Harry Potter/Headscratchers/Universe

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Questions about Hogwarts go in Harry Potter/Headscratchers/Hogwarts. Stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else can go in Harry Potter/Headscratchers/Other. For a specific book, please go to their specific page:

Wizarding World in General, Technology

  • It's established that in the Potterverse, the dead can be spoken to if there are pictures of them. Why then, does Harry never even consider having pictures of his parents (or Sirius etc.) painted. I can buy that there might be arguments against it along the lines of "it wouldn't be real" or "it wouldn't do to live in the past" or whatever, but surely Harry would at least consider it?
    • Pictures and paintings seem to capture the attitude and personality of the person when they are taken/made/painted. And since paintings are far more lifelike than pictures, one could assume some powerful magic would have to be involved, perhaps even requiring the subject of the painting to help bring it to life. So it seems unlikely Harry would request a painting of his parents a decade after their death—how would anyone capture their essence?
  • Sorry if this is obvious, but why are the teachers called Professors when they are teaching the equivalent of high school, not college?
    • Well, a person is called 'Professor' based on his/her educational degree, and not the place they teach. For that same reason, none of the teachers in my college are called Professors. They are either Doctors, or simply teachers...
    • It seems to just be an honorary title; Hagrid is suddenly referred to as 'professor' when he becomes Care of Magical Creatures teacher.
  • I know that everyone has thought of this but still, WHY IS THERE NO INTERNET? Every book involves something which the Trio spends ages in the library figuring out which would take 5 seconds with internet. "Who's Nicholas Flamel""How do you make/buy Polyjuice Potion" "How do you survive underwater""What are Horcruxes" "Voldemort's favourite places"...the list goes on.
    • To keep the info out of the hands of the muggles?
    • But they could take care of that, if they can hide a big Quidditch ground, I'm sure they could hide a search engine from the wrong people, even Muggle computer technicians can do that.
      • Why would there be an internet? To begin with, we know that electronic devices like computers don't work well around magic and don't work at all at Hogwarts. Then consider that the books take place from 1991 to 1998. How much of an internet did we have back in 1998? Just because people have magic doesn't mean they're going to invent things before Muggles do and it's actually stated that having magic makes you less likely to be logical or creative since you can just cast a spell and solve your problems instead of having to work at it.
        • There actually was a considerable amount of Internet back in 1998. The Internet existed before residential broadband access or wireless hotspots, after all. The World Wide Web dates back to 1991, and Usenet and BBBses are decades older. Hell, Google first went online September 15, 1997.
  • Wizarding Wireless Network? Wizarding Wireless Network? Wires?
    • I think this one can be explained as certain slang not transferring well. Wireless just means radio in Britain IRC. Doesn't explain radios and no TV though.
      • No, it doesn't. We say radio.
      • A bit of history tells us that "Wireless" was a term the British referred to the radio ("wireless transmission with radio waves") and was popular until WWII, where the military preference for "radio" slowly replaced it. If the Wizarding World is as out of date as it appears, referring to it as a Wireless wouldn't seem that strange.
      • In Deathly Hallows, I remember the radio being referred to as "Wireless" at least twice.
      • "Wireless" is an old-fashioned but genuine word for "radio" in Britain, used here for Alliteration.
  • NUCLEAR WEAPONS: Although wizards claim to be better than Muggles at everything and refuse to pay attention to anything they do, having Hiroshima, an entire city, be wiped off the map in WWII should have alerted wizards to the destructive capabilities of nukes. For so long, wars were just person against person, easy to avoid for wizards, but nukes wipe off parts of geography, not something wizards should be able to avoid, no matter how ignorant they are of the Muggle world. What would a wizard say when confronted with the subject of nukes? Would they try to change the subject because it's not proper in the wizard community? Or would they really be ignorant enough to not know about it?
    • It's never really addressed if wizards were in the general area of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It's possible the wizards that knew about them think their shielding spells could protect them even from a nuclear weapon. After all, who knows how strong magic is against the atom.
      • But you have to know exactly when a nuclear bomb is about to go off to set up a shield. Plus their magic shields don't seem to block out light, a.k.a. electromagnetic radiation. Even if a shield can stand up to the shock wave and keep out the fire storm, will it keep out all the x-rays, gamma radiation, and infra-red radiation (heat)?
      • Magic doesn't work by normal logic. Protego is not a field of force preventing minor-moderate curses, solid objects or shockwaves from hitting you, it's a magic shield which stops you from being harmed, no matter the means, up to a point (i.e. powerful curses like Avada Kedavra). Since visible light is not harmful, Protego won't block it. However, since other types of radiation are deadly, it would stop them. Indeed, if you trained a powerful laser on a Protego, it would probably block the light as it is now high-powered enough to burn. Magic doesn't work by logical laws, it works by laws of how a human thinks, and a human thinks a Shield Charm would stop him from getting hurt.
        • I doubt that many wizards are familiar enough with the technology to realize it does more than just cause a really big explosion.
        • There's also a no-limits fallacy in the above in that it assumes the simple act of casting a Shield Charm protects you from harm of any magnitude. Potterverse magic is not absolute, but scales; how much power you can put behind your magic matters as much as what spell you're casting. Harry, Voldemort, and 'wandlore' is the clearest example of this principle, but not the only one. Or to put it more simply; your Protego might try to protect you from a nuclear bomb, but it might be a few dozen orders of magnitude short of succeeding at it.
    • Why assume it actually was a nuke that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Considering Rowling seems to be trying to tie Grindelwald's story to World War II (the dates she gives for his reign match up almost perfectly with the rise and fall of the Reich), it's possible that it was a spot of particularly bad magic that they invented the nuke story to cover up. Once you add magic into a story, you have to consider the A Wizard Did It explanation for nearly everything.
      • But then the nuclear weapons R&D of every nuclear country, spanning decades and costing untold billions of dollars, would have to be a part of the cover-up.
        • Magic! (Troper waves hands furiously) Perhaps skimming the Nuclear weapons research money off the top is what funds the Wizard government; IIRC, we never hear taxes mentioned once. Perhaps the wizards magically de-activated the nukes that each country built; they clearly have people at the highest levels of Muggle government. Perhaps the average wizard doesn't even understand what a nuke is; Arthur Weasley couldn't handle British money or a Underground ticket without help, and the Daily Prophet had to explain to the population what a handgun was.
      • It's also pretty safe to assume that the atomic bombs weren't the result of wizardry when you consider that, frankly, wizards aren't very good at killing each other in large numbers. Remember, Sirius Black supposedly killing 13 people with a single curse was some serious Nightmare Fuel for the wizarding world, and 13 people in one attack is a pretty big step down from vaporizing entire cities.
      • Killing 13 people at once would be pretty potent Nightmare Fuel in the Muggle world, too. And Muggles don't even have anything that could annihilate a large group of people in one shot at close range without killing the killer at the same time.
      • A grenade launcher? If they are unarmed, any modern weapon could do it in a few seconds, fast enough for you?
      • A grenade launcher fired at close range would easily kill the shooter. You can't catch a piece of shrapnel to the face from a wand-blast.
      • One, the fact that we can kill 13 muggles in a single shot from even further away is more scary than the wand, not less. And two, you want 13 dead people in a single trigger pull and wave at close range? Behold, the flame thrower.
      • Am I the only person here who remembers that the only reason Pettigrew could kill 13 Muggles in one curse is because he deliberately shot into a gas main? To date, no wizard has killed 13 muggles at once with magic alone, but also had to use Muggle technology.
    • You don't even have to mention nuclear weapons. Most older British wizards will have lived through the Blitz and should know what Muggle weapons are capable of. This Troper's guess is that you just don't mention it in 'polite company', so that most wizards have simply forgotten about it, or never learned about it. The Purebloods we see in the books don't even understand age-old technology like electricity and telephones, and if the Daily Prophet article about Sirius's escape is an indicator, they have no idea what a gun is. In the worst case Muggle weapon technology would be used as an example of how dangerous those 'vile creatures' [sic] are.
    • Knowledge about the Muggle world seems to be somewhat inconsistent. For example, Arthur Weasley somehow managed to obtain a car, learn how to drive it and give it magically enhanced abilities. He also works in a Ministry department that regularly deals with 'Muggle artifacts'. Yet, his biggest ambition in life is to find out how airplanes stay in the air, something he could pick up from any number of (childrens) textbooks.
    • I'm pretty sure it was stated that Arthur liked to take Muggle machines apart to learn how they work, including the car, which is how he enchanted it in the first place. I guess he never thought to look at a Muggle textbook for answers. And the reason why he can't figure out how a plane works? Simple. It's too big to fit in his garage.
      • Maybe a small one could. ;-) Or a model.
      • Also, he may be able to learn how a car works by taking it apart, and also how to operate it, but he cannot gain knowledge of traffic regulations from that. In other words: someone must have shown him how to drive safely, so he must have another source of information than simply taking stuff apart.
        • Who says he needs to gain that knowledge? He could have just confunded his traffic examiner to get the license and relied on magic to get him through a drive safely. That's what his son does, after all. Or he just drives unlicensed. He floos into work normally, and he can apparate, so he probably relies on those for his transportation needs. He probably just thinks of the car as a really cool toy that he takes out on joyrides, and he does seem to live in a pretty isolated rural area, so he probably can do that without running into a whole lot of danger.
        • Considering Arthur's car became sentient on its own, and even the staid Ministry of Magic cars can leap to the front of a traffic queue, it's possible that no wizard is 'driving' any car, just directing them generally in the right direction, and they all are self-driving like the Knight Bus, along with various spells to keep Muggles from noticing their impossible behavior. However, no one besides Ernie Prang directs their vehicle in such a crazy manner, so Harry doesn't notice this.
    • Finally, something I'd like to add. Out of all forms of transportation technology, the one that is used more than any other by wizards is the steam locomotive, by far more complicated and more difficult to master than most anything else around. How is it that a bunch of people who have thus far demonstrated little to no technological knowledge can somehow figure all those valves, gears, and levers out? I suppose the easiest explanation would be that the Hogwarts Express is driven by a special crew of Muggle Studies experts, but that seems like way too much effort for no logical reason. Or possibly the train only looks like a typical steam train but is actually some sort of Eberron-style Magitech contraption.
    • To me, wizards' knowledge of the Muggle world, or lack thereof, is absolutely inexcusable. One of the more egregious examples of this is when, in one of the books (I think it was Prizoner Of Azkaban), they mention that the Muggle authorities were reporting that Sirius had a gun when he escaped, which the magical source of news had to clarify as "A kind of metal wand Muggles use to kill each other," meaning that enough of the wizarding world doesn't know what a gun is that clarification must be made. I don't buy that. Guns have been around for over five hundred years, and wizards don't know what they are? This just raises even more questions: do they know anything about the history of the modern world? Harry seems to sleep through all his wizard history classes, and they never seem to cover Muggle history, so exactly what kind of bubble does the wizarding world live in? Then there's the fact that you've got people like Ron, who, unlike Harry or Hermione, have spent their whole lives in the wizarding world, and then proceed to go to Hogwarts, apparently having never gone to basic school, where they proceed to sleep through their history classes, essentially becoming full fledged adults with little to no understanding of the history of the world, current events, or even some major technological innovations that have changed the world forever.
      • And yet they all run right though Kings Cross Station in the middle of muggle London every September 1. One has to wonder just how many ministry obliviators are doing 'Muggle crowd control' every time the Hogwarts Express leaves or arrives. Okay, maybe they have the possibility to arrive directly at platform 9¾ by floo or apparition, but we never see that in the books.
      • Uhm, about the "people like Ron" thing... isn't that pretty much Truth in Television for most students in the real world?
    • A thought just occurred to me: what if a wizard, on his/her way to Diagon Alley, got held up by a Muggle with a gun? They wouldn't know what a gun was, all they'd know is a person stuck something weird looking at them and said something to the effect of "gimmie the casssssssssssh." They'd be confused, say "no," and try to walk away, not knowing their life was being threatened. Cue a wizard getting shot because of gross ignorance.
      • Sounds plausible, but Britain has very strong firearm laws, so its more likely that the mugger would use a knife or something similar. But it certainly seems strange that British wizards lived through at least two big wars in the last hundred years, including a whole lot of German air raids, and are still ignorant to Muggle weaponry.
        • Strong gun control laws means a mugger would be more likely to use a knife? Yes, because all criminals follow the law.
        • Actually, yes. It's difficult enough to obtain guns that if you are mugged, as was stated, the mugger is more likely to be using a knife.
          • The statistics on black-market weapons trade in the United Kingdom might beg to differ, but at this point we risk going off-topic.
      • And that's what Appearation and the Floo Network is for: so wizards don't have to deal with the Muggle World. They don't have to know anything about us, and we can't find out about them should someone get careless and pull out a Galleon instead of a subway token.
