Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (novel)/Headscratchers

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Gee, why would I have cast the Patronus charm if I didn't need it?

 * When pressed on the issue of his Patronus charm during the hearing at the Ministry, when nobody believed Harry about the Dementors, why didn't he ask, "Well, why else would I cast one of those charms?"
 * He did. Fudge and company would have decided that he did it for the attention or something and that he was obviously spoiled enough to think he could get away with it. Not that Harry would have thought of that...
 * The Patronus Charm is also used to send messages to other wizards. I don't think Harry knew that yet, but he would've had a hard time PROVING that he didn't know that, and he definitely had motivation to send messages to people during this time (remember at the beginning of this book, Harry was spending all of his time griping that no one was contacting him?). Also, if a dementor wasn't around, it would be very easy to summon a happy thought and cast this spell, and it's very impressive in appearance. It's probably the perfect "showing off" spell, and since Harry has earned a reputation as being a show-off attention-seeker... well...
 * Which is something that bugs me to no end. Originally, the Patronus Charm was described as "very complex magic", which even fully qualified wizards could not necessarily do, and yet, at some point in the books, every wizard and his dog is suddenly pulling off a Patronus as a messenger bird with consummate ease.
 * Actually, using a Patronus charm to send messages isn't that common; it's just common around the people that Harry knows. Sending messages with Patronuses was a technique invented by Dumbledore, and he had to specifically teach all the members of the Order of the Phoenix how to do it, and those are the only people that know how to send messages with Patronuses, or even that it is possible to do so. I'm pretty sure I found that out from a JKR interview. As far as the complexity of Patronuses go, the only people that we are shown making corporeal Patronuses are Order Members/Teachers (who are, as was pointed out in book seven, "very good at magic") and the students who were taught how to do it by Harry. Of course, there are a lot of people like that, all of whom are very close to Harry, which is why we see so many Patronuses over the course of the books.
 * It doesn't matter who the teacher is though, the fact that so many of the DA could make Patronus charms, so easily too, is something that bugs me. That, and it's not the fact that Patronus charms are used to send messages that bugs so much, it is the fact that apparently lots of people can conjure them up in the first place to send said messages. It simply goes against the fact stated that Patronuses are very difficult to produce. Plus I'm not convinced a message could be sent by a non-corporeal form Patronus, as that is just a whispy cloud of silver gas; it seems likely you need a fully formed one, which again is supposed to be very difficult to do.
 * It is highly possible, and supported by Harry's comments to the DA about making Patronuses, that making a corporeal Patronus, while still taking a bit of skill, is much much easier to do when not being faced by Dementors, and it's being able to conjure one while being affected by them that is the truly challenging part.
 * It's not only "highly possible," it's explicitly stated. And w/r/t the supposed near-impossibility of making a Patronus -- all that's ever really said is that few people are capable of it, which doesn't necessarily mean they couldn't learn to do it if they tried, just that they haven't learned. After all, how many Dementors did people expect to run into in their lives until random searches for Sirius started happening/until Voldemort took over Azkaban? I figure that what makes it impressive is that it's an Awesome but Impractical-unless-you're-Harry-and-his-friends skill that takes a lot of study and practice and understanding of what's required of you mentally -- like Legilimency and Occlumency, or becoming an Animagus -- not that you have to be blessed with special talent to even have a chance at it. If you met a bunch of teenage drama geeks who had gotten together and put on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for no reason, you'd be impressed and slightly disturbed, but you wouldn't marvel at how such a thing was possible. You'd just conclude that they put a lot of time and effort in.
 * The book outright states that "even many fully qualified wizards" can not perform the Patronus charm. Which is why it is super impressive that Harry manages it. To have a large bunch of school kids do it with relative ease is bad writing. To later have it as such an ubiquitous act performed by many wizards of varying talent levels, smacks of a soft retcon of its skill requirements.
 * Yes. My point is that saying "even many fully qualified wizards" can't do it doesn't mean they never could, it just means they can't. I can't knit a sock, but I could learn. Most wizards can't make a Patronus. It's a special skill. But it's a learnable skill. They could learn if they tried, and the Order and the D.A. all had good reasons to learn.
 * Given how the pre-Second War Ministry relies on dementors for its prison guards, fugitive-trackers, executioners and thugs in general, it's entirely possible that it doesn't want most of the population to be able to summon up a Patronus, for the same reason that few real-world governments like for the average civilian to have access to firearms that can punch through police body armor. Fudge's administration wasn't all that trusting of the citizens it governed, what with fanatics like Crouch Sr. and Umbridge having too much say in how things were done: if there's one non-Unforgivable spell they'd have an unstated, vested interest in keeping on the "You Don't Need To Learn This One" list, it's Expecto Patronum.
 * Come now. It is quite clear that the "even fully qualified wizards" line is implying that it is such a complex charm that even talented wizards can't do it because it is so difficult. That is why it is so impressive that Harry pulls it off. Attempting to frame it as "oh, it just means they have to learn it" is downplaying the whole thing simply to allow bad writing in a future book.
 * Easier than all that to explain: most of the people seen using it are children, and of those, the only ones pointed out to make a corporeal form weren't younger than sixteen or fifteen, and when they were in book five, they were having the time of their lives, screwing with Umbridge. Even Hermione was made giddy by it. And then in book seven, how the DA were able to use it then? They were elated at having seen Harry, so they could make much happier thoughts then. And the Order members could probably be able to think of one another, and Dumbledore, and the bonds that held them together, to make one. Also, since Patronuses, as seen in the books, seem to be fueled Crowning Moments of Heartwarming, and all of the students were on the side of Harry and Dumbledore, they could just think of those two and how heroic they are. That time Harry saved the Stone from Voldemort, or saved the school from the Basilisk, or when Dumbledore was protecting his students, or how Harry had honored Cedric's wish of being brought from the graveyard despite the dangers involved, or any heartwarming thing Dumbledore had ever done for the world would work pretty nicely.
 * Also, there aren't any Dementors around when the kids are making their Patronuses, that's what makes it hard. Harry thinks about how much easier it is when you're in a nice warm classroom with your mates than when you're facing your worst fears. And even then, just being corporeal isn't necessarily enough. Ron and Hermione’s corporeal Patronuses aren’t enough in the final battle in book 7; it takes Harry’s to drive the Dementors back.
 * I think you have to look at The entire "even fully qualified wizards" thing does seem to sum up a line of thinking that's surprisingly common in the wizarding world: Wizards, especially adult ones, do seem to be a little too quick to dismiss something as "impossible" or "too difficult" to do, when in reality it is perfectly achievable if you have the right mindset and are willing to put in the needed amount of work. Just think how people keep saying that it's impossible to sneak into Hogwarts, no matter how many times actual events in the books show otherwise. Casting a Patronus, especially a corporeal one at thirteen is an amazing achievement -- but as the members of the DA show, it's perfectly possible to learn it with the right motivation and hard work.
 * The Patronus charm is one of the biggest, shiniest spells in the wizarding arsenal. There's very little that looks quite as cool. The International Statute of Secrecy was probably written specifically for spells like that.
 * I'm pretty sure that Harry did use that defense, and when he had, one of the wizards there had came up with the counter-argument that Harry only thought of that lie because as the only witness there was a Muggle, and they had believed that Harry knew that Muggles couldn't see Dementors, that their only "witness" couldn't even testify whether there was a real threat or not. At that point, the Dementor excuse would have looked like a pretty lame cop-out, if it weren't for the surprise witness of the Squib Mrs. Figg.
 * The Fridge Logic that bugged me was that Dudley already knew about magic. Harry wasn't breaking the Secrecy statute, just the Underage decree. All they would've had to do to get half the charges dropped was question who Harry had been living with the past fourteen years. The Underage thing would've probably been a lot easier to tackle with that.
 * But anyone could've been looking out the window. And a Patronus lasts for a while after its initial creation, too. Presumably, it kept chasing the Dementors offscreen until it faded away or whatever happens to Patronuses when their creator no longer needs them.
 * Actually, I'm pretty sure they were in an alley, and people don't usually have windows overlooking narrow alleys. And in the film, they were in a subway.
 * Regardless of whether they were in an alley when they were attacked (and Harry and Dudley seemed to be under an overpass of some kind in the film, not a subway, which would be enclosed), that isn't the part that they're in trouble for. The Dementors attack them in a place where they are vulnerable and where others might not notice they're in trouble, but obviously for the Patronus to be effective, it has to chase them away. Since the Dementors actually leave the alley with the Patronus's efforts, the Patronus also must have left the alley, into an area in which it could have been spotted by Muggles.
 * Harry was also underage at the time and using his magic outside of school, which is a separate offense. Therefore, he is in trouble regardless of Dudley's knowledge of magic.
 * Plus, they couldn't care less if Dudley knew about magic or not. They were just stringing on as many offenses as they could. They wanted Harry convicted of whatever they could, so they resorted to the letter of the law rather than the spirit.
 * And the Statute probably isn't just about keeping everyone ignorant that magic exists; it probably extends to not telling Muggles who are in-the-know more than what's necessary about how magic works. It was instituted in a time when the wizarding world was afraid of persecution, after all: no need to forearm your potential enemies.
 * It bugs me that the detection of underage magic is so inconsistent in the books. Dobby uses magic in Harry's house, and Harry gets blamed for it. That makes sense, because we are told that pureblood children don't get punished for underage magic because their houses have adult wizards. That means that the detection of magic is based on the location of the child and the other inhabitants of the house's ability with magic; otherwise, they would know that the magic performed in the house wasn't done by Harry specifically. But in the case of the Dementors, Harry's magic is detected while he's outside of the house, so there must be some kind of a spell on HIM that tells the Ministry he's using magic. The fact that they DON'T detect the magic from the Dementors as being Harry as well mean that all of the sudden, the way they're finding out about underage magic is different. It feels like she just conveniently changed it so that Harry would have the conflict with the government and their refusal to acknowledge the Dementors, which would be hard to overlook if they were monitoring magic they way they were in book 2.
 * Most fans like to Take a Third Option and suggest that both are active, but normally a student wouldn't get as much attention as Harry Potter.
 * A decent alternate explanation might be that Fudge said they had no other registered wizards where Harry lived, so if they detect any magic at all, they automatically assume it's Harry's fault.
 * My take is is that it's the wizarding world's version of invisible privilege. Sure, the intention is that all underage wizards are restricted from using magic from outside of a school environment, but it winds up affecting Muggle-borns (and Harry) more than anyone else. The Twins are clearly able to get away with magic experiments on the sly, and I doubt that Malfoy's parents ever stopped him from using magic.
 * This is all covered in book 7, it's called The Trace. The Ministry can detect any magic done in the vicinity of an underage wizard, hence Harry getting blamed for Dobby's magic. And yes, it is covered that if the kid is living with other wizards, it's pretty much just up to the adults there to keep them following the rules, it's only kids that have no other known wizards in their house that really get noticed. And as to them not detecting the Dementors, The Trace only seems to pick up actively cast spells, not any magic of any kind.
 * All of that aside, it's explicitly stated that Harry is the only wizard living in Little Whinging. When Mrs. Figg said she was a resident of LW near Harry's house, she had to specify that she was a Squib and thus didn't actually show up in the registry as a witch even though she had knowledge of the magical world and wasn't exactly a Muggle. Madam Bones also says 'that situation has always been closely monitored given past events', hinting, I suspect, that since the Hover Charm incident in book two, they've been paying special attention to magic use in Harry's area.
 * You guys are also forgetting one important fact: Who set the Dementors on Harry in the first place? Umbridge. Now, if she could pull strings to have Harry attacked, what's to say she didn't change a few things with however they keep track of The Trace? I'm almost positive she manipulated things to look even worse for Harry behind the scenes.
 * Exactly. She must have been trying a Xanatos Gambit in which Harry would either have his soul sucked out for trying to obey the law and not defending himself, or defend himself but break the law in the process (allowing the Ministry to have his wand snapped.) Either way, Harry would be too dead/disgraced to be a menace to the Ministry any longer.

That Liar's Not Lying

 * In OOTP, why didn't Harry attempt to prove he wasn't lying about Cedric's death? He could have smuggled some Veritaserum into class, he could have recorded his memories in the Pensieve, and there's even a straight-up mind probe spell introduced in the same book. Sure, it's risky and illegal, but that never stopped him before; at the very least, he could have had basically all the students on his side within a week.
 * He did: That's what the interview with Rita Skeeter was all about. Once that was published, the entire student body (bar the Slytherins) was back on his side. And as Slughorn proved, even Pensieve memories can't be trusted 100 percent: there's no guarantee the memories are 100% accurate.
 * Even if he did use Veritaserum, that could actually make things worse, because they might use that as proof that he was insane, because he believed his lies, and have him put in St. Mungo's. Think about it; if people are not sure whether you're a liar or insane, it's better that you don't eliminate "liar".
 * This. It's pretty evident that Veritaserum can only compel truth as you know it, not absolute truth. Remember, Barty Crouch Jr. directly stated under Veritaserum that Voldemort was back, and Fudge still refused to believe him, claiming that he was obviously delusional. If Harry had been questioned under Veritaserum, Fudge would simply have said that Harry was delusional and should be put away for his own protection -- rather this than face the terrible possibility that Voldemort is back.
 * Word of God says that Veritaserum cannot be used in court for evidence because it's not reliable enough for legal proceedings. Its effects can be resisted if the victim is properly prepared for it.
 * And there's no reason as to why Harry can't let the Ministry decide on what method they use to get the truth out of him? Because we all know Harry was telling the truth, he has nothing to lose by letting the Ministry choose their own means - particularly means that possibly most students couldn't lie their way through or resist. Heck, he could have even let the Ministry choose when and where to do this, without telling him, so that way they'd have the added advantage of getting Harry when his guard is down, minimizing any chance to try to prepare an immunity. And we are talking about an entire group of fully grown wizards, some of them considerably powerful (like the Aurors), so you'll have a hard time finding a reason to get me to believe how none of them could think of a plausible method to get the truth out of a fifteen-year old boy who has yet to finish school.
 * Fudge didn't want to have proof that Voldemort was back. He was too scared of dealing with that, hence his plugging his ears and going "La la la, Harry's lying and Voldemort's not back!" Hence also the massive discrediting and the hearing. Why would Fudge willingly try to shift for evidence to shatter his comfort zone, even if Harry offered the Ministry their choice of interrogation (I also don't blame Harry for not considering such methods - considering how unethical the Ministry gets later, imagine what would happen if they were left to poke around in his head with no guarantees of safety. I certainly wouldn't want to be mind raped by a group of powerful people who consider me to be a lying Attention Whore). Plus, as has been proven, there really is no ultimate way to tell the truth. Veritaserum, the Imperius Curse, memories, Legilimacy, all of those things have been proven to be blockable or resistible.
 * Whew, that must've been a big bull. Ok, let's get down to shoveling. "Fudge didn't want..." - he was not the supreme ruler of all Britain. The majority of the Wizengamot aquited Harry's innocence. Are you telling me none of them was interested in knowing the truth? "even if Harry offered" - that's the point. He didn't offer, he didn't dare them when he could've. It's one thing to call a boy who cries "Wolf!" a liar and another one - to step back when he offers to prove it. If you refuse that, you practically admit that you're afraid of the result. "Considering how unethical the Ministry gets later" - so the Scarhead took into consideration the circumstances that were yet to happen? Wow, the boy must've been slacking at Divination - he was a friggin seer! "With no guarantees of safety" - suggest to do it in the presence of people he trusts (DD, MG, Weasleys, Moody, you name it). "...have been proven to be blockable or resistible" - right. A fifteen year old boy is gonna, what was that, "seal his own throat or transfigure the serum before it touches his lips" (seriously, did this woman even read her own stories?), and nobody is gonna notice. Are you kidding me? "Fudge would have said that Harry was delusional..." - so you mean to tell me that there is no way to establish clarity of mind in that wretched Verse? "Crouch Jr. directly stated under Veritaserum...Fudge still refused to believe him" - nope, Fudge was only told that Crouch testified, and he fed the kid to a Dementor before the testimony could be repeated. Thus he could claim that DD'd lied about the whole thing.
 * Direct quote from Fudge on the matter: "Crouch may have believed himself to be acting upon You-Know-Who’s orders -- but to take the word of a lunatic like that, Dumbledore..." At this point he's not claiming Dumbledore is lying; he's saying that Crouch was insane and that his word couldn't be trusted. When Dumbledore says that Harry saw Voldemort return, Fudge then accuses Harry of being mentally unstable and untrustworthy (the articles in the Daily Prophet being convenient "proof"). So yes, I think I do mean to tell you that there is no way -- at least no quick and easy way -- to establish clarity of mind in that wretched 'verse. If there had been an easy and foolproof way to declare Harry completely sane, why on earth wouldn't Dumbledore have suggested it then?
 * Indeed, why*cough*lousywriting*cough*whouldn't he? The direct quote doesn't change the fact that Crouch Jr. was dead by that moment. It's easy to write off the words of a dead man as lies or insanity, but not so much with a living one.
 * Why not, if said living man is already starting to get an (admittedly undeserved) reputation as a mentally disturbed attention-seeker? Especially if there's no reliable way to establish that he is of sound mind, and it suits you damn well to cling to the hope that he's delusional? Fudge is doing the equivalent of sticking his fingers in his ears and going "LALALALA I can't hear you," and we already know that there are several higher-ups in the Ministry of Magic who are former Death Eaters, and to whom Fudge's willful blindness is very convenient indeed, and they'll of course be on his side and thus take it upon themselves to make it more difficult for anyone genuinely interested in finding out the truth.
 * Why didn't Harry attempt to prove he wasn't lying about Cedric's death? Simple. He's fifteen years old, and frankly, not the smartest fifteen year old alive. He's not a good strategist. He can think on his feet and come up with plans on the fly, but rational, thought-out planning? Not his strong suit. Add to it that he's gone through the trauma of seeing someone he knew die, and knowing he was indirectly responsible for the death (Cedric wouldn't have been there to die if Harry hadn't suggested they both take the cup), and that he's told Dumbledore what happened and for several weeks believes that Dumbledore will make people listen. So what happens when he finds out this isn't the case? Harry's reaction isn't to set out to prove he's right, it's to get angry that people don't believe him. He starts shouting. He gets sarcastic. He all but outright demands that people believe him because it's the truth, dammit. You might cry Idiot Ball at this, but knowing the teenagers I do, I find it to be a very realistic reaction.

If you want a job done right, you've gotta do it yourself...

 * In Order of the Phoenix, why didn't Voldemort just come to get the prophecy himself? It would have taken a few seconds: apparate in, grab the prophecy, apparate out. If he did it at night, he wouldn't even have to worry about being seen because the Ministry hasn't ever heard of nighttime security guards. But noooooooooooo, he just had to trick Harry into coming and getting it. Of course, dozens of Death Eaters (including prison escapees) don't look suspicious at all. Nope, nothing at all suspicious about a massive battle in the Ministry of Magic itself.
 * Wasn't it stated that a prophecy could only be retrieved by whoever it was made about? Meaning that Harry (and only Harry) could pick it up from the shelf?
 * Doesn't work - the prophecy's card had "S. some initial T. to A.P.W.B.D, Dark Lord and (?) Harry Potter" on it. Both the Dark Lord and Harry were named on it, ergo, either could pick it up. The stated explanation is that people are much less likely to notice a few kids than they are to notice the evil Dark Wizard who they all think is still dead.
 * Did "Dark Lord" even count as being named? Since it appears to be the title card and not the actual prophecy that matters. If he was called Dark Lord or Voldemort instead of Tom Marvolo Riddle (or Tom Riddle instead of Voldemort, if he'd Become The Mask), it probably shouldn't count as having been named. So it was only Harry anyway, despite the prophecy not actually naming him, and being nearly as much about Neville.
 * For that matter, Voldemort is more conclusively named in the prophecy than Harry! There were two potential "Chosen Ones," remember?
 * The "Some Initial" is likely "P.", since Sybil Patricia Trelawney (according to Word of God on her name) told the prophecy to Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, regarding the Dark Lord and Harry Potter. Harry is mentioned by name, and there's only one Dark Lord associated with him.
 * Well, yeah, but there's only one actual Chosen One. The moment Harry got his scar, his mark of being Voldemort's equal, that was it - Neville was out of the running. As for whether "Dark Lord" counts as being named, it always seemed to me that, while the fact that Voldemort went to Hogwarts was common knowledge, the fact that Voldemort was Tom Riddle was... well, not exactly a secret, but not exactly common knowledge either. It was a big surprise to everyone except Dumbledore when Tom was revealed to be Voldemort in CoS. And while Dumbledore might have told the Ministry, he might also have decided not to say anything - the Ministry doesn't exactly have a great track record for believing Dumbledore about things Voldemort-related, so the idea that Voldemort, champion of the purebloods, was actually a half-blood orphan would probably be dismissed as ridiculous (and you can see their point - the idea of a half-blood leading the purebloods to victory over his fellow half-bloods and Muggle-borns is kind of illogical, not to mention self-destructive; after all how would the purebloods react if, after they'd won, it came out that their leader was technically on the other team), and we do have precedent for Dumbledore keeping important info close to his chest. And the Ministry's not going to put Voldemort on the orb because that would mean actually writing the word Voldemort out - something that 99% of wizards are too scared to do.
 * A more clear and concise explanation: Two Choosable Ones, one Chosen One.
 * Pretty sure Harry already asked that, and I'm pretty sure Bellatrix already told him that Voldemort didn't want to risk exposing himself too early, since Fudge did Voldemort the courtesy of ignoring and covering up his return.
 * The absence of nighttime security guards was noted as odd by the characters; the manpower probably came in handy to get them out of the way. And Voldemort can be forgiven for thinking that those numbers would intimidate six teenagers (or three, by his intelligence) into handing over the prophecy. The Death Eaters, moreover, concealed their faces; Fudge policy would find some way to explain it, but there's really no getting around the seven-foot-tall skeletal figure. Don't suppose he could Polyjuice, either (only one-eighth human, after all), or he would Polyjuice Bathilda instead of resorting to Inferi.
 * So he couldn't just kill any guards that saw him in the space of a few seconds that it would have taken him to get the prophecy?
 * What's the betting the Ministry has wards that record each and every person entering the Ministry? Lucius and other Ministry employees arrive early, taking out guards and unlocking doors. Prison escapees and other criminals arrive later, join up with them. Looking at the wards, it looks like a raiding party led by Sirius Black attacked the ministry, nothing more. Obviously, Voldemort couldn't resist an entrance towards the end, mostly because the plan was already pretty screwed (One of the Death Eaters was going to talk eventually).
 * No, they really don't have wards for that sort of thing. What really gets me mad is that even if they did, the Death Eaters could've just smashed the prophecy and written it down for Voldemort. And, sure, one of the Death Eaters might have talked eventually, but no one would have believed them anyway. So why the grand entrance? And for that matter, why the secrecy? Why can't Voldemort just walk in the Ministry front door and start killing people? He's immortal, so what are they going to do?
 * The issue wasn't really Voldemort dying, it was him being discovered. As Bellatrix points out, the Ministry is happily ignoring Harry and Dumbledore while going after Sirius, leaving Voldemort free to sneak around and regain power. If he's seen, there goes that card.
 * "Him being discovered" is not an issue if you consider Polyjuice Potion. The Death Eaters had already captured Bode, a guy who works in the Department of Mysteries, so what's to stop Voldemort from Polyjuicing himself into Bode, casually going to work, and getting the prophecy?
 * At the time they captured him, they used the Imperious curse on him to get the prophecy (causing him to be hurt and hospitalized). They didn't know what the protections on the prophecies were. It's not until Voldemort frees his followers from Azkhaban that he understands exactly how to do it, and at that point he thinks it'll be easier to hit two birds with one stone by tricking Harry into getting it and being captured.
 * As Voldemort's physical form at the beginning of the series indicates, his form of immortality does not actually render him immune to death, it just renders death a recoverable condition. It's still moderately inconvenient. It took quite a few years worth of scheming and evil to get his body back the last time he lost it. It'd really suck to spend another ten years wandering around Romania just because a security guard got off a lucky shot.
 * Why not just prepare a few batches of that potion that revives him and then storm the Ministry? The people there are mostly cowards, so most would probably surrender or flee. Only a few would even try to fight, and he could easily out-duel them.
 * And fleeing witnesses aren't a problem how? At any rate, the resurrection ritual is considerably more formal than that.
 * The resurrection ritual is not all that complicated; the potion only needs three ingredients. And as for fleeing witnesses, they're no more of a problem than it was when Voldemort's return was made public in the newspaper. In case you don't know, despite that, he was winning the war in the sixth book.
 * Right, three ingredients: bone from his father: easy, but rather limited; blood from his enemy: a little bit harder, unless you have a "blood donation" scheme to fool him; and flesh from the servant: one time or another, no one likes to lose his body parts, even if it's to revive his master. Not to mention most powerful and/or dark potions have those bizarre and arbitrary constraints, like leaving the ingredients brewing for a month before adding the rest of them. Oh, and you're not considering the "primordial liquid" inside the cauldron.
 * Word of God says there's more steps to the resurrection spell then what we saw in the book, just like there's more steps to making a Horcrux than just going up to someone and killing them. It's just that they were apparently too horrible to include because they freaked out Rowling's editor. I'm guessing it has something to do with how Voldemort got into his ugly baby form...
 * The Horcruxes don't get used up, they anchor the main part of the soul on this side of the veil. The resurrection ceremony didn't "unmake" a Horcrux. It created a new body and ensouled it with the fragment of soul that had been hanging around as Vapormort for the past thirteen years. "All" the Horcruxes did was make sure that that piece of soul was still around to put into the new body.
 * In any case, Voldemort had bigger fish to fry than casually dropping by the Ministry. It didn't suit his plan for complete take-over; he wasn't ready yet. There were other pieces to put together during that time, plus the way I see it, he thought that this was a simple enough task for Malfoy and Bellatrix to handle. When he finally did show up, he made it pretty clear that he was furious that he was there in the first place. He didn't expect it to be Battle at the Ministry!; It was supposed to be easy recon. Mostly the fault lies with Bellatrix for being so crazy.
 * Also, Voldemort, despite being technically immortal, probably can't afford to do too many resurrection spells. One of the necessary ingredients is "bone of the father", and he seems to have used most of it up when he got re-bodied.
 * Because Harry would have ended up there anyway. Considering the track record of the past few years and the fact Harry was dreaming about the room, chances are if Voldemort went there, Harry would have known and shown up with better protection. Voldemort decided just to simplify things and send someone to take it from Harry. Better to have it on your own terms then have to worry about the Big Damn Heroes showing up a few minutes off schedule.
 * Another possibility is that there is some record somewhere as to who picked up the prophecy in the first place. We know that there are protections against the wrong person trying to acquire a prophecy; perhaps there's a system set up so that you know when the right person did. If so, Harry picking it up meant that anybody looking into it would see his name and chalk it up to his desperate need to be the center of attention. Voldemort going in and claiming it would say The Dark Lord on whatever list records such things and would be indisputable proof that he was back.
 * Exactly why would Voldemort need to worry about the list showing he was there? Apart from (possibly) Dumbledore, he was the most skilled wizard alive at that point, surely he could just change the records?
 * Because Voldy was considerably more circumspect (or cowardly) in his second rise than his first. Even when he's actually taken over (in Deathly Hallows), he does so behind a proxy. Considering that he was defeated by a baby Harry last time around, it makes sense to avoid confronting Harry if he can do so.
 * Assume that only two people can pick up the prophecy, Voldemort and Harry. Assume that Harry can prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he did not pick up the prophecy. The prophecy is gone. Who took it? Voldemort. Ergo, it's in Voldemort's best interests to make Harry do it.
 * One: You can't Apparate into the Ministry of Magic. Two: The plan was to have Harry and friends break into the Ministry, grab the prophecy, take the prophecy from Harry and friends, leave, and frame Harry for the whole thing. So that's why he didn't just show up. So his return would still be unnoticed until he was at his seat of power.
 * Harry was only dreaming about the door because Voldemort was, and Voldemort didn't realize the connection that they had quite yet, so that couldn't have been part of his plan. Voldemort spent all year trying to get the prophecy, so it's not like he was too busy or important to do it. Why couldn't Voldemort just have his Death Eaters go in (just like they did in the book) and clear the way, but instead of luring Harry there, he showed up himself (and apparently could apparate and disapparate there, as that's probably how he showed up and definitely how he left) to grab the prophecy. How to hide his theft? Smash the shelf that the prophecy was on. For good measure, smash several other shelves as well. None of the other propehcies are talking about him, so why would he care about the damage? This way, it wouldn't be obvious that his prophecy was the one that was targeted, and in the book, several shelves of prophecies were smashed with no ill effect, so it could have been easily done.
 * Whoever said you can't Apparate into the Ministry of Magic? Mr. Weasley said he normally Apparated to work, and in The Deathly Hallows, Ministry workers were whining about having to be flushed to work instead of Apparating like normal.
 * You can Apparate into the lobby of the MoM, and that might have been what the Order did instead of taking a flue. Possibly employees can even Apparate to and from their offices, although clearly there's security restrictions for visitors. Regardless of the rules, I'm certain that random people can't Apparate into the Department of Mysteries! Letting people pop in and out of your top secret labs would be a pretty stupid idea. (As would letting people just walk off the elevator into it, but the Death Eaters probably left any security disabled. But there's no reason to disable the Apparation wards for teenagers who can't do that anyway.)
 * Honestly, I can't figure it either. You'd think that if a fifteen foot mutant python of death could sneak on down to the DOM and bite Arthur Weasley without anyone seeing it come or go, Voldemort himself would have no trouble sneaking in even if he was wearing a clown suit and playing the tuba. (Or, more seriously, using polyjuice potion and disguised as somebody whose presence would be unremarkable.)
 * I also think the reason was that the Prophecy ball didn't refer to Voldemort by name (or even his alias). It just said: "The Dark Lord". Sure, he thought it was about him, but the wards on the ball might have thought otherwise, and there was no safe way to tell. So he didn't want to risk as long as there was an alternative.
 * Everyone seems to be assuming there's some sort of built-in magical rule on the prophesies, but considering the listed names are 'wrong' (Tom Riddle's name is not 'Dark Lord', and the other was a question mark to start with and someone decided it was Harry), and considering someone put it on the shelf to start with, it's just as likely that's a individual curse cast on all prophesies with explicitly listed exclusions. So possibly someone said 'For once, let's not follow the stupid rules, and not exclude Voldemort from the curse, because screw him, he killed a friend of mine.'. And even if they didn't, if the person who did the cursing was a stickler for the rules, Voldemort doesn't know that for sure. Heck, perhaps you have you have to identify people by their actual names, and no one even knew his.

