, though harmless, way is better than shunning a person who is obviously in an emotionally frail place, especially if there's such an intense history with that person.
 * I have problems with that too. She was the most responsible and reasonable of the three in this book - heck, in all the books - but more than half the time she's utterly disregarded, treated as "too fussy" and "worrisome" - there's also the scene where she's telling Harry not to sneak into Hogsmeade, and Harry and Ron yell at her. What the hell! She's reminding them that there's a sociopath on the loose and after Harry specifically (of course this isn't actually true but everyone thought so at the time) and they get mad at her for thinking things through and being thoughtful!
 * Yes, heaven forbid a series have flawed protagonists. That just might lead to (gasp!) Conflict. Really, what was Rowling thinking with this whole "not making everyone a Mary Sue" thing?
 * I acknowledged they had a legitimate reason to be angry. I don't even have a real problem with their treatment of her, at first. But Harry, the POV character, never had so much of a paragraph where he remembers that his best friend was in turned to stone for several months and remembers how horrible that was and how relieved he was to have her back after the fights begin. He and Ron never had a true discussion about how Hermione is showing visible signs of mentally unraveling; perhaps they could've argued about whether they should forgive her, or perhaps they could have acknowledged that they both wanted to make things right with her but didn't know how to make the first move. There could still be conflict without it seeming as if they never almost lost their best friend to death and as if they didn't particularly care that she was close to a mental breakdown. The most the reader gets is Harry having a strained conversation where he asks her if she's still supporting him despite his lack of support for her and trying to get her to acknowledge that Ron is right, only blithely acknowledging how broken she comes across in that scene.
 * I apologize if you thought my comment was about your legitimate original post. I was responding to the self-righteous, why-isn't-everyone-perfect whining of the first reply.

Best friend ever, worst teacher ever.

 * Okay, this is admittedly based on the film, but, what the hell was Dumbledore smoking when he made Hagrid a teacher? Hagrid is a nice bloke and really loves magical creatures, but he is complete pants at teaching. If a competent teacher had been placed in charge of magic beasts, then Buckbeak would never have even been in danger (nor any of the kids; honestly, it was lucky it was just Draco that got hurt, due to his being the Designated Monkey).
 * I don't see how this doesn't also apply to the book, but in either version, Malfoy only got attacked because he didn't follow Hagrid's instructions. Hagrid warned them to approach hippogriffs in just the right way and to not insult them.
 * Well, it could apply to the book, but I have only seen the film. Anyways, a good teacher, or a decent teacher, or heck, even just a competent teacher would have gone over the theory at length and made it very clear that the hippogriff was a dangerous creature, and taken measures to ensure that if the kids did something dumb (i.e. being kids), then they wouldn't get hurt. Not just said it was dangerous, then proceeded to plonk a student on its back and sent them off for a nice little jaunt. That kinda undermined the whole "dangerous" thing and replaced it with "can do this really cool thing", so it's amazing that it was only the blond bonce that decided to go pet it after that. Dumbledore knows Hagrid has always had problems treating dangerous animals too casually, and yet he puts him in a position where he can encourage others to be equally casual with deadly beasts. Accident waiting to happen.
 * Well, the "only Malfoy approaching" part was just the movie. In the book, there were a bunch of Hippogriffs, and after Harry approached Buckbeak and showed that hippogriffs are safe if approached carefully, the other students all gathered around the other Hippogriffs. Malfoy's was the only injury because he was too arrogant to pay attention to the lesson.
 * That's just Hogwarts. It's a dangerous place full of eccentric professors because a series about a safe school with normal teachers wouldn't be as fun.
 * Just remember, they are all actually wizards, and what may be a pretty serious injury to us may just be a scratch in the wizarding world. They do have blood replenishing potions, skeleton growth potions, etc., etc.
 * Hagrid isn't actually that bad a teacher. He said very explicitly "do not disrespect Hippogriffs, they will kick your ass." The only time he really effed up as the Magical Creatures professor was with the Skrewts, but if you remember his Thestral lesson, he seemed perfectly alright until Umbridge showed up.
 * Exactly. Go into a chemistry class, listen to the teacher say, "OK, there's some nasty stuff in here, be careful", watch someone perform an experiment successfully, then stroll up to a vial of concentrated hydrochloric acid, say "You aren't dangerous at all, are you?", then drink it. Should the teacher be punished for your idiocy?
 * He will be. He's responsible for you, while you're in his class. Why do you think is Snape so intolerant to clutzes?
 * Sticking the teacher with the responsibility in the example that was given would fail the "reasonable man" test. So would blaming Hagrid for what Draco did—Draco not only specifically and directly disregarded the instructions Hagrid had just given him, but Hagrid isn't even showing contributory negligence in allowing Draco to approach the hippogriff; its a task even a mediocre student can execute safely if he just follows the damn directions, and Draco is supposed to be approaching the hippogriff at that time because its a hands-on lab period and its Draco's turn.
 * There have been hints (such as an anecdote in Beedle The Bard) that Hagrid's predecessor made Hagrid look tame and cautious by comparison. A good case can be argued that anyone willing to teach a subject like Care of Magical Creatures has to have a different definition of "dangerous" than most other people.
 * Hagrid's predecessor, Kettleburn, had gotten into probation for, like, sixty times due to his reckless actions. Make that of what you will.