    • It could be argued that this ignorance is only true for isolated living purebloods, like the Weasleys or the Malfoys. Hogsmeade is said to be the only all-wizarding town in England, so any Wizards who lives in a town not called Hogsmeade would have at least some contact with Muggles. Heck, even the ancestral home of the Muggle-hating Blacks is somewhere in London, surrounded by Muggle houses.
    • Another theory: It is more act than real ignorance, although there is a certain amount of ignorance. Most wizards seem to have at least passing knowledge of the Muggle world, even Draco bragged about outflying Muggles in helicopters in book one. They have no deeper knowledge because they live in their own bubble, so most of them never use a telephone or watch a movie in their entire lives. Add to this the fact that Muggles are looked down upon by a lot of wizards, and you can imagine that stuff like "a gun is like a metal wand" is mentioned because it is 'just not proper' to know these things in pureblood society. Everyone knows it, no one talks about it, and if it comes up, people feign ignorance.
    • How much are we aware of how people live in other cultures? Just being a migrant between two very different countries, I notice how ignorant people are of the most subtle things - things I figured would be obvious. Muggles have difficulty living outside their own bubbles, why hold wizards to a higher standard?
    • I believe that the business about the gun was an As You Know. Newspapers still talk about 9/11 as if it happened yesterday, and wizards are shown to be kind of stupid, so it follows that the Daily Prophet would need to say something everyone already knows.
      • Probably true, as wizards apparently have enough awareness of firearms to have named Ron's favorite Quidditch team, the Chudley Cannons, after them.
    • Related to the above: Why didn't the British Military just send some well trained marksmen to take out Voldemort's top men? Couple them with well trained Aurors who can apparate silently and you've got a team that can kill from a kilometer or more away before the target can even get a shield up (unless they are lucky and see the muzzle flash), since they wouldn't hear anything before it impacted. Sure, it wouldn't kill Voldemort, what with his Horcruxes, but it could really cripple his ability to inflict damage on anything more than a one on one scale.
      • But even then, this could be fixed by using air-to-surface missiles which travel faster than the speed of sound. It may not destroy his soul, but you should be able to cripple his body long enough to incapacitate him and throw him into the sun or find some way to send him into deep space.
      • This still bugs me that people seem to think the Muggle military is the solution to everything in the story. It's a fantasy book, not something where the moral of the story is going to be "The military and guns saves the day". Besides, the Muggle government when this is happening is being kept in the dark about most of what's going on before Voldemort takes over, so aurors won't be helping them. Plus Voldemort, once he takes over, probably has the Prime Minister under the Imperius curse to not do anything. Even if he's not under Voldemort's spell, you can't just send solders to places you can't find, and aurors themselves aren't exactly able to find any real Death Eaters. Especially when the Ministry has to use fake death eaters as signs they're doing something. Also, firing missiles inside the United Kingdom will cause a bit of panic among the citizens.
        • Just because it's a fantasy book and the military isn't going to be the solution doesn't mean that it couldn't. Just because the muggles don't know and wizards aren't helping them find the places to attack or using muggle technology themselves doesn't mean that, if it happened, the muggle technology couldn't win the war. If nothing else, the Death Eater's lack of familiarity with it would be a huge advantage.
        • "This still bugs me that people seem to think the muggle military is the solution to everything". Well, that's how it works in real life, so it's natural that people are trying to apply that elsewhere.
          • No it doesn't. People thinking military force is the silver bullet often comes up in reality, yes, but really, it's not. See; Iraqi and Afghan Wars.
          • There are more than 15 or so enemy combatants in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
            • Also, the main issues there are a) they also have guns and bombs and understand how they work and b) too high a percentage of the general population actually agrees with the insurgents and supports them, and you can't change minds by force of arms except by massacreing all dissidents, something that Coalition forces simply aren't going to do. But Death Eaters would enjoy neither of these advantages; they're as ignorant of muggle militaries and how to fight them as any other group of wizards, and there are a lot of their fellow wizards that would entirely get behind a 'hey, shoot the goddamn Death Eaters' already campaign.
    • Also, one should note that wizards are much more resilient to physical damage due to their instinctive magical protection; Hagrid scoffed at Harry's belief that his parents died in a car crash, as no car crash can kill a wizard, the story where Neville got tossed out of a upper floor window by his relatives to tempt out a sign of magic is treated as a joke, and Qudditch players take regular lead cannonballs to the head with nothing worse than a mild concussion. So I would guess that a wizard would shrug off non-magical firearm rounds as something painful and annoying but not lethal. Also, it has to be noted that Rowling's wizards do not excel in purely offensive magic and wreaking of general havoc, but on subtler skills, like disguise and obfuscation (they hid a city in the middle of London), speed (apparation, flying), and mind-control (the Imperius curse, and the Memory spell). Sure, a nuke or a Muggle army might surprise and overcome a group of wizards by sheer brute force. But that nuke and army is not going to do any good if: they can't find the wizards in the first place, said wizards vanish into white smoke everytime they get close, the soldiers suddenly get all of their mission objectives and combat training wiped from their brains, or the nuke gets transmogrified into a sperm whale and a pot of petunias on its way down to the target.
      • Hagrid scoffed at the idea because Lily and James don't drive cars, not because they are somehow invulnerable to fiery metal death. Bludgers are made of iron, not lead, and they are never stated to be solid rather than being relatively thin shells. Also, if the wizards aren't coming out and fighting in the open, that's what special forces and intelligence agencies people are for. It helps that wizards are so outnumbered.
        • Actually, he specifically states that 'no car crash could kill a wizard', implying that even should wizards be caught in one (and they do drive, as shown a few times when Ministry cars picked them up at the Burrow) they would easily survive. There is also nothing even close to implying that Bludgers are anything but solid metal—how the hell would a thin shell knock full-grown wizards off of their broomsticks? By the by, how do you propose any intelligence agency would be able to gather anything approaching intelligence about wizards when anything they do manage to gather would mysteriously disappear? Remember, there are wizards in the highest levels of Muggle government (at the very least, they work with the Prime Minister to keep the general population in the dark) and I highly doubt they would allow any intelligence unit to gather information. Regardless, Muggles can't see Hogwarts. Likewise, they can't see the Leaky Cauldron, which is the entrance to Diagon Alley from the Muggle world. My suspicion is they wouldn't be able to see Hogsmeade either. How are they supposed to attack what they can't even see? And nukes are COMPLETELY out of the question, because they would be destroying Muggle Britain without any guarantee that they would even be able to see the wizarding world to hit it. That may well be exactly why the wizarding world is so close to the Muggle one—mutually assured destruction if Muggles attempted to use their most dangerous weapons against them in a war.
          • Actually. Hagrid says "Car crash? A car crash killed Lily and James Potter? It's an outrage, it's a scandal!" Lily and James are some of the most well-known martyrs in wizarding history. Hagrid is offended that anyone would try to cover up their heroics. It would be like saying that Jesus was run over by a donkey.
            • His full quote is "CAR CRASH? How could a car crash kill Lily an' James Potter? It's an outrage! A scandal! Harry Potter not knowin' his own story when every kid in our world knows his name!" It does seem like he says this because he thinks Harry should know but it also sort of implies that Lily and James could get in as many car crashes as they wanted and they'd be fine.
      • Might I point out that all it takes is a bludger flying at ordinary bludger speed to break Harry's arm? The reason people don't die more often in quidditch is because quidditch equipment is normally charmed to avoid ramming into the wizards at full speed (safeguards that Dobby deliberately disabled), not because wizards have comic-book invulnerability.
    • It could be that they don't know where exactly Voldy is at any time, so they can't just apparate wherever and snipe him right away. If they sniped random Death Eaters, Voldy would pick up that Muggles were fighting against him and there'd probably be huge retribution against Muggles in general. Even after he took over the Ministry, he didn't immediately massacre every Muggle, but if there were signs that Muggles were a threat, he probably would have. Even if gun beats magic, the majority of British civilians won't know what the hell is going on, would be unarmed, and even if they were armed, they probably wouldn't know how to use the gun properly.
    • Regarding the "Wizards high up in government" thing, I got the impression that Kingsley Shacklebolt being in the Prime Minister's office was sort of a one-off thing for the duration of the current emergency with Voldemort. Other than the communication between the Prime Minister of Britain and the Minister of Magic, there doesn't seem to be much communication between the governments, nor any penetration of the Muggle government by the wizards.
      • They certainly were able to get him in past all the security checks you would assume anyone working directly under the Prime Minister would require and he apparently was very good at his cover. That implies that either the Ministry of Magic had a program ready to put secret agents in the U.K government or someone used a lot of memory erasing spells to convince everyone that Shacklebolt should be there. Either way the implications are disturbing.
      • Regards Hagrid talking about Lily/James: he didn't say "A car crash killed Lily and James Potter?!", as if he meant that was definitely not what happened (but could have happened) and was the outrageous thing, he said, "A car crash kill Lily and James Potter?!" as if the notion of a car crash killing them, which was the outrageous thing. Methinks a subconscious non-verbal wandless Protego Totalum would have saved them from a car crash.
      • We are talking about people who can vanish one's arm's bones accidentally and magically regrow them - they can repair bones, concussions and the like without even needing a full-blown hospital, only what amounts to a trained nurse and a few potions. I presume they can also heal people who fall off brooms if immediate care is given, so I think the only way a car crash could be lethal is that if they were hit badly enough they couldn't protect, send a message or heal themselves quickly enough.
      • *Waves Occam's razor threateningly* Wizards are resistant to mundane deaths. Wizards are powerful enough to do stuff like nukes, but don't because the Ministry has Charms to detect such spells and punish them (hinted in DH). Magically-hidden places cannot be damaged by Muggles.
        • Occam's Razor? Ooh, that's easy. Lily and James didn't drive. They weren't likely to be out anywhere that they could be involved in a car crash. Just like someone who spends their whole life in Florida isn't likely to die in a blizzard or avalanche. Much more simple than Wizards being resistant to mundane deaths.
          • For that matter, who the hell would voluntarily drive anywhere if they could teleport or fly?
  • I can't remember what book that the statement comes from, but at one point, it's mentioned that "technology" does not work at Hogwarts, or anywhere that is particularly magical, and breaks down. Harry at one point draws attention to his wristwatch, which has stopped working as a result of this "magical interference," if you will. I found this to be a really lazy bit of writing, as it raises the question of "what exactly constitutes 'technology?'" Aside from the batteries, a wristwatch is entirely mechanical in its construction, IE, it's just gears turning against other gears. The process by which batteries produce energy is also a fairly simple process, which is why you can power a lightbulb using a potato or an orange, so both instances in this case of "magical interference" are retarding basics of machinery, essentially causing the laws of basic physics and chemical reactions to stop working. Let's suppose for a minute that it's not the mechanical processes of a wristwatch (the gears and such) that are being retarded, but the chemical process of the battery that are, as to assume the former is insinuating that magic somehow causes basic mechanics to break down, the implications of which this troper would rather not think of, as he prefers to retain his sanity (his most conservative estimate is that every simple machine would spontaneously stop working, meaning doors, locks, wheels, pulleys, levers, and the human skeletal system would stop working). So, as stated, let's assume magic causes batteries to stop working. Batteries work, in laymen's terms, by transferring negatively charged particles and positively charged particles, and utilizing the reactions of them migrating across from one location to another. Because we're assuming that magic retards this process, it is also assuming that magic causes particles to either lose their charge, or renders the physical properties of this process obsolete; it basically means that it causes the process of producing any form of energy to stop working. The implications of this are also not too pretty. This troper estimates, again, at its most conservative implications, that all life in the universe would simultaneously cease to exist.
    Now, I know what you're asking. What does this have to do with anything? So Rowling decided to not research the implications that making magic subvert basic laws of chemistry and physics would have, namely that most likely the world would implode or something due en masse violation of the laws of physics? Big deal, a wizard literally did it, and we're talking about a series with wizards and elves in it. Well, here's the thing. It Just Bugs Me because it shows that Rowling was a lazy writer by putting an arbitrary label on "technology," while ignoring the question of "what constitutes technology?" Or, claiming "magic" causes it to not work, by virtue that it's magic. It Just Bugs Me because it shows that Rowling decided to be lazy, and rather than exploring the very cool idea of how modern technology and magic might have evolved alongside each other, maybe even get into the idea of how eventually the dichotomy between magic and technology may someday be indistinguishable, we're instead given a huge Hand Wave by having the series pretend Muggles and things to do with Muggles don't exist unless the plot needs them to for a few minutes. It was a cop out, and not a very well written one, in my opinion.
    • I suspect that Harry's watch was digital.
    • Saying "apart from the batteries, a wristwatch is entirely mechanical and should therefore work" is a logical fallacy. It's like saying "apart from casting spells, a wand is just a stick, so why do wizards carry wands?" Besides, an in depth examination of magic and technology working together would be a completely different series of books.
      • What I meant was to take the two processes that cause a wristwatch to work (kinetics and electricity), and address them separately.