Purple Fire, Empty Lips

 * At the end of OOTP, it is mentioned that the curse that Dolohov had used on Hermione was less effective because he couldn't talk, but isn't that kind of the whole point of non-verbal spells?
 * Maybe Dolohov is poor at non-verbal spells?
 * I would say the spell is weaker because he's not trying to do a non-verbal spell, he's trying to do it verbally with no voice. Non-verbal spells are done in the mind. There's no indication that non-verbal spells are weaker than verbal ones. When Harry threw Snape across the room during a lesson with a Shield Charm, the strength of Protego is clearly because Harry is really angry. Other characters have used "Protego" verbally before and it's never had an effect like that, so it's not stronger because it's said out loud. There are plenty of examples of non-verbal spells being incredibly strong when used properly.
 * Spells seem to have different rules and operations depending on the spell. This particular curse might've been more powerful if Dolohov had spoken it.
 * Makes sense. The next book does imply that levicorpus can only be cast non-verbally.

Doom & Gloom

 * So, you have to have observed death, horrible, horrible death, to see the Thestrals? So, why couldn't Harry see them from the first year? Cedric died to Avada Kedabra, as did Harry's mom... Is his mother's death not horrible enough?
 * It's not a "Horrible death" that one has to see, but a death in general. I presume it means one has to see death, and have the understanding of what they saw in order for them to see Thestrals. Thus the reasoning why he can't see them in year one. He couldn't understand what he saw as a 1 year old, let alone remember it.
 * Harry didn't actually see his mum killed, he only heard it. Otherwise, he would've recalled the sight of her death when confronted by dementors, not just the sound of it. Word of God holds that he was lying in his crib at the far corner of the nursery, and didn't see her confronting Voldemort in the doorway.
 * That makes the flashback scenes in Deathly Hallows Part II quite problematic...
 * Also, first-years don't travel by Thestrals anyway....
 * Yes, but thestrals pull the carriages that the older students ride from the Hogwarts Express to the castle.
 * I can't remember where I read this (in a fanfic I think), but someone suggested that whether you can see Thestrals or not has to do with innocence. According to this fanfic (and yes I am aware that something said in a fanfic isn't canon, but it's a good explanation with nothing in canon to refute it - that I know of) there's a certain type of innocence that you don't lose until you see someone die, after which you can see Thestrals. When Voldemort killed Harry's parents, he was too young to understand what was going on, so remained innocent. When Wormtail killed Cedric, Harry was old enough to understand, so lost his innocence.
 * This is something that's bugged me - what about animals? In a truly biological sense, humans generally will be more affected by watching one of their own die, as opposed to another animal. But this isn't always the case; for example, in the film Waltz with Bashir, one actual line from a psychaitrist described a man who had finally taken in the horrors of the war he was fighting when he saw horses dying in droves from illness and starvation. Or what if you were watching a beloved pet parrot die (as parrots can live for decades)? What exactly is the level of pain one has to feel after seeing death to see Thetrals? Because I would bet on most of the students having seen a bug get smooshed before.
 * And what if Antimony saw a bug get smooshed (and somehow had avoided all the death she witnessed in the hospital while interning for the psychopomps and training to be a medium)? She doesn't consider squishing bugs to be murder, and thus would likely not count as having "processed" it, but Ketrak shows up anyway, so might that count? Crossover Cosmology is interesting to think about, but unlikely to ever result in definitive answers.
 * I have thought about the animals/Thestrals many, many times, especially since my Undergraduate Dissertation was on animality in the Harry Potter books. I always wondered whether seeing an animal die would have the same effect. My guess is that it would, but it would depend upon the circumstances. The same way that I think it's possible that a person see another person dying and not be very moved by it... But the really interesting question for me is: can other animals see Thestrals? Which ones? And when? Can only magical animals see Thestrals (and the same thing can be asked regarding Muggles/wizards)? Do magical animals (or animals in general) also need to see someone (or some animal) die in order to see Thestrals? If an animal (magical or not) can always see Thestrals, does that mean they have a deeper and more rooted understanding of death than humans? Or if they have to see death like us, does that mean that death is a puzzling mystery to animals as it is to us? What are the crazy ethical consequences of this to the magical world???
 * Animals' deaths probably don't count. According to the marginal notes in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Ron once had a pet puffskein that died when Fred used it for bludger practice. Ron presumably witnessed this first-hand -- else, the twins would've surely covered for one another about what happened to his pet, and he wouldn't have known why it died -- yet Ron couldn't see the thestrals. As for animals' seeing thestrals, they probably don't fully comprehend death enough to ever penetrate their invisibility, as it would negate the protective function of this power if any predator that's made a previous kill could see them.
 * Thinking about Thestrals... Why didn't Quirrell's death allow Harry to see them?
 * He had his eyes closed, and was probably unconscious by the time Quirrell actually died in the books.
 * What I want to know is why Harry didn't see the Thestrals at the end of his fourth year, but could see them at the start of his fifth. He'd seen Cedric die by then, and didn't see anyone die between end of fourth year and start of fifth, so what changed?
 * This was explained in an interview actually, and the fanfic is basing itself partially on the interview. It's explained that when Harry sees Cedric die, he loses his "innocence", but doesn't have time for it to sink in yet as he's still in shock. Thus after the summer, after it settles on him, when he comes back, he understandably freaks when he sees the Thestrals.
 * Rowling said that she didn't want to add the thestrals at that point because they would disrupt the flow of the narrative, tacking on a new subplot (just what are those skeletal horse things?) into the denouement of the fourth book that wouldn't be resolved until the fifth book. So she made up some bullshit about Harry needing to "process" Cedric's death before he could see the thestrals.
 * Read that as Rowling didn't think of the idea of thestrals pulling the carts until book five.
 * ...and you'd be completely wrong. She said explicitly in an interview that she knew what was pulling the carriages (Thestrals) from the beginning.
 * Well, it is not exactly as though Rowling does not have an incentive to lie on this topic (along with any other claim to have "thought of it from the beginning"), though just because she has an incentive does not mean she is lying. So, it comes down to a case of whether you choose to believe her, and there is a reason to not believe. Without evidence one way or the other, it cannot be definitively stated whether or not she knew about the thestrals from the beginning or not.
 * Besides, whether or not you think she lied, bringing up the thestrals at the end of the 4th book would have disrupted the ending quite badly. She would have had to devote at least a couple paragraphs (maybe even a page or two) to the fact that the thestrals are suddenly visible, which would have been pretty jarring compared to all the other stuff that was happening, leaving readers going "...What?" Either she gets people claiming she BSed stuff on her own creatures, or she would have gotten complaints about throwing something into the last few pages that, at the time, would have seemed contradictory to how the carriages were at the beginning of the book. Also, "Harry was too in shock" makes a fair bit of sense anyway, and even if it doesn't, it's also semi-plausible that he might have been just barely able to see them but just didn't care (again, because of being in shock).
 * Seems pretty straightforward to me... To see Thestrals, you must not only have watched someone die, but also realize what it is you're seeing. Hence, even if Harry had directly seen Voldemort kill his mother at the age of one, it wouldn't have made him see the Thestrals because he wouldn't have comprehended what it was he saw. (By comparison, Neville and Luna can see the Thestrals because they watched family members die when they were old enough to understand what was going on.) And as is stated in the first book, Harry never actually sees Quirrell die -- he blacks out while Quirrell is still struggling, and when he wakes up to see Dumbledore, he doesn't know that Quirrell is dead before Dumbledore tells him. By contrast, when Cedric dies, Harry knows exactly what is going on, and so this event is what makes him able to see the Thestrals. However, the process isn't immediate; maybe because the first shock of the death kinda numbs you, and it's only when you actually have processed what happened that the Thestrals become visible. (That, and Rowling didn't want to include a brand new plot point at the end of book four.)
 * Could have been interesting to see if Harry had gradually started to see the Thestrals as he processed Cedric's death. Maybe they'd gradually fade in; for some time when one walked close to him he'd think he saw something moving, but nothing's there... or is it? And then maybe he'd start catching short glimpses of them, until finally he was able to see them all the time. Buuuut, since he wasn't anywhere near a Thestral while the processing was going on, we'll never know how it might have happened.

It's a VEIL. How bad can it be?

 * Why the hell doesn't anybody stick their head past the damn curtains? I don't have the book on me, so I don't recall if Harry maybe tried and was held back, but I do remember a whole lot of Harry assuming Sirius is straightforwardly dead and trying every possible thing to contact him, when all I could think of is what's behind the damn curtain? I was going crazy with curiosity, and no one in story seemed to care. I'd have a hard time not sticking my head into a mysterious magic curtain to nowhere just if it was there, let alone having a surrogate father fall into it.
 * I'm not sticking my head into a magic curtain which causes people to disappear when they pass through it. The head might not come out. I like me head.
 * That room is the "death chamber," and the veil is referred to as the barrier between life and death. Presumably, whatever living thing goes through the veil is not coming back, including the cells in your head. Besides, Harry would have probably been eager to stick his head in the veil had he not been held back.
 * Don't know if this is canon or just something made up by fanfic writers, but more than one fanfic I've read has had the Death Chamber be an execution chamber, with the Veil the wizard version of the guillotine. So it was probably a good thing nobody put their heads through the Veil (or any part of their body).
 * It's a common theory among fans that that's the purpose of the Veil (or was at one point). After all, what are you going to do with a veil that only causes people to die? Use it as a means of punishment for criminals so you don't have to go casting unforgivables.
 * I thought that it was an execution chamber when I first read the book, but considering it is inside the Department of Mysteries I have my doubts now. As for what to do with such a veil, Nick mentions that wizards in the department of mysteries are supposed to be researching the secrets of death.
 * I think the execution chamber makes a good deal of sense. Remember, while it's in the Department of Mysteries, it's also in the basement on the same floor as the criminal courtrooms.
 * I personally think it used to be a execution chamber, but it was changed once they made an agreement with the dementors to house criminals in Azkaban. Now it merely is used to study death, whereas before it was used for both. Since before Sirius, no one had ever broken out of Azkaban, and most sentences are life in Azkaban (which I'm sure is a lot worse than an instant death), it makes a lot of sense that the room isn't used anymore for executions.
 * That, and (this might have a bearing on it, or it might not) the death penalty is illegal under European law.
 * I just though that if you touch it it'll pull you in or something.
 * Word of God has stated that the veil was used for research, not executions.
 * The wizards don't follow Muggle law. If it existed, the Dementor's Kiss would be banned under EU law too, but they still order it used on Sirius.
 * ...And how are the people studying this veil -- with a ten-foot pole? I mean, sticking one's head in a veil is one thing, but wrenching it open and watching from a safe distance is another.
 * I'm not sure I'd even feel good about the 10-foot pole option. Forcibly wrenching open the veil between the here and the hereafter seems like a recipe for a "Divide by Zero" event if I ever heard one. ("Existence has performed an illegal operation and must be shut down.")
 * Perhaps they just finished constructing the veil as a means to study death? Though whether it's been there since the dawn of time or was put up yesterday, why it isn't covered in a dozen warnings, caution signs and general safety charms is anyone's guess.
 * Probably they have an advanced equivalent of Extensible Ears available to study the Veil, or perhaps there are ghosts in the Do Mysteries who are willing to risk peeking in to see what they're missing.
 * Why not just have a D-Class do it?
 * Hermione and Harry come from muggle families, sort of, so why didn't they to, I dunno, put a video camera through it and see what happens? If it comes back, they've got footage about the other side, if not they know to stay the feck away as anything that goes through ain't comin' back.
 * Would that work, though? The books mention repeatedly that muggle technology doesn't work at Hogwarts, but it's never made clear whether or not muggle tech would work at the Ministry. Given how the Department of Mysteries is a pretty important part of the Ministry, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for them to think that a video camera wouldn't work there.

Inquisitors vs. Prefects - FIGHT!

 * I get confused by the quote where someone says "Members of the Inquisitorial Squad can deduct points," and the reply is "He can't, that would undermine the prefect system." This implies to me that prefects can't deduct points (which would be silly seeing as, if it was me at least, I'd take all the points off all the other houses). But then in the 2nd book, Percy takes points off Ron for being in the girls' toilet.
 * It undermines the prefect system because prefects (as far as I know) are limited to two upper-classmen from each house, who are chosen by their professors and the school head. The Inquisitorial Squad, on the other hand, is a much larger group, that is made up entirely of Slytherin members, who are basically given free reign so long as they remain loyal to Umbridge.
 * Rowling suggests that Ron was just wrong, and he hasn't been much of a prefect thus far if he hasn't been deducting points. More likely, the Inquisitorial Squad can deduct points at their own discretion, while the Prefects are limited to point deduction based on the school's rules.
 * How can Rowling suggest Ron was wrong when it isn't him who makes the quote? It's the Ernie bloke from Hufflepuff.
 * Then she suggested Ernie was wrong. I don't know.
 * Either way, how can Rowling suggest that a character got it wrong, just to cover a plot hole? She's writing the books, she should be able to get these details right in the first place.
 * Alternately, perhaps prefects are limited to point deduction from their own house. Or maybe they can take points from anyone, but it's subject to review by the staff.
 * Or maybe when this person says that the Inquisitorial Squad being able to take away points would undermine the Prefect system, they mean that working hard, being a model student, and having the honour and responsibility of being a Prefect would seem a little less special when another group of people get the exact same powers for none of the work?
 * 'Undermine' doesn't necessarily mean 'overpower'. I think it's true that it would undermine the Prefect system, because the Prefects can take points (and JKR saying that Ron didn't really know what he was doing was in reference to another scene with Ron where he SAYS 'prefects can't take points', which they can), but if the IS can also take points, they can just undo Prefect punishments. Say a Prefect takes points from another student for setting off firecrackers or something; logically, the IS could just take the same number of points (or more) from the other three houses so that the point reduction doesn't influence their standing in the House Cup. Logically, if the two groups of students were working together to monitor and discipline the student body, neither would undermine the other, but in this situation, there's a huge area for abuse of power since the IS doesn't choose its members based on their previous outstanding performance in the school, which probably usually acts as a safeguard as far as the character of the students goes. A student who is known to cheat, bully, or be aggressive with other students probably wouldn't be made a prefect, but they could and were made members of the IS.
 * Of note: Until Fred, George, and Harry were banned from the Quidditch team, no named IS member (since they were all, with possibly one non-Gryffindor exception, Slytherins) would have wanted to do that, since it would make the House Cup competition lean more in favor of Gryffindor.
 * We have no evidence at all that Prefects have the ability to take points away (as far as I can remember). The only possible evidence is that Percy says 'five points from Gryffindor', but he is clearly flustered and not thinking straight, so it might just a reflex for him to say something like that. We never get any indication that the points were actually deducted.
 * Word Of God says that Prefects can deduct points.
 * I got the impression that Prefects can deduct points from anyone who is not a Prefect, but the IS can deduct from anyone.
 * They can also deduct points for any reason. I seem to recall that after Draco pointed out that he was part of the IS, he took points from Harry because he doesn't like him.
 * Dunno why I think it, but I think Prefects can only deduct points from their own house.
 * Of course, the real question here is how the heck Draco became a Prefect in the first place, unless Slytherin Prefects are supposed to be 'more influential' instead of 'most responsible leaders', or all the other fifth-year Slytherins would be even more abusive. (Ron might not be the best choice for Prefect either, but at least all he does is joke about punishing people he doesn't like, he doesn't actually ever do it.)

Taking the "Defense" out of Defense Against The Dark Arts - For No Freaking Good Reason!!!

 * What a huge Strawman Umbridge is just bugs me -- not because of strawmen in and of themselves, but it's self defeating on the part of the Ministry of Magic. The minister believes Voldemort is dead and can't accept that he is alive. Fair enough. But why would he want to shortchange a generation of students of Defense Against the Dark Arts? Even if Voldemort is indeed dead, there's bound to be another dark wizard to turn up -- maybe not as dark, but Aurors exist for a reason. Did he want a generation of crappy Aurors? Also, Harry, Ron, and Hermione can't think of anybody but Voldemort that would attack them. You'd think that after shouting his name, which wasn't working until nearly halfway through the book, they'd make the argument of another dark wizard arising in the future.
 * A number of veterans from the old war state that when Voldemort was first in power, it was a horrific time. Now, having gotten past that, no-one wants to believe that they have to go through it all over again -- so much that Fudge will refuse to believe the evidence of his return unless it's literally staring at him in the face.
 * As for the Aurors, they have special training after Hogwarts as well, right? Assuming a students passes the necessary O.W.Ls and N.E.W.Ts under the new "Minstry Approved" curriculum, they can then undergo proper practical training when they apply for Aurors.
 * For a real life example - Look at the reaction to the rise of Fascism in the build up to the second world war... many people in power had gone through the horrors of the 'war to end all wars' less than twenty years ago and were willing to do anything to avoid another war... including sticking their metaphorical fingers in their ears and chanting 'la la la la, can't hear you Czechoslovakia, la la la la'
 * It's outright stated in the book. Fudge (and by extension Umbridge) doesn't want Hogwarts training young students in DADA because he thinks Dumbledore is going to use the kids as a private army to attempt a coup.
 * Fridge Brilliance -- Dark Wizards have to be trained somewhere. Maybe Umbridge (and by extension the Ministry) were trying to make sure that no wizard was skilled enough to become a powerful threat.
 * In regards to why Harry, Ron, and Hermione never thought to say another evil wizard, it's the case that they picked up the Idiot Ball. Despite that there's still Death Eaters out there that do cause trouble even when their alleged leader is "dead", there are break outs of deranged dark wizards from Azakaban, that two years ago Sirius Black was all over the wizarding news as a dangerous threat (yes, I know he's not bad, but the rest of the wizarding world isn't gifted with breaking the Fourth Wall), and there's just the random horrible wizard that loves to torture or kill others, the Idiot Ball stops the three of them from ever thinking of this.
 * Umbridge's response is easy to predict - The curriculum is approved by the Ministry and will teach you everything you need to know to fight off Dark Wizards. Until then, the adults will take care of it. *smug smirk*

The Orb of Prophecy - a literal Idiot Ball?

 * If Dumbledore had a copy of the Prophecy in the Pensieve, then why didn't they just destroy the glass orb Prophecy in the Dept. of Mysteries rather than keep guard over it so that Voldemort couldn't get it? Even if Dumbledore hadn't had a copy, wouldn't it have been better to extract it (using Harry) and then destroy it? Why keep it in existence, recorded in a form accessible by Voldemort?
 * Who said Voldemort/the Death Eaters knew the origins of the prophecy (Sybill, saw it; Dumbledore, heard her do it)? Besides, let the No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup trope be ignored at least once. Also, only Sybill, Harry, and Voldemort could get the orb, being directly involved in it. (Though this suggests another thing - when the orbs are broken, their prophecies are "released" and heard. Why don't the Death Eaters just use some way to throw the "Dark Lord" one on the floor to hear it?)
 * I don't think that's what they meant. Dumbledore knew what the prophecy said. Voldemort obviously wasn't going to be finding out from Dumbledore about it. Why did Dumbledore and the Order go through so much effort to keep the prophecy safe from Voldemort instead of just destroying the orb so they could be sure he'd never get it?
 * Easy. So long as he's distracted with that goal in mind, the Order has time to build up its forces and try and convince the Ministry that Voldemort is back person by person. Also, with Voldemort hiding to keep up the illusion that he's not back, he's not openly recruiting or attacking his adversaries.
 * Um, how will Voldemort know the prophecy is destroyed? Especially if you fake up another prophecy orb and leave it for him to find? Heck, prime opportunity for disinformation!
 * You only get one try at that. If someone happens to sneeze halfway through, then you're buggered.
 * Forget breaking it - we saw that the prophecies are just normal objects placed on normal shelves. When Harry and the others destroyed the shelves, many prophecies fell to the floor and broke. Possibly this would set off more alarms but, considering how long it takes the Ministry to arrive in Phoenix, why don't they just literally remove the shelf, tip it to one side, and catch all the prophecies in someone's cloak? Or destroy it but have someone hold their cloak underneath to catch all the bits as they fall? If you need to get something glass off a shelf which you can't touch and don't want to destroy, then there have got to be better ways than inviting your enemy into the situation to help you. In fact, there's got to be a way to put them on the shelf in the first place - Harry/Voldy/Trelawney weren't invited into the Department of Mysteries for that, presumably - ask your captured Unspeakable how they put them up there, Voldy!
 * I'd always assumed that by those mentioned in the prophecy can touch it, it meant that the person who spoke and heard it are included, meaning Dumbledore could have touched it as well. If that's not the case, then perhaps it automatically appears in the Department of Mysteries and they have some sort of spell set up to record prophecies from seers.
 * Levitate them onto a previously-enchanted shelf. Once Harry removed the prophecy, anyone could touch it, so there's nothing inherent to the prophecy itself that stops just anyone touching it.
 * ...So why doesn't Malfoy levitate it down from the shelf? Or use the Accio charm? And for that matter, why did he stop Bellatrix from Summoning it after Harry took it down? I mean, I know he didn't want anything to happen to it, but... how does Summoning it harm it, exactly? Wouldn't it just soar into her hand?
 * It's assumed that the prophecy can't be removed except by the owner, so levitating it probably wouldn't work. Besides, Harry was gripping it really hard once he realized the Death Eaters were there. Also, summoning a prophecy without being specific in the hall of prophecies is a bad idea.
 * Weren't a couple of prophecies knocked off the shelf by accident and smashed? That would seem to indicate that it's not physically impossible to remove a prophecy from a shelf without being the subject of it. They could have levitated one end of the shelf and caught it as it rolled off.
 * It's still debatable if the curse that comes from touching a prophecy that doesn't involve you would transfer when you caught it. It's also possible the Department of Mysteries has the prophecies specifically spelled against summoning, levitation, and all sorts of other charms.
 * Presumably while Voldemort was preoccupied with the Prophecy, he wasn't focused on his other plans of hunting down and killing people. After the Prophecy is destroyed, he drops all pretenses and goes all out on the Wizarding World. Thus, Dumbledore not destroying it and perhaps getting arrested (keep in mind at this point he was considered a nut job) for destroying property or having someone else destroy it was keeping it there as a distraction.
 * For that matter, if you're going to keep prophecies that need to be kept safe, especially when you're setting them up in a hall stacked on top of each other, why glass spheres? Why not a Plexiglas cube, or an iron tube, or something?
 * Or better yet. CHARM them unbreakable.
 * Or do what muggles do with breakable objects and either fasten them to the shelf so they don't fall off, or put them in padded containers.

"Need to Know" Nuttiness

 * Why the DEUCE did Dumbledore keep the prophecy secret from Harry? It has to be the most loudly telegraphed "twist" in the history of fantasy. When he found out, why didn't Harry protest with something like, ".... Sirius died for THIS? 'You are destined to kill Voldemort someday...' Don't you think I figured that out when I learned he tried to kill me as a baby? Cause where I come from, that's the first symptom of being prophesied to kill the Evil Overlord. You kept us all in a dither about something that anyone past the age of FIVE could have guessed!"
 * Well... the prophecy wasn't exactly "you're going to kill Voldemort." It was more "you're going to kill Voldemort OR Voldemort is going to kill you". That makes a bit of a difference. Also, Harry doesn't know that he's the main character of a fantasy series.
 * That makes it even worse! Considering Voldemort and Harry have gone toe-to-toe three times at this point, it's not like "You two are going to fight. One of you is going to lose" is a big shocker to anyone. The fact that the prophecy doesn't even specify who's going to win just makes it that much stupider. Obviously one of them is going to kill the other! That's like getting a prophecy saying "You might eat cereal tomorrow... or you might not."
 * The uncertainty of the prophecy is part of Harry's incentive. Yes, he wanted revenge enough to try and kill Voldemort, but like everyone else, he has had moments when he was afraid and unsure of what he was doing and where he was going. If he heard outright from the prophecy that he was going to kill Voldemort, he might have gotten complacent and not tried hard enough (or, as Dumbledore put it, "set too much store by the prophecy"). The fact, however, that no one knows who will win, made him strive even harder for the victory because he always knew he could die. (And please don't be rude.)
 * I took it to mean that *only* Harry could kill Voldemort and *only* Voldemort could kill Harry. This makes it important because Harry can no longer expect, hope, or pray that anyone else will finish the job for him.
 * The point of telling the prophecy wasn't to inform Harry that he had to kill Voldemort (it was made clear that prophecies didn't have to be fulfilled), it was to explain to Harry why Voldemort wasn't going to stop trying to kill him - Voldy was Genre Blind enough to not simply try to ignore fate and leave him alone. It was also made pretty clear that someone else could kill either Harry or Voldemort, but Harry also said that he wanted to be the one to kill Voldemort -- not for the prophecy, but to avenge all the wrongs done.
 * See, when I read it, I thought the significance of the prophecy was "You're going to kill him AND he's going to kill you." and that it was a bit of a paradox. The characters would be thinking, "How can I get at him without leaving myself open to attack?" and "What does that mean? Do we 'Avada Kedavra' each other at the same time?" Furthermore, I always thought Voldemort's solution was, "Okay, Harry did kill me when he was a baby, but thanks to my Horcruxes, I'm back. Now I'm free to kill him!" But the real solution in book seven was that Voldy kills Harry, (destroying the Horcrux), but because Harry sacrificed himself, he came back, then Harry kills Voldemort. Was I way off base in all this?
 * It's all very confusing, and there's no general consensus on who's right or wrong about how the Prophecy was executed. Keep in mind that Voldemort never knew the whole prophecy and only knew the first two lines lines about when the one with the power to defeat him was to be born, and never never knew about the line dealing with killing each other (or the power the Dark Lord knows not). I don't think Harry was ever concerned about dying himself, but he was worried about killing Voldemort and whether he could do it or not.
 * Dumbledore said he kept it a secret because he cared too much about Harry. Also, Harry did have a fit about it. He thought that if Dumbledore had explained it all to him, that this stuff wouldn't have happened. And he'd be partly right in that logic, of course. Also, a side note here, but it's said that the Prophecy doesn't control Harry's actions, it's pretty much like a prediction of the most likely outcome. Voldemort killing Harry's parents would, in turn, make Harry want to kill Voldemort. Then, when Voldy takes Harry's blood, he makes it so only they can kill each other.
 * So why didn't Dumbledore say "Harry, in the Department of Mysteries, there is something Voldemort wants. He may send you images through your scar to try and get you to get it so he can get from you" so Harry knows to be careful about the visions he gets?
 * Or "Harry, Voldemort is very hacked at you that you've managed to escape him twice already. He'll try extra hard now to rectify that and will use all kinds of tricks to lure you away from safety. He may even send images through your scar. So PLEASE, if you have some vision, even a most vivid one, do not act rashly, go to the nearest Order member."
 * Harry would probably do that anyway - and did! It's just that the only Order member left in Hogwarts was Snape, who Harry simply doesn't trust. If Dumbledore, McGonagall or Hagrid were still at Hogwarts Harry could easily have gone to them.
 * A better question is why did Dumbledore feel the need to keep the prophecy secret from Voldemort. I don't see how Voldemort would have benefited at all from knowing Harry's his equal, he already knows Harry was strong because he was unable to kill Harry.
 * It all depends on how Voldemort interprets the prophecy. He could read the prophecy and come to the conclusion that as long as Harry lives, then he can't die.
 * Except, he couldn't, since the prophecy said 'neither can live while the other survives'.
 * As long as V is chasing the prophecy he is distracted from taking over the world. Smart, actually.

Now, be good little sheep...