Dress code? What dress code?

 * This is also from the film version, but I really was horrified at the fact that nearly every single student had their shirt untucked during the Care of Magical Creatures class. It looked sloppy and awful, and I would have expected better of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardty. I would not have thought that students would be able to wear their uniforms so poorly without getting repremanded at such a place as Hogwarts. Even worse, Hermione was one of the untucked ones. I would most certainly have expected better from her.
 * Maybe they thought Care of Magical Creatures would be more informal than their other classes because it's, you know, Hagrid. Also, it was near the end of summer, so maybe the weather was still warm.
 * Extreme Values Dissonance here for American viewers, most of whom don't give a damn.
 * In-universe, no idea, but maybe the producers thought it would be a good way to symbolise entering puberty, which is intimately linked with rebelliousness.
 * In the fifth movie, trying to combat this was associated with Umbridge's reign. Basically, Hogwarts is like a traditional British boarding school in the same way that Starfleet is like the military. Just go with it.
 * IIRC, one of the directors outright told the cast "Wear the uniforms how you would ordinarily wear them." Without more direction than that, I suspect we may have would up seeing more of the actors showing through than the characters.
 * That makes scense. I go to a school where we have to wear a dress code a bit similar to theirs. If my class had a lesson outside with nice weather we'd be untucking our shirts and undoing a button or two. I felt that how they wore their uniforms at all times durring the movie was realistic.

Wormtail - The TRUE Dark Lord!

 * Speaking of the Muggle massacre Sirius had got accused of. How did a nincompoop like Pettigrew manage such a powerful spell, and, more importantly, why don't we ever see this "magic hand grenade" used later, except maybe for the time  got killed in DH? You'd think that in a massive battle, it would be even more effective than Avada Kedavra.
 * I always figured that Pettigrew was rather more talented than he let on (after all, he did manage the animagus transformation, which is supposed to be insanely advanced magic and can't have been easy even with help from James and Sirius); being the quintessential Dirty Coward, though, he'd want to make himself look as harmless as possible unless backed into a corner. As for why nobody else used it, I'd imagine something like that would be a bit hard to aim and could just as easily take out your allies as your enemies.
 * Well, Pettigrew managed to aim it precisely enough to make it look like he was blasted, yet not actually harm himself.
 * If it was exploding outwards from behind him (how I always imagined the scene, what with the "wand behind his back" reference), there's no reason it would hit him, and it would also make it look like Sirius just indiscriminately blasted everything in front of him.
 * Or perhaps he has really good reflexes and was relying on turning into a rat just before the blast, so the blast would hit where his head would have been if it weren't all of a sudden much smaller and lower to the ground. He was, after all, in a very desperate situation—if he didn't get away, it was virtually certain that either Sirius would kill him or he'd be taken to Azkaban for the rest of his life—so it's conceivable that he'd be willing to take the risk.
 * I just figured that he legitimately hit a gas main with his spell, causing it to explode. It would be ironic, at least—that the fake story fed to the muggle press was the version of events closest to the truth.