    • Considering the fact that the previous generations’ worth of wizards intentionally go out their way to ignore anything Muggle-related as being unworthy of basic contempt (I have no idea the mental strain it must have taken to maintain a life-long ignorance of the British currency system and modern dress code). So I doubt that the wizard world would care about adapting to Muggle technology. Also, the Muggles are kept in the dark about magic, and I have no idea how marrying magic to modern technology would benefit a Muggle, considering you need the "magic genes" to use any of them. All in all, magic and technology has no chance to crossbreed. Also, Rowling has a very clear label on technology, it must be electronic (the mechanical clock that Harry uses in Hogwarts, a steam engine, non-computerized SCUBA gear, and a late-Victorian mechanical camera all work in Hogwarts). Furthermore, Rowling's magical system works by temporary suspension of "a few very specific laws of nature in a very specific area (the wizards can play around with gravity, electronics, laws of thermodynamics, space-time, chemistry, physiology, kinematics, and elemental transmutation... magic is basically a codification on deciding on which law to modify, for how long and by how much to produce the intended effect). This may be a taint too much of fanwank, but Rowling is only following in the illustrious footsteps of Tolkien, Lewis, myth writers of throughout history, and Doctor Who editors who never really ask you to think too deeply about the logics behind magic.
      • Sorry, you lost me when you compared Rowling to Tolkien and Lewis. That's like comparing Danny Elfman to Beethoven. One is good, one is a god. Again, the in-depth explanation of why the idea of magic is capable of suspending the laws of physics was not the point; the Hand Wave was what bugged me, because it showed Rowling wanted to dismiss a very interesting aspect of the story she could have addressed, and chose to do so in an extremely lazy way.
      • Exactly, if Tolkien is a god, then Rowling is perfectly permitted to follow the examples set by Tolkien and not worry about codifying her system of magic down to a science. After all, where exactly did you find the chapter where the narrator describes the metaphysics of the One Ring in full or provides description and justification of the powers of the Silmarils? The most that Tolkien and Lewis ever says is "it works like that, everyone and everything in the story will react accordingly, take my words on it; after all, the characters do."
    • Stop applying logic to the magic. It's stated quite clearly in book 1 that logic doesn't apply to magic-craft. As Hermione said in the potions-puzzle: (paraphrasing): "The most brilliant of Wizards don't have a drop of logic. They'd be stuck here forever."
      • Also, remember, wasn't it a KID explaining this? A Professor might be expected to explain this better, but JKR probably just gave the response that any kid would have given. I can't remember exactly who said the quote, but it WAS a kid who talked about everything going fuzzy, right?
    • The fact that it doesn't make sense is the point. Magic does not make sense. Inconsistency, irrationality, and nonsensical...ness is part of the game. If science can be considered a kind of applied logic, magic in the HP-verse would be applied illogic. It abhors anything and everything that makes sense. That's why Muggle devices don't work in Hogwarts.
      • You are missing the clarifying point of what I said. I said myself quite clearly that it's not the lack of logic that irritates me, but the lazy Hand Wave that Rowling used to make less work for herself rather than address a very interesting idea. My long spiel about the mechanics and such of a wristwatch were essentially a "cover my ass" clause; my issue was with Rowling's lazy writing, and the ignoring of a potentially very interesting story aspect.
        • Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Harry's wristwatch stop as a result of jumping in the Black Lake during the second trial of the Goblet of Fire? Nothing magical about that; clearly his watch wasn't water proof, but, as it was mechanical, magic didn't interfere with it. As has been noted, an old Victorian-style mechanical camera still worked, but my suspicion is a digital one wouldn't.
    • How does that make an interesting story aspect? If you're reading the books, it's to know about Harry's story about defeating Voldemort, not to know about the magical laws of physics. I don't know about you, but if there had been a multiple-paragraph long spiel about how technology doesn't work in highly magical places and what can be qualified as technology, I'd be lucky to skim it, but if it was a few sentences, I'd read it. Also, if it's one of the earlier books, don't forget that those were rather oriented to children and I think a ten-year-old would rather be reading about action then he would about technology. What I'm saying is that it's really a minor aspect in the bigger scheme of things.
      • Again, I'm not referring to the laws of physics being broken here being the problem. As I myself mentioned (although no one seems to notice that I did), the laws of physics kind of go out the window when you're dealing with magic. I included my bit about physics as a "cover my ass" clause. What the interesting story element would be is again, how magic and technology might have evolved alongside each other. Maybe there's a big push in the wizarding world for modernization? Maybe you've got pureblood enthusiasts that reject it? Maybe technology is starting to take a foothold amongst students, but the school officials are against it? It could serve as both an interesting story element as well as a symbol of the conflict between the accepting and the non accepting aspects of the wizarding world, which is essentially the whole point of the Harry Potter series. But instead, we get a lazy handwave from Rowling in addition to her attitude about Muggles as compared to wizards, which basically tries to pretend that it's about the pointlessness of racism against Muggles and Muggle-borns while simultaneously showcasing how every Muggle in the series is either rude, incompetent, stupid, or such a blatant ass that it's almost appropriate to call them evil (years and years of child abuse is funny!).
      • Just think of it this way; if it runs on electricity, it doesn't work at Hogwarts.
      • The questions you're asking all start with maybe. Maybe, since no wizard really showcases any vast amount of knowledge, or, hell, small amount of knowledge, about most technology (and this is often Played for Laughs), they just don't care about technology, because magic is all they really need, and they don't want to trouble themselves with learning to use a lot of devices to do various things that they can easily do with their wands. And the Muggle characters in the series forms a grand total of three recurring characters, Aunt Marge and Dudley's goons, who remain nameless. You're forgetting that, though they don't physically appear, Hermione's parents are mentioned to be dentists and very nice people.
      • Hey, don't underestimate ten-year-olds.
    • Hermione was the one that said "Technology doesn't work at Hogwarts", it only came up in book 4 as to why Rita was able to listen in on private conversations. I always assumed it was some kind of magical EM field side effect that, while disrupting electronic devices and radio waves (of a non magical type), wouldn't mess with power production from something like a chemical battery (Rechargeable and/or lithium wouldn't work). So mechanical devices work, even if they need electrical input (mechanical watches, cameras of the time period), but micro-possessors and anything that uses electricity in a way other than to produce kinetic motion (Digi watches, CD/tape Walkmans, Game Boy, radio transmitters, other mid 90s technology) would not work right or not work at all.
    • Wait a second, if Technology doesn't work in Hogwarts, what happens to muggleborn kids with a pacemaker when they enter the school grounds?
      • Kid enters Hogwarts. Kid collapses. Teacher runs out of wards, Apparates to St. Mungo's. Healers extract pacemaker/cast Reparo on heart. Problem solved.
      • I can't imagine that pacemakers are common in children and they're a relatively new invention (and it's even newer that pacemakers were given to children) so it might have simply never come up. If a child does have a pacemaker, any responsible guardian would tell the school and, if necessary, explain what a pacemaker is. If nothing else, the child would collapse upon entering the school and immediately be taken to the hospital wing or St. Mungo's and the problem would likely be permanently fixed.
    • I think we've forgotten that the reason Harry's watch wasn't working was because he dived into the lake during the second task while wearing it, and continued to wear it out of habit. As to Hermione's comments on bugs not working, it's possible that Hogwarts has some kind of protection against malicious technology such as bugs and bombs and the like.
    • To paraphrase Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: the [Harry Potter] universe doesn't care how you think magic should work any more than it cares how you feel about gravity.
  • I know that this is due to Rule of Cool, which (after plot and theme) is the controlling factor in how the Potterverse works, but still: parchment, quills and ink bottles? People having been trying for a long time to make writing implements which improved on the quill, and wizards have shown that they're willing to copy things invented by Muggles, but they haven't copied fountain pens, much less ballpoint pens. Now, if all the quills were enchanted to be "ink-free" or "self-inking", then wizards would have no need to adapt those Muggle inventions, but those sorts of quills are the exception, not the rule. And do they do Arithmancy with ink? If so, every time they make a math mistake and need to correct it, they have to put down their quill, pick up their wand, cast an erase spell, put the wand back down, and pick the quill back up, whereas if they used paper and pencil they could just use the eraser on the end of the pencil.
    • Don't hate on the quill and ink bottle, I still do my university homework with a quill and ink (and yes, all my friends think I'm weird). Not to mention the wizard quills are much better than actual pens, they never run out of ink, they can change colour at your command, they have a built in spellcheck/factchecker, and they can write an essay by itself via mimicking your own style. Also not all educational institutions allow you to write your homework in pencil, and not all pencils have a eraser on the end, a regular eraser erase probably takes as much time as doing a spell, finally, looking at the proliferation of non-erasable Muggle writing implements (e.g. the above mentioned fountain pens), most of us are obviously not as dyslectic as you.
      • Dyslexic? I was talking about making mistakes in math problems, not spelling mistakes. As for never running out of ink (and for forth), those are expensive/novelty quills, not the run-of-the-mill ones most everyone uses. Harry carries around a bottle of ink which he spills in the second book.
      • Right, because Newton and Company couldn't do math until after the invention of the pencil (or more specifically the eraser).
      • Not to rain on your parade, but the more "useful" types of quills, like Spell-Checking (a Punny Name if I ever saw one) and Quick-Quotes varieties, are considered to be cheating. At least, during the O.W.L.s; not sure about for normal assignments. As for never running out of ink, I think there's only one example of that shown throughout the series, and it's the type that you'd want to be careful using, lest you end up with a five-inch essay on the Goblin Rebellion of 1798 etched into your forearm.
        • Which brings up another comment: How do 'inches' work as a measurement of written work? Obviously, it means how many inches' worth of parchment need to be used on the assignment, measured vertically. But unlike typed work, where increasing the font size and indents are easy to notice when you're told to write a five page paper, everyone's handwriting is different. You can get one student who gets frustrated because he can never fill his quota with his tiny, squiggly handwriting, and another who breezes through it with great sweeping words, and you can't really accuse either of not doing the assignment properly, since that's just their own style of writing. Is the parchment lined, like notebook paper? Or does X amount of inches equal a particular amount of words to be written?
          • In this troper's school, you were always required to hand in an essay no less than X pages long. And he knows the tiny handwriting frustration too well. Real schools are not fair, why should magical ones be?
          • I remember it being mentioned somewhere of Ron and Harry writing in a very large hand to fill up space while Hermoine was writing in tiny script to get all the information she wanted into the allotted space.
      • As you move up in the grades, they make you print a certain number of pages with a specific font and specific size. Or at least, that's how it happened with this troper's schools. Isn't that fair? And anyway, using this little topic as a justification for why quills and ink are used in the Potterverse disregards a lot of what has already been said.
    • alright, so we have discussed the use of quills. Now: Parchment. I have never seen parchment used for anything other than formal documents, so I assume paper is cheaper or easier to make. Why don't they use that?
      • Because wizards hate sheep and love trees.
        • You ^ have just made reading this entire page totally worth it. Thank you so much. You are my new favorite person.
  • This has bothered me since reading book one; why do people in the Potterverse wear corrective eye-pieces? I mean, with all of the incredibly powerful medical techniques, i. e. regrowing bones and mending complex fractures in less than a second, why hasn't some form of spell that could fix bad eyesight arisen?
    • This is because eyes are immensely more complex then bones. Magic that can be used to regrow or mend large structures like bones, doesn't exactly require the finesse it would take to shape almost microscopic imperfections in the lens of the eye.
    • Also, if you have magic, then regrowing a bone isn't that incredible; we've known how bones have worked for a very long time. But almost all that we know about how eyes work are relatively recent innovations that were determined by powerful microscopes that the average wizard wouldn't have access too. They're not exactly on the forefront of modern medical technology. Bet they don't even know what a "stem cell" is. Combine this with the numerous things that can be wrong with one's eyes, the amount of effort that would have to into creating all the spells needed to fix each one of them, and all of this can be solved by placing some oddly shaped glass over the eye, I'll bet it just seemed easier to go with what they had already. Bad vision isn't really all that inhibiting if you have glasses.
    • Okay, but from the logic that the science of eye problem is too complex to simply 'magic' away, then brain activity, as the brain is the least understood organ, should be another problem. Yet in Goblet of Fire, Harry is given a potion for dreamless sleep. This could just be a potion that prohibits the sleep cycle so that R.E.M. sleep is never attained, I suppose, but that, to me, seems incredibly complex.
      • It's not complex, because magic. Also they probably do have magic laser eye surgery but it's probably expensive, and why should Harry bother anyway?
      • Not really. It's relatively simple to sedate someone deeply enough not to go through REM, or at least not to remember it in the morning. Also look at it from a folklore standpoint. Real-life witches believe in herbs that stop hemorrhaging (relatively simple) and herbs that stimulate lust (not possible in real medicine) attributed with the same complexity. Given that magic is based on actively not making sense and breaking natural laws (applied illogic, as a troper above put it), you have to accept that at some point we're talking less science and more rock and roll.