 * In the fifth movie, Umbridge says, "There will be no need to talk." Hermione mutters, "No need to think is more like it". Umbridge was clearly not out of earshot. Why would she let a comment like that slide -- unless she agreed with it?
 * She did agree with it. She wanted them to stick to a standardized method of teaching rather than the students ever actually thinking for themselves.
 * Just a nitpick - "standardized methods of teaching" don't need to be bad or anti-student-thinking. It's just that this one in particular was, since it was conforming to the Ministry's agenda.

We're about to be exposed! Let's just stand around like idiots!

 * Movie # 5: why, as Umbridge is tearing down the wall that is hiding the Room of Requirement, didn't the DA members do something reasonable like in the book and RUN LIKE FORREST GUMP? As frightening as being discovered is, they wouldn't simply stand still there, and such a room wouldn't have a single exit!
 * If the movie!room is anything like the book's, then it takes time and concentration to make a door materialize. By the time they had created a back door, Umbridge would already be in.

HORRIBLE BURNING COAL FACE.

 * During "Order of the Phoenix," Sirius justifies popping his head in the fire by saying, "This was the only way I could come up with of answering Harry's letter without resorting to a code... and codes are breakable." So... has nobody in Harry Potter's world ever heard of a one-time pad? Sure, Harry and Ron would be too dim to know about it; and Sirius, while considered smart in school, is probably too into magic to research Muggle methods of secret communications. But what about Hermione? She's exactly the kind of Muggle-born nerd who should be familiar with the idea. With all the adventures the trio keeps getting into, she ought to realize that they might need secure communications in the future and start research on cryptographical techniques that don't require a computer during her vacations.
 * Those are people who have issues with the telephone. And to Hermione's defense, she seems a lot more knowledgeable about Magic then anything else. Besides, the vast majority of peoples, nerds included, don't even KNOW what a One-Time pad is.
 * ...Yeah, what is a one-time pad, anyway? Odds are, even J. K. Rowling doesn't know what it is; if she doesn't know, then neither does Hermione.
 * Read the link. It's an encryption algorithm which uses a randomly generated key of the same length as the plaintext. As long as you can follow it perfectly (which usually boils down to making sure the key is truly random, never re-using it, and making sure it never falls into enemy hands), the code has been mathematically proven to be unbreakable. You are right that Rowling is unlikely to have ever heard of it; she has admitted that she is bad at math. But is there an in-universe explanation for why Hermione hasn't stumbled across it?
 * Why would she? She never seemed interested in the Muggle world; she even spent most of her summers with the Weasleys instead of her own family. If she did think they needed a secure communication system, then she would've just gone to magic.
 * Specialis Revelio.
 * How would she have gotten the one-time pad to Sirius securely? There were times in Harry Potter where it could've come in handy, but how is this one of them? Also, maybe Arithmancy includes a spell to "reverse the last calculation that was performed on this paper," which would break the unbreakable code.
 * If she had thought ahead, and she should have, then she could have left it in Number Twelve when she was there during the summer in case Sirius, or anyone else from the Order, needed to contact her or the other members of the trio secretly. Of course, she would have to teach someone how to use the pad (it's easy; just shift each letter of the message by the number indicated on the pad and destroy each page after use); but Sirius is the perfect candidate, since he is always in the house (and thus able to encode messages for other people at headquarters if necessary), and he has lots of free time. If she thought about it before the previous year, then she could have also given the pad and instructions to Sirius during their face-to-face meeting in "Goblet of Fire" -- indeed, considering they are corresponding with the most wanted wizard in Britain at the time, this would have been a sensible precaution. And if she had given pads to Harry and Ron and instructed them in their use, then Harry could have given one to Sirius when he talked to him in the fireplace before the first task and told him how it works. Now, if for some reason she figured it out after she came back to Hogwarts but before this particular message from Sirius, then she still could have given it to him, along with an explanation of usage, when he once again used the common room's fireplace for communications. It wouldn't have done much to secure THAT conversation, but it would have safeguarded future ones (particularly avoiding the one where Umbridge almost caught Sirius by the hair). Now, it is true that perhaps one-time pads are breakable by magic, but Sirius's wording about codes being breakable doesn't suggest that to me. If codes were routinely broken by normal spells, then he wouldn't have bothered to mention them as a possible security tool; his usage suggests that codes do protect messages, but can be broken by sufficiently determined/skilled cryptanalysis, and that he came into the fire because he wanted to have complete message protection. But cryptanalysys is useless against a perfectly executed one-time pad (hell, even if they mess up in the execution, then it would likely be strong enough to withstand whatever inexperienced code breaking Umbridge or the Ministry can throw at it).
 * You apparently didn't think it was funny or at all clever, then, when Hermione (or Harry) would suggest an obvious idea that Ron (or Harry) was passing over in favor of a complex magical bypass (only, in this case, replace "complex" with "illegal")?
 * You can't use computers and such at Hogwarts; Hermione explains this in Goblet of Fire when they are suggesting Rita uses a walky-talky, she explains equipment like that gets all messed up because there is 'too much magic' at Hogwarts and it distorts the equipment. That probably also goes for mobile phones.
 * You don't need any electronics to use a one-time pad. Paper pads, while a bit laborious, work just fine.
 * It's just as one of the above Tropers said. If JKR doesn't know of the one-time pad, then Hermione won't. As smart as she is, her knowledge is limited to how much the author knows (same for any character in the novels). However, alternatively, there was that mirror that Sirius gave Harry, which Harry only ever opened after the man died. Honestly, you'd think he'd bother to ask about it when he got the gift, or at least inspect when he got to school. It would have saved him a lot of trouble, as he could have instantly communicated to Sirius.
 * Clear case of Fan Myopia! In this case, said fan seems to be a crypto-nerd. (No, not in the sense of "secret nerd". I mean "nerd who is especially into cryptography"!) And Hermione, although very smart and, well, nerdy, is just not a CRYPTO-nerd. Though perhaps there exists a wizard-version of cryptography.
 * For one, we are forgetting the very, VERY real possibility that somebody out there has created a spell capable of automatically decoding codes. Secondly, even if that isn't the case, as any intelligence veteran worth his salt will tell you, mathematicians lean WAY too heavily on the reliability of a one-time pad. Proving something is "Mathematically impossible to break" means jack all, because they are only crunching numbers rather than talking about the actual strategies one uses against codes. One of which is to take a look at the code itself and try to gauge what stands for what. A number or letter repeated frequently enough is probably a vowel ('E', 'A', 'I', or less commonly 'O' or 'U') or a "frequent consonant" ('R','M', 'N', etc). If you know the language the codemaker is supposed to be communicating in, you can match up their alphabet and crank out several reasonable guesses about what an individual word is and go from there. Couple with the fact that the Western Alphabet is pretty limited in and of itself (and the English one is even more limited than usual), and it is entirely possible to break these "Unbreakable" codes even without the pad. Heck, that is EXACTLY what the Western Allies did when intercepting several German, Soviet, Spanish, and Portuguese codes in WWI and WWII, because they knew that they had an inborn belief in the impossibility of a security breach without the pads, and exactly what the Germans did with the Soviets later in the war. These things are not failsafe even using Muggle methods in the real world, and in a setting that involves magical spells that reveal hidden secrets, it's entirely understandable that Sirius would be paranoid about responding in written form.
 * The way one time pads work is that the key changes for every character. So the same letter repeated multiple times in the encoded message won't refer to the same unencoded letter. For example, an "A" will sometimes be a "C" but sometimes be a "F". Without the key, you can construct literally any message of that length. Other criticisms (ie magical methods) are still valid though.
 * Because although Hermione is smart, she's not omniscient. In essence, she's not the right type of nerd - she's a magic nerd; what she appears to know about the Muggle world in canon is roughly what one would expect an intelligent almost-12-year-old to know. I'm honestly not sure that she necessarily knows advanced Muggle things like relativistic physics or exactly how computers work.
 * Specialis Revelio. Come on, these people CASUALLY animate hundreds of statues with an incantation and are implied to have caused World War II. You think they'll be stumped by a Muggle code?
 * Well, as Snape's potion gauntlet in book 1 showed, most wizards can be stumped by a high-school logic puzzle. So... yes. (There's also that the one-time pad is a form of encryption that is absolutely unbreakable even by modern supercomputers. There is only one way to compromise it, and that's to steal a copy of the cipher key. Without that, you're fucked.)
 * Because Hermione isn't Bat-Man and unless Sirius had a blurb about being a crypto-nerd in his past, it would have been out of no where and rather tedious to read.

Harry Potter and the Definition of "Requirement"

 * Does the Room of Requirement give you what you need or what you want? For example, if Harry were suicidal, would he find a psychiatrist or a selection of nooses and pistols?
 * It depends what you mean by need. If Harry wants to take his life, he needs something to do it with. When the Weasley twins first discovered the room, it became a broom closet because they needed to hide from Filch. However, if the room gives people what's best for them, then it shouldn't have become anything at all so Filch would catch them and they would be forced to face up to whatever they did wrong. At the same time, it allowed Draco to work in secret on his plan to kill Dumbledore, to the point where it would refuse to let Harry in, so I don't think it's capable of making allegiances. So I think it gives the user what they want.
 * I'm not sure the twins getting a detention and losing house points is necessarily what is best for them if they're running from Filch, and it certainly hasn't done anything to change their behavior all those other times they've actually gotten caught.
 * The part with Malfoy bugged me. Granted, I only thought of it when I saw the movie, and don't remember the book version, but Malfoy wanted the secret room, so he got it. Harry wanted to see what shenanigans Malfoy was up to, so he got a brick wall. Is it just first come, first served? In that case, what would happen if one person wanted a room filled with kittens while another person stood beside them and simultaneously wanted the other person to not get a room full of kittens?
 * It's been speculated that he wanted a room that no one could find out what he was up to. And him being active in the room gave precedence over Harry wanting to find out what Draco was up to (due to Draco wanting the opposite). This was why when Harry wanted a place to hide the book, even though Draco might have been in there, he was allowed in, because he also wanted a room that no one could find what he was up to.
 * In the book, I thought the reason that Draco could get into the D.A. HQ is that they left it running. The room hadn't disappeared yet, and he just walked in.
 * Depends on how Harry wanted to resolve the situation. If he was depressed, but wanted to feel better, it might be able to conjure a therapist of some kind (though we haven't seen it create a sentient being out of thin air before). If Harry truly wanted to commit suicide, then yeah, it'd give him something to do it with. May be grim, but as the other guy said, it gave Malfoy the place to plot to kill Dumbledore.
 * The room might not necessarily conjure the therapist out of thin air. He might just, you know, steal him away from home for a little while, a la The Replacements. Which poses the question, are there magic therapists? If not, then the kidnapped one would be thoroughly freaked out, methinks.
 * No, they probably just have super-dee special magic drugs to correct brain chemistry and then leave the depressed witch or wizard to work through their other issues on their own. Which may partially explain why, exactly, the magical community makes up such a small percentage of the human population at large.
 * The original question gave me the image of a Magitek psychologist that looks like an NS-2 model robot. Or possibly H.E.L.P.eR.
 * Given that the Longbottoms are still hopelessly insane nearly two decades after they were tortured, I'd say that no, there are no wizarding therapists.
 * Or they're hopelessly insane. As in, nobody can get through to them, either because they're so blocked off or because there's not really anything left of them but confusion.
 * Exactly, there are plenty of irretrievably insane people IRL and also plenty of therapists IRL too; therapy doesn't solve everything. Magical damage, such as what would be inflicted by using the Cruciatus Curse, would most likely be completely out of the capabilities of therapists to cure. Now, as to why there isn't a spell to cure that kind of insanity, however......
 * For that, we turn to our good friends Giles and Tara: "...the human mind is very delicate. Too much can go wrong." "I've heard stories about people trying healing spells... if we did something, it could make things a lot worse."
 * When Harry and company use the room to hold the DA meetings, Harry thinks about what he wants the room to give him, and the room provides. So if he walked in front of the wall three times while thinking "I need a place where I can commit suicide... a place where nobody will bother me, a place with all the appropriate tools..." then yeah, that is what he would get, because that is what he would need in order to do what he wanted to do.
 * The Room can't conjure food, and I'm guessing sentient human beings are one of those things, along with food and money, that can't be permanently conjured, so no therapist. My theory, though, is that the Room is designed to do what's best for Hogwarts. When a psycho bureaucrat takes over, the school gives the students what they need to resist. When a student needs a place to hide something or secretly work on something (that was what Malfoy asked for, not "A room where I can continue my plan to kill Dumbledore"), the Room helps the student with no regard for what happens next (it doesn't ask questions, so to speak). If a student asked for a gun or a knife without adding what purpose they planned to use it for, it might comply, but the Room's specific function is to turn into a room that serves the seeker's needs. What kind of room is best for someone who's suicidal to achieve their goal? If a student specifically requested a room to help them commit suicide, I'm going to assume causing or contributing to the death of a student would violate the Room's directive to serve Hogwarts, and it would not comply.
 * If it doesn't allow a student to kill oneself, why would it allow a student to hide stuff illegally? Illegally hiding stuff is blatantly against the school rules. The room simply has no guide on what is right and what is wrong, it simply conforms to what the person wants. If they need a bathroom, they get a bathroom. If they need a place to meet for DA meetings, then it gives them that. If they need a room to kill themselves in, then they'd get one of those.
 * It doesn't have to be hidden illegally. What if, say, someone had a diary and people kept stealing it and reading it aloud? They'd need a place to hide it so that stops happening, and the Room of Requirements would be the perfect place for it. Or what if it was somebody's birthday or Christmas and someone needed a place to put the gifts that they were planning on giving? Just because the power to hide things can so easily be misused doesn't mean that there are plenty of perfectly innocuous reasons to use it.
 * I'd like to think the room has a way to bend the desire to the overall best outcome, depending on how it's phrased. However, if it's phrased like "Give me a sword so I can kill myself", there's nothing it can do. Which begs the question of what would happen to the dead body in the room. Would it keep the room active (if they asked for privacy) or would it disappear into Hammerspace that the objects are stored in?
 * One of the theories about how the 'Room of Lost Things' got so large is that is where all the 'real' objects left in any incarnation of the room are whenever they aren't needed. I.e., that room is hammerspace. Which raises some Nightmare Fuel about what you'd find if you kept searching...is there an entire section of corpses?
 * Suicide can easily be committed by pointing a wand at yourself and saying "Avada Kedavra."
 * Or "Reducto," or "Diffindo," or anything, really.
 * I'm having the hilariously morbid image of, should a student request suicide, the door simply opening onto the outside wall of the castle.
 * In response to the Draco question, I always assumed that the Room obeyed Harry's request to show him what Draco summoned. Draco was smart enough to make the Room become invisible to passers-by - Harry could have entered by walking through the wall, King's Cross style.
 * Except that when prof. Trelawney requested a place to hide her liquor (BTW, why would she feel the need to, does Hogwarts conduct booze raids?), she crashes in on him just fine.
 * Trelawney needed it because she was already viewed as a loony as she was. The sherry bottles probably wouldn't help her poor reputation.
 * I doubt that's what happened - I'm sure Harry beat his hands against the wall in frustration at least once. Also, the King's Cross analogy is faulty. The wall IS there, it just teleports you to Platform 9 3/4 if you go at it right (And I would say Trelawney is hiding the sherry bottles because it wouldn't look too good if Umbridge found out.)
 * Lolwut? She's doing it during the sixth year, Umbridge is already gone.

Traces of Doubt

 * Why is it that in the fifth movie, Harry gets into trouble for casting a Patronus, but a couple of nights later, the Order let him fly on a broomstick through Muggle London? They fly a few metres away from a cruise ship, for crying out loud!
 * Half Blood Prince explains that the Ministry can only monitor if and where spells are cast and not who cast them (which is why Harry is blamed for the Hover Charm in the second book - he is the only wizard in the area, and thus magic activity there would be attributed to him). A broomstick has already been enchanted, so unless someone got pictures or something, there is no way for the Ministry to know he did it.
 * Plus, in the book, Moody used a Disillusion Charm on him, essentially turning him invisible so no Muggle would have seen him.
 * In the book, Moody went out of his way to take them over rural areas and through cloud formations to avoid being spotted. The other characters complain about it. The movie scene is just Rule of Cool.
 * In Quidditch Through the Ages, it is mentioned that brooms are routinely charmed so that, in flight, to Muggles they look like flying geese. I don't know about the UK, but in the Washington, DC area, Canada geese are so common that one's only concern is to not step in goose droppings.
 * "Muggles? They don't see nothin', do they?"

At this rate, they might as well just start using "Flipendo"!

 * Movie complaint: Stupefy is meant to knock people unconscious, not backwards. WTH?
 * Just like Expelliarmus is supposed to disarm someone, not send Lockhart flying backwards. It's theorized that if a certain spell is overpowered, it can send the target flying.
 * And Avada Kadavera is only meant to make the victim crumple to the ground dead. Launching people is not in the spell description.
 * But the point of Stupefy is to knock people out. It looks okay if you knock someone out and throw them backwards, but they just changed the spell's purpose entirely instead of enhancing it as they did with Expelliarmus.
 * Also, for the record, there have been occasions of Expelliarmus knocking people backward if used strongly enough.
 * Two words. Adaptation Decay.
 * On the movie-related spells, here's another one that gets people's goat: in the final action sequences, many of them- Harry and the DAs included -- are using non-verbal spells. Most of them didn't have a clue how to do those yet (save perhaps Hermione). They were fun to watch, though.
 * I always thought that it was thanks to the same part of the Musical World Hypothesis that turns people into deaf-mutes with low-level telepathy every time a Hard Work Montage happens.
 * What about the fact that people are shown using "Levicorpus"? There are three problems with that. 1) Harry and the others had no idea the spell even existed until a year later 2) Levicorpus is a nonverbal spell only, yet the kids are using it verbally 3) Levicorpus is defined as hanging someone up by their leg as if it were caught in a hook, while the movie shows them floating as if they were laying on air. It just feels so wrong when the moviemakers screw up the spells like this.

Mysterious mind connections are mysterious...

 * In the Deathly Hallows, although Harry finally manages to use Occlumency properly and block out Voldemort's visions, he still clearly realizes what's happening to him. In the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore tries to get Harry to learn Occlumency so as not to be tempted by Voldemort's trick. But even if he had grasped this technique, he still would have known what was going on. Without anybody actually telling him what could possibly happen (and considering that the first time Harry had such a powerful vision, it saved Mr. Weasley's life), and given his current state of annoyance with Dumbledore (and especially Snape) -- He probably would have chosen to succumb to the attack anyway, and the whole plan would have been moot. The only excuse I can give Dumbledore is that he couldn't have known what it felt like to have such a connection (it was quite the anomaly), and that his efforts were a desperate resort. Still, though...

Poor Communication Kills, But No Communication Outright Brutalizes

 * Why the heck did Harry not use that mirror, which Sirius gave him specifically for contacting him when he needed him, ever?
 * Harry didn't know what Sirius gave him and thus decides to never open the package. He was handed the package as he was heading back to Hogwarts and Sirius only tells him not to open it there as "Molly wouldn't approve". His reasoning at the time was that it was a method of communication that would either get Sirius in trouble for using, like the last time he tried to communicate via the Floo network, or encourage him to leave the house and thus get caught by the Ministry. He didn't realize exactly how it worked and thus buried it at the bottom of his trunk and forgot about it. In fact, he practically vows not to use it almost immediately. If Sirius had explained how to use it then rather than leaving a note, we might have had a whole different year. You can check US page 523 for yourself.
 * I don't know if this is in all UK or Commonwealth versions; but I'm from Canada, and I have the scene on page 462 of my version, in case people without the US version wanted to check it out. Basically, Harry decides not to use it after Sirius says it's a way to communicate / let him know that the Occlumency lessons are going bad. Harry didn't want to be the one responsible for Sirius leaving the house again.
 * I got the feeling that Harry never got the hang of Occlumency. It was just that in Deathly Hallows, Voldemort became increasingly agitated and thus forgot to monitor the mental link between himself and Harry (it was established that the reason Harry began to get the Department of Mysteries images was because Voldemort was manipulating the link).
 * The problem here is that Harry talks to Sirius in Umbridge's fire to discuss what he saw in the Pensieve AFTER receiving the mirror. Why did Sirius not ask Harry why he was using the fire and not the mirror then?
 * He got it just as he was leaving for Hogwarts, had put it away, and by the time he needed to contact Sirius, five months had passed. Can you honestly tell me you would have remembered it?
 * Given how Sirius has spent the whole time brooding (not to mention the implications that he's been drinking) and is bordering on obsessed with Harry, he should have remembered he gave him the mirror.
 * Sirius is in favor of rule-breaking in general, and Harry was using Umbridge's own fireplace, behind her back, to contact him. Sirius probably thought that that was so cool, he wasn't inclined to question or complain about it.
 * The problem with this is that Sirius had used the fireplace in the Griffindor Common room to talk to Harry twice before that. And not once did he bother to mention the mirror. Heck, the second time he wrote a letter to Harry telling him to meet him at the fireplace. Why didn't he use the same letter to remind him about the mirror instead is beyond me.
 * The Order has a secret means to communicate with each other, which everyone assumes to be Patronuses, but that's completely absurd, as a Patronus showing up in the middle of Snape's class is bound to be noticed, or worse, while he's talking to Voldemort. What if a mirror system is the Order's secret means of communication, and Sirius just stole one and gave it to Harry? And the second Harry uses it, everyone would figure that out (We don't actually know how they work, perhaps it's broadcast to all mirrors), so Sirius really does only want it used for emergencies. Convoluted, yes, but it makes sense of both the 'Glowing talking animals' means of secret communications concept, and why the mirror is not used...because Harry isn't actually supposed to have one. And it explains why no one's apparently ever seen Snape's Patronous.

Oh, sure, everyone forgets the girl!

 * Mrs. Weasley, on Ron being a prefect: "That's everyone in the family!" Gred and Forge: "So what are we, next-door neighbors?" So what is Ginny, the Madwoman in the Attic?
 * In slight defense, the "so far" could have been implied, but then she did ignore Gred and Forge. I never was a fan of how Mrs. Weasley could be so narrow-minded sometimes.

They're using wandless magic ALREADY?!?

 * Harry is able to use his wand without holding it when he casts "Lumos!" in chapter 1. But this ability never reappears in the series, nor is any explanation given.
 * And of course fanfics have made all sorts of explanations. Truly it could be as simple as accidental magic, or it could be as complicated as the ability to do some wandless magic (or even more complicated: Remote Casting). Harry never seems to go back and think about how that worked, and thus we tend to forget about it.
 * It's established rather clearly that the link between the wand and the wizard is spiritual, and nothing says that the physical contact is obligatory. Wizards usually hold their wands while casting because they need to point it at the object of casting or to make some magical gestures with it, neither of which a simple non-directional spell like Lumos apparently requires.
 * Remote casting is shown in book 1: Quirrel snaps his fingers to cast a non-verbal Incarcerous, but was probably holding his wand in his other hand.

Why Don't Ya Just Hex Him... Wait, that's what you're trying to do?!?

 * The whole plot point with Voldemort's desire for the prophecy as a mean (or guideline?) to kill Potter is rendered completely senseless, when Voldemort tries to AK Potter in the atrium, even though the prophecy-ball is destroyed. So, if Voldemort's convinced that AK would work on Potter (otherwise, why'd he use it), then why bother with the prophecy at all and not kill Potter right after he enters the Ministry, or at least have the DE ambush and capture him?
 * Just gotta say, when I read the part about Voldy trying to AK Harry in the Atrium, I thought of Voldemort shooting at the kid with an AK-47. Needless to say, I got a good chuckle out of it.
 * Him showing up in the Ministry wasn't the brightest of ideas in the first place. If he's trying to keep the fact that he's back a secret, and he shows up at the Ministry, why didn't he do this before and simply grab the prophecy himself? The whole plan wasn't well thought out by Voldemort all around, and that's his character flaw in not thinking of everything the way he should have. When he got there, regardless of reason, he was enraged that they'd destroyed the prophecy, and in his madness assumed that since he had Harry's blood and he almost killed him last year, this year shouldn't be any different and he could kill him just as easily. Which is technically true at that time.
 * Yeah, except that he looked surprisingly calm and cool-headed in that moment and not enraged at all. And luring Potter to the Ministry and away from the protection of Hogwarts was a great idea, all the less plausible that V didn't think of positioning Death Eaters right at the entrance and ambushing the kids.
 * The plan was pretty much shot down at that point. Voldie hadn't reckoned on Harry showing up with friends, and actually fighting his Death Eaters, let alone summoning the Order of the Phoenix. At that point, he was resorting to damage control.
 * Voldemort -- the single most fearsome dark wizard alive -- sent Harry Potter an invitation to a massacre and was actually surprised that Harry came with reinforcements? Voldemort, whom the Order has been searching for frantically all year, deliberately transmitted his exact location to one of his worst enemies and didn't expect the Order of the Phoenix to show up? What, did they make him swallow the Idiot Ball? Honestly, you talk about Idiot Plot, this is it, right here.
 * Nope. V planned to make Harry curious enough to tootle along to the Ministry alone to get the prophecy as he thought Harry already knew of its existence and wanted to hear the whole thing. When he didn't, V lured him with Sirius. V's DEs (yay for acronyms!) would have creamed Harry and co.but for the arrival of the Order, and here's the point you are missing: Voldemort had no way of knowing the Order would be there - Harry had very little time, after all - because the only reason they were was Harry's message to Snape who V thought was on his side! V showing up at the Ministry was damage control and DD himself calls it foolish thus why V didn't do it in the first place. Yet another apparent Plot Hole solved with the wonders of logic!
 * While you are correct in that Harry actually was this stupid in canon, its generally considered wise tactics to base your plans on the assumption that your opposition has a brain and will be using it, because otherwise you've created a scheme vulnerable to even the slightest touch of common sense. The original complaint stands: Voldemort was being stupidly overconfident here, in that he quite rationally should have expected that he'd get party crashers. If nothing else, he knows that the Order has been bodyguarding Harry 24/7 while off Hogwarts grounds ever since the end of book 4. If Harry shows up without his minders, its only reasonable to presume that they'll have noticed his absence and be following him as soon as they can... as indeed they did.
 * Although now we've got to wonder how Snape managed to get away with it. If V bothers to even slightly reconstruct what happened, he knows that Harry couldn't have ordered the reinforcements, especially as they arrived so late. So...how does V think DD figured out what was going on? Either Snape betrayed V, or Snape isn't as trusted by DD as Snape claims, because there's apparently a member of the Order at Hogwarts that Snape doesn't know about who noticed Harry was missing. (I hope Snape suggested it was Umbridge, who, after all, helped escort Harry out of the castle earlier that night. Mwhahaha.)
 * It's been established that the Order has been patroling the Dept. of Mysteries at night, so its likely that another member bit the dust that night when the DEs showed up. Snape, being their 'inside man' to the Order, could have said something like, "Oh, Lupin was going to take over the watch at midnight, and when he showed up and saw all Hell breaking loose, he sent up the Bat Signal."

Abusing the Room of Requirement for Fun and Profit!

 * The Room of Requirement, Harry. Everything you could ever want is in that room. All you have to do is simply wish for it. When I first read it, I thought "Hey! What if he could wish his parents back to life with that room? All he'd have to do is say 'I wish to speak to James and Lily Potter' and bing bang boom! There they are!"
 * Magic can't bring people back from the dead. This has been stated and restated over the course of the series. Voldemort came back because he was only mostly dead. The Resurrection Stone only brought back their spirits, and even then, only temporarily. But no amount of magic can bring back someone who's really dead, and I don't think they make any secret of this.
 * Also, as someone said upthread, it's a pretty safe bet that human beings are one of the unstated exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration -- i.e., you can't conjure someone under any circumstances, it's a law of magical nature.

So, what's the point in almost choosing someone, again?

 * What was the point in having Neville be The Almost Chosen One? Conservation of Detail, and it doesn't go anywhere in the next couple books. Neville becomes more badass, but that has nothing to do with the prophecy. The prophecy didn't say "...and this person will kill the Dark Lord. The person that fits most, but not all the criteria will stop being a loser, and start kicking ass."
 * I believe the reason for Neville being the Almost Chosen One was because it gave Voldemort the option to choose who he wanted as his equal. If there was only one person the prophecy could have qualified, then it wouldn't have mattered what blood type Harry was, but instead it shows that Voldemort doesn't care for blood supremacy as much as he claims. Plus, it has the added bonus of giving Harry (and the readers) the "what if?" line of thought.
 * Prophecies are vague and misleading. Neville was The Almost Chosen One because the prophecy didn't give sufficient enough information to narrow it down to the one person it was actually about. Technically, it didn't name Voldemort either, but there was only one Dark Lord at the time, so that wasn't hard to guess. It's very rare for a prophecy to be precise and unambiguous in their wording; they're tricky that way.
 * It can be even worse if you make the prophecy in question even vaguer by considering that there are other calendars, so "as the seventh month dies" might not even be July. If interpreted incorrectly (and judging by how little of the prophecy Snape heard), it's actually impressive that Voldemort jumped to the conclusion that Harry or Neville must be the child mentioned.
 * "It's very rare for a prophecy to be precise and unambiguous in their wording; they're tricky that way." In fiction, that's because it would be very boring to have the exact details of how everything is gonna happen ahead of time. In real life, it's because concrete and detailed claims are falsifiable.
 * I can't remember what book it was (if it was even in the book, my memory is really faulty on this), but didn't Dumbledore himself tell Harry that it was all basically Voldemort who made the choice on who became the chosen one, and he chose HARRY as the one most similar to him -- The half-blood, whereas Neville is a pure-blood. Voldemort interpreted what parts he did know of the prophecy and considered Harry as his equal.