The Trouble With Time-Turners 8: The Quest for Peace

 * It just bugs me that the Time Turner was given to Hermione just so she could take extra classes. Wouldn't it make more sense to give it to Harry in case of an emergency? Furthermore, there must be more simple ways to take extra classes. The teachers could've come up with something less extreme.
 * Give a time machine directly to an Idiot Hero? Believe me, sooner or later, you WILL end up with a universe-destroying time paradox. The way they did it was pretty smart actually - the TT was within reach, yet in possession of someone with a working brain.

Lawyers? Even the Ministry Has STANDARDS!

 * Why would the Trio have to help Hagrid with the trial of Buckbeak? They know nothing about the law—couldn't Hogwarts spring for a lawyer? Why didn't Dumbledore or one of the other professors help? And why was Hagrid required to speak in the defence—he doesn't own Buckbeak, Hogwarts does—Dumbledore or one of the governors should have.
 * Well, D does get Hagrid himself off the hook, doesn't he? Apparently, that's the best he could do.
 * The Wizarding World doesn't seem too keen on defense attorneys. Harry doesn't get one in Book 5, DD has to basically force his way into the hearing. None of the Death Eaters shown in flashbacks seem to have them either.
 * Yeah, the main problem is that we don't really know how the Wizarding Justice System works, especially when it comes to magical creatures. Hagrid might have just been an advocate for Buckbeak, or a character witness. We also don't know that no one else tried to help Hagrid, or if he even asked anyone for help. One or more of the other teachers might have lent a hand when they had a free minute, but they probably weren't too terribly concerned about the fate of one hippogriff. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if Hagrid demanded to be the one to defend Buckbeak over Dumbledore or any of the Governors. Hell, the Governors probably would've said "It attacked a student? Let it hang."

Has Scabbers outsmarted the Map?