  • Well here's one thing that I didn't really understand - Hogwarts has indoor plumbing. I can understand the wizarding world accepting some muggle inventions, or maybe through some radical theory, indoor plumbing was invented by wizards, or maybe a lot of muggle inventions were kick-started by a wizarding friend who wanted to help muggles out and inspired them to invent it. but this is off-topic. They don't look entirely modern, but how the heck are they able to have 20th century bathrooms in a school that's supposed to be a thousand or so years old? I can understand some modernization by more liberal wizards because people were sick of doing it in a chamberpot or outhouse, but the thing that doesn't make sense is the Chamber of Secrets is in a sink in the girl's bathroom. Was it something like a pump, originally but got turned into a sink by renovation wizards?
    • Hogwarts is always changing. Maybe they just left some toilets in an empty room and the castle made it's own plumbing.
    • The Wizarding world takes on muggle technology, but just at a slow rate. They have cameras, elevators, clocks and what have you. It's not too farfetched to think that plumbing filtered in through the save process of mental osmosis. Furthermore, plumbing is ancient, the Romans had them.
    • The entry through the bathroom sink might be something Tom Riddle whipped up himself, when he was at Hogwarts in the 1940s. Only the second gateway with the carved serpent statues would date back to Salazar Slytherin's day; after discovering the Chamber, Tom could've backtracked the pipes until he found one that led to an accessible part of the castle, then bewitched one of the sinks to facilitate Parselmouth-only access. Just his bad luck—and Myrtle's -- that the path he found led to a girl's restroom.
    • If you're complaining about the anachronistic of Hogwarts, the bathrooms are trivial problems. For a better example, there are no 1000 year old castles in Scotland. Or England. At all. Castles filtered in from the Normans, which invaded England in 1066, and castles didn't get to Scotland until the 1100s. And those were the wrong kind of castle, which were really just stone keeps with wooden fences...Hogwarts, as described, couldn't possibly exist until the end of the 13th century, and really seems closer to 15th, the very end of castles before cannons made large flat walls impractical.
      • The founders could've copied castle designed from the continent, which later generations of wizards modified. Certainly it would've had to expand over time, as Britain's magical population grew alongside its Muggle population.

Wizarding World in General, Government and Rights

  • What exactly constitutes a 'misuse of Muggle artifacts'? Enchanted brooms seem to be okay, because it is tradition, yet flying carpets are forbidden because carpets are Muggle artifacts. Ministry cars are enchanted to be TARDIS-like, but that's okay, and the Knight bus is a freakin' purple triple-decker bus that zigzags through streets full of Muggle cars, but that seems to be okay, too. On the other hand, Mr. Weasley faced an inquiry because of his enchanted Ford Anglia. So, somehow it seems to be a bit random what 'Muggle artifact' can be legally enchanted, and when such an enchantment becomes illegal. The only explanation this Troper could come up so far is 'politics'.
    • Mr. Weasley got in trouble more because of the fact that his car was spotted flying by several Muggles. If he'd enchanted it to only do the things the other Ministry cars can do, there probably would have been no inquiry at all. It seems to be more along the lines of protecting the statute of secrecy than politics. The flying carpets being outlawed in England seem more a precaution than anything else. They might be more noticeable and people would have a lot less reason to have one in their possession as brooms are necessary for Quidditch and used less often for transportation.
    • Arthur's car had a defective invisible spell and was seen by a dozen Humans. Ministry sent out a squad of Aurors to mind-rape (Obliviate) the Witnesses. Arthur was fined G50, I assume G20 paid for the clean-up squad and G30 was punishment. When the Twins used the car to rescue Harry, the invisible spell worked and there was no punishment.
    • Crouch makes a big deal that his family used a carpet before the ban. I assume that carpets had an efficient invisible spell and the ban was political/economic.
    • Muggles have invented flying cars. We just realized that they were an incredibly dumb idea because they used up huge amounts of gasoline, and then crashed once they ran out. Needless to say, we stopped producing them. Why wouldn't the people who saw Arthur's car flying just assume it was some idiot trying to revive that concept?
      • They'd probably notice a flying car without wings or any propulsion.
    • Broomstick riders can use disillusionment charms so that the flyers can not be seen by Muggles. They could do the same thing with carpets.
    • Also, permits. The Ministry knows that it has some flying cars, and the bus is probably registered. Nobody knew that Mr. Weasley had enchanted a car in such a way. About flying carpets, I think they're legal.
      • Flying carpets are illegal. There is a conversation between Arthur Weasley, Barty Crouch Sr., and Ludo Bagman in book four where they talk about the ban. It seems to be a political thing, though. They're banning the import of flying carpets from Asia, while British made brooms are perfectly legal. Okay, Crouch mentions a "12-seater Axminster", which is a British carpet, but all together, it sounds like a conspiracy along the lines of "the oil industry is holding back electric cars". Perhaps the Quibbler should do some articles on the subject.
        • Um. This troper doesn't think flying carpets are illegal. IMPORTING them is. Perhaps Britain wants to keep a monopoly?
          • Flying carpets are illegal in Britain. Crouch's mention of an Axminster is followed immediately by the assurance that "it was before they were banned, of course." It's a Misuse of Muggle Artifacts issue, not a monopoly issue.
          • And in what way are brooms different from carpets? Both can be found in any given Muggle household, so classifying one as a Muggle artifact whose enchantment is illegal and the other as a legal magic object sounds a bit odd.
            • Muggle brooms don't come with footholds, aerodynamically cut twigs, and names inscribed on the end. It would be pretty easy to tell the difference between a sweeping broom and a flying broom.
          • I reckon it's a subtle hint at racism within the wizarding world - "oh, they're Asian/Middle-Eastern, you can't trust them." Replace "flying carpet" with "burqa" and the metaphor might make sense.
    • Inconsistency in government regulation is Truth in Television. Example: Drugs. Marijuana is illegal in all 50 American states, yet alcohol and tobacco are not. Another example: This troper once read an article about a UK law that would ban beer over a certain alcohol content, yet that content was actually lower than the alcohol content of absinthe, which is not banned in Britain.
    • Flying carpets aren't traditional in Britain the way that they are in Arabia or the way that flying brooms are in Britain. Therefore, they can be banned without a general uprorar.
    • This troper believes that the issue of carpets and brooms is trackability. Broomsticks and ordinary brooms look very distinctive, and to a wizard eye, it is easy to spot the difference. Carpets, on the other hand, are not as easy to tell apart if they are enchanted. Just a thought.
      • Also, if a flying carpet were to accidentally fall into Muggle hands, there's a fair chance that some ignorant non-wizard will be standing on top of one, not realizing it isn't a normal piece of floor covering, and mistakenly activate it. No Muggle is likely to try to ride a broomstick, save perhaps when they're goofing around at Halloween, so there's much less chance of some unsuspecting soul accidentally being carried into the stratosphere.
      • Personally, if it were up to me, I would enchant a snowboard and get a personal hoverboard.
    • With the advancements in Muggle technology, perhaps the straw and staff broom has being supplanted in the Muggle world by vacuums and more effective brooms. This would leave the for-flying-only brooms as something that isn't of the Muggle world anymore.
  • Not really something that bugs me, but something I kept thinking about: The books take place in the nineties, but now it is 2010 and the world has changed a little bit. Cities like London are riddled with CCTV surveillance cameras, and Joe Average carries a cellphone that can not only take pictures and videos, but also post them on the internet in a matter of seconds. On the other hand, we have seen wizards depicted as being utterly ignorant to the most basic muggle inventions. Put those two factors together and wizards will have a really hard time to uphold The Masquerade. Or are there plausible ways to prevent that?
    • While there may be ways to prevent that, like having wizards working for various technology groups to put memory charms in the devices, it would also be beyond most wizards to maintain this level of technological intelligence combined with memory charms. In all honesty, something would have happened by today where some dark wizard attacking a town would have been caught on camera and posted on the internet before any government (magic or Muggle) could stop the leak and break The Masquerade. I saw a fanfic where such a thing happened in Argentina and Harry was a primary diplomat between the two worlds and helped them ease into living with the societies together (that, and Quidditch got even bigger).
    • The epilogue doesn't mention anything unusual, so we can probably assume that they managed to keep it secret until at least 2017. Given their numbers, capabilities, and intelligence of Muggle society, that is nothing short of a miracle; the masquerade is definitely living on borrowed time.
    • A) Disillusionment charm. B) Most wizards seem to avoid Muggle population centers whenever they can. (Was it ever said in Deathly Hallows whether Voldemort and his followers were openly attacking Muggles?)
      • Presumably, someone could devise a spell to render a given closed-circuit camera blind to magical phenomena and creatures. Agents of the Ministry can cast it on any cameras within range of nexuses like the Leaky Cauldron or the train station, and the Muggles who view the feed would never know they're missing things.
    • But there's still an incredible amount of possible scenarios by which the masquerade could be broken. It just doesn't make any sense for it to have survived this long.
    • Memory Charms. People on the inside (such as Kingsley a la Half-Blood Prince). Muggleborns and half-bloods that are savvy to the Muggle world. I think a lot of the bases are covered.
    • It's also pointed out several times that magic screws with technology. Those cameras might simply not work to see wizards or record them in a meaningful way. Besides, if anything would break that masquerade, it's the Knight Bus banging all over England making buildings jump out of the way. If that didn't do it, some kid's Nokia cell won't.
    • Maybe one of the reasons so many quickly-debunked "supernatural" viral videos circulate on the Internet is that Squibs are planting them online, to keep people skeptical about the real sightings when they happen...
    • What I would want to know in relation to this is how Hogwards deals with all the pissed 11 year old muggleborns who are suddenly stranded without their cellphones and thus can't mail their friends and family on a regular basis anymore. Or are unable to use computers for google and stuff. For kids who grew up in the quick-paced, technology centred world we live in today, the wizarding world would be frustratingly slow...
  • This is related to the wizard world bubble above. I can kind of understand them not wanting to do much with Muggles (the oldest wizards probably had grandparents who the Muggles tried to burn as witches), although it still seems very odd. What is even worse is that the wizards form their own bubble within the magical world, and English wizards form one within that. House Elves, for an example, would be more powerful then wizards if they had a wand. Yet no one seems to actually use them for the purpose of fighting. Centaurs will have as much to suffer under Voldemort as anyone, yet don't do anything until the last battle (for that matter, why don't centaurs interact with Muggles?). Apparently, the order of the Phoenix can't call upon any foreign powers for assistance. The wizarding population doesn't even consider the needs of giants and Dementors (they do care enough to stop Muggles from employing giants). And from what I understand, any modern Muggle battleforce could have slaughtered an army of wizards. And here I was hoping for an enormous team-up in the last book (Death Eaters+giants+Dementors+some goblins+some foreign powers vs order of the phoenix+centaurs+some goblins+UK military+freed house elves.
    • Well, we saw parts of that in Hallows: If I remember correctly, some Centaurs participated in the Battle of Hogwarts, as well as the Hogwarts House Elves. Voldemort had at least some Giants and a number of Dementors on his side.
      • Considering the elves: There are only two freed elves that we know of (Dobby and Winky), and the others are servants/slaves of the families that own them. Keeping the the general opinion on house elves in mind, it would have been like having your cook, maid, or gardener go into battle. (And no, not that Cook)
      • Involving the British Armed Forces would be an egregious break of the Statute of Secrecy, and could open a really big can of worms. (Imagine that large parts of the military learn about the existence of magic... cue black ops laboratories that try to find out how wizards tick and how to militarize them.)
      • The British prime minister already knows about wizards, as do all previous ones. I don't really know how the British government works, but couldn't they simply have also revealed themselves to a general and made a friendly request for some guns? Or just take 'em without asking? Battling for the rights of Muggles and Muggle-borns in a drawn-out bloody battle seems kinda odd if the Muggles could end the battle within minutes. But no, keeping ourselves secret is more important than the potential enslavement of Britain.
      • For that matter, couldn't they have recruited some Muggle soldiers or police who are related to Muggleborns, so already know that magic exists? Surely some of them would be more open-minded than the Dursleys, and eager to defend both the Muggle and wizarding worlds, not to mention their own family members.
    • Regarding Centaurs: According to the side-material, the Centaurs have voluntarily separated themselves from humans due to past discrimination on the part of wizards who tried to classify them as "beasts".
      • Okay, let's just accept that guns don't work on wizards, OK? Otherwise, the whole story is null and void. They'd probably sense the gun and stop it, or else do accidental magic or something.
        • Except that if melee weapons and arrows work on them, then guns should as well. So yeah, the story is pretty much null and void.
        • WMG: involuntary magic is most effective against Muggles/Muggle technology. More likely theory: magic weapons. And no, you cannot enchant a gun. Magic screws up technology.
          • Problem with the whole 'guns don't work on wizards' is that Word of God has said that technology will beat magic every time.