I think you need to go look at the wording of the prophecy again..since Harry was NOT his eqaul until Voldmort killed his parents (and failed to kill Harry.)

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches ... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies ... and the [Dark Lord will mark him as his equal], but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not ... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives ... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies ..."

Oh and what other month could be the 7th month of the 12 months of the year--July, both Harry and Neville's parents were part of the oringal Order of the Phoenix so "born to those who thrice defied him", the only difference is Harry's a half-blood (like the Snape, Voldmort, and I think Dumbledore) and Neville's a Pure-blood (but like Ron doesn't care)
 * That was actually when he was explaining to Harry everything about the prophecy and why everything was set into motion, after the climax at the Ministry when they were back at Hogwarts. That statement in and of itself makes Voldemort's choosing Harry make more sense than if he had chosen Neville. Page 842 of the US version.
 * Dumbledore explains how it explains the nature of prophecy and how Voldemort made Harry the Chosen One: there are no further special magic powers granted to Harry, it was all V's doing. By A King Harry's parents, he made Harry his sworn enemy. By accidentally sticking a bit of his soul to Harry, he gave him the mind-link and Parseltongue. Harry doesn't magically have to kill V at all, it's just the only thing that can happen purely because of Voldemort.

Oh deer... that's an unusual Patronus...

 * So the most reliable method of communication used by the Order is Patronuses, and when Snape found out that Harry had seen a vision of Sirius being tortured by Voldemort in the Department of Mysteries, Snape went to confirm its truth. That would mean Sirius had seen Snape's Patronus, and most probably, the rest of the Order too. So why is nobody concerned about the fact that Snape's Patronus is a doe? Even if they hadn't seen Lily's Patronus, they must be curious as to why it's so unlike Snape's character (it's implied that one's Patronus is decided by one's character, if not by the bonds they share, e.g. Harry's Patronus is a stag, his father's animagus form), or Harry's Patronus's counterpart.
 * Yes, the most reliable method is Patronuses, but that doesn't mean he used one. Snape knew Umbridge was suitably distracted, and he could have easily used Floo Powder to contact them, as it would have been faster. We don't know for sure how he contacted them but the fact remains that Sirius would have been more worried about Harry then possibly concerned with what Snape's Patronus looks like.
 * Uh, one thing I'd like to point out here: Sirius isn't a total idiot. I'm sure he at least suspected that Snape was in love with Lily; he probably figured it out while they were in school, and he viewed Snape as a pathetic enough loser to never get over her. If Sirius ever saw Snape's Patronus and realized that holy crap, Lily had the same one!, he wouldn't have been surprised. (Though I'd have to agree with the above post; I believe JKR once said that Snape never used his Patronus to communicate with anyone but Dumbledore.)
 * Snape did not contact Sirius using his Patronus: Jenny: How did snape keep his patronus secret from the rest of the order? J.K. Rowling: He was careful not to use the talking Patronus means of communication with them. This was not difficult, as his particular job within the Order, i.e., as spy, meant that sending a Patronus to any of them might have given away his true allegiance. Dumbledore does say that the Order 'has more reliable means of communication than Umbridge's fireplace', which leads one to believe he meant Patronus, but it can't be. It IS possible, though, that this was just a case where Rowling hadn't yet decided everything. We know she had planned Snape's position in the story and his love of Lily from the beginning, but the specifics of Snape's patronus matching hers may have been something decided later. Snape's Patronus could have been something else originally and served the same purposes in the final book, when she decided it was more poetic for her to match his Patronus to Lily's. So, they must have another method of communication by default, since we know Snape didn't send his Patronus. This is probably for the best, anyway, because if it's true that Lily's Patronus was a doe, it would have probably been a horrible experience for Sirius to suddenly be faced with the Patronus of one of his best friends who's been dead for so many years. Not to mention the mental trauma of hearing Snape's voice come out of it.

Ka... me... ha... me.......................................

 * So, according to the movie, wizards can have DBZ power battles, which look stunningly similar to "Priori Incantatem" from the previous movie. Now, it's been a while since I read the book, but did that ACTUALLY happen?
 * Rule of cool. In the book it can only happen when two wands share the same core. So, we've only seen Harry and Voldemort do that.
 * Possible extra justification in hindsight for Dumbledore being able to do it with Voldemort. He does possess the Elder Wand, which is explicitly more powerful and more magical. But really I do think the movie producers were pushing it with this one.
 * Or maybe the twin cores version is different i.e. with the twin cores it's the only thing that can happen and if someone wins, all that happens is that the loser's wand shows what it's done. With a run-of-the-mill Beam-O-War, the loser just gets hit.

SANDSTORM!!!

 * Also a movie gripe, but, instead of letting Voldemort pierce Harry with thousands of glass shards, Dumbledore decides it's much safer to have Harry be assaulted by multiple thousands of grains of glass/sand... and this is better? Has Dumbledore never heard of erosion?
 * Well, yes, getting hit by a huge pile of sand is better than getting hit by a smaller series of glass blades. The sandblasting would hurt more, but the glass pieces would make him dead more.
 * I gripe about it every time I see that part, because it's not sand, it's powdered glass. And Harry rolled in it. Poor mister Potter's face and hands should just be raw, bloody flesh now.
 * No it wouldn't. You must never have handled powdered glass -- it certainly doesn't tear your skin up if you rub it between your fingers. And sand isn't really anything different than coarse glass powder anyway.
 * And if you powder glass fine enough...it goes back into being sand.
 * If you ever use a glass bead machine (a form of metal finishing that blasts metals with grains of glass at high speed, often using a glovebox), you will undoubtedly get some on you and discover that it is easy to touch without cutting yourself. Hell, even getting hit by a few beads will sting something awful but won't cut you. The glass in the movie wasn't moving nearly fast enough to cause severe cuts.

We need to get our priorities straight...

 * Why was it so important to keep the full prophecy away from Voldemort? The "one must die at the hands of the other" bit might have made Voldemort redouble his efforts to kill Harry, but the "power the Dark Lord knows not" bit might have made him more cautious. Keeping Voldemort occupied trying to get the prophecy tied up some of his resources, but protecting the prophecy tied up some of the resources of the Order.
 * It was a necessary distraction. While he's distracted with it and why Harry can beat him, he's not attacking and advancing his other plans as much as he could. Dumbledore is worried Voldemort could figure something out that he doesn't want him to, or rather assume something he shouldn't. For example, Voldemort figured out from only two lines that it had to refer to Neville or Harry ignoring the possibility that the prophecy could be referring to a different calender or dark lord. If he got a hold of the entire prophecy he could possibly interpret the line "the power he knows not" to mean that Harry has some way to locate his Horcruxes, and as a precaution place more enchantments on them, move them, or hold onto them closer. It's better to leave your opponent in the dark than let him have information that could lead him to being that much harder to defeat.
 * If they wanted to ensure Voldemort never got his hands on the Prophecy, the simplest and surest method would simply be to walk in, smash the prophecy globe, and leave a transfigured lava lamp in its place. (And yes, they could do that; the protections keep anybody not named in the prophecy from picking it up, but Harry and Bellatrix both smash prophecies willy-nilly by accident when fighting in the DOM. Smashing one on purpose should be even easier.) After all, its not like Dumbledore needs the prophecy; he's already got his own copy safe in his pensieve!

Easy Recovery

 * In the hospital wing at the end of the book, Umbridge apparently hasn't said a word since the encounter with the centaurs, but two paragraphs later, she speaks perfectly normally and no-one seems to care.
 * They were hiding their disappointment.

Snape's Memory Woes
"Step 2: She breaks up with Severus, because he called her "Mudblood" (yeah, I know there was his dabbling in Dark Arts, but she somehow lived with it), even though he clearly lost his gip when he blurted it, it was partly her own fault for meddling in a boys' fight and adding to his humiliation, and he was extremely sorry for that. Hell, that moment might've served as Heel Realisation for Severus and usher in his reformation, if she didn't spurn him!
 * "Snape's Worst Memory": (Now before I go on, I have to ask some people to take off the Death Eater glasses and stay away from the leather pants.) Snape is painted as a horrible person for calling Lily "Mudblood", and in all fairness, he was wrong to do it. But, still in all fairness, he had just been publicly tortured and humiliated, and anyone who's ever been in that situation knows that the first thing you lose control over is your mouth. So, and I know this sounds like I'm justifying his behavior (I'm really not, but if it makes you feel better to think I am, go right ahead), he did have an excuse. Lily, on the other hand, called him a hated and nasty name ("Snivellus") and made fun of him for something that was completely out of his control (namely, being poor), and she didn't have the excuse of being tortured and humiliated in front of the entire school. So... Why am I supposed to believe that anyone in the memory was in the right? Rather, why am I supposed to believe that Lily was being the bigger person? Two wrongs do not make a right, no matter the circumstances.
 * The problem is that we're not told the whole story, merely the breaking point. For all we know, for the past 3 years, Snape's been researching Dark Arts and Lily's been defending her friendship with him, and him calling her a Mudblood just made her realize that maybe Snape really has changed and he has gone over to thinking like a racist pureblood. Or perhaps, as you said, Snape really just saw red and lashed out because of the situation. We don't know. From what we can tell, both of them were in a very high-stress situation, and it's no doubt they probably both overacted and neither was "in the right". Ultimately, if Snape tried to apologize later, he failed to make it seem like he was sincere enough, and Lily gave up on trying to defend him.
 * This is pretty much confirmed from Snape's conversation with Lily immediately afterwards. He'd been in deep with the Dark Arts/Death Eater wannabes for a while already, and Lily had stayed his friend out of loyalty even as she was getting pretty disturbed by it (she even says that she'd been making excuses for him). Publically calling her the equivalent of the n-word was just the straw that broke the thestral's back, as it were.
 * And remember that Snape wasn't exactly a fluffy bunny at school; he was something of a bully himself. Besides, when most people are humiliated and one of their friends comes to help them, they manage to avoid using racial slurs.
 * Lily wasn't being tortured and humiliated in front of the entire school, but she did have her best friend screaming at her for trying to help him, refusing to acknowledge that they were friends, and then calling her the nastiest name he possibly could. I don't know about you, but I'm not the type who'd be able to think rationally and realize, "Oh, he's under a high-stress situation, he doesn't really mean it," especially since he'd already been using that name about other people and hanging out with the people who think that she's naturally inferior and worthy of death.
 * A lot of people - including me - would have gone along those lines of thought (oh, he's under a high-stress situation, he doesn't really mean it.) What James had just done was the wizardly equivalent of tying him up and stripping him to his underwear in front of at least fifty of his schoolmates. That's severe psychological trauma, and that kind of bullying happened to Snape regularly. As for being ungrateful when Lily turned up to help - having his friend come to help during a situation like this would have been doubly humiliating, because Lily being popular (and James liking her) would have drawn extra attention to the bullying. (I know from personal experience how humiliating it can be when a popular friend comes up and defends you while you're being bullied - she/he often brings half the school with him/her, and the word gets around a lot faster. Most people find it funny that you're being bullied, especially if you were an unpopular loner like Snape.) It was dead wrong of him to call her a Mudblood, and I'm certainly not justifying it - but if I were in his situation, I probably wouldn't find it difficult to use a racial slur - (and believe me, I am NOT proud of that - it makes me sick to think how easy it would be.) Although I wouldn't do what Lily did under those circumstances, I don't blame her, actually. Being uber-popular, she wouldn't have come to the same conclusion as me. All she would hear was Snape's "Mudblood!", and she ditched him. Another thing that makes me Scratch my Head about the situation, though - Lily knew what was going on, knew that Snape was being sucked into the Dark Arts. She knew that the only other people who ever accepted him were the children of Death Eaters. She knew he was falling for that (going with the DEs.) She was his only friend who wasn't a mini-Death Eater. So why didn't she consciously use her (very strong) influence over him to help him stop being a mini-Death Eater? I know the power of friendship. It takes one friend, just one friend consciously working to pull you out. I have no doubt that she could have. (And just to be clear again, I am not blaming Lily. I'm just wondering.)
 * Yeah, that really bugged me too. To me, it was a What the Hell, Hero/Nice Job Breaking It for both Lily AND Snape. I'm not gonna lie, I've been in both Snape's position and in Lily's. I was pissed when Sev said it, but it I understood it. I probably wouldn't have lashed out like Snape did, but I understand it. Because if I remember correctly, Lily really wasn't much help. In fact, didn't James start showing off even more when Lily showed up? So at this point, all the humiliation I'm going through is partially your fault, damn you. At least that's how I'd be thinking in the heat of the moment. Here's my thing -- Lily, after all that you two have been through... you're just gonna end it all like that? Where the fuck is that Gryffindor stubbornness? Stick with him he needs you now more than ever. Instead, she's all worried about what everyone else is thinking and basically drops him, leaving him to sink even deeper into the Dark Arts because, after all, what else is there to lose now that my best friend is gone? Yeah, that was epic fail for both of them.
 * Of course she's going to end it like that. She's stood up for him, despite him hanging out with known Death Eaters. Despite the fact that her friends tell her she shouldn't be, becuase he dabbles in the Dark Arts. And then she stands up to James Potter, pretty much threatening him (she pulls out her wand, and is prepared to use it), forcing him to put Snape down. Then what does he say? That he doesn't need help from a 'filthy Mudblood'. Yeah, I'd say he was being totally ungrateful to one of the few true friends that he had. And on top of it, called her one of the nastiest things one might say. The wizarding world equal to the N-word. And keep in mind, he had been hanging around known Death Eaters like Mulciber and Avery, who had tortured people at school. And then, when she calls him out on his aspirations to be a Death Eater.. of calling other Muggle-borns mudbloods... he doesn't deny it.
 * But that's my point! The fact that he was meddling in the Dark Arts and called her a "mudblood" would be even more reason that he needed a friend on the "Light" side to pull him out of it. Without a friend, he was well and truly lost (at least for the moment). It takes a stronger person to realize this and stick by him through thick and thin and be compassionate and pull him out, than to just cut off all ties. Lily took the easy way out, and that bugs me because she was supposed to be a hero.
 * The thing was, Lily had been trying. She'd spent two to three years trying to convince him not to be friends with the DEs, and this was just her realising that, despite all her friendship and attempts to bring him to the light, he just wasn't coming back. Then, when he genuinely wanted forgiveness, she wasn't able to give it, because she thought that it would end up the same as before, with Snape drifting more and more into the Dark Arts.
 * I also don't get how James could have changed. Studies show that the majority of teen bullies become even bigger bullies as adults and rarely ever change. Considering that James and Sirius's actions were callous, pointless and near-sociopathic, I'm not willing to believe James changed - much. Love and marriage don't change one as much as you might think; my theory is that wartime gave James a different place to channel his violent/bullying tendencies, so to Lily it seemed that he changed. Besides, she was always attracted to him (Word Of God on this) even while he was a bully, lowering my opinion of her even more. It's not like Snape was an angel (oh, he was anything but), but, again, Lily a) took the easy way out when she was supposed to be a hero and b) she was attracted to James even while he was still a bully. There's even a line in SWM that says her "mouth quirked up as if she was about to laugh" or something, while James is doing the wizardly equivalent of tying Snape up, flipping him over, and stripping him. Oh no way. But I guess that's not the point - the point is she was always attracted to him, and when he hid his bullying from her (Sirius or Lupin says this) and then his bullying tendencies got channeled into the war instead, she took it that he changed and went with him. That's my theory.
 * What studies? Link please? I hate it when people do the whole "Studies show that blah blah blah" defense. Being a bully does not automatically make one evil incarnate, and we have plenty of evidence that he had good qualities underneath the Jerkass behavior. Did you forget the part where it was his idea to break the law by becoming Ilegal Animagi so that Lupin would suffer less from his curse every full moon? And it was Sirius and Sirius alone who had the idea to send Snape at a fully transformed werewolf on a full moon. James went to save Snape when he found out about it. Even if it was more to save Lupin from being Expelled and/or possibly put down like a rabid dog for killing Snape it's still eveidence he's not a sociopath like you aparently seem intent on claiming (I also hate it when people talk about teenagers being stupidly callous and doing things that might get others killed without thinking automatically making them sociopaths, so Sirius's behavior doesn't make him one either). It isn't that big of a stretch that he'd be the sort who'd be able to grow out of being a bully. Besides, James had begun to change by his seventh year (A full year after SWM) as that's when Lilly started dating him, so the war had nothing to do with his behavior. Just because some bullies don't change when they grow up doesn't meant none of them do. I thought we were avoiding painting anyone wth the Death Eater brush here.
 * Good point! People change as they grow up, your temperement stays the same throughout life but your personality can change a lot. This troper was bullied by a girl all the way though primary but now at Comprehensive School said bully is now perfectly lovely and friendly. James grew up a lot in his seventh year possibly as a result of saving Snape, which could have made him put things in perspective.
 * SOME people change. Children who are lashing out as bullies for a reason (say, being abused at home themselves) are very capable of change. However, children who have no discernible reason for being bullies in the first place? People who have absolutely everything going for them - money, name, grades, popularity, great home life, you name it - and STILL feel the need to abuse and torment other kids for sheer sport? In other words, people like James Potter? I don't think those kind of people ever change. Because they see no reason to change. They have no reason for doing what they do other than the fact that making someone else suffer is fun; why would that change?
 * The Marauders actually did have a "discernible reason for being bullies" -- being on the opposite side of a wartime political divide. I don't think its a coincidence that a group of 'blood traitors' and 'mudblood lovers', who later on grew up to be Order of the Phoenix members, spent most of their time in high school getting in gang fights with the kids who were all pureblood supremacists, who later on grew up to be Death Eaters. Its political factionalism, not random sociopathy.
 * Do we know when James's parents died? If one or both of them died shortly before this incident, it could be that his behavior in Snape's worst memory was a case of acting out his own turmoil, rather than a normal facet of his personality. Later on, when he'd processed his grief and re-considered the potential consequences of his and his friends' behavior (e.g. that Sirius's "prank" of siccing were-Lupin on Snape could've gotten somebody Killed Off for Real), he could've realized what a creep he'd become and worked to make himself more of a person Harry's grandparents wouldn't be ashamed of.
 * Yeah, sorry about that. I don't like a lot of Severus's behavior but if I were to choose between teen!Severus and teen!James I would definitely hate teen!James more, so I probably sound biased. I can't find the original link I had, but I have another one here. I still count James's behavior as far worse than just stupidly callous. Re-reading SWM, it just doesn't look like "normal" teen behavior. The level of physical humiliation is taken to an extreme point and would damage a teen for life.
 * What I gathered from the entire Snape/Lily/James story is the following. Lily and Snape were good friends from childhood. However, after Snape goes to Hogwarts, for whatever reason, he makes friends with Death Eater wannabes and takes an interest in Dark Arts. Some of this could be excused by a desire to fit in with his housemates, and resentment over being bullied by James and the other Marauders. Lily stands up for Snape, but at the same time, she is horrified by what she sees him becoming (his growing interest in Dark Arts and association with future Death Eaters). Matters come to a head during the Worst Memory incident. During this incident, pay careful attention to what is happening. Snape is being bullied, and Lily saves him. In response, Snape calls her a Mudblood. People compare this to the n-word; in fact, it's worse. At the time Snape uses this word, there is a group of people (the Death Eaters), who literally want all "Mudbloods" dead, and want to kill as many as they can. In using that word, and associated with Death Eater wannabes, Snape is not only insulting Lily, he is identifying himself with the very people who want her dead. Later, in backpedaling, Snape tries to tell Lily that she isn't like all the other Muggleborns, (echoing rationalizations of real-life racists). Lily realizes that, whatever Snape used to be, and whatever his reasons are, he is turning into a bad guy, and is aligning himself with an evil from which Lily needs to protect herself. (Of course, he would later repent, but Lily had no way of knowing that at the time.) As far as standing by Snape and being a source of light to save him out of darkness, the problem is that a lot of people who are in abusive or otherwise unhealthy relationships use that as a justification; most of these cases end, at best, in heartbreak for these would-be saviors. Regarding Lily/James: true, he was a complete Jerkass, but that is something a person can grow out of, and he did grow up over time; Snape, on the other hand, changed in the opposite direction, and evil is not something you can count on someone growing out of.
 * Except that Lily isn't at all frightened about the people Snape is hanging with, or that he's going to become some genocidal terrorist. Even her wording -- I think she says "your precious Death Eater friends" -- is just...odd. She sounds angry and even a little jealous, but not frightened or shaken in the least. And shouldn't she be? If she (and presumably Snape, and every other kid) KNOWS what the death eaters are and are capable of, shouldn't she be scared at what her BFF is becoming? Just imagine saying the words "your precious Al Queda friends" to your wayward mate. Or "your precious Manson Family buddies." You know, it just doesn't work.
 * Some other things to note about that scene; the only reason Snape is there at all is because he was stalking and eavesdropping on the Marauders. He 'coincidentally' follows them all the way from DADA class to down by the lake while they're busy just talking to each other. When they finally catch him eavesdropping and, yes, start to bully him, Snape uses the distraction of Lily's arrival to get back his wand and then tries to slice James' face open. ("Snape had directed his wand straight at James; there was a flash of light and a gash appeared on the side of James's face, spattering his robes with blood.") Only then does James dangle Snape upside down in the air... and when Lily makes James put him down, Snape tries to go for his wand again, and Sirius paralyzes him. So, while the Marauders are still being Jerk Jocks here, Snape's nowhere remotely near being an innocent victim -- not when he chose to escalate to using attempted lethal force during a schoolyard brawl, repeatedly, to the point where he had to be paralyzed to make him stop.
 * A related just bugs me about the pensive. Harry feels that what his dad did was unjustified because only someone like Malfoy would deserve it, but it never occurs to him that Snape might have been just as bad as Malfoy (and we later discover that he was worse). Now, let's not get into "Snape deserves it" or "no one deserves it" argument, this is strictly at Harry's mental processes. Harry thinks Malfoy or worse deserves it; Snape is worse, so what is Harry's problem? He's seen what Snape is like as an adult; why would he be better as a hormonal pre-redemption teenager? He's seen 10 minutes of Snape and thinks he knows the kind of person Snape was; he never even considers that it might have been a two-way street. For example, if I saw Hitler feeding some ducks, no one would say "he wasn't doing anything at that precise moment in time, so why did you do it?" Same thing with Snape, especially as Harry actually saw Snape call Lily a mudblood; doesn't that give him the slightest clue as to the type of person Snape was?
 * Does it say that only Malfoy would deserve that kind of treatment? I don't have the book handy, but I thought the narrative suggested that James' behavior was on par with Malfoy's, not that Snape would only have deserved the treatment if he had been Malfoy. Regardless, Snape is not Hitler. And James and Sirius didn't attack Snape out of moral outrage for his behavior, they attack him because they're bored, they don't like him, and he's close enough that they don't have to go looking for him.
 * The line is "He had once overheard Professor McGonagall saying that his father and Sirius had been troublemakers at school, but she had described them as forerunners to the Weasley twins, and Harry could not imagine Fred and George dangling someone upside down for the fun of it... not unless they really loathed them... perhaps Malfoy, or somebody who really deserved it." I always assumed it meant that he thought Malfoy would deserve it more than Snape, but I can see what you mean.
 * Actually, I believe that line means that Malfoy does not really deserve it, the Twins just hate him enough to do that sort of thing to. Malfoy =/= "somebody who really deserves it" in that sentence, those are just the two different types of people the Twins would do that to. Otherwise, I believe it'd be worded something along the lines of, "somebody who really deserved it, like Malfoy." Hope that makes sense.
 * No, Snape is not Hitler; I just used Hitler as a good example of someone who is in need of an arsekicking 24/7, just like Snape was at school (according to Harry's criteria of being worse than Malfoy). James and Sirius just gave as good as they got.
 * A preteen/teen boy is not in constant need of an arsekicking 24/7. The boy was in need of serious psychological help, and what did he get - a serious arsekicking 24/7. I'm not saying he didn't deserve telling off/punishment for some of the things he did, but he also needed somebody who cared enough about his wellbeing to sit down and talk to him about his values and priorities. Somebody to pull him out of the Death-Eater-ness he was going into because the children of Death Eaters were the only people apart from Lily who would accept him. Not a single child deserves anything like what Snape got, no matter how messed up they were. In fact, the more messed-up a child is, the more help they need. Snape did not get any of this much-needed help, he only got a serious arsekicking, 24/7. As for the original question's statement of how Snape calling Lily a mudblood would give Harry some insight as to what kind of a person Snape was -- considering that what James was doing, as I stated to the above question, was the wizardly equivalent of tying him up and stripping him to his underwear in front of everyone, it wouldn't have been difficult for him to say something like that. Especially when his friend, who he liked in a romantic way, came up and saw him in this situation, and actually tried to defend him -- that's humiliating. I'm not excusing his behavior, because it was absolutely out of order for him to call Lily a Mudblood, but it was an understandable response, if not the right one. (Again, not defending his actions. But if you want to think I am, and it makes you happy, I don't deny you your happiness.)
 * I'm defending him. No lie, the man is clearly in wrong just as much as they are, but looking at that one memory: He was paying them no attention. The man was walking away reviewing his OWL exam. And look at the wording He was paying THEM no attention. It was never a one on one fight. James and/or Sirius always wanted an audience and never did things on their own. They were always egging each other on, and if Peter grew some balls from time to time, it was probably 3 to 1. Remus the fucking PREFECT looked the other way. That's probably what bothers Harry the most. Remember, Harry has lived with the same situation since he was little. Dudley always owned his ass. Remember "Harry Hunting"? I'm pretty sure that was a regular occurrence with Snape, because if you read it, as soon as they called his name, he instantly went to "attack and defend" mode. And no one else is defending him until Lily comes along and, as I mentioned in the above convo with Snape, she made it worse. In a direct quote from James “I will if you go out with me, Evans,” said James quickly. “Go on… Go out with me, and I’ll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again.” Flirting with Lily, his bestie and long time crush, right in front of him while he's tied down? Fuck no. Of course he's gonna fight back and he's gonna be twice as vicious. It was heavily implied that the man grew up in an abusive home with no one to give a damn besides (possibly) his mother and then Lily. Who James has a crush on. Cue epic hatred on both sides. James because he can, Sev because James started it and he's trying to take Lily. Not only that, but y'all seem to be skewing things a little. If you want to compare them to Harry and Draco, think on this... Harry's almost never innocent in each scrap with Draco. BUT WHO'S ALWAYS STARTING IT? 90% of the time, it's Draco. Just like in that one memory, it appeared to be James. Or Sirius, I can't remember. If you want to make the comparison, Draco is James and Harry is Sev. That's the way I see it. Of course Harry's gonna be upset -- he's heard nothing but great things about his dad. Do you wanna hear about all the evil things your parents might have done?
 * Of course Snape is not in need of an arse kicking according to your or my morals, BUT as was the original point, as far as Harry is concerned, someone as bad as Snape was deserving of that sort of treatment. Yet for some reason, Harry never considers that Snape might have been a kid bad enough to meet his criteria. As for your Mudblood defence, would you call a black friend a N***** if they came to help you out in that situation? As I said before, this isn’t about getting into "does he deserve it", it's about Harry's mental processes. As for what my parents did, if I discovered my dad beat up a kid who went round a Jewish school, in London, at the height of the blitz and holocaust, praising Hitler, and calling people the N work and the K word, and beating people up, I wouldn’t be too fussed. Especially if said kid grew up to be an SS concentration camp guard. Snape did the wizard equivalent of that at school.
 * Snape didn't do the wizardly equivalent of that at school. He was a victim and didn't engage in fighting with anyone until late in his sixth or early in his seventh year, when he gained enough backbone to fight back at James. Lily's wording is that she objects to Snape's friends, not to what Snape does. Snape wasn't even present when Avery and Mulciber and the rest were doing their stuff; if Snape had been present, Lily would have ditched him then and there, no questions asked, as we can see from her personality. As for calling her a Mudblood -- I don't like explaining this again and again... Okay. I know it's hard for people who haven't been severely bullied to understand, but although it was reprehensible to say "mudblood" as Snape did when Lily defended him, it was completely, 100% understandable. Again, if you haven't been bullied the way Snape was, it's going to be a stretch to understand, but bear with me please. James did the wizardly equivalent of tying Snape up, hanging him upside down and stripping him in front of all his classmates. Nevermind that that is pretty much criminal behavior (and if it isn't -- I haven't been to law school after all -- it's a fine line between bullying and criminal behavior, and in my mind they are one and the same.) Nevermind that that kind of bullying, happening on a regular basis, is enough to drive any fifteen-year-old kid to suicide. At the point where he was hanging upside down, Severus would have been thinking, could this even get any worse? And then it did. Lily came along and defended him. That is the most embarrassing thing, ever, that can happen to you while being bullied. (I've been in this kind of situation: if I'm being bullied to that extreme extent, and a popular friend comes along to defend me, it's so embarrassing -- I honestly wished I could die right then and there.) Unwittingly, Lily had just humiliated him even more. Snape should not have responded the way he did -- but it's understandable, if not justified. Again, a stretch for those of you who haven't been bullied to that kind of horrific extent, but I tried my best to explain. Let me know if there's anything I didn't cover. Anyway, back to the topic (sorry about the long paragraph, but any kind of defense of bullying is my serious Berserk Button.) As the original topic states, Harry doesn't think that Snape might have been "as bad as Malfoy". To me, that seems reasonable, because Snape wasn't like Malfoy. He was 'friends' with mini-DEs because they were the only people who would even pretend to accept him. Also, Snape was victimized on a regular basis for no reason (James and Sirius even say that it's more the fact that Snape exists than anything else - meant to be funny, but actually an insight into James's complete indifference and lack of remorse - sociopathic anyone?) Malfoy isn't victimized; more often it's Harry who is (though Harry isn't a saint either.) Malfoy isn't popular among most Gryffs, but certainly has plenty of friends and even a girlfriend. Snape was nowhere near that level. He was completely and utterly at the bottom (with only mini-DEs who would tolerate him), which is why Harry sympathizes with him - Harry doesn't sympathize with Malfoy because Malfoy has plenty of friends and still chooses to bully.
 * I'm not sure I agree with you about Malfoy having friends. I think it was pretty well implied that Crabbe and Goyle are just his minions, not his friends. And I don't think he and Pansy actually liked each other much either. He was only superficially popular because of his Death Eater dad and his money. I get the impression that he was just as lonely as Snape, except for the illusion that he had loads of friends.
 * Belive it or not, I was bullied at school, so it says something that I can't sympathise with Snape. "Snape never lost an opportunity to curse him"... "they did rather detest each other, not unlike Yourself and Mr. Malfoy"... "served him right, sneaking around hoping he could get us expelled"... "knew more curses than half the kids in 7th year in his 1st"... "up to his eyeballs in the dark arts". Not really someone who only fought back in sixth year. He invented Sectumsempra and Levicorpus, not really the actions of a non-bully, and Levicorpus got out, so he must have overused it. Actually what James has done is the wizard equivalent or debagging, or pansting as I think the Americans call it. This isn't bullying, it's fighting; James and Snape have been fighting since their first year, and we just see Snape losing. Btw, what did he do when he got his wand back? Expelliarmus, Stupefy, Impedimenta? No, it was a version of Sectumsempra. They're both supposed to have given as good as they got where each other and probably other people are concerned. Another objection Lily had to Snape was that it was well known that he wanted to join Voldemort. That's from Snape's own memories as well. Snape is a terrible person; I'm not saying James is better (well, maybe I am just a tiny bit, as he mended his ways not long after this memory), but you really have to see what a terrible person Snape was. As for "it's more the fact he exists" meaning James was sociopathic, you're reading too much into it. He saved Snape's life soon after this memory. Possibly that was his turnaround. Btw, you'd call your black friends niggers if they came to help you? I didn't.
 * You make some valid points, but I have to disagree with the "This isn't bullying, it's fighting". Re-reading SWM, the only definition for James and Sirius's actions is extreme bullying. It wasn't even provoked. (Preemptive strikes do not count.) The words "coolly" and "coldly" are used more than once in describing Sirius and James's tone of voice. I believe "indifferently" was also used, and that is not fighting. That's utter callous disregard of another human being's feelings. If they want to fight, fight. Extreme public humiliation isn't fighting, it's bullying to the point of damaging Snape for life, which they did. Although Snape is a jerk to kids as an adult, and that's inexcusable, that doesn't have anything to do with his inability to get over what happened as a child - and believe it or not, he has no reason to be able to get over it. An adult!Sirius sneers at and antagonizes Snape, and as James and Sirius were the instigators to the entire problem (as we see in the Hogwarts-train scene) Sirius shows zero remorse. And as for Sirius's remarks "Served him right, sneaking around . . ." "Knew more curses . . ." etc., Does Sirius have any right to criticize Snape just as does Snape have any right to criticize Sirius? Anything that comes out of either of their mouths about the other is likely to be biased to the extreme. Yes, Adult!Snape is a jerk. Yes, 16 year old-Snape was planning on joining Voldemort. Yes, he's not an angel or even a really nice or good person. But James and Sirius's actions towards him as teens were not justified any more than Snape hexing them was justified. I count Severus's use of Sectumsempra as well as his very tight control of the use of it (a cut on James's cheek instead of the wide gashes Harry inflicted on Malfoy) as far less than giving what he got. Maybe a lot happened offscreen/off page. Still, what James and Sirius did was unquestionably extreme bullying that is in no way ever justified.
 * '... as far less giving as what he got'? Um, are you serious? Do you know what the real world calls it if, while some jocks are busy pushing you around and dangling you upside down, you then pull out a knife and cut the guy's face? Even if you exercise 'very tight control' of your knife, the jocks are committing misdemeanor assault, while you're committing assault with a deadly weapon (a serious felony). Three guesses who's going to jail and for how much longer? And no, you couldn't claim self-defense either -- using or even just brandishing a lethal weapon in reaction to schoolyard bulling is going well beyond proportionate response, which renders a self-defense claim invalid. Its the exact same reasoning where you're not allowed to shoot someone in self-defense during a bar brawl, only when you are legitimately in fear of your life. If Snape's shot had landed a few inches higher, James wouldn't have an eye. If he'd landed a few inches lower, James wouldn't have a jugular vein. And given that Snape was wildly flailing around while being held upside down, I really doubt he was precision sniping. The dude tried to cut James' head open as his first reaction to bullying -- that's the real psychotic behavior here, not the Marauders' own schoolyard assholery.
 * The point of this memory was to show Harry (and the audience) that James and Sirius (and Lupin and Peter to a point) to be complete assholes and not as great as Harry thinks they were.
 * Except, as JKR had clearly established, Snape was and is also a complete arsehole (and Harry knew this), so it doesn't quite work.
 * It works because Snape was RIGHT about Sirius and James, and his hatred of them becomes much more understandable. James and Sirius were complete asses in school; Harry didn't exactly believe this because it was coming from Snape, but the memory points out that it is in fact true what Snape said about Harry's father and godfather. It also explains Snape's behavior to Harry; though not excusable, Snape thinks Harry to be like his father. Hell, he even looks like him.
 * But again as I said above Harry is cool with this stuff (remember him laughing at Malfoy being turned into a ferret and slapped around) as long as it's directed at someone like Malfoy. Why doesn't he even consider than Snape might be like Malfoy? He has just heard him call his mum a mudblood and knows he's a nasty piece of work afterall.
 * --->Step 1: Lily witnesses James Potter humiliating her long-time friend Severus in the most disgusting way possible with little to no provocation.