 * How come Fred and George didn't notice Peter Pettigrew being on the map? Since they'd been there longer, you would think that they would know more names of people in the school than Harry would, so they might know quicker that it wasn't anyone who attended, right?
 * It's not like being at Hogwarts a particularly long time makes you familiar with every single student. At the start of his fifth year, Harry had never met Luna Lovegood, even though she had been attending since his second year. If you saw a perfectly ordinary name on the Marauder's Map, would you assume it was a student you hadn't met or an Animagus Death Eater in hiding?
 * Also, the map is big. Unless Peter happened to be in the corridors they intended to snoop through, they very well might not have seen him.
 * Word of God has answered this on her official website; it can be found in the FAQ.
 * "It would not have mattered if they had. Unless somebody was very familiar with the story of Sirius Black (and after all, Sirius was not Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's best friend -- indeed, they never knew him until after he escaped from Azkaban), Fred and George would be unlikely to know or remember that Peter Pettigrew was the person Sirius had (supposedly) murdered. Even if Fred and George HAD heard the story at some point, why would they assume that the 'Peter Pettigrew' they occasionally saw moving around the map was, in fact, the man murdered years before? Fred and George used the map for their own mischief-making, so they concentrated, naturally enough, on those portions of the map where they were planning their next misdeeds. And finally, you must not forget that hundreds of little dots are moving around this map at any given time; Fred and George did not know everyone in school by name, so a single unfamiliar name was unlikely to stand out."
 * Except that the map would show "Peter Pettigrew" and "Ronald Weasley" right on top of each other, nearly 24/7. Even if Fred and George weren't looking for the secret passageways, they must at some point have needed to find out where Ron or the Trio were, and they would see Pettigrew with them. It doesn't make any sense that Fred and George wouldn't put 2 and 2 together and realize that Scabbers was Pettigrew.
 * This image suggests the brothers are just open minded.
 * They're looking at a map, not security cameras. Assuming the twins ever bothered to spy on their brother, it would almost always show several people practically on top of him. There's only so much room on a two dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object full of thousands of ever-moving trackable people. The only time it would ever be obvious would be if he was right in front of them with Scabbers in his pocket (pets don't go everywhere with their masters). Hell, even if they did notice Peter was with him so much when they couldn't see him, they might have just assumed he had a secret boyfriend he was trying to hide. Percy had spent a year trying to hide the fact that he had a girlfriend, after all.
 * This may work to explain how Peter Pettigrew was never discovered in waking hours, but what about at night when everyone is in their room? I may not have been to a boarding school, but I'm quite certain that you do not normally need to share a room with, say, hundreds of students. And by the way the books describe it, it seems there are only a handful of students that share a room, and along with Ron and Harry, only Neville, Dean, and Seamus appear to be sharing the same room, and George and Fred do actually know all of these boys (if not personally, in name's and appearance's sake). At some point, you would think that the twins would be sneaking out at night (and am I not going to accept the possibility that they wouldn't sneak out... after breaking practically every rule in the book, how could they have not snuck out after hours?!) and when they consult the map they wouldn't have seen the name "Peter Pettigrew" in the same room as their brother. Hell, let's go one step further and point out that the nights Peter as Scabbers was sleeping in that room at night instead of scurrying about the castle, that he was even sleeping in the same bed as Ron (much to the disgust of the poor boy when he realised his pet rat was a balding man). How could the two mischief makers Fred and George not only have not noticed that Ron's and this "Peter's" name is suspiciously way too close together, but to have resisted the urge to tease their brother about this? Please explain how they would not notice an additional name in one fairly decent sized room that should only have at most FIVE boys occupying it. Even on a small two dimensional magical map, this feat should not be too hard to accomplish, unlike trying to find one name among thousands of moving names in a narrow corridor.
 * Also, why didn't they notice that Scabbers's name never appeared on the Map? Mrs. Norris's name does, so we know that named pets aren't exempt.
 * "...they concentrated, naturally enough, on those portions of the map where they were planning their next misdeeds." THIS is what explains it. In the two and some years Ron goes to school and F&G have the map, we never hear any hint of them pranking the room. The only time they even go into the room is to wake the boys up on Christmas Day, an event which doesn't require looking at the map.
 * This HP Lexicon essay offers a possibility - the map focuses itself on the areas most likely to be relevant to the user, in this case Harry or F/G: their immediate vicinity, teachers' offices and quarters, etc. If it showed the common rooms at all, it might very well only focus on people of particular interest to mischief-makers, perhaps going a la Facebook and saying "Percy Weasley, (prefects' names), and 117 others are in here."
 * Yep. Indeed, the twins themselves said they didn't use the map very much anymore, else they wouldn't have given it away in the first place. From their comments, it sounds like they used it to find secret passages, not spy on people.
 * Ron didn't have Scabbers with him all the time, he was probably in the Common Room or the dormitory most of the time during classes. And though Scabbers did sleep in Ron's bed, it's doubtful Fred and George would ever think to check that room while they were about their mischief. Even on the off chance that Ron happened to catch them sneaking out, they would have just told him to go away. They'd be more likely to see what Percy was doing, so they could avoid him.
 * Does it say that Scabbers/Pettigrew necessarily was sleeping in Ron's bed every night? Potter only notices him on the map himself because he was out prowling and saw Pettigrew's name wandering the corridor.
 * Did Harry notice Peter's name in the book? I think was just the film.
 * No-Prize Explanation: The name on the map used to be Scabbers. It was only that year when the name started showing Peter Pettigrew again, because Peter's identity returned as his fear of Sirius and Crookshanks overwhelmed the mellow pet personality he'd assumed for himself over the years. In short, he had been Becoming the Mask as Scabbers, and come Sirius's escape, the mask came off.
 * All the explanations above have the same flaw - they adher to the following sequence: *Twins don't have the Map* - ??? - *Twins use the Map exclusively for praking and focusing only on secret passages and such*. But let's return to Step 2, namely what happened imeediately after they found the Map and figured out how to make it work (note, it doesn't have a manual on it). What would they do? Test it! Examine it thouroughly! And where would they start? Naturally, with the parts of the castle they already know well and can verify, i.e. their Common room! And what would they see? Exactly, an extra person, whom they at best never heard about, and at worst know as the gallant hero and martyr of the First War, Peter Pettegrew.
 * "Never heard about" shouldn't raise too many alarms, because even within the houses not everyone knows everyone. For example, Harry didn't meet Romilda Vane until his sixth year, and they're both Gryffindors.
 * She's a girl and Harry's a Socialy Awkward Hero. Twins hardly had that problem. If anybody ever knew everybody in their House (if not in the whole school), it would be them. Not that it really matters, the simple fact of there being more people on the Map than there were in the room should've raised their interest.