  • Where were England's traditional allies during the War? Voldemort qualifies as a rebellion, shouldn't the Ministries of the US and France and the rest of Muggle England's allies be helping England's Ministry of Magic? In fact, the countries that Magical Britain seems to have diplomatic relations with all seem to be Eastern European countries (like Bulgaria) or small countries (Andora). Sure, Britain plays Quidditch with places like Uganda and such, but the West is pretty much never mentioned. Wizarding Britain must have done something to damage relations with them.
    • Fridge Horror. That's what Voldy was up to in book five. Britain's the last unconquered Wizard Government left. Alternatively, those countries are helping, but a) they don't correspond in size, for whatever reason, to the Muggle countries they represent, and/or b) they just aren't doing much good.
    • Maybe the other countries don't have a pureblood supremacy movement, and Britain is the backwards one in this case.
    • I second that. Wizarding Britain seems to be somewhat Victorian in its attitudes, so the Americans are probably seen as 'uncivilized colonials' and real-world relations with France have been somewhat frosty in the past. Additionally, there wasn't much time for the English wizarding government to call for help: Fudge refused to acknowledge Voldemort's return and was occupied with discrediting Dumbledore and Harry. Scrimgeur was in office for about a year before Voldemort took over the ministry. Then there's the matter of pride ("We can solve our problems by ourselves!").
    • It's pretty unusual for governments to intervene and stop revolutions in fully independent nations in real life (the main exceptions I can think of here are the Russian Civil War and the East/West proxy conflicts in Africa and Asia during the Cold War). Usually, nothing gets done until the new regime has been in place for decades, and then something else tips the balance towards action (say ,a conquering spree or a pile of bodies that's just a little bit too big to ignore anymore). And I'd say that we aren't given enough information on the geopolitics of the magical world to know what sort of governmental infrastructures even exist in the Wizarding World outside of Britain.
    • Sarcasm Mode: If the Wizarding US are like the Muggle US, it could have been plausible for the US Wizard Government to order an invasion of Wizarding Britain during Book Seven, to eliminate the 'Dark Lord Threat' before it spreads to other parts of the world. (*Thinking* This sounds like a viable Plot Bunny for a seventh year Fanfic...)
      • This American Troper finds this offensive. Our country would never interfere with Britain's affairs! They aren't one of our main sources for imported oil.
      • Forget writing a fanfic about America intervening. Write one about why it doesn't.
        • Simple. Without a request for assistance from the British government, we won't do anything. There is a legal term for dropping military forces into a country without getting their permission first -- "act of war".
    • This troper doesn't recall anything in the 7th book indicating that Voldemort's rebellion had spread beyond the UK. In fact, this troper doesn't recall anything to indicate that the outside world even knew Voldemort was back. The Ministry warned the Muggle UK Prime Minister, but apart from that, it doesn't seem like they told anybody. And after Voldemort took over, he certainly wouldn't want the French or US wizard governments knowing about it, just in case they did decide to invade.
    • Tyrants coming to power in a single state and the coup being given only bureaucratic attention by governments elsewhere unfortunately is Truth in Television. It's actually one of the most realistic thing about the last book. Far worse things have been done in the real world than what Voldemort was doing to England and its Muggles, Muggle-borns etc.
  • Each nation on Earth apparently has its own Ministry of Magic or the equivalent. These are essentially self-governing, and have minimal contact with the Muggle governments of their respective countries. So what happens if a Muggle country breaks up, like happened to the U.S.S.R., or if two Muggle nations merge, as with Germany? Do their Ministries suddenly have to rearrange themselves in response to political changes that the wizarding world played no part in?
  • If each country's Ministry of Magic (or whatever they call it) is responsible for hiding magical creatures within its jurisdiction, who's responsible for hiding sea serpents, or other critters that are found in international waters?
  • The whole statute of secrecy kind of bugs me, since not only do wizards hide themselves from Muggles, they also hide all magical creatures, which defies us all access to potion materials. Basically, Wizards aren't just hiding, they stop Muggles from ever getting access to any magic.
    • Hagrid states outright in Philosopher's Stone that one of the primary reasons for The Masquerade is basically to keep Muggles from bothering them too much with their problems.

Harry "But what does a Ministry of Magic do?"
Hagrid "Well, their main job is to keep it from the Muggles that there's still witches and wizards up and down the country."
Harry "Why?"
Hagrid "Why? Blimey, Harry, everyone would be wanting magic solutions to their problems. Nah, we're best left alone."

      • No, my problem is not that the wizards are hiding because they don't want to solve our every problem, my problem is that they are hiding the stuff which would make us capable of solving our own problems.
        • How would Muggles solve their own problems if they had access to magical creatures/plants? They'd still need magical knowledge or a wizard's help to make anything useful. Also, it would be kind of hard for witches and wizards to remain hidden if the Muggles had to deal with goblins and centaurs prancing about blabbing about the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts, wouldn't it?
          • For magical knowledge, that's what experimentation is for.
      • JKR once said that if a Muggle picked up a wand, they wouldn't be able to use it properly, and that they couldn't brew a potion (despite Potions being "the most Muggle-friendly subject"), which basically explains the need for a Statute of Secrecy. But, as noted elsewhere on this page, the Wizarding World is very traditionalist (many times to the point of stupidity), so it could be a bunch of antiquated anti-Muggle sentiment keeping it from being at least re-written.
      • That article explains a lot, although it is quite vague, as if the author hadn't decided yet.
        • This Troper always thought that "We don't want the Muggles to bother us with their problems" was the bowdlerized version they tell to kids. If the Muggle world would realized the existence of magic, no wizard would be safe any more: Witch-Hunts, Mengele-like experiments on wizards in government labs, etc. (Just compare the treatment of mutants in X-Men)
          • The X-Men scenario is one option, but it's also possible that the reveal of magical CREATURES such as dragons, goblins, or giants would create a different scenario, wherein the muggle population became aware of creatures they did not know to exist before (something that might not be as negative an impact as a human of greater power). As for wizards themselves being revealed, it's possible that would cause an X-Men like scenario, but it's also possible they would be immediately associated with the current (real-world) use of 'witchcraft', which almost unerringly is applied to Wicca and other pagan religions. It's not UN-likely that the first impulse would be to lump witches and wizards in with Wiccans, and that people who stuck their hands up later and said 'no, we really CAN do REAL magic' would be identified as delusional or attention-seeking, and that the wizard world would be treated much as it has been - as something that isn't realistic or doesn't exist. The fact of the matter is that in order for witch-hunts the like of what we saw in Salem to even be possible, most people would have to be strictly Christian and to take 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' as a direct command from God. Even now, most Christian sects do not take this stance toward other religions. The reason it is more plausible in the X-Men is because the majority belief now is in evolution, which is fueled by natural mutation like what the X-Men display, and as such there would be more easily manipulated convictions based in science than there would be based in religion. Evangelical Christians are the most vocal, but not the most numerous individuals out there, and would be the most likely nemesis of real witches and wizards.
            • Let's be honest. The real reason nobody persecutes Wiccans is because no one believes their ridiculous claims about knowing magic spells. If Muggles were made aware of REAL magic, the response would be quite different. After all, the reason the Bible considers witchcraft sinful and immoral is because of what it can do, not just because it is allegedly a product of a pact with Satan. If magic were real, society would be utterly unable to tolerate it. How do you live next to a person you know could make your house burst into flame with a word? How do you deal with people who can read and control minds at will and without any physical trace that they've done so? You can't. The only rational response is to either wipe them out or forcibly segregate them from the rest of society (and by "segregate" I mean "move them to another continent", not "put them in a ghetto").
              • Given apparition and portkeys, "wipe them out" is the only option.
              • Ugh. The creators of the X-Men comic have so much to answer for. To hopefully stop the ongoing march to genocide, the only 'rational response' to discovering the existence of people with superpowers is to get them on your bloody side. Either superhumans are so powerful that the social contract continues to exist only with their cooperation, or they are not. In the latter case, there's no need to panic. And in the former case, there's every need to get them to agree that they like society in the current shape that it is and that there's no need to start reshaping it to fit, and the obvious first step towards that goal is don't convince them that society is their enemy.
              • There is also that any government discovering the existence of people who can teleport, shapeshift, and read minds, is to go 'Holy shit! My secrets are not safe from these people!' *beat* '... and neither is anyone else's! Hey, wizard-people! For the low low price of joining the CIA, I am prepared to drown you guys in money.' After all, if only magical security can stop magical threats, and a trained wizard is also capable of stealing you the secrets of anybody who didn't hire enough wizards of their own, then your most urgent and immediate security need isn't to kill wizards—its to recruit as many possible.
    • This doesn't really bug me, but I was just wondering if the Muggle bureaucracy even knows that wizards exist - not in the sense that they know Ron Weasley is a Wizard, but in the sense that they know a boy named Ron Weasley exists who was born in whatever year. Do wizards have whatever the British equivalent of social security numbers are? And of course, that relates to another question; just how much population is flying under the radar? Also, presumably Muggle-borns are registered in the system, but what about half-bloods where one parent is a Muggle? What about THEIR kids?
      • Probably not. Wizards existing in the records of Muggle bureaucracies opens up a whole slew of problems. For instance, who keeps these records? I can't see wizards doing it, given their strong cultural bias against doing anything in close proximity to Muggles. So they would have to be kept by Muggles. What happens if some Muggle bureaucrat is going through the records and starts finding more and more people who apparently don't exist? Does the Ministry of Magic keep a full-time company of Aurors on hand to memory-wipe any Muggle who stumbles upon the records? No, the alternative is much more likely. The names and births of wizards don't exist in Muggle records, with the exception of muggle-borns or wizards who are publicly visible to Muggles (i.e. Squibs, wizards who've had their wands snapped, or wizards whose profession involves regular contact with Muggles), and the records of the latter are probably forged. Half-blood wizards are probably registered (it would be hard to keep them secret from the Muggle side of the family), but not their children. As far as the Muggle government is concerned, half-blood wizards grow up, move away, and die alone and unloved.
        • What do you mean, people who apparently don't exist? All wizards except those in Hogsmeade have Muggle neighbours. Even the Weasleys in Ottery St. Catchpole. Muggleborns and half-bloods don't drop off the face of Muggle Earth. Wizards may not mingle with their Muggle neighbours much, but an inspector looking to confirm the existence of Ron Weasley or Marvolo Gaunt would succeed in doing so. And aversion to working with Muggles? They're in contact with the Prime Minister.
          • Wizards visibly do not engage with mundane society on much, if any, level. Governments tend to be curious about people who have physical existence and known addresses, but don't have credit histories, bank accounts (remember, the Muggle government does not know that Gringotts exists, much less is able to do credit checks there on their computers), educational records past age 11, visible means of support, known employers, or income tax returns. Try to imagine Inland Revenue's response to someone who apparently does all their transactions in cash and can't even give you their employer's name and address, much less his payroll tax #.
    • The reason Hagrid gives for keeping the Muggles in the dark is what bugs me. Apparently, magic is so wonderful that it can't possibly be shunned as a solution like every other new and scary thing exposed to the masses. There are still plenty of people who refuse to touch a computer! "Well, I never needed a wand to look after my house, and I had more kids than this Weasley person!"
      • Hagrid's answer is likely a) something he came up with on the fly, b) something he's not given a lot of thought before, and c) a drastically simplified answer given to an eleven-year-old boy who's just discovered that wizards exist. Explaining the social and political ramifications of the fall of The Masquerade to a child (potential violent response from Muggles, social unrest, demands to access to magical artifacts for scientific study, cruelty to magical creatures/beings, etc.) when you're not that well-educated yourself is probably pretty difficult.
      • But those computer-phobes are decreasing every year. The same would no doubt hold true for magic.
      • Conclusion: the masquerade is useless.
  • Exactly how does the Ministry of Magic handle matters between the wizarding society and Muggle Britian. For example, let's say that a Muggle aware of the Masquerade is invited to a social function containing mostly wizards and ends up killing most of them. Do the wizards take matter into their own hands and have to figure a way to explain his disappearance to the authorities, or do they simply report to Muggle police while trying their best to hide the fact that they are members of a secret community of actual wizards and witches? Also, how do squibs integrate into Muggle society if they presumably have no National Insurance number or birth certificate that would be recognized as legitimate?
    • The answer to all your questions is magical forgery. If a muggle kills a bunch of wizards, the wizards convict him in their own courts, then literally conjure up evidence indicating he actually killed a bunch of Muggles, modify his memory so that he believes that he killed a bunch of Muggles, and then turn the killer over to the Muggle government. If a Squib decides to go off and live with the Muggles, the Ministry of Magic magics up all the documentation they need. Or alternatively, they don't do this, and the Squib ends up living on the streets as a crazy beggar.
    • Presumably have no birth certificate why? Wouldn't all wizards have them, so that they can prove their existence (as Muggles) to the Muggle government?
      • This presumes that all Muggles have birth certificates, but guess what? There are a lot of people who don't have them and a good 70% probably have never and will never see the actual document, since it's filed away in a government office somewhere near their birthplace.