Step 3: ...

Step 4: Fast forward two years, and she'd married the torturer.

Aren't we missing something here?"

Yeah from the looks of it things were already going sour between Lily and Snape. I can't quite remember exactly what it says but at one point there is a line saying that Lily almost laughed at something that James said about Snape so I do think that Lily was slowly starting to warm to James. A lot of people seem to think that they became a couple overnight but personally I think that it was more of a slow process.
 * The "Mudblood" thing was the straw that broke the camel's back. What Snape failed to understand when he was trying to apologize was that Lily wasn't upset about one instance of him using a Fantastic Slur, she was upset about a pattern of behavior which had culminated in that. It's not like he had been a perfect gentleman and then one day he blurted out a bad word. He had been getting deeper and deeper into the Dark Arts and Lily had been making excuses for him, but then he called her "Mudblood" and she saw how far gone he was.
 * That's not exactly my point. What bugs me, is that despite all the Sev's flaws, James Potter's behavior was still completely devoid of anything even remotely sympathetic, and I find it hard to believe that Lily wouldn't blame him, at least partly, for what'd happened, so just how in the world did they end up together?
 * Well, we have to go on Sirius and Lupin's word that James had a Heel Face Turn. But what happened that she should be partially blaming James for? If you mean bullying Snape, she did blame James for that, or else she wouldn't have stood up for Snape. If you mean Snape saying the word "Mudblood", that plays into the fallacy that Lily was only upset about one particular instance of him saying the word "Mudblood" rather than it on top of his increasingly worrying association with the Dark Arts. If you're suggesting James drove Snape to the Dark Arts, remember Snape "knew more curses when he arrived at Hogwarts than half the kids in seventh year."
 * That's the problem. We can't go on Sirius and Lupin's word. Lupin is a coward and Sirius is, quite simply, a near-sociopath who seems to be remotely capable of affection. (Which means he isn't really a true sociopath, but you get my drift.) Both men idolize James and both men have never been able to get over Lily and James's deaths. In a way, James and Lily's deaths have arrested part of their development.
 * And as for Snape's alleged proficiency in curses, who do we hear about this from? Exactly, Sirius. However, if we go by what we see instead by what we hear, it's painfully obvious that Snape craved attention, friendship, and affection from the Marauders (otherwise, why the hell would he constantly hang around them, asking for troubles). How much must it hurt that the super-popular, universally loved and loving Potter could share no love for him. That he'd invited Pettigrew in his inner circle, but not him. And when there was that other popular, charming and brilliant guy, who DID accept him and offered him ways to vent off his bottled up frustration and anger and feel superior, is it that surprising that he fell for it? Of course, he's still responsible for his own actions, but there is no doubt to me that the "good guys" did nothing to stave him off the slippery slope at best, and were pushing him down it at worst.
 * Well, actually, going by what we saw in the flashbacks from book 7 the reason Snape kept hanging around the Marauders is because he is an obsessively vindictive and oversensitive personality that will declare an obsessive feud to the death over the tiniest insult. Seriously, he walked across a train car to deliberately insult people he'd never met before simply because he overheard them saying to each other that they hoped to be sorted into Gryffindor and not Slytherin.
 * About Snape, Deathly Hallows said it with Snape's memories: Lily knew who Snape was hanging around with, knew what his "friends" were doing, what perhaps Snape was doing. Lily and Snape had been friends since they were ten. And suddenly, when Lily tried to help Snape (admittedly, I understand that it is humiliating for a popular friend of yours to help you in those instances), Snape snapped at her and insulted her in the worst way. For Lily, that was just the climax of a great series of bad things Snape had been doing for a year or even more time, which she had tried to explain away because he was her friend. This was not Lily taking the easy way out; this was Lily thinking that maybe he was so much into the group that she had no chance of bringing him out. Also, it could be that her thoughts went "if he insults me like that when I help him, what will happen when he gets angry on some other thing?" Besides, Lily, even if she was really mature and intelligent, is still fifteen years old, and she doesn't have the hindsight us readers have.
 * All this is true, though I've seen the Power of Friendship in instances like this on an amazing level too many times for me to really believe that, at fifteen, there was really no chance of pulling Snape out. I mean, I'm really young to be saying this, but I've seen it a lot in my short life. (And after all, Snape did pull himself out even later in life and when he was deeper in - and it was directly because of Lily. I believe that if, after blowing him off, she had metaphorically 'left a door open' for their friendship, this could have resulted in Snape having a Heel Realization - but that's just from what I've seen of friendships, which, admittedly, probably isn't as much as older people.) You do have a point, though it's not something I would make, it's still a solid point that makes sense. The only other thing is about Lily being fifteen, and therefore not having the experience or hindsight to realize that she could still have changed him - well, I'm not going to say specifically, but I am a bit younger than Lily was at that point, and if I had a friend that came from a troubled family and was getting into gangs/drugs/cults/etc, and was being bullied, I would definitely stick by them no matter what (of course, even I have limits, I wouldn't put myself in a vulnerable position/in an abusive friendship with somebody who was mentally unstable - which Snape wasn't, but I would definitely stick by them and be there for them and try to pull them out.) If this hypothetical friend of mine called me the N word when I tried to help them, I would still be there for them and try to help - there was no reason for Lily to completely shut herself off. Sure, I would understand her leaving the friendship out of anger, but what bothered me the most, I think, was her complete and absolute refusal to have anything to do with him later. She cut herself off from him completely, and I have a problem with that. And I am younger than she was, so I don't think it's a maturity issue. (And - please please tell me I didn't offend anyone with this post. If I did, I'm seriously sorry because I'm not sure how my opinion looks to other people.)
 * Remember that the Wizarding World is at war during this time. The Death Eaters aren't just a racist hate gang -- they're a racist hate gang that is also officially a terrorist group that is openly fighting the government and murdering people in the streets. And remember that Severus genuinely joined the Death Eaters and stayed there for years -- he only tried to change back once Voldemort targeted Lily in 1981, but that still leaves 2-3 years of being a full-on loyal Death Eater between Hogwarts graduation and the death of the Potters, let alone what he was up to before he left school. When your nation is at war and someone you know chooses to enlist with the enemy army, what else can you do? Given that this is a war where the enemy wants to ethnically cleanse people like Lily, its even worse. From Lily's point of view, Snape has announced his intention to sign up with an army of people who explicitly have 'murder Lily Evans and everyone like her' as one of their life goals... the idea that we could even begin to criticize her for walking away from Snape at that point is staggering.
 * I don't think Lily forgiving him would have spurned a Heel Realization. Rather, I think it would have made him feel his behaviour had been validated and pushed him even deeper into the Dark Arts. Years of Lily's friendship hadn't stopped him going into Death Eater circles to begin with, what difference would a bit more make? If she'd stuck by him even after he'd called her a racial slur, he'd never have learnt that it was wrong. The fact that her leaving wasn't enough to snap him out of it means he was already too far in, otherwise he'd have instantly broken all ties with Mulciber, Avery etc, stopped everything he was doing with the Dark Arts (which I believe he could have done, since Sirius said that no one in the Order knew for sure that Snape was a Death Eater during the First War, so he can't have been that deep in until after school.) After a incident like that, a verbal apology was worth nothing. If he had shown her, rather than told her that he was truely sorry and willing to change, then she probably would have forgiven him. Sticking with him unconditionally would have been the worst thing she could do and probably would have made him a far worse person. Whilst I'd like to think that Lily was too mature for this, it is possible that she only left as a test to see whether he loved her enough to come to the right side. A test he failed. Also, I have to point out that the Drugs = Death Eater analogy really doesn't work. When someone is on drugs, they are physically addicted to it, and their body won't let them stop, no matter how much their mind wants to. You can get addicted after taking it once. You can't be physically addicted to Death Eat-ing. You can't hang out with Death Eaters once and instantly have to join them. He made his own decision to be a Death Eater. Nothing Lily did by that point could have changed his mind. (Just to clarify, as I just realized I sound like I'm contradicting myself: I believe that Snape could have gotten out of the Death Eater circle if HE had wanted to. I believe there was nothing LILY could do to get him out.)
 * Well, maybe if she had actually bothered to make him choose between the DEs and her, it might've made the difference. Of course, that night after the Incident it was indeed probably too late, but they had several years prior to it, while Snape gradually got entangled in Dark Arts (BTW, I wouldn't be so quick to discard their similarity to drugs. They might very well cause addiction), yet apparently not once did Lily try to deliver an ultimatum to Sev, otherwise you'd think that moment would be reflected in his memories. I think, a logical conclusion to their talk that was reflected, would be Lily saying: "it's either them or me", but for some reason it wasn't.
 * Regarding James, I think that Sirius and Remus did tell Harry that Lily wasn't interested in James at all until he pulled his head out of his arse and mellowed. He may have still been a bit of a prankster, but if he was given the Head Boy position, combined with the situation out of Hogwarts (the First War with Voldemort had been going on for several years already), maybe he finally managed to grow out of the childish behaviour shown on the memory, and that's when Lily started to show some interest in James, when she saw his mature side.
 * This is where my suspension of disbelief goes right out the window, because I had the idea pretty clearly stuck in my head that James was a sociopath (as well as Sirius, but that's beside the point), and sociopaths just don't change. They can't. Maybe A Wizard Did It and magicked him out of his sociopathy? Sorry, I know this isn't canon, but just look at his behavior and tell me he's not a sociopath.
 * The same thing can be said for Snape... He was always interested in the Dark Arts, and he had a clear nasty streak from an early age (shown when he made that branch fall on Petunia for insulting him. Involuntary magic or not, it shows that he had a inborn desire to cause people pain from when he 9 years old.) He was just as much a bullying git as James/Sirius, only he never got over it. He continues bullying children for the rest of his life. For 16 years after the death of the woman he loved, (which was his own damn fault for becoming a Death Eater in the first place,) he continues to gleefully torment her son at every opportunity, just... because? He dared to exist, or something? He started the animosity between himself and Harry, not the other way around. If Snape hadn't treated him like crap from the moment he laid eyes on him, then Harry would never have hated him. Sure, Harry would deliberately antagonize Snape from then on, but he did nothing to make Snape treat him badly from the first day. Snape was so immature and petty that he decided to start a rivalry with an eleven-year-old, again, just for existing. I could understand it if Harry had come strutting into Hogwarts with an enormous ego like James's, but he didn't. Therefore, Snape had no reason to hate Harry, he's just a nasty and vindictive person at heart. Also supporting that is the way he treated Neville. He bullied Neville because he blamed him for not being targeted instead of Harry, despite the fact that obviously a baby cannot be responsible for anything, it was Snape's own actions as a Death Eater that brought about Lily's death. He is a vengeful lunatic for tormenting Neville for something that he did himself. I'll never understand why Snape fans like to forget about the fact that Snape. Was. A. Murderer. You cannot deny that he must have tortured and killed people as a Death Eater before Lily died. He must have killed or wounded Order members (Lily's friends!) in battle. That is the number one symptom of sociopathy: lack of empathy/remorse/guilt and inability to see victims as people with emotions. Believe James is a sociopath if you want (I think a better title would be narcissist, if one wants to assign mental disorders to people who probably just have a jerkass streak (which is 'curable', unlike sociopathy),) but you can't deny that Snape exhibits many of the symptoms. And remember the fact that Harry (who has James's blood, and is like him in some ways) was able to forgive Snape for years of hate and abuse, enough to name his child after him, whereas Snape died still loathing Harry... for existing. Yeah, Snape sounds more like a sociopath than James to me. James was just spoilt and full of himself, which occasionally led to behaviour that was slightly sociopathic, but he grew out of it. Snape was simply a cruel person, who never grew out of it. Also, James literally could not have been a sociopath, because otherwise he wouldn't have saved Snape from getting killed by Sirius's 'prank.' And to answer the original question, the basic reason that Lily picked James over Snape is: James was a Jerkass at first, and changed for the better because he loved Lily. Snape, on the other hand, decided he loved the Dark Arts more than Lily, and refused to become better for her. Ergo, James wins fair and square in the end, regardless of how either of them behaved initially.
 * Snape shows a lot less sociopathic tendencies in my opinion, than Teen!James did. Snape was completely trustworthy after he changed sides; sociopaths aren't trustworthy, ever. Sirius especially, but also James show blatant tendencies toward not being able to empathize: In SWM the words "coldly," "coolly" and "indifferently" are used to such an extent in describing James and Sirius's tone that it stuck out like a red flag to me. James and Sirius were literally completely indifferent towards the extreme physical humiliation they were inflicting on Snape. Yes, Snape grew up to do bad things, but this was probably in part a result of never having experienced anything else by the hands of other people. As for a 9 year old having an inborn tendency to causing suffering . . . just . . . WTF?! . . . Voldemort, sure, he was never normal according to JKR because magic was involved in his conception. But . . . a normal (extremely lonely and ostracized, sure, but normal otherwise) kid? Seriously. Sure, he was a jerk as an adult. But as a little kid, that's taking it way too far.
 * Yeah, because the words 'coldly,' 'cooly' and 'indifferently' have never been used to describe Snape either. Alright, maybe that is going a bit far, but plently of other characters had just as awful a childhood, or worse and still became better people. Snape's not the only one with a Freudian Excuse you know. There might not be much justification for James being such a dick, but Sirius? Sirius had parents who were just as, if not more abusive than Snape's. They were all about blood purity and Dark Arts. Can you really blame Sirius for loathing Snape on sight? The first thing he hears out of Snape's mouth is how much he wants to be put in Slytherin, the House known for turning out Dark Wizards, and that he wants Lily to be there too. From that moment on Sirius classified him in his head as Death Arts-loving scum who was dragging some innocent girl down with him, and therefore thought he deserved everything he got. There was no other conclusion he could have come to, and that's not his fault. Also, James and Sirius probably hated him even more when they found out Lily was Muggleborn, because they knew that Snape hated other Muggleborns. They probably thought that he was abusing/using/mainpulating her in some way. How were they to know that he wasn't? And as I said before, however horrible James and Sirius were as children/teens, they still grew out of it and became much better/kinder people than Snape (particularly Sirius.) Snape had absolutely no redeeming qualities other than his love for Lily, (which was an extraordinarily selfish love at that, otherwise he would have wanted her to be happy, even though it was with James instead of him) And Snape's horrible treatment of Harry was a disgusting insult to Lily's memory. He had every right to dislike Harry because he reminded him of James, but to outright loathe him and make sure he was aware of it at every possible opportunity? No. Just no. I don't know how he lived with himself. I think he'd be lucky if Lily could ever forgive him for that. I couldn't. And as for Snape being trustworthy, that's a joke. He wasn't loyal to Dumbledore because he realized that being a Death Eater was wrong, it was because he was angry with Voldemort for killing Lily. He never turned to the good side or was loyal to Dumbledore. He just turned against Voldy because of his own selfish reasons, and had to obey Dumbles to avoid being sent to Azkaban.
 * Exactly! Snape wasn't the only one with abusive parents, Sirius had them too. He was raised by people that taught him that bullying was okay and was probably never shown love by them. Anyway Snape gave as good as he got and would have never given up a chance to curse one of them so neither party is innocent. Also look at adult Snape and adult Sirius, can you honestly say that Snape was a better person than Sirius? Also Remus's lack of intervention can be traced to his fear of losing the only people that ever accepted him, I mean come on! Lupin probably doubted the love of his own mother at times!
 * Meh, while what James and Sirius was doing was Jerkass behaviour, you have to remember, Snape was a wannabe Death Eater, meaning he wanted to be part of a pureblood supremacist group led by a genocidal psychopath. The fact that Lily was still friends with Snape at all shows just how much she cared about him; it would be the equivalent of a Jewish girl being friends with a wannabe Nazi, or a black girl being friends with a member of the KKK. On the other hand, a lot of Snape's Jerkassness as an adult was through bitterness that came from his treatment at school, the choices he made, and the fact that he realized that he completely screwed up his chances at happiness; he probably wasn't that big of an ass at school, personality wise. At school, Snape was a deeply lonely and troubled boy, though to everyone else, he seemed to be a creepy, weird kid, since being fascinated by the Dark Arts and inventing curses to use on people in your spare time is the equivalent of a kid being obsessed with medieval torture and inventing new torture devices in his spare time. No, the other students didn't know about Snape's little hobby, but to them, his obsession with the Dark Arts alone was weird; his association with Death Eaters turned that weirdness factor Up to Eleven. Let's not forget, he was the equivalent of a Neo-Nazi, who hung out with kids who were probably doing their share of dickish behaviour, which would likely be the equivalent of a group of Neo-Nazis harassing and beating up Jews and non-white kids at school. While from the reader's perspective, since we could see what was going on in Snape's head and in his backstory, he seemed to be a sad, lonely kid picked on for no reason; to James and Sirius, Snape was just a creepy little asshole who happened to make a really convenient target. Not saying that's the only reason they did it, since they did it to others, and there was also a lot of personal animosity; James hated Snape because he hung out with Death Eaters, held a lot of detestable beliefs, and was jealous of the fact that he was closer to Lily than he was, and the fact that Snape also had a crush on her pissed him off. Sirius hated Snape because he reminded him of his family's pureblood mania, and was a way to take out his anger at his family. They bullied him, however, because he was an easy target, was always entertaining, and eventually, it was just a habit; the fact that they had personal reasons to hate him was just a bonus. Calling James and Sirius sociopaths is definitely pushing it, though; narcissistic behaviour is pretty common at that age (God knows I had my share of asshole moments), but as they got older, they matured and grew out of it; had they been sociopaths, Dumbledore, at least, would have seen through their attempts at feigning normalcy, since he had managed to do the same with Tom Riddle, a textbook sociopath who was probably much cleverer than either James or Sirius. Snape was just an angry, troubled boy growing up who found a group of friends who would accept him and make him feel big and important, a feeling he never had before. He realized too late exactly what being a Death Eater had cost him, and he worked the rest of his life to make up for it, devoting his life to serving Dumbledore. The reason James and Sirius became much more likeable people than Snape was, simply, that they didn't have reasons to become bitter; James had a wife, a son and a good group of friends (except Wormtail, but he didn't know that) when he was killed. Sirius was somewhat responsible for the deaths of Lily and James, though his mistake had only been trusting Wormtail; he hadn't directly been the one to betray the Potters. He also ended up in Azkaban, again, through no fault of his own, so his anger was mainly directed outward, rather than inward, and once he got out, he was at least able to be a part of the life of his best friend's son. Snape was directly responsible for: a) the love of his life ending up with his most hated enemy, b) said love cutting off all ties with him and rejecting him and c), directing the most dangerous Dark wizard in the world towards this woman, resulting in her death. The reason that he was a complete Jerkass to Harry as an adult, was because Harry was a daily reminder of all of these things (something which worked out quite well for Dumbledore, since it helped keep Snape loyal by reminding him what could happen if he turned back to Voldemort). Basically, don't assume that the reader's perspective is every character's perspective; to James and Sirius, Snape deserved every taunting he got, though most of it was done for amusement than any moral outrage; to Lily, she saw her childhood friend transforming into something hateful before her eyes, and couldn't bear to watch any longer.
 * All valid points, although I have a problem with the "good group of friends" and "growing out of it". Neither James or Sirius were remotely good people. I don't care how much of a Heel Face Turn they either had (in fact, Sirius still seems like a flat-out Jerkass as an adult, probably partly due to Azkaban,) I have issues with believing that anyone like James or Sirius could grow up to be good people. What they were doing wasn't normal teen behavior, it was disturbing to the extreme, even more so than Snape, who had an obvious need to be accepted and the only way he found this acceptance was by joining a group that were admittedly pretty much Neo-Nazis. I can't get my mind around the possibility that you can just "grow out of" the kind of things James and Sirius did. They weren't just being idiots/narcissistic (though god knows they were.) I have freaking nightmares about people like James and Sirius. The teenage Snape seemed much more redeemable simply because of his motive for joining the Death Eaters. If someone guided him to a healthier way of finding acceptance and friendship, his need for the Death Eaters would be cancelled out.
 * It certainly is normal teen behaviour, it only looks worse because there's magic involved. It might be difficult to understand James and Sirius's perspective without having been in their position, but what they were doing wasn't that out of the ordinary, nor was it entirely unjustified: replace every instance of the word 'Death Eater' with 'Nazi', 'Voldemort' with 'Hitler', and 'Mudblood' with 'dirty kike/nigger/slur of choice', and you'll have an idea of how Snape and his Death Eater friends looked like to everyone else. As for not having a good group of friends, the rest of the Order were certainly decent people, despite any opinion one may have about Sirius or James. Though nobody is denying that they were Jerkasses, they weren't ruthless, evil sociopaths, they were more like Draco Malfoy, minus the Death Eater fixation, and with arguably better publicity. Besides, calling them psychopaths is stretching it: they simply didn't consider how Snape would feel because they had gotten so used to messing with him, and they saw him as being worth less than them for a number of reasons. Despite what you might think, people do grow out of that, it's a part of growing up and maturing: teenage dickheadedness like that of Sirius, James, and Malfoy isn't on the same level as the psychopathic malice of Tom Riddle at their age, and unlike Riddle, it's definitely possible to change for the better (though not everyone does).
 * I'm going to bring up what I think is a crucial point here: Y'all are just arguing about which was worse, Sev, Lily or James, but I want to mention that we have no found out that that scene was not, as we once thought, Snape's worst memory because of the humiliation, but because of //what it made him do.// It was that incident that upset him enough to call Lily a Mudblood and destroy their friendship and by extension all possibility of her ever returning his love. And like seriously? James and Sirius weren't sociopaths. Being a bully at age fifteen (I am fifteen, I should know) does not make you a sociopath and it is highly likely that you will grow out of it as you mature. I know no boys who aren't jerks to some extent at that age.
 * Do these boys also attempt to murder their peers or at least send them to certain death just for lulz? (If Sirus failed to understand what he was doing when he was sending Severus to Lupin, he wasn't a jerk - he was either a sociopath or a braindead).
 * It wasn't as if Sirius forced Snape into the shack where Lupin had transformed. Sirius all but dared him to go in there and Snape went of his own free will. While it was stupid of Sirius to do that in the first place, part of the blame falls on Snape for being stupid enough to go into a creepy shack based on a rival's opinion.
 * Or, how about we stay away from Ron the Death Eater and Draco in Leather Pants as the OP stated, and realize that yes, Snape, James and Sirius all did bad things but all also had reasons for doing so? Yes, they had varying degrees of justification, and yes, nobody in that scene was entirely faultless. But it was not entirely Snape's "fault" nor was it entirely James and Sirius's "fault." And why can't we just leave it at that?