Um have to point out that Scabber wasn't even NEW to the family when Ron got him, Scabbers was Percy's pet rat BEFORE he became prefect so that means from Nov.2? Nov 3? 1987(maybe 1981-since for all we know it could have been Bill's pet before Percy's)-1990 Percy had it the twins start going to school in 2 years in fall 1989. The twins get the map in 1989..? and Percy has the rat for at least one more year between 1989 and 1991.

The Strange Case(s) of Peter Pettigrew

 * It is established that the reason Sirius knows where to find Wormtail is that he recognised him from the newspaper photo. Now, I can buy that Sirius would be able to tell the difference between his friend's animagus form and any other rat, but the picture wasn't of Scabbers, was it? It was of the entire Weasley family, and Scabbers was sitting on Ron's shoulders. And they have a big family. You may have been able to identify Scabbers as a rat, but he'd have been tiny. There's no way the differences between RATS are going to be visible at that size. I seriously doubt they'd have noticed the missing toe, either.
 * A couple of points here: Some rats are bigger than people think. In the movies, Scabbers is shown to be about the size of a 3-month-old kitten. Secondly, wizarding photographs move about, and interact with the wizard holding the photograph (as seen in OotP with Moody telling people in the old Order photograph 'Move along, one side' and the like to show off all of the old Order). It's possible that he saw the rat that was familiar, asked Ron to step forward with the rat in the picture, and got a clear view that way. It's not just the missing toe that gave Peter away; in their school days, they used to run around at least once a month with each other for the better part of at least 2 years. It's like recognizing a human friend in a photograph from a distance. You get the idea you might be wrong, and you need a closer look, but you get that pang of recognition.
 * Indeed, male domestic rats can weigh upward of half a kilogram. I should know, I've held one that was - he's so big, he really has to be held in two hands.
 * Also keep in mind that the Dementors have been "eating" his happy memories and basically forcing him to dwell on Peter's betrayal. It's not just a hazy memory of what his buddy looked like as a rat, it's literally all he's been able to think about for 12 years.
 * On the subject of Peter Pettigrew, it bugs me that neither the Potters, nor Lupin, nor Sirius ever figured out that Peter had turned over to Voldemort's side. True, they probably didn't pay much attention to him, but surely someone would have recognized that something was wrong? In Lily's letter to Sirius that Harry finds in DH, she mentions that Peter was acting odd last time he visited, and it makes sense that she wouldn't know why given that they didn't spend much time together. But James and Peter spent nearly their entire Hogwarts careers together—don't you think he would have been able to see that Peter was seriously off the mark? Or is Peter just that good of an actor?
 * People lie successfully all the time. That one's not even something we see take place in the continuity of the series, we just find out about it about after the fact, so I don't know how you can find it badly done/hard to believe. You might as well say the books are at fault for not explaining exactly how Aunt Petunia met and married Uncle Vernon.
 * Also, if Lily didn't know Peter all that well, it's entirely possible for her to describe "acting odd" when, to James, he was acting the same as he always was for the past 7+ years. Peter is clearly a very frightened person. While it doesn't excuse the betrayal of his only real friends or the glee he obviously took from the bullying of Severus Snape, he probably hid behind James a lot and James would've been used to seeing a very jumpy Peter. Peter being more jumpy than usual during a time of war wouldn't have surprised James. Lily would've only have gotten to know Peter well for at least three years, more depending on the exact age difference between Harry and his parents. (I'm under the assumption James and Lily were 20-21 when Harry was born, but that's due to something I read long ago. I've recently read they were 25-26, but I'm not sure which is correct.)
 * Besides, Lily is the type who sees the best in people. Look how long it took her to ditch Snape. Even seeing that Peter was acting strange, she probably wouldn't jump to the conclusion that he's a Death Eater.
 * From theenglishman who is otherwise a huge Harry Potter fan - until Lupin saw Peter Pettigrew on the Marauders' Map, he, like the rest of the wizarding world, had believed that Sirius Black betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort. Lupin seems oddly calm about having his entire world-view shifted in just an hour or so - even though he's considered the Only Sane Man to a bunch of (mostly) useless adults, that seems to stretch Angst? What Angst? to its limits.
 * It's possible that Lupin always suspected that something was off. Keep in mind, he knew something that no one else did: Sirius's and James's loyalty was such that they would risk a highly dangerous act of magic in his service. Peter was along for the ride, for the most part. So he can't rectify the image of Sirius that he's always had with the image of Sirius turning to Voldemort. Which would make him feel guilty, especially since he probably wouldn't be able to imagine Peter as the courageous hero he made himself out to be in his last moments. Then he sees Peter's name, and he sees that Peter didn't die. And the already shaky image he has of Peter as a hero falls apart. I imagine him being more relieved than angsty: he really didn't underestimate Peter, he really hadn't gotten himself killed for James and Lily; what else could he have been wrong about?
 * Besides, take note that Sirius didn't act as a bloodthirsty murderer either. He didn't kill anybody when he had a chance in the boys' dorm. I think Lupin was already confused and unsure in anything by the moment of Reveal. Finally, even seeing Peter's name on the Map didn't immediately transcribe into "Pete's a traitor" for him. Only when learning about Peter's time as Ron's rat, did he understand everything. So in fact the "shift of world-view" was rather gradual.
 * If Crookshanks was such a threat to him in his rat form, either physically or because the cat's actions might eventually cast suspicion upon him, why didn't Pettigrew ever do something to stop Hermione's pet from pursuing him? There must have been times when both Scabbers and Crookshanks were left behind in the dormitory while all the students were in class. So why couldn't Peter have returned to his human form and snuck into Hermione's room long enough to kill the cat? That would protect his life and his secret, while denying Sirius the help he needed to get past the Whomping Willow. He could even set things up for Sirius to take the blame for Crookshanks's death, if he left the doors to the Gryffindor dormitory and Hermione's room open a bit, so it looked like Black broke in again, and found the cat wandering loose in the common room.