  • While veritaserum isn't used in courts because it can be circumvented, why not use pensieves to establish that the testimony isn't a lie? Or why not have witnesses make an Unbreakable Vow to the judge to not lie for the duration of them being on the stand? Of course, neither would establish that the testimony is factual, since memories can be modified via magic, but establishing that the witness isn't lying would be extremely useful.
    • It's never really established how widespread pensieves are in this world. For all we know, Dumbledore has one because a previous Headmaster of Hogwarts created it and left it for Headmasters only. If, however, they are widespread enough for commercial use, it's entirely possible that the way veritaserum is bypassed can bypass pensive memories as well. Unbreakable Vows, on the other hand, might be really bad, as, if I remember correctly, if you break one, you die. That would be bad in the courtroom for lying about something small on accident. Unfortunately, even if phrased correctly as an oath of truth, it could probably still be bypassed by the above method of fooling veritaserum. The fact that a truth serum can be bypassed usually means there's a magical method to completely fool one's perspective of the truth. In that case, there would be no way to get the truth unless there's a way to prevent the method.
      • Well, I would presume that the British Ministry would have enough resources to get a single one to be used at trials. As for bypassing the truth serum, according to Word of God, "he [Barty Crouch Jr.] might have sealed his own throat [to prevent swallowing it] and faked a declaration of innocence, transformed the Potion into something else before it touched his lips, or employed Occlumency against its effects", so those techniques couldn't be used against a pensieve or the vow. And when Slughorn tried to tamper with his extracted memory, it was obvious that it had been altered. And as for dying from breaking the vow: 1) the vow could be worded along the lines of "I swear to not intentionally lie" to prevent death from accidents, and 2) I don't think people would be willing to die in order to lie over minor matters.
        • It's funny you should mention Barty because the scene where they actually do use veritaserum on him is the perfect example of how to not have to worry about any of that. Because at the end of book 4 we find out that its perfectly possible to dose a person with veritaserum while they're still unconscious, because it can be absorbed via the mucous membranes and not just swallowed. Which means 'sealing his throat' is pointless (its already touched the inside of his mouth), and not even Dumbledore can transfigure anything while out cold. So, since magic exists that can readily put someone unconscious and then wake them instantly a few minutes later, you can see where I'm going here.
        • It's also pretty hard to use magic when they've taken your wand away, parked your butt in a chair in the interrogation room, and surrounded you with large humorless Aurors.
      • What really gets me is that their solution to the possibility of veritaserum failure is simply to take testimony without any veritaserum. So, because there is a method of interrogation that can possibly be suborned with significant effort, it is then cast aside and instead they use... a method that can be suborned by the simple effort of opening one's mouth and lying? Refusal to use a method because it's imperfect only makes sense if the alternative is more reliable; otherwise, it might not be ideal, but it's still better than nothing. As for the Word of God in question; in that very same paragraph, Rowling also mentions that the reason veritaserum did work on Barty Crouch was because he was 'groggy' at the time he was dosed and thus unable to perform any tricks. The solution is thus obvious; feed the interrogatee a stunner (or some type of confundus or disorienting charm, if you just want to daze them momentarily), force-feed Veritaserum, then enervate.
        • Veritaserum is not better than nothing because it lends a sense of false confidence to the interogation. It is easily understood that the person being questioned may lie, but people may have a harder time accepting that if they've been dosed with veritaserum.
          • That depends on how they use it. If Veritaserum is used so that a confession is treated as proof that it works on the suspect but no confession is not proof that it doesn't then it can be a basic screening method to save a lot of time and effort. The only flaw I can see in this is that it wouldn't detect people confessing to things that they did not do but I think that would only happen in a minority of cases when the person who took the Veritaserum either had a thing for confessing to things they didn't do or if they were trying to protect the person who did commit the crime or who they believed to have committed the crime.
      • Think about this in terms of the Muggle equivalent: do you really think execution is an appropriate punishment for perjury, in EVERY instance? What if you were a witness to a murder, had been through unspeakable horrors, and after therapy agreed to testify at the trial, only to be drugged, threatened with death if your accounts were imperfect or you told a white fib (e.g. "I was on that street to pick up the dry cleaning, not buy sex toys..."), made to give up your private memories and experiences to be scrutinized by strangers, and treated with extreme suspicion and disrespect. Do you think your testimony would be the best quality and calmest it could be?
  • Okay, here's something that really bothers me. The wizarding world seems to have no semblance of a military. I mean, sure, there's the Aurors and Order of the Pheonix, but they seem more like police/intelligence, so there's really no military. Also, Rowling said herself that a human with a shotgun would win every time over a wizard with a wand. Doesn't this seem like it would put the "Muggle sympathizers" in the story at a distinct 'advantage' to Voldemort, or at least his cronies? Sure, fewer people in Britain have guns than in the US, but they're not impossible to get, killing curses could be defended against with simple riot shields,[1] etc. Also, considering that the wizarding world is run by the "Ministry of Magic," and assuming that all wizards are still loyal to Britain, wouldn't the fact that one of their ministers had been 'deposed' by some magic Hitler-wannabe set off a bunch of red flags for the British government? Forget Britain's allies turning a blind eye. The British Military could have, and should have, handled this instead of forcing it on a 17-year-old, even if he is a wizard.
    • It was more an off-the-cuff remark about Muggle vs. Wizard, she didn't particularly think it through. There is evidence through the series that wizards aren't much threatened by guns.
    • Not only that, but the Order of the Phoenix is NOT international, and it was mentioned that they were unable to get foreign help.
  • How enforcement of underage magic is handled bugs me. The way the trace works is that they can't tell if you did magic, only if someone did magic near you, right? Given the Ministry's history of pure-blood supremacy, it doesn't really surprise me that they'd go after Muggle-borns and those raised by Muggles while relying on the parents to enforce it in pure-blood households. However, what about households with Muggle parents and more than one wizarding child (ie the Creevey brothers). If Colin Creevey sets off a hovering charm, say, then how will the ministry know to punish him and not Dennis? And what about when one sibling is of Hogwarts age but the other is still quite young and in the "Doing magic by accident" phase? What then?
    • You forget about "Priory Incantem". Yeah, sure, they don't use it in Chamber of Secrets, but that's bureaucracy to you - always going for the simplest and most formal approach.
      • Of course, the one time we see that spell used in the books, it provides evidence against someone innocent (the culprit had taken another person's wand). But it would work in that particular accidental-magic case.
    • How many times have kids in Real Life gotten away with false accusations against their siblings? A fair few. So witches and wizards have to deal with the same problem…
    • They target Muggle-borns because they can't tell if a family with of-age wizards have underage wizards breaking the law (they rely on the parents to enforce it within wizard households). It's a magical blind-spot that would be the case with or without their suspicion of Muggle-borns.
  • So, if the Ministry has a special quill that records the names of all magical children in Britain at their birth, why, oh WHY, do they not bother to tell the parents of any wizard child born to Muggles that their child has magical powers until they are 11 freakin' years old?! Wouldn't it make a hell of a lot more sense and be much kinder to give those poor parents at least a few years to get used to the idea that their child is going to have super powers and be accepted into a fantastic and bizarre hidden society where they'll only be allowed to see them for 3 months a year for 7 years of their teenage life, instead of just casually dumping this life-altering and world-view shattering revelation on them all at once a mere month or two before it begins? Not to mention, how many Muggle-born wizard children do you think have been needlessly traumatized or institutionalized by people that think they're crazy because the wizard government never thought it was necessary to warn their parents that, oh hey, your kid might accidentally bend and/or break the rules of physics with magic every now and then, don't worry though, cause it's perfectly normal?
    • It fails the Law of Drama, you need the Call to Adventure to come as a shock, not as something that the protagonist has been groomed for for all his/her life. As for in universe reasons... I guess the Wizarding world's prejudice against Muggle-borns also extends to the Muggle-born's parents; not telling them them that their child is magical until the last moment possible (after which said child is immediately removed from the parents to be immersed practically full-time in the magical culture) has the effect of neatly locking out the parents from the Wizarding world. If you tell the parents that their kids are magical from birth, presumably they can meet with with other such parents during the pre-Hogwarts years and worm their way into the Wizarding culture, and before you know it, there would be this subpopulation of Muggle parents running around the magical world, and that's probably a little too much multiculturalism for the old-fashioned wizards.
      • Only Harry (being the protagonist of the series) needed the Law of Drama, and he got it from the Dursleys purposefully trying to quash any and all opportunities for him to learn about the wizarding world (and it took Hagrid bursting in to overcome their efforts). There's no excuse for anyone else.
    • I think the above response is on the cynical end of things. On the other end, there's: a) By eleven, the kids have produced some weird events that can be used as proof to persuade the parents that you're not insane. Think about it; what would you think if Some Dude appeared and said "Hey, that baby you're holding? Magical powers. Totally not crazy. Not a joke. Prepare yourselves. Also, we'll be back in eleven years to take him away. Ta ta." Versus "Hey, you know all those crazy things your kid does? Magic. Only explanation for it." Yes, the person could demonstrate for proof, but that could be "eyes playing tricks" or "temporary insanity," whereas the children's tricks usually have non-family witnesses, have been building up for years, and aren't looked on with serious suspicion from the beginning. b) To discourage children from purposefully escalating their "accidental" magic displays. We learn towards the end of the series that some experimentation is not unusual, but think about how much more there would be if the children knew how and why they did these things. It legitimizes it and opens up the oportunity for messing around to get a leg up before school starts. Yes, wizarding families' children do know, but if they experiment like that, it's unlikely to be around Muggles and they have more people to slap them on the wrist and teach them The Rules.
    • They get their Hogwart's acceptance letter a week before they turn 11. (Incidentally, it's also entirely possible the whole 'birthday' thing is a coincidence. Students might just have to respond a month before school starts, and a letter gets sent a week before that if they have failed to do so.) But we have no evidence Muggle-born aren't introduced to the Wizarding world well in advance of that. What people forget is Harry Potter is not Muggle-born. His parents were Wizards, and it's probably pretty unlikely for a Wizard to be sent to live with Muggle relatives. Presumably, he slipped through the cracks, either accidentally, on purpose thanks to Dumbledore's meddling, or simply because the Dusley's threw any wizards out of their house before Harry saw them.
      • I think we're given some evidence that the Muggleborn students haven't been introduced to the wizarding world well in advance. Justin was supposed to go to Eton until he got his letter and if he'd known for years they wouldn't have made plans to send him there (or at least he wouldn't still be talking about it years later). Colin babbled about how shocked they were when he got his Hogwarts letter and so did Hermione. If these people had known that they were wizards for longer than a month or so than they'd be well used to the idea and have likely spent enough time in Diagon Alley or around other wizards that they'd be much less...bubbling. Harry Potter might as well be Muggleborn for all the good having wizard parents did. Dean isn't Muggleborn and presumably there have been other cases of magical children being raised by Muggle relatives who aren't their parents. Tom Riddle wasn't Muggleborn and he got the same sort of treatment as Harry did. In fact, it actually shows that he had never heard of magic being real before he got his letter so I think that's even stronger proof that Muggleborn students find out around the time Harry does. And it makes so much more sense to send the notes out at the same time rather than diong it a week before their eleventh birthday. Hermione's birthday is in September so should she find out a year before she can actually go to Hogwarts? Where's the sense in that? It's also so much more work to remember (or magic it) to send letters out periodically to students whose birthday it's approaching than to do it all at once.
        • Concerning Hermione, this might be Fridge Brilliance. Remember how she's a year older than Harry and Ron because she waited a year to find out about the wizarding world and reading books and stuff? While she was happy to do so, maybe she just had to because she got her acceptance letter just a little to late and her parents had already planned something for the year!
          • Hermione's birthday is in September. Most schools have a cutoff date for when the student-to-be has to be a certain age, which was likely before the start of term (September 1) for Hogwarts.
    • The policy not to alert Muggle parents about their children's potential might date back a long way, to an era when there'd be no guarantee a newborn wizard or witch would survive to age 11. Child mortality was sky-high for most of human history; better to wait until they're sure the child will live long enough to come to Hogwarts before the family is informed.
  • Given that the books say more than once that many witches and wizards are half-blood or muggle-born, otherwise the wizarding world would be dying out, why is it that the head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts department doesn't get almost everything muggle? Ditto most of the wizarding population. You would think everyone would know someone they could ask questions concerning muggle stuff.
    • What gets me is how Mr. Weasley and his kids keep mispronouncing the names of Muggle technologies, even after they've heard Harry say them correctly. Isn't proper enunciation something that's drilled into young wizards in every spell-casting course from Day One? They have to pronounce spells correctly for them to work, so should have a good ear for words in general.
  • Harry grows up to head the Auror office, and Ron becomes one too. This is rather surprising given their record of breaking rules when it suits them.
    • Exactly, then they'll know all the criminal's dirty tricks, perfect. The bigger question is which one of them will turn into Gene Hunt.