Harry Potter is officially a moron

 * This is not so much about a fridge logic, but about how Harry behaved in general. So Harry has a vision of the person who is the next best thing to his dad being tortured somewhere in a omnious part of the MoM. First, he breaches into the office belonging to the The Umbridge, he gets information from a questionable source, and nearly forgets that Snape is part of the Order because he hates him. If Harry for a second would have dropped his Idiot Ball, he would notice, that the vision he saw could be wrong, that he could let Snape take care of this, assume that Kreacher's information could have been wrong too, and above all, THAT HE SHOULD NOT ENDANGER HIS CLOSEST FRIENDS IN AN RESCUE ATTEMPT AT THE HEART OF THE MINISTRY AGAINST DEATH EATERS. I mean, seriously, half of the plot only works with puberty making Harry stupid, and the other half is Dumbledore not spilling the beans, which is a problem in itself. I mean, Dumbledore could have just said, "Stay the Hell away from the Ministry under all circumstances!" Instead, he keeps his distance from Harry and locks him out of the loop.
 * Dumbledore was trying to minimize direct contact with or instruction to Harry, to keep Voldemort from having the incentive to possess him. Harry, as Hermione mentions, has a "saving-people thing" and isn't always rational. Yes, both characters screwed up, but there were reasons for what they did and they got called on it.
 * What bugs me most about the whole thing is that after they get rid of Umbridge, why didn't Harry just go back to Snape? I mean, I know he thought Snape wasn't taking him seriously, but he could've thought of making him see sense if that were the case.
 * That actually makes the most sense about the situation to me. Harry tried to go to McGonagall in book 1 about the Philosopher's Stone, but wasn't taken seriously by his Head of House. Ever since then, only Dumbledore has really accepted anything he's said. Why would the teacher who's hated him since he came to the school take him seriously?
 * Oh idk, maybe because he, Harry, was right some months earlier. Just a guess.
 * Harry and Snape are on the same side, but they don't like each other personally at all (not counting Snape's residual love and loyalty to Lily as liking Harry). If Harry has any option but Snape, he's going to take it. In hindsight, a stupid decision, but easy enough to see why he made it.
 * It's not even a stupid decision. Remember, until book 7 came out the entire fanbase was heavily divided on the question of what side Snape was really on. We didn't know for sure if he was actually loyal to Dumbledore or Voldemort. And Harry didn't know for sure either -- hell, book 5 is the book where Harry openly states that he thinks Snape is actually working for Voldemort (in the scene after one of the failed Occlumency lessons). Of course Harry doesn't try to send a message through Snape so long as he has any other possible option, and doesn't go back to Snape once he's escaped Umbridge. He has a very real suspicion that Snape might hand him over to Voldemort, and at this point in time and within the limits of what Harry can possibly know about, its not an unreasonable suspicion. Remember, Snape has deliberately been doing everything possible to give the impression of a guy who is genuinely loyal to Voldemort -- that's what "double agent" means. We cannot fault Harry for believing what Snape wanted him to believe.
 * It made a lot of sense to me, too. Everyone forgets that at least once in EVERY book so far, there have been both MAJOR and minor points made that Adults Are Useless. And everyone seems to forget that Harry's abusive upbringing is a major sticking point with everything. Up until now, he's had to do everything HIMSELF. He's already broken down and used his last resort for help, and it APPEARED that no help was given. In my mind, I can clearly see this as a "screw you all, I'll do it myself", especially seeing as how that's literally what's been happening in all the previous books. Book 1, McGonagall didn't believe him, and the Trio went on their own. Book 2, Lockhart was absolutely USELESS and in fact would have got them all killed... my point made?
 * I myself always thought it made sense why Harry would believe his vision of Sirius to be real. Think about it -- just a few months ago, he had a nearly identical experience in seeing Mr. Weasley get bitten by an enormous snake. That sentence in itself sounds so absurd, the only reason Harry's claims were taken seriously was that Dumbledore and the Order happened to know of Mr. Weasley's current position. Every other one of Harry's visions that followed proved to be real, too. Harry says it himself: "Why d'you think they want me to stop seeing these things? Because they're real, Hermione!" Harry had also spent an entire semester being told by almost everybody that he was a liar, that he was mad, that what was happening to him was bullcrap. These facts alone would be plenty sufficient in fueling Harry's likelihood of believing that Sirius was really in danger. This all, of course, isn't to say that what Harry did wasn't extremely foolhardy and rash. But it does make his decision that much more understandable and less of a "Screw reason, my friend's in trouble".
 * TO BE FAIR (lulz), let's examine the situation: on my personal reread, I was actually shocked at how rude and insulting Harry was toward his friends in his blatant attempt to PREVENT' them from going to the Ministry with him. Obviously Harry didn't want to endanger them -- especially Neville, Ginny, and Luna. Unlike Ron and Hermione, they haven't been in the dangerous and injury-inducing situations with Harry that give him faith in the trio's abilities -- but they are determined. Luna even offers the one way to get to the Ministry that they end up using, because Harry, Hermione, and Ron don't manage to think of anything else plausible to use (Thestrals). So, Harry DOES try to keep them from being in danger, but they are determined to help him. Also, after a year in the DA, they might not have a natural gift with DADA, but they know Harry's most highly regarded defense spells. And Harry does try pretty hard to keep them from getting involved. After how he spoke to them, the fact that they ended up going can ONLY be attributed to their determination to go, because he was dickish enough that they wouldn't have ended up there for any other reason.
 * "Harry's eyes met with Ron's. He knew Ron was thinking exactly what he was: If he could have chosen any members of the DA in addition to himself, Ron, and Hermione to join him... he would not have picked Ginny, Neville, or Luna." Seriously Harry, seriously?
 * There are multiple ways to interpret this. He could be saying that there were better members such as those older and more experienced than those three would be who he'd pick. Another would be that he wouldn't want to put them in harm's way. Lastly, he probably doesn't believe they're all that good in a real firefight, as besides Ron and Hermione, he's never seen anyone hold their own under pressure.
 * To be fair, Neville has a tendency to fail at magic (i.e. his family thought he was a Squib for the longest time), Luna has a tendancy to wander off towards shiny things, and Ginny...possibly a flare-up of Big Brother Instinct directed at her, as he does consider the Weasley's to be like family to him.
 * Overall, we have to be fair to Harry and not criticize him for failing to act on information that he didn't have -- indeed, information that Dumbledore apologizes for withholding from him at the end of the book. 'It is possible to send a fake vision' is one of those vital pieces of information that Harry was never clued in on... and as mentioned above, after Harry gets a vision from Voldemort and it turns out to be genuine and its instrumental in saving someone's life, Harry has every rational reason to trust the next vision he gets from Voldemort, especially if he thinks it's also going to help save someone's life. You can only criticize someone's ignorance if they had the opportunity to learn but were too lazy to try. If other people are deliberately keeping them from having access to the knowledge then its not their fault, it's the other guy's.

Phoenix May Cry

 * When Arthur Weasley is bitten by Nagini, he is sent to St. Mungo's and Fawkes is sent off to tell Mrs. Weasley. Instead of using Fawkes as a glorified owl, wouldn't it have made more sense to send him to Arthur directly? It was proven in book 2 that Fawkes can cure poisonous snake bites, so wouldn't that have saved the Weasleys, not to mention St. Mungo's healers, a lot of trouble?
 * This always bugged me as well. My only guess is that Voldemort knows a way to counter phoenix tears and Dumbledore knew about that. Although that still doesn't make sense, as you'd think a basilisk would have more potent venom than any other snake.
 * I always figured the problem was only partly the poison from the snake bite, the antidote for which St. Mungo's probably has in droves, and also being bitten by a huge snake. This now concerns me; would St. Mungo's, the best wizarding hospital, have a wing solely devoted to forcing Phoenixes to cry to cure poisons? Considering what we've seen of the Wizarding World and their concern for anything that isn't straight up human, I'm gonna go with yes.
 * From what can be gathered, Phoenixes aren't all that common and catching one and forcing it to cry sounds incredibly stupid. Not only can they flame travel out of Hogwarts, but they can lift great weights and sing to startle their enemies. Now, having Phoenix tears in bottles from willing donations, like apparently Fawkes did to Ollivander, is much more likely.
 * Aren't you missing the point here? The question is not about the prospects of Phoenix utilization in medicine - it's about one particular Phoenix curing, or rather not curing, one particular man.
 * Maybe Voldemort learned from the Basilisk and learned to counter it? Or maybe being a Horcrux gives you special powers?
 * Maybe they knew Arthur was going to be found anyway, and the Weasleys were having to play down links to Dumbledore due to Ministry persecution (it is said much earlier in the book that friends of Dumbledore were having a hard time of it). Having Dumbledore's phoenix would not only show a massive connection to Dumbledore, but also cast a lot of doubt onto his reasons for being there in the first place, and could have got him fired or thrown into Azkaban (cf Sturgis Podmore).
 * Fawkes could have healed Arthur on the spot and they could have sent him home to rest without raising an alarm. Nobody would ever know he had been there.
 * Phoenix tears are only shown to be a cure to Basilisk venom in the story, though they also mention that they work on other types of poison as well. There's no evidence that it's a cure-all for every type of poison, though, and Dumbledore would have tried phoenix tears if they would have been effective.
 * The Basilisk is the King of Snakes. It would be ridiculous if the tears could cure its venom but not that of lesser snakes. And no "if it was a good idea, DD would've thought of it" is not a valid excuse - there still must be a reason why he didn't.
 * That's just it, though. If phoenix tears could cure any type of snake venom, there's no reason Dumbledore wouldn't think of it; it wouldn't be consistent with his character to overlook something so glaringly obvious. Ridiculous or not, it seems to be the case that Basilisk venom is a different type of poison than Nagini's venom; in Real Life, an antivenin for one type of snake isn't necessarily effective against another one, regardless of potency.
 * Yes, there is such a reason, and it's the same reason as for the half of entries on these pages - it is bad writing. When a seemingly wise character makes an atypicaly stupid blunder, they aren't ought to have an excuse for it - it maybe just the author's blunder. Note, that as concerns DD, it's anything but the only example. As for the cas in point, ok, I wasn't entirely just when I said that the tears HAD to cure this particular venom. The bad writing part is that nobody cares to even suggest it, in particular Harry, who experienced the awesome healing powers firsthand.
 * No amount of Phoenix tears will replenish that amount of blood. Besides, can YOU cry on cue? Fawkes was really messed up when Harry was injured - "OMIGOD VOLDEMORT'S COMING BACK MY ONLY HOPE IS HARRY AND A MOTHERLOVING BASILISK IS TRYING TO EAT ME!!!" But this time it's just, "Ouch, that's gotta hurt." Besides, how do you explain a guy just screaming blue murder suddenly apparently unharmed but chalk-white and unconscious from blood loss? Plus, Fawkes is one of only two tame Phoenixes ever (the other, Sparky, is a Quidditch team mascot, and how likely is it that a Quidditch team sends their Phoenix round to heal injured Order members?) so the Ministry would put two and two together, assume DD has spies at the Ministry and arrest him. Nice Job Breaking it, Logic!
 * Also, on the subject of the Harry Potter books being such bad writing: let's see you write a better story, right now, in front of everyone!

I HATE YOU! I! HATE! YOU!

 * I never got how this thing about Dumbledore looking at Harry's eyes would anger Voldemort... could someone plase explain it?
 * Voldemort had figured out the link between his mind and Harry's, so he could sometimes see through Harry's eyes. When Voldy sees Dumbledore through Harry's eyes, it infuriated him and Harry felt that rage.
 * But this brings up yet another question... If Voldemort figured out that there was a connection with him and Harry's minds, then how did he not know that the reason for this is because ? Voldemort's powers of analysis seem to be sharp enough that he deduced what he heard of the prophecy. I don't see how he could not have deduced that.
 * How many times in history has ? With the world not having enough knowledge of the matter, Voldemort could not have known right off the bat that that was the reason. Maybe he just believed he was that good at Legilimency, or that the result of the night in Godric's Hollow was a special mental connection, nothing more.
 * Exactly. Voldemort doesn't have a mental link to, so the only thing he could possibly compare it to behaves in a completely different way. If anything, analysis would cause him to conclude that his link with Harry couldn't be for that reason, due to behaving very differently.

More "Needs to Know" Nuttiness

 * As far as I can remember, before the "Nagini bites Arthur" incident, Dumbledore suspected that there might be a mental connection between Harry and Voldemort, which is the reason why Harry was kept in the dark during the summer, and why Dumbledore avoided Harry. So why not tell Harry about the suspicion, so he'll know why things are happening? Because it would upset Harry? Would "Voldemort might have a mental connection to me" really have upset Harry more than "everyone is keeping me in the dark and my mentor is shunning me"? The only other reason to not tell Harry would be that they didn't want Voldemort to find out that they suspected a mental connection, but keeping that secret would only be useful if they intended to use the mental connection to feed false information to Voldemort.
 * As Dumbledore admitted himself at the end, he screwed up everything because he thought Harry was too young to learn the truth.
 * Actually, it makes sense to conceal some things to Harry. We learn the full truth only in book 7, and it's obvious that Dumbledore couldn't tell it all. So Dumbledore has no idea how to tell Harry just the part of the truth he needs to know to act as needed.
 * Some things, yes. But this thing? Harry already knows that he has some kind of mental connection to Voldemort, via the visions! Simply telling Harry 'Errr, I'm afraid the connection might work both ways, so we need to be careful what we say in your hearing' is hardly going to break Harry's brain; its a very logical outgrowth of shit Harry already knows.

Really? Now Hermione's got the Idiot Ball too?

 * "He could not believe he had been so stupid [...]. There was still a member of the Order of the Phoenix at Hogwarts - Snape." I can believe Harry was so stupid. What I can't believe is that Hermione didn't think about this.
 * She had a hard enough time trying to convince Harry that it wasn't likely that Sirius was caught, much less convincing him to go to Snape when she knows Harry will just blow up at her for mentioning it.

Bye Bye Butt

 * Moody's comment about how sticking a wand in your back pocket could cause you to lose your buttocks. So where else do you keep your wand, if apparently it's prone to catching fire or blowing up?
 * Your front pocket? Fanon likes to fill this by having wand holsters. Other than that, either in long sleeves as part of the robes wizards usually wear or in the robe pockets.
 * A wand in the front pocket at the level of the belt?

Just attacked by Dementors? Grow some backbone, twerp.

 * Harry brings Dudley home after saving him from the dementors. At no point does he tell Vernon or Petunia "Get him some chocolate, he'll feel better."
 * Stress of the moment. And besides, they were all yelling at him for trying to save Dudley's life. I'd be a little too sour to really remember about that if that happened to me.
 * And besides, I thought it was just wizarding chocolate that had that effect. I don't see the makers of Mars bars building in a 'Dementor-revivor' to their products. The Dursleys are hardly the type to have magical chocolate around.
 * I thought it was just chocolate's chemical properties.
 * I thought it was because chocolate makes you happy and staves off despair.
 * Eh, he was out of danger and had just had an antagonistic confrontation with Harry. Harry may care enough about his cousin to not want him to get his soul sucked out, but I don't think he would care that much about a little mental torment that he will get over eventually.
 * It's Dudley. His parents would end up giving him lots of chocolate whether Harry suggested it or not.
 * Not after they spent the whole previous year dieting, they wouldn't. They may not have had any chocolate in the house, and for all Harry knew, the dementors might be lurking nearby, ready to jump anyone who left the house to buy some. So even if he'd had a moment to think of it, it wouldn't have helped much.
 * Come off it. You try making the Dursleys believe Harry when he talks about a mundane solution to a not-so-mundane problem.

The Ministry of Magic really needs some safety procedures...

 * No OSHA Compliance: If going through the Veil meant instant death, shouldn't they have at least put a velvet rope around it? Or some kind of sign that implicated mortal danger?
 * This one makes sense, as the only people that should be in the Department Of Mysteries would be trained personnel, the Unspeakables themselves, or someone being led by them. That room itself wouldn't have any reason for visitors, unlike the prophecy room. It's akin to putting up a rope around a bottomless pit in a top secret facility; anyone that knows about it should know of the danger.
 * Even people who know about a danger can trip. OP's right; there should be a rail or something around it.
 * The veil was on a dais. It's not like it's just sitting there in the room, you have to walk upwards a bit to get to it.

Ooh, I've been hit! Hey, I'll just walk through this shiny veil thing!

 * In the book, Bellatrix hits Sirius with a non-lethal spell (Fanfic writers love to play with this one), which causes Sirius to lose his balance and stumble back through the Veil. Fair enough. But in the movie, she audibly uses the Killing Curse, and it's a green beam of magic that hits him. Rather than causing instant death, as was shown by every other time it had been used, Movie!Sirius looks shocked for a few seconds, turns to look at Harry, and then slowly walks backwards through the Veil. WHAT???
 * Again, massive Adaptation Decay. It makes sense in the book, but much less in the film, unless due to his close proximity to the Veil, it wasn't actually him moving and reacting, but his soul moving and reacting.
 * Have you ruled the possibility that he, oh I don't know, stumbled and Fell?
 * If I remember the film correctly, the Veil reaches out like a living thing, pulls Sirius in, and absorbs him. So maybe the director was trying to hint at its true nature as a portal to the land of the dead or a representation of it in our world. Besides all that, the slowness comes from the entire scene going into super-slow-motion for about fifteen seconds until Bellatrix runs off.

SNEAK

 * Ok, the movie. In the book, it's one of Cho's friends who rats them out, telling Umbridge and her cronies exactly how to get into the Room of Requirement. Understandably, Harry's a little hacked and gets angry at her, while Cho defends her, part of what breaks up their relationship. But in the movie, Cho is captured and given verisaterum and forced to show them... where it is for some reason (despite the fact that earlier, Filch, Malfoy and the other Slytherins were not only shown to know where it is, but actually saw Luna and other students enter, another It Just Bugs Me, honestly). Now, despite the fact that this was completely beyond her control, Harry decided to hate her. What. She didn't rat them out, she was forced to and had absolutely no control over the situation, and Harry blames it all on her? What the hell Harry?!
 * Adaption Decay. It can be said again and again, but the fact of the matter is they have to fit it in time wise. Changing the person that gives the secret up seems to be a questionable change, but then they don't have to cast another actress for Cho's friend, build up her character, or show her at all during the movie. If you want to get down to it, you can fault Harry for thinking she could have done anything about it.
 * I do, I do fault Harry for it, the problem is, he has no reason to act like such a jerk about it. He's seen its effects on an adult Death Eater, so he knows how powerful the stuff is, and he suddenly expects a teenager to fare any better?
 * I guess if you stretch the reasoning, you can see the possibility that he thought that she shouldn't have drunk anything Umbridge offered, but it's not really clear how she got Veritaserum in her system at all, nor does he giver her the chance to explain.
 * But why would he assume that she drank anything willingly? They all know how bad Umbridge is. The fact that he doesn't let her explain just makes things worse.
 * Well, Cho was waiting next to the door when the other DA students had to write blood-lines. So we have to assume she is a traitor (Draco is happy to brutalize her, but he's Draco, he will be brutal rather than letting her follow willingly). So, we have two hypotheses: she betrayed the DA, but was given veritaserum anyway because Umbrige doesn't trust spontaneous confession. The other possibility is Umbrige not giving lines to Cho specifically to make her look like a traitor and Harry buying it. I still believe the former.
 * But why would she betray them? Any possible reason given?
 * If I remember, the movie played Cho's confession as out of the blue, more like Umbridge was using it to tear the group apart. Only later, when Umbridge catches the group in her office does Snape explain that the last of the truth serum was used on Cho. Harry hadn't given Cho time to explain earlier, and despite the revelation, he wasn't in the best mindset to think of apologizing to Cho later.
 * He saw her being manhandled by Malfoy, that doesn't exactly scream "traitor", that screams "forced against her will"... although it probably would seem like she had been threatened into telling them... even though they knew where it was (Seriously? What was with that part... other than Adaption Decay). He still should have apologised at some point.
 * Adaptation Decay, that is all. It was downright idiotic for the movie to change it to Cho and Harry's falling out being due to Cho selling out the DA when she was forced to by truth potion, and Harry knew this later on, but never bothered to reconcile. The movie should have just left it as Cho sold the DA out on her own accord, if they felt they didn't have a sufficient enough time to play out Harry and Cho's falling out as in the book.
 * Actually, it's mentioned offhand IIRC. Umbridge was threatening Cho's parents' jobs. I think Hermione mentions it at one point. (This is another thing they take from Marietta's character when them composite Cho and Marietta together for the Movie.)
 * The thing about this scene that bugged me was that I didn't feel that the movie gave enough attention to the fact that it was Cho who was the one who told Umbridge. I'm bad at recognizing people just based on their face, so that could definitely be part of it. But from my view, Umbridge and the IS finally got into the room, gave everyone lines, and then Harry acted like a total prick towards Cho. It wasn't until I hit rewind then pause that I saw that Cho was in the group.

Where is the competence? Surely Voldemort's top flunkies can do better than THAT!

 * For that matter, in Order of the Phoenix, the Death Eaters were beaten back for a while by children when they had a clear numerical advantage. They wouldn't last ten seconds when they were outnumbered and faced by thousands of adults who were all trained more in magic than the children.
 * Well... the children were trained by Harry for most of a year in techniques he had found effective against Voldemort. Harry is pretty much the definition of The Messiah, and, for once, the training period is actually of a fairly reasonable length. Are most of the Death Eaters really all that trained in combat? They seem more like terrorists, dependent on catching people unprepared in the middle of the night more than a group that goes around training all the time, at least until Deathly Hallows, anyway...
 * Further, well... you kinda answered your own question. They were facing children. Not to mention the Hand Wave of the Luck potion, giving them an advantage on top of some pretty serious training, but really. We are talking about a bunch of people who have made names for themselves by striking terror in the hearts of others through terror tactics squaring off against a cadre of children. Do you really think they took them seriously in the slightest?
 * The Death Eaters didn't just mop the floor with the kids because they wanted the prophecy Harry was holding. The Death Eater who got too trigger happy and ruined Voldemort's chance to hear the prophecy would be lucky to get off with a painless death. They were deliberately holding back.
 * Also, 'beaten back' is only in the movie. In the book, it was more 'the children managed to successfully run away and hide. For about ten minutes. At which point Bellatrix and her squadmates caught up to them and proceeded to thrash them all, leaving Harry in a very uncomfortable hostage situation resolved only by the Big Damn Heroes entrance of the Order'.
 * I believe most of the group save Lucius (who has probably only fought in formal duels and was not well-trained) had spent the last decade in AZKABAN. They probably weren't back to their 100% best yet.

Just speak up already, Ginny!

 * Did it bother anyone else that Ginny, during the days that Harry thought he was in danger of being possessed, didn't just knock on the door and say "Hey. I've been possesed, and can tell you what it feels like. Give me a shout if you want to talk."? I mean, YES, Harry is acting like a pill, YES, he shouldn't have forgotten, YES, she's not his mother, but for God's sake, the kid saved her life and the life of her father, and now he thinks he's being possessed. Furthermore, it's been two and a half pretty traumatic years since then, and Ginny has spoken to him for all of what, six minutes in those years? Letting him wallow until Hermione shows up seems like unnecessarily cruel; you can berate the kid for insensitivity after you've made sure he's okay.
 * Ok, I just skimmed the book (US pages 491 onward) and Ginny did attempt to talk to him, but Harry, being Harry, bottled up his emotions, thought about it that night, and avoided everyone until Hermione came by the next day and forced him to explain what was bothering him.

Too wimpy to commit torture?

 * How the hell was Harry not able to cast a proper Cruciatus Curse on Bellatrix after she just killed his only remaining family member, but he had no problem doing it when a random Death Eater just spat on McGonnagall? Do you mean to tell me he didn't "mean it" the first time, but seeing a mere insult launched him into Unstoppable Rage?
 * Two possibilities. Bellatrix may have a higher pain tolerance and bluffed to Harry about how much it hurt, or Harry's righteous anger against her wasn't enough to make it effective, so when he used it in Deathly Hallows, he used a different sort of anger (knowing he has to mean it) and made it much more effective.
 * Bellatrix tells Harry as much after he zaps her. "Righteous anger won't do it, you have to mean it" (or something similar to that).
 * It's about proportionate retribution. Bellatrix killed Sirius, so Harry wanted her dead, not in pain. Carrow had been tormenting children for the whole year and was about to frame them up to Voldemort, but, as far as Harry was aware, didn't kill anybody, thus Harry hated him enough to wish to hurt, but not enough to wish to kill.
 * Harry was in rage-mode when he Crucio'd Bellatrix, but he was cold and cruel when he did the same to Carrow. Only in the latter situation is he really concentrating on, "I want this person to suffer."
 * He didn't perform a true, full-on Crucio either time. The first time he wasn't old enough to have the magic oomph to normally do more than stun; rage let him send Bellatrix flying. The second time, as a stronger wizard with a more cynical and hating nature, he was again able to send an enemy flying into a bookcase in pain ("... won't hurt me FOR LONG) rather than just drop them to the ground in agony, which would make him evil rather than good but kinda angry.
 * Maybe Harry was still overwhelmed with shock of seeing Sirius die?

Giving out love in all the wrong places

 * Isn't the relationship between Harry and Sirius written as being much stronger from Harry's point of view than it would be in Real Life? Of course Harry should care a lot for Sirius, but in the books, he seems to consider him a surrogate father, despite the fact that he has actually spent very little time with him (regardless of the reasons for this). I know Sirius is his godfather, but that shouldn't count for that much, should it? I also think it's rather insulting of Harry to hero-worship Sirius as a mentor and father figure in this way, when Arthur and Molly have treated him like a son to them throughout the entire series. I haven't got the book handy to check, but in the film, he hugs Molly awkwardly when he arrives at Grimmauld Place, and then brushes past her to enthusiastically greet Sirius, a man he met on precisely one occasion previously.
 * What bothers me is why Harry isn't nearly as close with Remus as with Sirius and doesn't seem to have been as interested in keeping in touch with him as with Sirius. Sure, Sirius is more exciting and offered him a home, but he had known Remus a good while befor meeting Sirius and I just find it a bit weird.
 * In the movies at least. In the books, he met Sirius two more times in the Goblet of Fire. I've always thought Harry put his faith in Sirius because he's the only one that ever offered to give Harry a home away from the Dursleys. To Harry, that was one of the best things that could ever happen. I think Harry always saw Arthur and Molly as his best friend's parents above possible suragate parents. Yes, they're kind and very close, but then he can't get past the fact that they have seven kids to love while Sirius has none. Sirius also fills a link for Harry because he was best friends with his father and can tell him about him. It's all about perspective, and getting the perspective of an eleven-year-old orphan that's never known anything about his parents is a bit... difficult.
 * Also, Sirius is a fellow adventurer who is on the run from the law. Arthur is an office government bureaucrat and Molly is a housewife. You can see who is more exciting to Harry, who prefers to get into the mystery/fight of the day rather than study for future careers.
 * You both raise good points. I never really thought that Harry might think that it's selfish to expect the Weasleys to consider him a son, and I didn't really take into account Sirius being seen as a fun and exciting person for the teenaged, adventurous Harry to be around, as well as the knowledge Sirius could provide about his parents.
 * The movie, as normal, skips a lot of the development. I'm pretty sure Harry wrote several letters to Sirius, and they certainly talked for a reasonable amount of time at the end of PoA. Not to mention that Harry would be just fascinated with anyone that knew his father like Sirius did.
 * Not only did Harry see Sirius as a more kindred spirit than the Weasley parents (close to his dad, mistrusted by the wizarding world, kept out of the loop after Voldemort's return etc) but keep in mind also that while the Weasleys were parenting Harry mostly from the comfort of their own home, Sirius was doing it while on the run from the law. In dog form. Eating rats. Kinda hard not to feel more affectionate to a guy in those circumstances.