The Trouble With Time-Turners 9: Past Mistakes
"Professor McGonagall told me what awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time...loads of them have ended up killing their past or future selves by mistake!"
 * Killing your future self, fine, I can see how that works. But how do you go back in time and kill your past self?


 * Maybe "killing" isn't the word so much as changing the course of events to kill your past self. For instance, going back in time to stop a death eater attack, but an escaping death eater recognizes you and kills your past self. If meant literally perhaps seeing your past self causes regret enough to kill themselves as a byproduct of the time turner.
 * Time can't be changed though, that's my point. If you go back in time and cause something to happen then that thing had always happened. A loop where your future self gets killed is fine, a loop where the past self is killed would be completely unstable. The progression of time from any individual reference frame is linear, but different reference frames follow different lines. From the reference frame of the Earth, all these events only happened once, but since the temporal line you're following is curved you see these events that only happen once at different times on your line. They still only happen once, so what had already happened can't be changed.
 * First off time travel is complicated. Under Harry Potter's rules for time travel we don't know what would happen if someone went back in time and killed themselves in the past. By use of the time turner it's possible, but the ramifications aren't clear.
 * If you change the past then it wasn't the past. It was an alternate universe that proceeded identically until that point. Changing the past is a logical impossibility. If you had a time machine and went back into the past, then tried to change something that you knew had already happened you would fail. Most philosophers who study this would say that you would likely fail due to circumstance. Something random would prevent you from changing the past for the simple reason that you have already failed to change the past.
 * It will seem that way to you but if someone else changes the past then you're either still in the same universe and see the ramifications or it never happened in the first place. So if you want to go that way everyone that killed themselves in the past went to an alternate history/universe while the effects still happened for everyone else. To reiterate my point time travel is complicated and has different rules depending on the fiction. In this case changes can happen even if the one that caused them won't necessarily feel them.
 * Yes, time travel is complicated. However, both of Einstein's relativity theories imply that past and future are not absolute, but instead are dependent on the frame of reference from which they are observed. There will be a frame of reference in which the event which the time-traveller is attempting to prevent occurs simultaneously with the the event where the time-traveller is going back in time. As such, you are observing both the event and some-one attempting to prevent the event occurring at the same time. Thus, it is impossible for one of them not to happen, as you can see both of them happening.
 * And, yes. I am aware that I'm trying to apply relativistic physics to a children's book about magic.
 * Answering the original question: if you kill your past self, then you take its place and again live the period of your life until the moment of time-travel. Then you go back in time and kill your past self, thus completing the cycle and locking yourself in a Groundhog Day Loop forever.
 * Simple, if one is startled enough and gets into a fight, it could be easy enough for future self to kill past self in the heat of the moment, and depending on how difficult changing that makes it to navigate it might be near impossible to hit the reset button.
 * I don't see the problem. Either Minerva was lying to Hermione to ensure her responsible behavior, or the Ministry (namely Unspeakables) was lying to the population so everyone wouldn't try to meddle with time. In fact, the Time Turners could be completely safe (at least for the Universe and the timeline in general). Maybe if some time traveler ever came close to endangering the timeline he just got wiped out and disappeared. That's why everyone should be careful with Time Turners.
 * Hermione could just be exaggerating their danger to Harry, who is a teenage boy with a tragic past and a heroic streak - exactly the sort of person who would do something stupid and noble and get himself killed.