  • This was the only category that I can think of to properly sort this complaint into, but: why do so many wizards act like a Fish Out of Water? The Statue of Secrecy is pretty important, but they don't do anything to teach wizards how to act among muggles. And it's not like that's difficult. Here is the pamphlet:
    • Dress in Muggle clothing. See figure one for standard wardrobes, sorted by gender. women may wear men's clothes, but the reverse is not true.
    • Don't gawk at things muggles aren't gawking at. Act like muggle objects are mundane for you.
    • Pay using Muggle money. If necessary, there is a goblin in Gringnotts who will give you Pounds for Galleons.
    • And remember that Loose Lips Crash Broomsticks. Don't mention magic in any way, shape, or form.
    • See how easy that was?
      • The office of Muggle Relations probably has one, but considering the insular attitudes and smug superiority of wizards, I have a hard time seeing that pretty much anyone would pick one up. Also, Wizarding Britain is a radically different culture from Muggle Britain. Acting like you belong in a completely different culture is not something you learn to do overnight. It can take years or decades, if it is at all possible.

Your first point is completely valid, your fourth slightly less, considering how pervasive magic is in Wizarding Britain, but I'll grant it.

Remembering to exchange your money is a valid point as such, but the question is which is more likely to breach the masquerade, someone who tries to exchange gold for goods or services, or someone who doesn't know how to tell what denomination paper money is and thinks there are 493 pence to a pound.

As for gawking, I gawked a LOT the first time I visited London, definitely enough to make me stand out in a crowd, and I come from a city in a similar culture. How do you think someone from a rural part of Africa or Asia, who has never been further away from home than the nearest village would react to seeing London, even if he/she had seen London on TV? Yeah, like that.

Wizarding World in General, Magic and Magic Theory

  • What in the name of Merlin is the point of duelling? I think JK originally intended it to be the Wizard's Duel from Sword in the Stone - turning one another into animals and whatnottery - but in duelling in the later books, the intention is almost always to either kill or incapacitate the opponent, so why would you ever use any spell other than Expelliarmus, Stupefy, or Avada Kedavra? There is no reason a death eater would cast JELLY LEGS on Neville in Book 5 rather than killing him stone dead. The only excuse I can think of is that magic is like sword-fighting - you have to beat the other sword out of the way (arbitrary jynxes and hexes) before you can stab (curses) - but that seems a pretty weak excuse, given the description of Sirius's defeat at the hand of Bellatrix in book five; it's not described that he was finally beaten down and unable to defend himself, it's more that her spell just managed to hit. There's also the fact that Avada Kedavra is UNBLOCKABLE. If your spell is on target, and your target ain't Harry Potter or the master of your wand, you can't fail. On a similar vein, why is Avada Kedavra so ridiculously underused? As far as I recall, only four characters are said to have definitely used the spell: Voldemort, Snape (on Dumbledore's request, so rules may be different), Rowle (used a LOT in the heat of conflict), and Wormtail (not too difficult to use). Then if you consider that it's uncurable and (almost completely) unblockable, you'd think it'd be used a lot more.
    • A possible reasons for underuse of AK might be the chaotic nature of most magic figths. It's not an ordinary shootout, where the opposing sides are more or less lined up against each other and thus can cshoot without fear of hitting a comrade. But in the magic battle everybody keeps shifting and teleporting aroundб and friendly fire is much more probable. Bad guys most likely don't care about such trifle. Of course, its underuse on the villains' part is unexcusable.
    • Imagine it like a Muggle fistfight. Sure, if you hit your opponent in the face with a flying side kick, sweep them to the floor and cave in their ribcage you have won immediately, but that's hard to do and quite easily dodgeable. AK requires lots of power to use, thus why the people who use it most are Voldemort and powerful Death Eaters like Bellatrix. It's also a freakin' massive green bolt of deathy doom. Quite easy to dodge if you've seen the DE psyche himself up first and gather his strength to cast the spell.
      • Well the non-outlaws likely don't use it because of how very, very illegal it is and so when they can kill people with a curse that won't get them sent to Azkaban then they will.
        • Are you implying that killing somebody with anything but AK will NOT end you in Azkaban?
          • That is what's implied in the novels... which is why I say just blow them up with bombarda.
    • I believe it's because of the hardness of some of those spells. AK is a VERY difficult spell. Not all can successfully attempt it. As said in Goblet of Fire, if a wizard's magic skill isn't enough, it won't work and will just give the enemy time.
          • It depends on the situation. Say you're an Auror and tracking down a dangerous fugitive that you can't subdue or several and they keep reviving each other. If the Unforgivables haven't been authroized then you can't use AK. If you use another spell and slit their throat then it would be more forgivable in the eyes of the law. Also, if you kill somebody without authorization, using AK would just get you into more trouble than another method of execution.
          • I think the explanation is that some wizards/witches duel for FUN. Or practice, so that in the event that they are faced with a real threat, they can react well and defend themselves. Why would you want to AK your best friend when you could just cast Jelly Legs? It's just that in the novels all the duels we see are between the Death Eaters and the Order. When Harry taught them other spells in the DA, it was so that they could hold their own in a duel while they were still 14-15 and didn't want to or couldn't summon up enough power to off somebody. I think that in times of peace dueling is more like taking a karate class or learning to shoot a gun even if you don't intend to ship off to Afghanistan.
  • Snape invented the Sectumsempra spell when he was a teenager at Hogswarts. So does that mean every other young wizard is able to invent their own spells?
    • It's probably like real life inventions; everybody can potentially make them, because there is no law or physical constraint that prevents them from doing so, but few actually get to do it for a number of reasons.
    • Hermione possibly invented the Point Me spell.
      • She also invented the blue-fire-in-a-jar effect from the first book, and Ron at least tried to invent a spell to turn Scabbers yellow. The Weasley twins were the creators of dozens of prank spells and items, even before they left school. Inventing minor spells probably isn't especially unusual for a pupil; it's inventing spells that last, or that will hold up to the rigors of combat with another wizard, that require expertise.
  • So, why is Divination looked down upon in the Wizarding world? So, they can believe that they can use sticks the blow people up and fly on broomsticks, and yet predicting the future is too far fetched. Sounds like an Author Filibuster to me.
    • I think this falls victim to the fact that in our world the magic to make things fly and to tell the future both don't exist and so they seem equally likely. In the world of Harry Potter, though, flying and blowing things up with magic are clearly real while divination is much less obviously true. It's really like saying 'Well, magic isn't real and aliens aren't real but magic exists in Harry Potter so why don't any of them believe in aliens? Don't they know that if one ficitonal thing is true in their universe, everything else must be, too?' I think that everyone respects that there are some true predictions (even Hermione or she wouldn't have taken the class). The problem is, though, that it's such an imprecise art. From what we've seen, you can't force a prediction. No one can ask 'so will we win the war against Voldemort', for example, or how to defeat him. You just have to wait until the Seer gets a vision that they won't remember anyway and hope that somebody else is there to witness it and reports it. Teaching Divination is frankly a waste of time because if you have the gift then you can't control it and you won't remember anything so what do you need to learn? If you don't have it then you can't gain it and the gift is very rare anyway. There's also the fact that none of the prophecies are guaranteed to come true. Dumbledore explained that there are hundreds of prophecies in the Hall of Prophecy that didn't come true. If Snape hadn't overheard part of Trelawney's prophecy then that wouldn't have come true either and Voldemort never would have come after Harry specifically.
    • Divination in general is not looked down in the Magical world, after all, a large section of the Department of Mysteries is devoted to storing and studying prophecies. But the problem that Dumbledore have with it is that divination in the Potterverse seems to be a purely innate power and cannot be taught and is therefore unfit of being part of the school curriculum.
  • This goes out to combat in Harry Potter in general. Why isn't the Silencio spell used as often? It's clearly the most powerful disabling spell in Harry Potter, preventing spellcasting. It's more defensive than using Stupefy.
    • While you have a point when fighting students, you seem to be forgetting how big a deal nonverbal spells are. Silencio, against someone who can use nonverbal magic, would do just as much as doing nothing, making Silencio a huge waste of time when you could just stupefy or kill them.
      • Avada Kedavra was never used nonverbally.
      • That may be true, but if Dolohov's spell against Hermione in Book five can be used as an example, spells seem to be less powerful if used nonverbally. In Hermione's case, that made the difference between 'severely injured' and 'dead'.
      • From what we've seen, Silencio isn't a Magic Missile-type spell. You don't have to land a hit with it; you just cast it and you instantly cover a wide area. Then, you can take extra time to aim your Stupefy with less concern with what your enemies are doing.
      • I see it as an Invisible Missile. Crucio doesn't have a missile either, but you can avoid it, as Goblet of Fire shows us.
    • Also, remember that while trained wizards can do nonverbal spells, they seem to prefer to say them out loud if they can. So silencing an attacker might just guarantee that they will use nonverbal spells, making it that much harder to defend against. Also, remember when Dolohov hit Hermione with that purple fire stuff. Madame Pomfrey said that if he had done it verbally, it would have killed her, so verbal spells are probably stronger.
      • Didn't Dolovoh actually try to say the spell? For all we know, it was a Killing Curse that got changed or something due to the Silencing Charm.
      • This is it exactly. Dolohov wasn't doing a nonverbal spell, he was attempting to cast a curse verbally without being able to speak. This on its own would probably be debilitating to the spell effect. Also, was Silencio cast on him while he was trying to cast it or earlier? Because if it was the former, then it's even worse for him, because it would likely be similar to Cho Chang setting her friend on fire by screwing up the incantation for the Disarming Charm in OotP, or Ron's Hover Charm failing because he was mispronouncing 'Wingardium Leviosa' in PS.
    • Related to that, there are a lot of very useful spells that just don't see use in combat, for some reason. People can get up after Crucio, break out of Petrificus Totalus, and maybe even withstand a Stupefy or Reducto if they're Determinators. Get hit by Obliviate, though, and you're not going to know what's going on. Granted, this is one of those cases where a Killing Curse would be more efficient.
      • I could be wrong, but Obliviate modifies memories, it doesn't just wipe them blank. You have to actively create a memory in someone's mind, which would require much more concentration than just stunning, petrifying, or blasting.
        • Gilderoy Lockhart can testify that Obliviate has a "delete all" setting. Admittedly, his was by accident, but if it can happen by accident then its very likely it can also be deliberately duplicated.
        • Also, the scene where Kingsley Shacklebolt throws a memory charm on Marietta Edgecombe in Dumbledore's office shows that for a skilled caster, a memory-adjusting spell can be done very quickly and quietly, given that he did it in front of a roomful of witnesses without anyone noticing except the person who happened to be looking directly at his wand hand at the time.
    • Nah, making a Killing Curse requires you to seriously mean to kill the person you are in front of. Harry tried to torture Bellatrix in Order of the Phoenix, but it didn't work. Harry wasn't that resentful, and it shows us how bad the Death Eathers were if they could do the Unforgivable Spells with such ease.
      • It would take an extremely powerful Obliviate just to make this happen, as in "regress them back to a juvenile state" powerful. The caster would have to erase their memory far enough to make the opponent forget about their fighting skills if they want to kill them off. Alternatively, the caster could just make the opponent forget why they're fighting if they're only looking to make peace. Even then, the person could get treatment to get their memory back.
        • Not immediately. Breaking memory charms is a difficult and time-consuming process that can permanently damage the victim's memory. Just look at Bertha Jorkins.
        • It's implied Voldemort tortured it out of her. If a powerful wizard such as Dumbledore wanted to restore her memory without doing damage, it would probably have been easy. Lockhart was only damaged so badly because of the broken wand he was using.
          • Dumbledore is capable of reversing an Obliviate without permanent damage, given that he mentions doing this to Morfin Gaunt (who young Tom Riddle had memory-modified to take the fall for his own murder of Tom Riddle Sr.) as backstory in HBP. However, Dumbledore also mentions that it took him a great deal of prolonged effort, as in weeks. Given that this is Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard in the world, talking about a memory charm done by the man who will grow up to be the second-greatest wizard int he world but is still only like sixteen at this point in time, we can reasonably state that the process is quite difficult and time-consuming.
  • Is it just me, or are the wizards and witches incredibly unimaginative? Okay, so maybe the "good guys" stick with approved spells and uses, but what about dark wizards? How about "Accio Spinal Column" to summon a person's backbone right out of their skin? And that crazy bone removing spell used by Lockheart would sure cause a stir if used offensively. There just seems to be alot of untapped potential.
    • An 'Entrail-expelling curse' was mentioned in the Order of the Phoenix.
    • Something that would be exceptionally useful in this regard would be transfiguration spells. Turning a wizard into an animal, a rock, or a fruit would remove their ability to fight far more effectively than anything else short of a Killing Curse. Yet we never see any wizards actually using transfiguration in battle.
      • Transfiguration is implied to be more difficult than charms and hexes, especially on the fly. Slughorn's ability to demolish the room and still have time to turn himself into a chair in Half-Blood Prince is seen as a mark of his exceptional ability.