Everyone loves the scenic route

 * Time that the Ministry Six depart from Hogwarts: sunset. (Explicitly mentioned in text). Time that Harry Potter is portkeyed back to Dumbledore's office after the DOM battle: dawn. (Again, explicit.) So, allowing 1-2 hours for creeping around the Ministry, being chased around the Ministry, being rescued at the Ministry, etc., that means that the kids must have been in the air all night and well into the dark of the next morning. So why in the pluperfect heck did Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix not make it to the Ministry until around half an hour behind the children, given that Snape had the alert out right after they left? Does it really take them all the way from mid-evening to circa 4 AM just to get up, have a staff meeting, and take the floo?
 * For that matter, why did Dumbledore not try contacting the kids en route, either by house elf or by Patronus messenger? "Harry, it's all right! I'm with Sirius and he's safe! You're being tricked by Voldemort! Come stop at Grimmauld Place before going to the Ministry; Molly has cookies!" He had hours.
 * Dumbledore needed the whole shenanigan to proceed in due course for a number of reasons: 1) to set up a face-off between V and Fudge, so that the latter would finaly admit the obvious, dig his head out of the sand, and stop interfering with D's affairs, 2) to set up a showdown betwen V and Harry wherein V would attempt to possess Harry, get burned, and abandon that idea altogether, 3) to allow Potter's "outer circle" their "baptism by fire". Sirius's interferance was, apparently, unexpected.
 * Even so, stupid. 'All right, here's the plan. We intercept the kids en route and keep them safe at Grimmauld Place.' 'But what about the Death Eaters? We have a perfect chance to-' 'And then a few hours later, at the time when the kids would have arrived at the Ministry, we make sure the Death Eaters see Harry going in alone to retrieve the Prophecy. They pounce, and we pounce immediately after they reveal themselves, not half an hour after.' 'You're sending Harry in there ALONE?' 'No, but Tonks shapeshifted into Harry works just as well.' Doesn't fulfill the 'deliberately expose Harry to Voldemort' objective, true, but that would have been a hideous jerk move anyway. Not to mention, there's easier ways to bait Tom into doing that; after all, Dumbledore specifically stated that was the reason he didn't want to give Harry Occlumency lessons himself.
 * The DE only revealed themselves after Harry grabbed the ball. Tonks couldn't do that for obvious reasons (wow, that didn't sound right). Even if they did show up, nailing them immediately would scare away V. As for the jerk move, it's true, but then again, nearly everything D had been doing from the end of "Prisoner of Azkaban" onwards was stupid, insane, or criminally irresponsible, and only worked because absolutely everything V had been doing was even more so, therefore this plan at least falls into the general pattern.
 * Have her step up to the shelf, pretend to pick up a glowy ball that she actually had up her sleeve, pretend to listen to it, and then say 'ohhh THAT's what the prophecy is!' out loud. Then pretend to put the ball back on the shelf. If the DEs haven't revealed themselves already, they sure will now... capturing 'Harry' and making 'him' talk is now their only option left for finding out.
 * *Sigh*... and the real prophecy ball will just obligingly dissappear from the shelf to maintain the ruse. The Death Eaters were already there, standing around the shelf, invisible. Not to mention, that who says you can actually playback the prophecy without anyone around you seeing and/or hearing the process?
 * "The Death Eaters were already there, standing around the shelf, invisible." Yes, and the #1 and #2 biggest badasses in the Order (Dumbledore and Moody) can both see through invisibility cloaks.
 * Which means the only thing Tonks has to do is look like Harry, walk in the room, and go towards the shelf. As the Death Eaters all turn to look at 'Harry', Dumbledore and Moody quietly walk into the room wearing their invisibility cloaks and stun all the Death Eaters in the back.
 * I'm currently rereading OotP and I am at the part when the Order shows up to save the kids. Having read this page shortly before hitting this part of the book, it made me stop a think about how the time worked out. As I thought about it the time-line for what happened did not seem too far fetched. How? It starts when Harry alerts Snape that Sirius is being held in the Department of Mysteries by Voldemort. Snape, being a smart person, decides to first check to see if this true. The problem with this is that he can't use the Floo Network since all fireplaces, except for the one in Umbridge's office, are being monitored just in case someone tries to contact either Dumbledore or Sirius. Second, he can't use his talking Patronus because no one, except for Dumbledore, is supposed to know the reason he is loyal and using it would tell people his secret. He also can't use the house elves because, since they are loyal to Hogwarts, Umbridge could find out. That leaves the only form of communication he has as an owl which takes a while to get from Hogwarts to London and then from London to Hogwarts. After he gets confirmation that Sirius is not in the Department of Mysteries, he probably went in search for Harry and the others. So he goes to Umbridge's office, which is full of students who have been taken out by the other four and he hears that they went in search of a weapon somewhere around Hogwarts. It probably takes him a while to confirm that they are no longer on the grounds and it is then that he is at that point he contacts the others and tells them that Harry and the others are in the Department of Mysteries and the group gathers and leaves for Department of Mysteries where, shortly after, they arrive to provide much needed backup.
 * Except that the book says explicitly that Snape was in contact with Sirius very shortly after leaving Umbridge's office. (Chapter 37).
 * There is an explanation here, but it requires an unnoticed Unreliable Narrator here. The narration doesn't say what happened, Dumbledore does, but there is no way for Dumbldedore to actually know what happened. Dumbledore can not possibly have spoken to Snape, and Sirius is dead. Dumbledore is at the end of a long game of telephone from Snape->Sirius->Kreacher->Dumbledore, with possibly more people in there. (No one said Snape spoke to Sirius, just that he confirmed Sirius was at Grimmauld Place. He could have spoken to Remus.) So it's entirely possible Dumbledore is just wrong about the sequence of events, or about how fast it took.
 * A reasonable timeline of events: Perhaps Snape took an hour or two to confirm Sirius was there, returned, found a bunch of captured students, interrogated them, and then spent another three or four hours trying to figure out where the heck the students and Headmistress went. He looks for 'the weapon' which is apparently 'hidden in the forbidden forest' according to Draco. (Which Harry also says that 'he', whoever that is, has Sirius.) And wondering why on earth he's never heard of this stupid hidden weapon.
 * Somewhere during this, he contacts the order, and everyone starts looking for Harry. Perhaps storming some actual Order weapon storage facilities, because Harry's directions are really really really bad.
 * Then later, after a dozen people have been trying to figure out where the heck Harry Potter has gotten to, Snape says "I wonder if That Stupid Boy was talking about the prophesy?" (Which is not, in fact, hidden anywhere. It is openly sitting exactly where it is supposed to be,) and they show up there. At this point the gang is well inside the Department of Mysteries, and the rest of the time can be explained as the Order trying to batter down the doors which relocked after the kids entered.
 * All of the above speculation is factually incorrect; Dumbledore specifically lists the people that Professor Snape spoke to when he contacted Order HQ. The list was Sirius, Remus, Moody, Kingsley, and Tonks. And Dumbledore remained behind at the Ministry to speak to them (and escorted the wounded to Madam Pomfrey besides), before coming back to rejoin Harry in his office. So while Sirius was dead, that's still four other people he could have gotten the entire unedited story from. Also, Dumbledore states explicitly that Snape immediately figured out that Harry had been talking about the Department of Mysteries; indeed, Snape had already seen and recognized the mental image of the DOM hallway that Voldemort had been sending to Harry weeks before, during the Occlumency lessons.
 * That list of people is the list that was there the second time Snape contacted the Order, when he finally figured out Harry was not in the Forest. Nothing that says they were there when Snape checked on Sirius. Although that's somewhat irrelevant to the point, as the point was Dumbledore wasn't there for that entire thing, and we're talking about what he knows. Before the battle, the only person DD talked to was Kreacher, which we know for a fact, and after the battle, he explicitly says he's going to talk to Fudge for 30 minutes about Voldemort, then go talk to Harry, which he does 30 minutes later. So assuming that's what actually happened, and that he hasn't spoken to any Order members since this entire thing started, is not farfetched. Although he was apparently given a status report on the other students during his talk with Fudge, as he assures Harry they have not been permanently injured.
 * And the fact that DD is talking about what 'Snape' did is really just the clincher here. Whether or not he got the story from the others, there is literally no way he could spoken to Snape, unless he felt like contacting his triple agent from the Ministry of Magic right near captured Death Eaters, over a Floo he knows is tapped. (I guess he could have Phoenix-teleported or Portkeyed to Hogwarts, talked to Snape, left, and then flued back later to see Harry...in thirty minutes...but that's getting a bit silly.) So we already know that he's repeating things he heard from others, that he when he says 'Snape immediately contacted blah', he means 'And I was told, by Remus or whoever, that Snape said he immediately contacted the Order'. In fact, whether or not DD managed to speak to Remus or Kingsley (The only two Order members still standing) in the thirty minutes is somewhat irrelevent, as we don't know how much they know of the timeline of that night.
 * Correct me if I'm wrong, but night time in northern Scotland in June is pretty darn short, if memory serves.
 * *looks up sunrise/sunset times for Northern Scotland in late May* ... sunset is around 9:30-10pm?!? WHAT. ARBITRARY. SILLINESS. Harry gets the phony vision of Sirius being tortured during his History of Magic OWL, in other words, middle of the afternoon. The text specifically states that the students are just starting dinner when Umbridge takes them into the Forbidden Forest. Even allowing for the time it takes to lose Umbridge and all, there is no way that this sequence works without someone just unaccountably sitting on his hands for a couple hours doing absolutely nothing. Great, now we've got two unaccounted time sinks in the same scene; between the initial vision and the sunset takeoff, and the one we've already been discussing! Bad at math indeed, Ms. Rowling.

Bloody Protection
"Dumbledore: While you can still call home the place where your mother's blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge. You need return there only once a year, but as long as you can still call it home, whilst you are there he cannot hurt you."
 * Where was that vaunted and much fussed over "Protection" Harry was supposed to have, when Harry was attacked by Dementors?
 * If you're referring to the protection from Aunt Petunia's blood, I'm pretty sure that only works when he's on Privet Drive or possibly even on the Dursleys' property. He was on Magnolia Crescent when the dementors attacked him.
 * Even if that is true (Dumbledore never says anything to back that idea), then how could it possibly be effective in the first place? Harry obviously couldn't be expected to stay at home 24/7.
 * Actually, Dumbledore entirely says something to back that idea. From chapter 37 of OotP:


 * Hookey, so it's confirmed then, that the "Protection" was absolutely useless. And by DD, no less. Delightful.
 * I always felt that the blood protection was against Voldemort and his minions specifically. The dementors were sent by Umbridge, not LV, so they may have been able to ignore it entirely.
 * Hand Wave doesn't even begin to describe it. How the heck would the protection tell one from another? Did the Dementors show their credentials? What is even the point in such "filter"? An enemy is still an enemy, no matter his origins, especially if it's the darkest and foulest of all beings and natural allies to Voldemort. So what, Harry is safe from V's minions who are mostly dead or in Azkaban, but if another aspiring Dark Lord decides to make himself a name by killing the Boy Who Lived, the boy's screwed?
 * For the last freaking time: THIS! IS! MAGIC!!!!!
 * For as many times as it would take to sink in: THIS! IS! STUPID!!!! It is a lazy excuse at the best of times, and it flat out fails in a world where magic is subject to natural laws and restrictions.
 * /bangs head repeatedly against wall/ No, it's NOT subject to natural laws! You can jump up and down on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, magic itself seems to have intelligence, information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light... sweet Jesus, there's hardly a law of physics that isn't broken. Magic does not care how you think it should work, it works how it wants to, which happens to be that it is able to tell whether a threat is sent by Voldemort or not. You can whine about that all you like, it's just how magic works.
 * Silly me, I though it was glaringly obvious I wasn't speaking about natural laws in the sense of our, non-wizard, nature, but the intrinsic magical laws. And it has them. There is the fifth-exclusion-from-whatever that prohibits conjuring up food; animagi can only morph into a single animal; when V needs to root out the opposition, he cannot just wish to find all people who hate him - he has to set up a very definite trigger (his name spoken aloud); time travel operates on Stable Time Loop; Quirrel burns on Harry, because he shares a body with V, but other Death Eaters can touch him without any harm etc. So yeah, I don't care how magic does what it does, but what it does has to make sense. With that in mind, what exactly constitutes "a threat sent by Voldemort". What is the trigger? Caused by V himself? He'll have others do it. The Dark Mark? He'll send people without it. Knowingly taking command from him? He'll hire assassins anonymously. He's not some demon, he cannot "taint" people merely by communicating with them. How obscure should the connection between V and the threat itself be, before the protection stops reacting to it? Heck, Umbridge sent the Dementors to silence Harry, because he was trumpeting V's return, which he did because of V. So in a matter, that threat was also caused by V, but the protection didn't work. Does this mean that if he manipulates people into wanting to kill Harry, like, say, by taking their relatives hostage, the protection won't work? And that is only what concerns living, or at least sentient, threats. What about inanimate ones? Let's say a jet explodes in the sky above the Dursley's house, and a turbine is falling right at it. Will the protection really care if the jet exploded by itself or if it was blown up by V (or his cronies, or a hired terrorist, or a brainwashed random person, you get the idea)?
 * Moreover, why exactly was it supposed to only last until Harry's 17th birthsday? Seriously, is there ANY explanation at all?
 * The protection only lasted until Harry became a wizard of age. Presumably he wasn't going to keep living at Privet Drive once he was old enough to perform magic legally.

What kind of crazy room is Heart, anyways?

 * "There is a room in the Department of Mysteries,' interrupted Dumbledore, 'that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible... the power of heart." What's up with that? How can you lock the power of heart inside a room? I mean technically, how? What, do they keep an imprisoned angel there? Or Ma-Ti?
 * Word of God: The Love Room in the Do M contains a fountain of Amortentia.
 * A fountain of potion that induces strong lust and obsession, the stuff that more or less turns people into slaves, the thing that was aptly named "the ultimate date rape drug" in the HBP section? Seriously?
 * It's quite clear that originally Rowling had different ideas for how the series would progress after book five. For whatever reason, and we can only speculate, she changed her mind when writing the last two books. That's why plot points like what was in that locked room and the purpose and eventual use of the Veil in the story, relationships between characters (Luna clearly liking Ron, Hermione and Harry not giving a crap about Ron and Ginny respectively while slowly developing an atrraction to each other), etc.. are dropped. So I garauntee that originally something else would have been in that room, and Rowling just handwaved it away as a fountain of love potion in wordofgod mode as it no longer fit with what she ended up writing.
 * Have you only watched the movies? It's so obvious in the books that Hermione and Ron would eventually pair up, not Harry and Hermione.
 * To some people the R/Hr pairing is obvious; to some people it isn't. This doesn't need to be a shipping war.
 * Why would they even create a room, then keep it permanentley locked? Why did they decide that love is off limits, but not death, time, space, knowledge, or whatever else they have?
 * The books stress time and again that love triumphs over all other forces and magic.

Go, Severus, And Spy No More
DD tells Harry that, when Snape was eavesdropping on him listening to the Prophecy, somebody (apparently, Aberforth) busted him and "threw out of the building". Why would they just let a potential (that is if, for some reason, they failed to establish his true allegiance) spy go with his memory intact?
 * It's possible that Aberforth didn't know who Snape was and, seeing a man listening outside of a room in his inn that was rented to a woman, simply reacted like a good landlord and threw Snape out. Then, afterwards, when Aberforth told Albus what had happened, much facepalming ensued.
 * Except that it's not what happened. According to Trelawny in HBP, Aberforth actually opened the door and "introduced" Snape to them, and Severus even made some excuses for being there, so obviously DD knew he was there and what he was doing. And them he let him go. Why.
 * I imagine it went something like this: Aberforth: Hey, Albus, I caught this guy outside the room! Snape: Oh, crap! *Disapparates*
 * Good idea, but a) in that case Snape wouldn't have bothered with excuses (and he did, even Trelawny remembers them); b) DD said that he was "thrown out", not apparated away.
 * Now that I think of it, the scene makes (what a shock) even less sense! If Trelawny remembers Snape, this means that she saw him after she'd finished prophesying, because during the process she's out. But how is that possible?! Snape was only supposed to hear the first sentence before he was "thrown out"!

Oh, sure, sending the Dementors after an underaged boy is a great idea... NOT.
What exactly was Umbridge counting on, when she sicced Dementors on Harry? Let's say they succeed. Now instead of a boy who since the end of the year hasn't made a single attempt to press the matter of V's return they've got themselves two teenage corpses with very distinct "marks" of a Dementor's Kiss. And since all the Dementors were supposed to be under Ministery control, she'd as well lay her business card on the scene of crime.
 * To go one worse, if Harry Potter turned up dead (or kissed, whatever) mere months after reporting that Voldemort had made his return, it would basically confirm that someone was trying to silence him. It would be impossible to cover up the death of such a famed individual, and no matter what, it wouldn't end well for the Ministry. Umbridge should be glad her attempt failed.
 * Can't remember and don't want to dig the book out from my bookshelf... Did she say that she specifically wanted them to get rid of him somehow? Or could she have given them orders to attack him, maybe pretend to perform the kiss, but leave him? Just to try and scare him into behaving?
 * Was she that dumb? Like Dementors could just pretend to kiss him and then rise up and leave! They are vile creatures who attacked Harry on their own in the past. And Ministry knew about it, and so did Umbridge.
 * Not to mention, that if they could do that (can the Dems be Imperiused or something?) it would've been even worse, because it would've instantly excluded Voldemort or Sirius Black from the list of suspects, leaving only Ministery.
 * Possibly she'd ordered them to crowd around Harry (who is known to be very vulnerable to their aura) until he was genuinely driven insane, thus "verifying" the Daily Prophet reports that he's mentally unstable. As Harry is a loner when he's not at Hogwarts, she didn't count on there being another person there with him, whom the ravenous dementors would try to Kiss on sight.
 * Except that the other dementor was trying to kiss Harry as well.
 * I could have completely misunderstood the books, but I always thought that the attempt was never supposed to "succeed", that is to say, Umbridge knew Harry could do a patronus, and so expected him to use one to fight the dementors off. Umbridge knew Harry would never be able to convince the ministry that the Dementors were there, so he would have been expelled and therefore out of the way. The only thing she didn't count on was Dumbledore and Mrs Figg showing up at the trial.
 * Yes, such plan would make more sense, but could she really rely on Harry to act? The only time Harry ever casted a Patronus on public was during the Quidditch match in Po A and the Dementors were not real then. Even if Umbridge somehow, third-hand, heard about that time, it would be a huge stretch and risk to expect that he'd be able to repell two real ones. And even Madam Bounce apparently didn't know he could cast a corporeal Patronus, so I doubt Umbridge did. And as for "would never be able to convince", again: Veritaserum (already explined why reasons against it are retarded), Pensieve and most importantly Time. Frigging. Turners. The whole problem is completely artificial.

Positive thinking... Hermione, WTF?
So, we all know that Hermione is a smart girl. That much is clear. And also we know, that the House-elves get free, if THEIR MASTER gives them a piece of clothes. So, why did the smart girl think that her leaving the clothes in Gryffindor room would free someone? She isn't their master, it's Dumbledore. And leaving clothes in Main Room isn't giving. So, is Hermione too stupid to understand that or is she trying to convince herself?
 * Hermione wasn't even listening when she was told House Elves like their jobs and getting clothes equals being fired in disgrace. Her intentions were good but her brain was sadly absent for much of her SPEW work.
 * It's not about the fact that she should know they liked the work. That's different matter. But she knew only the clothes their master gave them would free them, and she was clearly not their master, which she also knew. So, WTF?
 * Apparently, stupidity is contagious. You can't abide around Harry and Ron for five years and not catch some. Although, seeing how the elves were so appalled by those hats they stopped cleaning the Gryff common room, perhaps they could've been used to free them (or maybe they were just that hideous, lol); maybe there was some loophole in that the elves were loyal to Hogwarts and all its denizen in general (like the whole Malfoy family were considered Dobby's masters, not just Lucius) and as such could be freed by any of them.
 * Maybe it was because Hermione was a prefect? Maybe she considered that enough "authority" to free the elves? I mean, obviously people would accidentally leave hats, gloves, scarves, etc in the common room all the time but the Elves didn't freak out over it.

Hand Me The Ball
The only ones who can touch a prophecy ball without going insane are the ones it was made about, so the DEs lure Harry into the Hall of Prophecy, have him grab the ball, and then Lucius demands that Harry gives the ball to him. Wait, what makes Lucius think that the ball's mind-shattering power subsided once Harry had taken the ball from the shelf? And if he in fact knows it for sure, then why the heck would it? I don't think that the balls were initially meant to be played Hot Potato with, so why would whoever enchanted them include such a security-compromising caveat?
 * It was about picking them up from the shelf, not about holding them. Once picked up, anyone could hold them. That's what it was all about, it would make no sense at all if not that.

Draco the Prefect
Why is Draco Malfoy made a Prefect? He doesn't seem remotely qualified for the position and he blatantly abuses it. He's never implied to be more than an average student, either. Dumbledore surely is a better judge of character than that!
 * What's Draco's competition? Crabbe and Goyle? Someone has to be the fifth-year male Slytherin prefect.
 * "Dumbledore surely is a better judge of character than that" - *five minutes of uncontrollable insane laughter*. Ok, seriously though, it makes perfect sense. Snape needed to gain Draco's trust and what's a better way to do it than by (ostensibly) pushing his appointment as a prefect through.
 * For the sake of plot? Actually Blaise Zabini seems more worthy of being a Prefect, but Rowling didn't give any details about him until the next book. Likewise Pansy Parkinson isn't exactly Prefect material, but it fits seeing as how she's the Slytherin equivalent of Hermione.
 * Remember that by this point in time, Voldemort has returned and all of the Death Eaters secretly know about it... including most of the parents of the Slytherin kids. It's quite possible that any alternate candidate had their parents sit them down and explain to them why they really really really really really really wanted to turn the job of Prefect down if it was offered to them, so Draco could have it. Goodness, its not like Lucius hasn't canonically used threats and extortion on the school board before... that's how he gets Dumbledore suspended in book 2.

Oh Look, a Pensieve! Gee, That's Not Private

 * Why on earth would Harry look into Snape's Pensieve? Sure, he hates the guy's guts, but that's still no reason to do something as invasive as looking at someone else's private memories. Snape didn't get mad when Harry managed to use Occlumency correctly and therefore see a few snippets of the memories that he chose to retain during the lessons (kid!Snape cowering; teen!Snape sitting isolated and shooting flies off the wall.) He's already willing - maybe not happy, but willing to risk letting Harry see these less-intense memories compared to SWM; he specifically chose to retain his more personal memories in the Pensieve. So why the heck would Harry violate that? Does he really have so little self-control?
 * Why would he know better? It's not like he'd ever gotten any comeuppance for doing the similair thing in the past, like peeking into Filch's mail or into the Pensieve itself.
 * Remember, he wasn't after Snape's personal secrets. He wanted to know if Snape was hiding any Order information from him, namely about Mysterious (got my pun?) dark hallway with a door.
 * Exactly. Also, remember that this is during the period of time Harry suspects that Snape is actually working for Voldemort. If Harry sincerely thinks that Snape's working with the enemy, of course he's going to go looking for evidence to either confirm or deny that.
 * Also, Snape is telepathically rummaging through Harry's most painful childhood memories every week, and then being a dick to Harry about them. At this point, its not surprising that Harry's respect for Snape's privacy or dignity would be nonexistent; Lord knows Snape's not showing any respect for Harry's.
 * Well, of course, Snape would intrude Harry's mind! He's teaching him how to defend himself, so obviously he'd have to assault him. Sure, he could be more tactful about it, but on the other hand, it's not like Harry showed even the tiniest bit of assiduity on the lessons or, gods forbid, appreciation to Snape for spending his free time on him. And leaving Harry alone with the Pensieve was a clear sign of trust, which Harry promptly crapped on.
 * If Snape had showed common decency during their lessons, then Harry most likely wouldn't have been so outspoken. Theoretically, the teacher is supposed to be the more tactful one, after all.
 * Also, by this point Snape has spent the prior four and a half years doing everything in his power to make Harry Potter hate and distrust him. After putting that much effort into it, Snape shouldn't be surprised that he succeeded.
 * Right! Like saving Harry's life in PS (and getting his robe burnt for his troubles) and protecting the Stone (and getting his leg almost bitten off for his troubles)! Or allowing the Trio to get away with harming other students and stealing his supplies (please don't tell me he didn't know - in the middle of a Legilimency discussion it won't even be funny) and then preparing the cure for the petrified ones (and, of course, getting a big nice handful of sod all in gratitude)! Or rushing to save them from a serial killer and a werewolf!
 * Remember that part of Snape's job as a double agent is to convince everyone that he's genuinely loyal to Voldemort, 'Everyone' includes Harry Potter. It isn't until book 7 that Harry finds out what side Snape is really on. Hell, it isn't until book 7 that we found out what side Snape was really on! So yes, Harry thought that Snape might have been working for Voldemort. This is exactly what Snape went out of his way to make Harry believe.
 * Snape got his robe burned because the trio thought that Snape was the one trying to steal the Stone and kill Harry. They had legitimate reasons to think so, too. Snape went out of his way to be antagonistic to Harry and the other Gryffindors despite the fact that this was was the first year they actually met him. The student's job is to learn the material given to them. The teacher's job is both to teach and to help ensure the welfare of the students so they can learn more effectively.
 * None of that changes the fact, that when it really mattered Snape was doing a lot to help the kids, even putting his own health and life on the line, and let them get away with a lot, and the kids were aware of it. Whether they chose to ignore it all in favor of their childish grudges, is another matter.
 * That's my point. In the first book, he never gave them any reason at all to make them think he was helping them. Harry only found out because Quirrell was mocking him at the time. And while he did protect the students, that doesn't take away from the fact that he went about doing it in the most Jerkass way possible. With childish behavior like Snape was repeatedly showing, of course the the students had a grudge against him. Anyone would.
 * No, he didn't. But afterwards it should've been obvious, shouldn't it? Jerkass manner - yes, it's true, although I see a number of reasons for it, mainly that he had to remain buddies with Malfoys. But my point is that Harry, even when well-informed, sees only that manner, completely dismissing everything behind it, which culminates in the detestable scene in the end, when he literally turns a deaf ear to DD all but flat out saying: "He saved your life, you moron!" and somehow making it Sev's fault that people get killed in a real-life combat. This is why the reasoning that Snape was a jerk to them, and therefore it was OK for the Scarhead to snoop into his private memories, falls flat for me.
 * Harry's a teenager. Teenagers tend to be a little self-centered. He'll grow out of it. Snape has no such excuse. I get that he has to keep his cover, but that's no reason to think like a Bond villain. As for saving his life, Snape was partially responsible for endangering it in the first place. He was the one who gave the prophecy to Voldemort. The entire reason he's protecting Harry is because he's Lily's son. It's not because it's the right thing to do. Harry shouldn't have looked into the pensieve, but you have to remember he was supposed to teach Harry how to protect his mind from being invaded. Voldemort wasn't even aware of it at this point, so there was no reason for Snape to continually attack his mind like that and not explain how to defend himself. Harry was frustrated and angry. It didn't make snooping right. On the other hand, why did Snape just leave it out where Harry could find it? He knew that Harry was always curious by nature. Snape should have known better than to carelessly leave his private stuff out where anyone could find it. Complaining about it later makes him a bit of a hypocrite, since he made sure to view all of Harry's most embarrassing memories.
 * Also, about the 'he's supposed to attack Harry's mind' thing above; that still doesn't excuse repeatedly smashing into Harry's mind from the getgo with his strongest attacks, all the while teaching Harry the absolute minimum (if anything at all!) about how to properly defend. That would be like teaching someone martial arts by repeatedly kicking them in the balls on Day One while yelling at them to stop being so slow and inept, instead of first working on conditioning, then kata, then light sparring, and only then full-contact sparring.
 * You do remember, of course, that Snape was simultaneously a double agent, who had to report to Voldemort, who would most certainly not be pleased if the kid actually succeeds in mastering Occlumency? Sure, Snape was a horrible choice to be Harry's tutor, second worst only to aunt Bellatrix herself, which only makes me scratch my head harder at DD's inexplicable decision to appoint him a tutor in the first place (especially since, as stated below, his reasons to do that make absolutely no sense).
 * Sorry, still doesn't fly. The entire point of teaching Harry Occlumency is to plug the potential information leak known as 'Voldemort reads Harry's mind'; failing to successfully do this will, as far as Snape knows, screw the entire war against Voldemort sideways with a rusty drill bit. Because if Harry can't block out Voldemort then you can never tell Harry any useful strategic information at all, ever... which means you can't use him in the fight against Voldemort, ever. Which means Voldemort wins, forever. The only reason they dodge this bullet in the canon is because starting in book 6 Tom clutches the Idiot Ball hardcore and goes 'OK, I'm never attempting to read Harry Potter's mind again because I didn't like it'... but no one remotely sane in book 5 should have been, or was, betting on this ever happening. tldr; at the time, Dumbledore's judgement is that Harry NEEDS to learn Occlumency no matter WHAT the risk, therefore, 'Snape couldn't actually teach good without blowing his cover' is not sufficient. (Neither is it true, in fact; there's a reason that the entire school was told they were "Remedial Potions" lessons. Nobody else in the school save Dumbledore and the Trio actually knows that Harry is being taught Occlumency by Snape, so, there's no cover to blow.)
 * Ok, let's get something clear first. The Prophecy does not mean that Harry should be regarded as a sole savior of the wizardkind. Not just because it was vague and open to interpretation (my personal theory is that the prophecy had already been fulfilled the night Potters were killed, and who's to say I'm wrong? Trelawny never said that "vanquishing" would be final), but because pinning all hopes in war on one, let's be honest, pretty artless teenager is suicidally stupid and it only worked because ceasing to peek into Harry's mind was the least of V's many, many IdiotBalls. So, yeah, Snape's position as a spy was one of the major reason why he sucked at teaching Harry. However they were going to use the kid in the war, it was a matter of distant future, but associating with V was a constant necessity, and if he decides that Snape makes more than perfunctory effort, he might get suspicios, and then, well, not just Sev's cover will be blown, but his life as well. And he will know, despite the ingenuity of the "Remedial Potions" ruse, because he has a direct link to Harry's mind, and there's no way he wouldn't use it to spy on him, regardless of the kid's being-in-DD's-confidenceness. That only leaves Snape with one option. And he was giving the kid at least some advice and techniques, like clearing his mind from emotions before sleep, but guess what, the Scarhead couldn't be bothered to follow them! What the heck was Sev supposed to do? Oh, and "he left the Pensieve in the open, meaning it was his own fault" is just wrong. I have no idea, why he'd leave it there and why he would do it in front of Harry and not than alone *cough*contrivedexpositiondevice*cough*, but it is still no excuse. You don't excuse a thief by making it vitim's fault that the money weren't locked far enough, do you? Snape rummaging through Harry's painful memories is no excuse either, because so was Harry seing his painful childhood memories, so they were on equal terms. In fact, leaving Harry alone with the Pensieve could be seen as a first sign of trust Snape began to feel, because he'd seen how horrible the kid's life was and Not So Different from his own. And the ungrateful bastard promptly crapped on that trust.
 * Which means that the best solution for this is 'Get Harry another Occlumency tutor'. Even if Dumbledore has to train them from scratch first, he has time -- Draco proves that you can learn Occlumency well enough to block out Snape (who is a very skilled Legilimens) over the course of one summer, and Harry didn't even start his occlumency lessons until after Christmas, meaning Dumbledore has the entire first term to get someone spun up and to speed. BTW, this also highlights again how Snape sucks as an Occlumency instructor, and how the excuse of 'Harry has poor control over his emotions' doesn't fly. Draco is a spoiled temper tantrum-throwing brat, and Bellatrix is a raving homicidal psychopath. Neither of them are poster children for self-control or healthy emotional balance, to put it mildly. And yet Bellatrix was able to teach Draco enough Occlumency, in less than two months, to shortstop Snape. While Snape was unable to teach Harry anything useful in almost six months. This means one of two things; Draco is either ginormously smarter and better than Harry (insert hysterical laughter here), or else Snape is that much worse of a teacher than Bellatrix.
 * You do realize that basing your theory on the assumption that Harry is not essential to the defeat of Voldemort requires completely ignoring the last two books in the series, right? The above is a giant house of cards with no foundation; watch it fall. Also, yet again you just ignore both plain fact and common sense and make the baseless claim that Snape has to act like a tremendous dick to maintain his cover, when in a more competently written plot a double agent allegedly trying to infiltrate the Good Guys acts like a Good Guy, instead of openly parading his villainy around on his sleeve.
 * Oh, sure, Harry eventually happened to be essential to the victory. How plausible was that is for every reader to decide for himself. I can only reiterate my point: pinning all hopes in war on one artless teenager is suicidally stupid, and it only worked because all the bad guys started acting like they were lobotomized with a rusty fork. You named one of those idiocies yourself. I can name a dozen more. And as you duly noted one shouldn't rely on enemy's future stupidity, well at least not more than once. As for Snape and his cover, think of this. Sev doesn't need to infiltrate the Light Side - he has already done it, while acting like a dick. So V knows that he can get away with being a dick, and there is no reason for him to suddenly start caring for his (nonexistant) image by teaching Harry properly. Meaning that if he does, it'd look suspicious, and for V "suspicious" pretty much means "dead". As for why he was acting like a dick all that time I can think of a few possible reasons: sucking up to Malfoys, playing up to DD's image of gullible old fool, being a negative incentive to Harry, generally lacking social skills, suffering from the long-time psychological trauma.
 * At this point you are literally arguing with the author, in that you are asserting that the plot of the book was not actually the plot of the book. Which might be great for planning a fanfic, but doesn't work as a method of literary criticism. The entire series is set up on the assumption that Harry is the only one who can defeat Voldemort, complete with an in-story prophecy confirming exactly this. With that laid down as canon, we cannot fairly criticize the characters for acting on this belief. (We can, however, criticize them for failing to act intelligently on this belief, which is something that they do only about a million times.)