It's pronounced "Stoo-puh-fye"

 * Wormtail's escape required every person present in the scene to be clutching the Idiot Ball. What is the point of putting someone in manacles when you already know they can shrink down to rat size? And what kind of idiot makes one of the people holding the prisoner's restraints be the kid with the broken leg? If they'd simply fed Pettigrew a couple stunners and then levitated his unconscious carcass along like they were doing with Snape's, then even Lupin's wolfing out would not have ruined the whole thing. Or, hey, if they didn't want to risk the stunners wearing off, they could have just put Pettigrew in the Full Body-Bind. Hermione had only learned that one in first year. As is, they were practically begging for Pettigrew to make a break for it. Sodding Idiot Plot.
 * Word. In fact I can practically envision Lupin or Hermie (i.e. present people with brains) looking at the safely tied up and unconcious Severus, then at the conscious Pete in his stupid manacles and saying: "Guys, something tells me we're doing it wrong."

Containing werewolves: you're doing it wrong!

 * What was DD smoking when he devised the procedure to deal with teenage Lupin's condition? An allegedly haunted house on the outskirts of a town, with a secret passage leading to it, with an open entrance on the school grounds protected by a homicidal tree? The hell? I think even V would scratch his head at the contrivedness of this solution. It is blatantly unsecure, it's conspicuous, it adds another giant Shmuck Bait to the place that already feels no shortage of them and most importantly, what's the point? Why not just a padded, soundproof room somewhere in the dungeons? Why not the Room of Requirement? Even if it has to be a separate building (which does makes sense, I guess), why not just cast the Disillusionment Charm on Remus and whoever escorts him there? And why not simply immobilise him after he transforms, so that he couldn't hurt himself?
 * All I can saw about the Room of Requirement suggestion is that it wouldn't work because Dumbledore didn't know it existed. The rest, however, I have no answer for.

What the hell, Sirius?
Sirius' "highly amusing joke" on Snape has been bugging me ever since I first read this book. I can believe that he hated Snape enough to actually want him dead, but I'd really, really like to know what he had planned to say to Lupin the day after if his prank had worked.
 * Quite likely something on the order of "What the hell was Snape THINKING?!? I can't believe he was actually stupid enough to do it!" Honestly, Snape's actions here are beyond idiocy—why on Earth he would deliberately crawl down a dark tunnel towards a place already reputed to be dangerous simply because one of the four people who pranked him mercilessly had handed him the key? How could Snape possibly have expected to be walking into anything but a hideous ambush?
 * Although its instructive to note that by the Common Law, Sirius would actually bear no liability, either criminal or civil, for Snape's wrongful death even if Remus had eaten him. The short version is that 'contributory negligence', or 'that guy was already doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing at the time he got killed, so its his fault', would make the liability for Snape's death fall on Snape. (It can't fall on Remus—even if Wizarding law would very likely have been all 'kill the werewolf!' -- because at the time in question Remus is, through no fault of his own, in a condition where he is unable to understand the nature or consequences of his actions, much less be able to control them. Which means he's covered by the diminished responsibility defense.) The Shrieking Shack is private property, not on the grounds of Hogwarts—Snape is not only trespassing, he's breaking and entering. A trespasser has no lawful expectation of safety and the owner is under no obligation to inform him of safety hazards. That the Shrieking Shack already has a reputation for being "the most haunted place in Magical Britain", i.e., a reasonable person would already have grounds to suspect that this place may be dangerous, only makes Snape's position even worse. Now, if Sirius had made false promises of safety to Snape, if he'd told Snape 'Nah, its really all right, you'll be fine', then Sirius' position starts being problematic—but we have no canon this was the case. The only thing Sirius told Snape was how to get past the Whomping Willow, Snape was entirely on his own for the rest. So this is probably how Sirius avoided being expelled afterwards.
 * As for the alternative theory, that Sirius was genuinely trying to get Snape killed - remember that in the 'Snape's Worst Memory' scene, Snape's reaction to being dangled upside down by the Marauders was to hit James with a cutting curse. While he only inflicted a major gash on the cheek, he was being dangled upside down at the time and that likely threw off his aim; if Snape had landed his shot three inches higher, James Potter wouldn't have an eye. If he'd landed it six inches lower, he wouldn't have a jugular vein. Sirius is exactly the sort of person who'd go "Oh, so we're going loud now, Snivellus? We've taken it all the way to lethal hexes? You wanna play rough? I'LL FEED YOU TO A FUCKING WEREWOLF ROUGH, ASSHOLE!"

Not like the Death Eaters all have identification tattoos on their arms...

 * OK, it's mentioned several times that Sirius is believed to be The Dragon to Voldemort. If that's true, then why the hell didn't they check to see if this oh-so-important Death Eater had the Dark Mark when he was arrested?
 * He was arrested for betraying Potters and murdering 13 people. Whether or not he had the Mark was hardly important in comparison. Besides, with V dead apparently all the Marks faded.
 * they didn't fade right away, nor did they fade completely. Dark marks were still present during the trials for other Death Eaters, including Snape.
 * Maybe they did so and, finding none, concluded that Voldemort had opted not to slap an obvious "I'm-With-The-Bad-Guy" label on his Deep Cover agent.
 * Same reason they didn't check his wand with prior incantatem (and thus notice he never actually cast any blasting hexes that day), same reason they didn't give him veritaserum, same reason they didn't call in Dumbledore to Legilimize him, same reason they didn't give him any trial at all. It's because the Ministry of Magic is full of idiots. Hermione's 'wizards don't have an ounce of logic' comment from book 1 is the truest damn thing she's ever said.

Scabbers and Crookshanks
Ron's anger with Hermione for the alleged death of Scabbers is Ron being a world-class git for several reasons.
 * One: According to Harry's Hogwarts letter rats are not on the allowable list of pets in Hogwarts while cats are. So from the start, Ron's automatically in the wrong on this issue regardless of what else is going on.
 * Two: There are literally dozens of natural predators (owls) around Hogwarts that eat rats, in addition to the housekeeper's pet cat, in addition to the pet cats that other students own. Scabbers is, to put it charitably, in a high-risk environment. In such an environment it is Ron's responsibility to keep his pet rat inside its cage where it will be safe. If Scabbers had been a normal rat and not actually a shapeshifted adult wizard he wouldn't have lasted the first week without going down something's gullet. Ron is being too lazy to do what any rat owner is expected to do as a normal course of business, and then blaming Hermione for the consequences of his own failure. That's like not housebreaking your dog and then yelling at your roommate for failing to keep the carpet free of dog shit.
 * Three: Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother, cats eat rats. The entire reason cats were domesticated by mankind in the first place was because they kept mice and rats out of the grain storage at a time when nothing else was able to, and it wasn't until the 20th century that the primary purpose of keeping a cat became 'companionship and leisure' as opposed to 'pest control'. There is no practical way to keep even a house-broken domestic cat from chasing rodents—unless its one of the few cats that never makes the initial mental connection "hey, this squeaking thing is food!" at all, any healthy cat is going to hunt mice. For Ron to act surprised, let alone morally outraged, because a cat allegedly indulged in what is entirely natural and expected behavior for cats is a massive entitlement complex.
 * This is also why Hermione isn't callous for defending Crookshanks' actions as 'He's just following his nature!' She's only speaking the exact literal truth, just as if she were saying 'Crookshanks has four paws and is orange.'
 * So yes, Ron looks like a total idiot in this sequence and why oh why did Rowling write it?