SNEAK, the book, not movie

 * Neville tries to tell on Harry and the others, and he's rewarded for his attempts. Hermione gets Harry's firebolt confiscated, and while she's shunned, she's rewarded as well. Marietta isn't given her side of the story, but from what Cho says, it's implied Marietta turned on the DA either in an attempt to help her mother or out of fear for the consequences that could befall her mother. Everyone, it seems, besides Cho, is okay with this, including the professors who are either incompetent if they can't remove a hex placed by a fifteen/sixteen-yr-old or malicious in their refusal to help a student. JK Rowling thinks the fact that a person who was in an oppressive environment, had a mother who might have been in striking distance of Umbridge, was a teenager, meaning she likely wouldn't have realised how badly her telling would be for them, deserved to be permanently scarred. Marietta wasn't, from what was shown, a hardcore Voldemort supporter. She wasn't a 'traitor'. She was a teenage girl who tattled. And permanently disfiguring even actual traitors is a moral travesty in my opinion, never mind an underage tattle-tale.
 * Neville tried to stop them, not tell on them, and, as it turns out, he was absolutely right. I don't recall Hermione being rewarded even a single point for what she did (correct me if I'm wrong), and, again, she was entirely justified in her worries. As for Marietta, calling her a traitor is not that big of stretch, because even if it wasn't an actual combat situation, it was as close to it as it could get in that environment, with DA as the resistance group and Umbridge as the enemy. Games were over, the real war was looming outside, and the kids had to grow up fast to have a chance to survive. After all, the whole idea behind the DA was to learn real fighting instead of its emasculated, Ministery-approved version, well, it is only fitting that they get the taste of real responsibility as well, to be more prepared for the adult world, where they, indeed, do not disfigure traitors, but execute them. It is actually refreshing to see the staff trying to bring the seriousness of the situation home to the students for a change, instead of beating around the bush, like they did with Potter all the time.
 * I could have sworn that I originally wrote that Hermione was still clearly presented as the heroine of the stories, not that she was rewarded, too. I don't know if someone edited that or if I just thought I did. Neville was going to tell if he couldn't stop them; he said as much himself. Marietta was a teenager who seemed to have some doubts that Voldemort was back. She likely didn't grasp how important everything was. Or she grasped it all too well and made the choice to put her mother in front of the DA. And professors shouldn't be allowed to pick sides. If a student disfigures another student, even if they agree with the one who did the disfiguring and don't like the victim, they still have an obligation to help the one who has been disfigured. They have just as much obligation to protect the children of death eaters as they do muggle-borns, and the same principle applies to members of an underground club. Whether they approve of the club or not, whether they agreed with Marietta's choice or not, she was still their student, and she was attacked by another student. They chose not to punish Hermione, and they chose not to help a girl Hermione disfigured. If they wanted to impart the seriousness, they could have punished Marietta in some way that didn't permanently alter her body. Although, I'm not sure how it is that no one at St. Mungo's or any other wizarding hospital couldn't have helped Marietta, but my main thing is the moral statement presented that a teenage tattle-tale deserves to have his or her body violated and permanently disfigured. I utterly reject that statement.
 * It was originally that she was the heroine of the story. For whatever reason EMY3K edited to what it currently says. I thought it was you in the page history so I didn't even question it. Anyway the common fanon theory is that when everyone in the DA signed the list that says they were part of the DA it formed a part of a magical contract. As part of the contract it made an irreversible betrayal clause which makes it so that anyone trying to repair the damage wouldn't be able to. This is similar to the fanon theory that anyone backing out of the magical contract for the Goblet of Fire would lose their magic or life. Now it's all fanon and whether that's moral or not is up to your interpretation of Hermione's character or not. I mostly agree that if that's true she should have been more open to them about what it was they were signing or at least told them after they signed. I think most of the teachers simply assumed that it was break in a contract that she signed willingly and decided not to help or punish as it was out of their hands.
 * "They could have punished Marietta in some way " - oh, like what, make her write lines? Take away House points? Send a letter to her mother? Make her clean the latrine? Get real. And it wasn't permanent - she got away with some scars, probably not worse than those you get from real acne - Hermie was not a sadist. And again, they were in the middle of a war. You can always make a lot of excuses for a traitor - they were afraid, they were confused, they were Just Following Orders - it doesn't change the fact that traitors are not tolerated at war. Or wargames for that matter.
 * Scars are permanent; they may fade, but they never completely disappear. Harry could have gotten scars on his hands from playing Quidditch, but as far as I know, no one has ever used that to say Umbridge wasn't sadistic in forcing him to use the blood quill. Defecting soldiers, adult spies, etc., are held to a rigid standard, and though I protest some of the treatment they're subjected to, I don't get upset that they aren't tolerated. However, I don't believe in children soldiers, nor do I believe a scared child in an oppressive environment should have permanent damage done to her body for making an ill-thought out choice. As for punishments, I don't know, but I do think the professors could have thought of a way to punish her that didn't involve physical harm if they felt she deserved it.
 * She isn't permanently scarred. It's stated in the next book that most of the pimples have gone away, with only a few left. Hermione wouldn't want someone scarred for life.
 * JK Rowling specifically said that, though the pimples faded, Marietta was left with scars on her face. She did want that character scarred for life as evidenced by her 'loathing a traitor' (paraphrase) comment. Since Hermione is her also her character and no other characters of hers besides Cho, who was presented somewhat unsympathetically, ever called her out on, and there were no scenes or dialogue that even implied Hermione might feel guilty, I'd say Hermione did want Marietta scarred for life or, at least, felt no guilt towards the fact she was.
 * Here's a couple of points to consider. We don't know if Mariette ever asked any of the adults for help. And I see we she wouldn't: ask the people you've betrayed to help remove a sign of your betrayal (not a life threat, mind you, just an inconvinience), that requires some nerve. And as for why they didn't punish Hermie, well, they have no proof it was her doing.
 * She was a hurt child. If a non-abusive parent or teacher sees a child is hurt, they, at least, ask if the child would like some help. Often, they don't even bother to ask and automatically grab the medicine/first aid kit/telephone while telling the kid to sit down/stay still/etc. In this instance, the proper response, once they realised what had happened would be to take her to Madam Pomfrey as soon as possible, and if she couldn't help, make arrangements to transport her to St. Mungo's. Again, whatever their personal opinions, she was a hurt student under their care, and they had no right to shirk their duties.
 * First, she was not a child. She was fifteen, and in the wiz world this is closer to maturity than in ours. Hell, Riddle started taking over the world at that age! Second, and more importantly, she was not "hurt" - she had a bad case of acne, that's it. Ton of kids have it, and somehow parents or teachers don't rush to put them into hospital. Again, wizards are much more tolerant to injuries, both because they suffer them more frequently and can withstand more than us. So could you please stop pulling the pity card? She betrayed her comrades and endangered the whole anti-Voldemort movement. Yes, she probably didn't mean to or didn't think of the ramifications, so what? Simplicity is worse than robbery, they say. I think the teachers can be excused if they were willing to let her be inconvenienced by the consequences of her actions, and not fussing over her as if she was a baby. As you duly noted, Harry was also scarred, but nodoby dragged him to Madam Pomfry.
 * Actually, many parents do take their children to the doctor for bad cases of acne. Marietta had a spell on her that altered her body; it altered her body in a way that caused emotional distress to her. If a student threw acid or permanent ink on another student's face and a teacher failed to help the latter student, I'd still call foul, even if that student had tattle-tailed on the other student. No, nobody took Harry to Madam Pomfrey, nor did he go to her himself; I personally believe that situation was mishandled, as well. I make no apologies for my empathy towards real life people or fictional characters. I don't like to see people hurt, I'm a big believer in a person's mistakes not haunting them for the rest of their lives, especially when the mistakes are made when they're young, scared, and confused, and I absolutely despise and disagree with the idea that a person doing something wrong gives another person the right to physically hurt them.

Dude, you have pockets

 * In the movie, Harry, while running for his life, carries the prophecy in one hand. He was wearing jeans. I'm fairly sure some of the others had pockets, too. Put the prophecy in a pocket. It's a wonder he didn't drop it.
 * Eh, the prophecy doesn't look like it'd fit into a jean pocket. Not easily, at least. Harry would have to set aside time in the heat of battle to squeeze it in.

The Prophesy is wrong in oh so many ways
''The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches ... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies ... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not ... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives ... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies ...'' "*The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches ... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies..."
 * It says 'either must die at the hand of the other'. The last blow against Voldemort is struck by...Voldemort. It's a backfiring curse. That is not 'the other'.
 * But Voldemort was using Harry's wand at the time so in a way it counts.
 * It says 'neither can live while the other survives'. That has be interpreted pretty poetically to be true, and even then it doesn't work. Even if we assume 'live' means 'live in a way that isn't under constant attack'...Harry manages to pull that off for 11 years. Likewise, Voldemort managed to live pretty well the first 18 months Harry was alive. It might be true at this point in the story, but not earlier.
 * In canon the Dursleys are chronically emotionally abusive, and occasionally physically abusive. Harry's quality-of-life at 4 Privet Drive barely qualifies as "surviving", let alone living. The cupboard under the stairs, for Merlin's sake!
 * So the theory is that there are two different thing, that there is 'living' vs. 'surviving', and both Harry and Voldemort are restricted to only 'surviving' while the other survives? That does seem to explain the end, but doesn't explain the first 18 months of Harry's life, where Voldemort seemed to live just fine.
 * Or split the "neither can..." part into two. Now it literally means neither can live, which means both must die at some point, but somehow one will survive. The prophecy really doesn't make full sense unless an Ass Pull happens at the end, which turns out to be a Fridge Brilliance from Jo. But seriously, neither can DIE while the other survives is a little closer to clarity.
 * It say 'but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not', which is love, and that part seems to be true and make sense. Love is a power, and Voldemort does not know about it. But then it says 'the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies'. While the power of love is important, at no point does Harry's power of love vanquish Voldemort. His mother's love sorta does, at least twice (The original backfired curse, and killing Quirrell.) But not his own power of love. We're all glad it showed up, it kept a lot of people alive, etc, etc, but it didn't vanquish Voldemort, Voldemort's stupidity and egotism did that.
 * The prophecy just said that he would have power that Voldemort doesn't know of, not that that's how he will defeat him.
 * And, to top it off, we have strange tense issues: The entire prophesy is in the future tense. He's approaching, he will do this, he will have that, etc. Except he is apparently 'born', not 'will be born'. The first 'born' could be written off as it fading out for a second, but not the second.
 * It doesn't refer to Voldemort's death, but to Harry's. My interpretation of the prophecy is based on the fact that it doesn't talk about killing, but about dying - as if the active party is the one doing the dying rather than the killing. And so it eventually proves - Harry sacrifices himself to stop Voldemort, thereby resolving the prophecy.
 * The prophecy makes sense when you break it down into its individual parts:

"*and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not..."
 * The tense issue is reconciled by the fact that, since Voldemort hasn't attacked either child, neither is the 'Chosen One' at this point. Thus, they are approaching, meaning that they will be chosen soon.

"*either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives..."
 * By choosing the one he will kill, Voldemort acknowledges them as 'the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord' meaning that they are equal to him, since no inferior could possibly bring him down in his eyes. The power he knows not of is obviously love, as has been stated before.


 * Here's where it gets tricky. The two are destined to fight each other, and one of them will eventually succeed in killing the other. No one else can do it. Harry can't die, since the Horcrux inside him will likely sustain him (as a Horcrux container can only be destroyed by magical means that far exceed the norm, Harry was likely only in danger from the Basilisk and the Fiend Fyre throughout the whole series), and Voldemort can't die due to the Horcruxes he has made. By the time the Horcruxes are destroyed, Harry and Voldemort are fixated soley on each other, and are eager to kill the other, not allowing anyone else the privilage.
 * Except for the part where Voldemort did not die at 'the hand of the other'; he died at the hand of himself. Voldemort gets killed by his own reflected Killing Curse.
 * Or split the "neither can..." part into two. Now it literally means neither can live, which means both must die at some point, but somehow one will survive.
 * But still, it seems to fall short. "Neither can die while the other survives" makes a lot more sense in the context of what happens in Deathly Hallows.
 * Or maybe I ought to go with the previous interpretation, neither of them can get a real life while the other survives...Voldemort always fearing Harry and being the predator and Harry being the prey. I mean Harry gets a real life only after Voldemort is killed, till that time the only way to summarize his story was Deus Angst Machina.

Underestimating Floo Powder

 * So, Harry is desperate to get to London to save Sirius, although he has no idea how to get there. So, Hermi persuades him to sneak into Umbridge's office first to use the Flowing Floo so that they could call the Grimmauld Place and check if Sirius is there... ... ... ... WHY DON'T YOU IDIOTS JUST GO THROUGH THE FIREPLACE STRAIGHT TO GRIMMAULD PLACE?!!! The fireplace is not supposed to be monitored (how in the world could they buy such a primitive ruse is another thing, but lets ignore minor plot holes in favor of big ones).
 * I think that Harry's plan in here was just to do a fast check on Sirius, like he had done before when he asked Sirius and Remus about Snape's memory. He is on a very tight schedule, due to (a) having seen Sirius being tortured, and (b) Umbridge could be back at any moment. Sure, Harry could have gone to Grimmauld Place, but then how does he get back? Umbridge would have known that Harry had gotten inside, but had not come out, so it would be easy for her to understand that he could have gone somewhere, and once Harry goes back to Hogwarts, he's toast. Harry didn't expect that Umbridge could have placed warning charms on the door.
 * Why would he need to get back? He needed to get to London to save Sirius, right? Well, unless I'm wrong, Grim. Place IS in London.
 * Yes, but what if Sirius didn't need to be rescued (which was actually the case)? Then Harry would be stuck and in big trouble.
 * It seemed to me, that at that particular moment, "trouble" was the very very last thing Harry could care about. Besides, by that point, Hogwarts pretty much royally sucked, with all Harry's allies among the teachers gone and Umbridge fully in charge. I doubt he'd miss it much. Finally and most importantly, the school year was (almost) over, it's not like he was going to miss any classes, and I got an impression that after the exams, the students were more or less left to their own devices. Perhaps, that's why V chose that exact time for his little game. In case of a false alarm, he'd just ask somebody from the Order to give him a lift back.
 * Point's moot, anyway. Wouldn't Kreacher have had to let Harry come through the fireplace? Imagine how likely he'd be willing to do that without a direct order.
 * Nothing in the books indicates that there was such condition, Harry was already disclosed the location of the house, Kreacher wasn't the owner of the house, and in CoS Harry accidentally Flooed into Borgin & Burkes without any permission from the owners, so no, I don't think it was the case. And, as usual, it's not about whether or not would it work - it's about not trying an obvious solution (and it was obvious because when Sirius was talking to them through the fireplace, Umbridge tried to grab him, meaning that he was physically there, therefore "talking" and "walking" via Floo is the same thing).
 * Kreacher is entirely capable of extinguishing the fire if Harry tries to come through, and since he's deliberately trying to set this whole mess up he almost certainly would.
 * Harry never says how he's going to get to the Department of Mysteries, and it's entirely possible he was planning on using the flue after hanging up after Grim. Place. He was planning on getting there some other way, probably the Knight Bus, before the flue was suggested.
 * Luna is the only one who asks how he was going to get to the Department of Mysteries after the floo mention, perhaps it was obvious to everyone else...and perhaps Luna was just asking because she, being conspiracy-minded, knows you can't just floo into the Department of Mysteries, or floo into the Ministry and walk there. Except you can when all the security is disabled, like it was. (She does seem rather astonished when they just walk in, although the Narrator seems to think she's inexplicably awed at an empty hallway.)
 * Speaking of which. Why was Sirius able to reach Hogwarts so easily? Where's the security? Does this mean that anybody else could do the same thing and peek/teleport into the school? On the other hand, if Hogwarts was indeed accessible from the outside via Floo Network...why the heck didn't all the kids go there that way instead of by the train? Everybody would be saving a lot of time, nerves and resources.

Boggart's true face
Lupin states that no one knows the true form of a boggart, the form it has when no one's near for him to take his form. So how could Moody know it was a Boggart in the cupboard when he saw it? It would have its true form at that point, no one was near it. And if you count that they were near enough, it was stated in 3rd book that Boggart had no form until it came out of the cupboard and took the form of Nevil's (nearest Persons) greatest fear. In that case, he would have to be in his natural form.
 * Maybe Boggart simply knows whenever somebody is looking at it, whether by a normal eye or a magical one.

Redefining Cardboard Prison
In the end Malfoy taunts Potter, saying that the Dementors had left Azkaban, and so his father and other Death Eaters would be out in no time. So let me get this straight. They know V is back. They know the Dementors would most likely join him on the drop of a hat. And they still put all the captured villains in the Azkaban like nothing happened?! What the heck? Wouldn't the first thing they'd want to do in this situation be relocating all the prisoners to a more secure location?
 * I read this out of a fanfic, but I notice it seems to be disturbingly true: Wizards have no redundancy. They have ONE banking organization (goblins), ONE hospital (St. Mungo's), and ONE prison. I'm guessing they didn't have the foresight of having any place more secure than even a compromised Azkaban...
 * At the very least there's Nurmengard.
 * That's in a different country.
 * So? That's even better - now, if V decides to liberate his cronies, he'd have to antagonize a whole new country. And it was almost empty anyway, why waste the place?
 * I'm pretty sure that in the magical world, much like in the real world, the British government does not have authority over the German prisons.
 * No, but the goverment could negotiate deportation of criminals to said prison. After all, it was DD who ended Grindelwald's reign of terror, surely they wouldn't deny him a little return favor. And the real importance of Nurmengard is that it demonstrates the possibility to contain the magical criminals without use of dementors. Since DD is dead sure V would eventually return and dementors would immediately join him, why didn't he borrow their experience and have a back up containment procedure prepared in advance? Yes, the majority of wizards are idiots, but isn't he supposed to be different?
 * You assume that Britain has something to bargain with. For all we know, Magical Britain is equivalent to muggle Zimbabwe. Maybe that's why no other countries bothered to intervene the first time Voldemort rose up.
 * That would explain much, although I put stress on DD's personal authority and esteem as the vanquisher of Grinewald and his standing as the most powerful sorceror in the world. You'd think his favour would be valued enough to warrant a little cooperation.

Oh, no! Voldemort might realise...what he should've always known anyway.
So, DD's excuse for not teaching Harry Occlumency personally was that "if Voldemort realised that we were connected more closely than just a teacher and a student, he would've tried to use you to spy on me" or "possess you to tempt me to try and kill him by killing you". "Original argument: Voldemort has no reason to think Harry is in Dumbledore's confidence. Strawman version: Voldemort has no reason to think Dumbledore would teach Harry anything ever, even indirectly through a subordinate."
 * Ok, first: how the heck could V possibly NOT know that Harry was special to DD, when he obviously knew that DD had heard the prophecy, in full at that?! Besides, the personal uber-protection set around the kid's house should've also given him a clue, shouldn't it? Also, what exactly was DD afraid V would spy on? "Monday: DD is teaching Harry Occlumency. Tuesday: DD is teaching Harry Occlumency. Wednesday: Harry has mastered Occlumency, and I cannot pick up anything anymore."
 * Looking in from the outside, that only proves Harry is a valuable chess piece to Dumbledore, not that Harry is in Dumbledore's confidence.
 * Ri-i-i-i-i-ight. "That brat is destined to be the one capable of killing me, and DD knows it, but he will most definitely NOT divulge any important information about me to him or teach him any important skills, that might help him in his mission, because...lol, that Muggle-lover is too dumb for that, that's why! No reason to try and spy on him through him at all!" Self-delusion: Advanced Classes. Monday-Wednesday, 50% discount to Dark Lords.
 * Welcome, class. Today we shall discuss the concept of "strawman argument". Here is today's example:


 * Thank you, class. Any questions?


 * Yes, teacher, as a matter of fact we do. 1) How the heck do you go from "receiving personal lessons in mind protection" directly to "being in confidence and, hence, worth spying on"? Is it really such an outlandish occasion for the school Headmaster to teach students? If they need some extra plausibility, fine, put on a little show, like have Sirius (whom Harry'd been writing about his dreams and scar pains) explain the situation to him and how he must learn Occlumency, and how lucky he is that his Headmaster is one heck of an Occlumens, and sure, he's a busy man, but they gonna gang up with Remus and Arthur and whatnot and ask him really nicely, and whaddyouknow, he agreed! There, no reason for V to suspect anything. 2) What the heck does it matter whether Harrry is seen as being in DD's confidence or not? He's first and foremost THE Harry Potter! V's (perceived) arch-nemesis! The one he's obliged, yet is inexplicably unable to kill! Are you seriously telling me that he wouldn't grab at the opportunity to spy on him by whatever means available? He spends an entire year seeking for something that might give him insight on the kid, yet he could possiby ignore a dedicated line to his mind? 3) What the heck does it matter if V does try to spy on DD through Harry? What is he supposed to learn from their Occlumency lessons? The techniques? Well so would he from Snape's lessons as well, except in that case he would rather learn that the teacher absolutely sucks at teaching, meaning it is safe to use mind tricks on the kid. Speaking of which... 4) Even if for some reason DD just couldn't teach Harry, how in the heck does it excuse entrusting Snape with the duty, when it was an obvious recipe for disaster from the very beginning? Even notwithstanding their mutual animosity, Snape responds to Voldemort. He couldn't teach the kid well, even if he wanted.
 * BTW, you may notice, that each following question kinda negates the previous one. I'm aware of that and stipulated them all to better demonstrate just on how many levels doesn't DD's excuse make any freaking sense.
 * Apparently, you missed the part where Dumbledore was worried that Voldemort would force Harry to duel him to the death.
 * First, how can you force a teenager to fight the most powerful sorceror in world to the death, or rather how can you force said sorceror to kill him rather than disarm and stun in about two seconds? Especially if said teenager is supposed to be his secret uber-weapon. Second, ok, let's say V does plans that. What does it matter then if DD gives Harry lessons or not? As I say below they do meet each other normally every day.
 * Second: what the heck did DD's unwillingness to communicate with Harry have to do with V's willingness to possess him? On the contrary, if Harry wasn't special, wouldn't it, from V's PoV, make it more admissable for DD to sacrifice him? And Harry and DD had been seeing each other anyway, in the Great Hall, for instance, so what exactly prevented V from taking over Harry there? Mind you, we're not talking about what V would or would not actually do, but about what DD would consider a valid excuse to expose Harry to danger.
 * Again, the whole point was for Voldemort to not realize that Harry is, at least partially, in Dumbledore's confidence. If Voldemort knows that, he can use him to spy on Dumbledore. So Harry sees Dumbledore in the Great Hall. Big whoop. Does Voldemort want to spy on Dumbledore giving a public speech? No, he wants to spy on Dumbledore going over his top secret anti-Voldemort plans. The issue is whether or not Harry has any access to that sort of thing. If he doesn't, there's no point in using him to spy on Dumbledore.
 * So don't go over top secret anti-Voldemort plans until the kid masters Occlumency, what's the problem? As for a convenient, non-being-in-confidence-indicative reason to do that, simple: "Harry, your escape from Riddle was a major affront to his overblown ego. He will certainly try to rectify his mistake. You're safe while in my custody, but he might try mind tricks to lure you out. To prevent that from happening, I'll teach you mental protection." Done.
 * Plus, what knowledge are they afraid Voldemort will pick up from Harry? Let's go down the list:
 * "Harry, I'm afraid Voldemort has targeted you specifically". Yeah, Tom already knows this part, and he already knows that Dumbledore knows this part.
 * "So I have ordered special security measures for you." Tom already knows this, too; as seen in book 7 he doesn't hesitate to ask Snape questions about Harry Potter and possible security precautions around him, questions Snape has to answer at least mostly truthfully in order to keep his cover intact.
 * "Also, I'm afraid Tom is in contact with your mind." Well, duh. Harry told Dumbledore about the visions as far back as book four. Snape's already reported this to Voldemort as part of his double agent cover. So again, Tom already knows, and he already knows that Dumbledore knows that he knows, so you can say it in Harry's face all you want.
 * "Plus, there is a prophecy in the Hall of Mysteries that Tom wants very much, and he might try and use you to get it." Tom already knows that the Order knows about the Prophecy and is guarding it from him; by this point Lucius already knows about the people in invisibility cloaks lurking outside the DoM door, remember?
 * tldr;: You can tell Harry the entire plot of book 5 without worrying that you're giving anything new away to Voldemort -- not only does Tom already know about all of it, Tom also knows that the Order knows about all of it.

Headmistress and Teacher?

 * When Umbridge declared herself to be the new Headmistress of the school, who was teaching DADA? Was she doing both jobs? I wonder if that's the reason the castle didn't accept her as the headmistress.
 * Before that, it doesn't seem like she would have enough time to be both the DADA teacher and Hogwarts High Inquisitor. Perhaps she's using a Time-Turner. Or since she never did any actual teaching anyway, perhaps she got someone else (Filch, maybe?) to supervise her classes.

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