      • And yet Mad-eye Moody could turn Malfoy into a ferret in the blink of an eye. Although it is true that students only learn human transfiguration in their final years, it is implied that more intelligent wizards, at least, all possess some proficiency at this.
      • Transfiguring yourself is different, because creatures Transfigured into other things normally end up with the mind of that other thing, and hence you can't get back without help. They talk about this when they talk about Animaguses, who have to learn how to keep their own mind, and we've never seen anyone manage being an inanimate object before. Slughorn could have easily ended up thinking he was a chair!
    • Good point. Perhaps they have a strong distinction between 'combat spells' and 'other spells', so they normally use them according to the situation. The bone removal spell was more of an accident, Lockhart wanted to mend the bones, so it is not entirely clear if there is a spell that is intended to remove bones. Also, some spells seem to be very specialized: For example, Leviosa, Levicorpus, Mobilicorpus, and Locomotor all make things float, albeit different things and in slightly different ways. So it is possible that certain spells only work in certain ways.
    • Perhaps Accio only works for discrete units of matter, like 'Accio Book' as opposed to 'Accio Page 42'. But none the less, Accio could be very useful, even if you cannot rip out someone's spinal column. Being able to summon someone's wand, or even the whole person should give you an edge in most duels.
      • How do you know using Accio on a person's spinal column won't instead throw that person back-first straight at you? I can understand Accio will simply give you that specific object requested if, say, I wanted a bottle of ink and it happened to be tucked somewhere in my bag, but if I used Accio on my favorite bookmark, and said bookmark was tucked in a closed book that was locked inside a chest across the room from me, will Accio be curteous enough to unlock or break the chest, open the book (or rip the bookmark out of it otherwise) and toss the bookmark at me, or will it just throw the "bookmark" to me, book, chest, and all?
      • We know from Order of the Phoenix that it's very hard to summon something out of someone's hand, especially if they're very determined to hold onto it. Ripping someone's wand out of their hand would probably be impossible for all but the strongest wizards (and maybe not even then).
    • "Dark wizard," does not, for the most part, mean "psychotic lunatic." A lot of people are capable of shooting someone in the throat and recording their last bubbling breath so they can play it every night before they fall asleep. They don't. Most people, if forced to shoot someone, will either go for the wound or go for the kill, not for the gore. They're wizards, not Mortal Kombat characters.
    • It's not that they're unimaginative - if you want to kill someone, Avada Kedavra is far more efficient, and unblockable to boot. Why bother trying a complicated but "showy" bit of magic that might not even work, when you can simply kill your target instantly?
  • What exactly makes a curse 'unforgivable'? Bellatrix Lestrange says in Book five that you have to 'mean' them, but can that be all? It can't be their effects: While torture, mind control, and killing aren't exactly nice, one could kill or torture with literally hundreds of other spells that are not 'unforgivable'.
    • I'd always assumed it was merely a classification of the spells when they were made illegal. They, unlike other spells, have no other use than to torture, kill, or control minds.
    • Okay, good point. But as with all things, good/evil is more a question of intent than of the tools used. This Troper could think of at least one 'good' use for both the AK and the Imperius. Can't think of something for the Cruciatus at the moment, though.
      • If you think about it hard enough, then, yes, they can be used for good. Cruciatus can be used in controlled situations for damaged nerves. AK can be used for peaceful death with agreement. Finally, Imperius can be used to fix harmful personalities. However, all of those possibilities would have to be regulated by either the government or a medical professional, and thus any unauthorized usage of them would be grounds for lifetime in Azkhaban.
      • But that's the problem. Take the AK for example: It has a 100% fatality rate and cannot be blocked by shield spells. That alone makes it one of the, if not the most useful spell in any life or death combat situation. But if a wizard uses it to defend his family from a Death Eater attack (for example), he would go to Azkaban for self defense.
        • Perhaps it's a Human Rights thing. All of the things that they could possibly be used for good are downright controversial. Assisted Suicide, forceful personality change, torture to reveal information, taking away the will of others. The Twilight Zone probably has an episode or two on one of these.
        • It probably has to do with the fact that, to get these curses to operate at full power, you seem to have to literally revel in them (we never see a heroic character produce a lasting Cruciatus, for example, or anything more than a crude Imperius, though Snape probably had enough pent-up rage at life in general to fuel his Avada Kedavra at Dumbledore). Sure, there are plenty of other spells that can do bad things, but to effectively use these, you have to put yourself in a very scary place emotionally. That, or you have to be a sociopath.
        • Also, Snape didn't need the rage, not that it didn't help. He WANTED to kill Dumbledore, because Dumbledore wanted Snape to kill him. All part of Dubledore's plan.
          • You still have to "mean" an unforgivable, whether it's a mercy-kill or not.
            • Do you? Bellatrix says you have to mean a Crucio to get it to work properly, but all faux!Moody says about Avada Kedavra is that you need a powerful [talent for] magic to back it up, and he didn't think fourth years were capable of it.
            • Snape could have been just that pissed off Dumbledore was making him do this.
            • You probably need both power and a strong intent to kill to make AK work.
            • So how did Krum build up the necessary hate to cast Crucio on Cedric, if he was under the Imperius Curse himself?
        • Isn't that similar to the way muggle Britain deals with firearms? It's perfectly believable.
        • While you can use other spells to kill, coerce, or torment people magically, the Avada Kadavra, Cruciatus, and Imperius curses cannot be used for anything else. They exist for the sole conceivable purpose of murder, torture, and enchanted puppetry of another human being. That is what makes them unforgivable to use at all.
        • That is only partially correct. The AK kills instantly, but not every killing is murder. The self defense I mentioned above would fall under that category. Like another Troper said: In a way, it is comparable to firearms legislation.
        • Not necessarily. A gun has no purpose other than to fire a bullet which can, and often does, kill. There are spells that can be used to stop an intruder/attacker non-fatally, such as Stupefy or Petrificus Totalus (and these are actually probably easier to cast than AK, and probably more instinctive, with the added bonus of being reversible if you happen to hit an innocent bystander or ally).
          • No, the point is not that a wand or spells are like a gun, it's that Avada Kedavra is like a gun. Hence the comparison of the real U.K., where you would face a pretty strong punishment for having or defending yourself with a firearm, to wizarding Britain in which using Avada Kedavra on a human being for any reason is treated harshly.
        • The reason the "AK in self-defense" argument doesn't work is because wizards have countless other options for self-defense besides AK. In the real world, killing in self-defense is generally only justifiable in a "him or me" situation where there are literally no other options besides lethal force. If other options are present and you fail to use them, most courts will charge you with murder or manslaughter. A wizard with a wand in his hand has EVERY option at his disposal. A wizard who casts Avada Kadavera against an attacker could have just as easily cast Stupefy or Expelliarmus or any of a hundred other spells. Ergo, there is no justifiable reason to use Avada Kadavera.
          • The counter argument for this is if the person that's attacking you has really good shields and you can't penetrate them. AK can't be blocked, so casting it could be used in self defense if there's no other way to get through the shields.
          • You're forgeting that in order for AK to work, the caster must have a strong desire to kill their target. If you kill a person in self-defence, your strongest desire isn't to kill your attacker, but to make sure they don't kill you. It would be almost impossible to use AK in self-defence, even if you tried. The same applies to using AK to save another's life.
        • Okay, let's list it out: Crucio's only possible purpose is torture, a practice which is not accepted by civilized society. The Imperius removes free will, which is not only not accepted in civilized society, but is complete Fridge Horror. And Avada Kedavra... pretty much the only justifiable reason to use AK would, in fact, be mercy killings, and if that's even considered acceptable in Wizarding Society, then there are most likely fast, painless poisons that could be used. To use the usual comparison, you don't use a gun for mercy killings, you use chemical injection. Putting a blanket ban on Avada Kedavra, then, just makes sense.
        • Imperius can be used if someone wants to do something, but do not have the willpower. For example, here's an infomercial: "Having trouble losing weight and keeping it off? Want to quit smoking? Well worry no longer! For the low low price of just 10 Galleons, I will personally Imperius you in whatever manner you desire! Want to jog a mile every morning? Imperius! Need discipline to start learning a new instrument? Imperius! Call today!"
  • So 2 of the unforgivables are unforgivable (and therefore banned) because they can be used to kill or torture. No one seems to remember that a spell like Bombarda is basically a freakin hand grenade explosion and would just as easily kill people. Especially since we've seen many times that the most of the commonly used spells can easily be avoided by hiding behind random scenery which would completely shatter in the face of an explosion.
    • Bombarda could conceivably be used for demolition or clearing large obstacles. The Unforgivable Curses literally are not meant for anything other than murder, torture and mind-control. Therein lies the distinction. Just because you can pick up a brick and smash someone's skull in with it doesn't mean bricks aren't otherwise useful. You could also use Wingardium Leviosa to lift someone up and then drop them to their death, but that's not the only thing that spell could be used for.
  • How come only painted portraits talk? Small photos of people in the Daily Prophet and in photo albums never talk. Why? And for that matter, why does the Daily Prophet print photos in black and white? Surely if magic can make pictures MOVE, they could bother making them in color.
    • Probably has to do with how they're printed. If they're using a printing press or a magical equivalent, perhaps it only has black ink. So for mass produced pictures, it's easier to just have them black and white and moving but not talking, as that might take more magic than necessary.
    • This Troper assumed it had to do with the creation of the object. A photograph takes only a second to capture a person's appearance (though the films make it look like a photograph covers more like a minute of time, repeated indefinitely). On the other hand, a painting, especially a handsome old-fashioned oil painting, takes hours to create. The sitter poses for a long time. That gives the wizard artist a much longer timeframe in which to work the mind and spirit of the subject into the painting. What does this mean about the Headmaster's paintings, I don't know.
      • I also think it has to do with the creation. Not only does it take only a second to capture the image, but it can be reproduced without much effort. You could have fifty copies of the same photo, but a painted portrait is unique, and as such it is probably infused with more magic ability of its own.
      • Wizard photos aren't mobile initially, they're made that way by developing the film in a special potion. Presumably the paint used to make a talking painting is brewed using a more exotic/expensive potion recipe.
    • When it comes down to it, it may be POSSIBLE to create a photograph that speaks. But when it comes to newspapers, you would never want that. The person who sells them would be driven crazy, and after you'd finished reading the paper it would continue talking from the bin. Not to mention, if you're trying to actually read an article, it would be very distracting to have the figures from every photograph in the paper trying to talk.
      • Colin Creevy needed to develop his photos with a potion to make them move. The ink used by the Daily Prophet is probably a potion as well, and brewing inks that make the pictures talk as well as move would make the paper too expensive to be profitable.
  • Exactly WHY is food one of the Five Exceptions of Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration? I mean, they can conjure live animals and transmute things into animals (remember Hermione coonjuring a flock of birds? Or Cedric Diggory turning a rock into a dog during the First Task?). So... why can't food be Transfigured? There shouldn't be anything that makes it different than any other conjurable substance.
    • Perhaps the animals are not really alive, or transmute back into inanimate objects after a time. If that were so, if you turned a rock into a pig, killed it, cooked it, and ate it, it would at some point turn back into a rock, possibly in the middle of your digestive system. As for conjuring food out of nothing, Rowling has said that conjured items 'don't last very long'.
    • The REAL big question is why money is one of the exceptions. If we assume that the Philosopher's Stone is the only thing that can transmute gold, what about transmuting silver? Or diamonds? Or paper money? Or 8,000 pound Micronesian Rai stones? There's no reason why any wizard shouldn't be able to wave a wand and create limitless wealth.
      • Surely the reason that the things used for money ARE used for money is precisely because they can't be copied: in other words, you are confusing cause and effect: (1) find something relatively rare that can't be copied, (2) use it as currency.
        • Sounds smart, but don't forget that most Muggles don't know about magic, and only think of stuff that can not be copied by the means that they know. What prevents a wizard from transfiguring something that can be sold/pawned in the Muggle world, or even sell a Muggle some Leprechaun Gold and getting out of Dodge before it disappears?
      • It is likely that this would only be possible in small amounts. Muggle paper money is usually very complex these days, so that it would be difficult to transfigure. Precious metals and stones would be possible, but when someone starts to sell a few tons of silver, or a bus load of Rai Stones, it would get suspicious very fast. That being said, it would probably be quite easy for a wizard to get by "without money" in the Muggle world if he keeps a low profile. The wizarding world probably has safeguards against that kind of thing.
      • You also have to take into account the reason for value: that you can't just get it anywhere. If wizards used magic to conjure a buttload of silver, Rai stones, or even paper money, the value of those things would drop like a stone. That's the same reason why no one abuses the ability to buy a gold coin the size of a hubcap for five pounds, sell it to Muggles at market value (significantly more than five pounds), and then repeat the cycle for massive profits.
        • What really bugs me about the 'you can't transfigure stuff into or conjure food' is not just that it was a blatant Ass Pull, but that it is contradicted in at least one instance; in the fourth book, Ollivander makes a wand spout wine.
          • Ah, but the reason food can't be conjured is because, as per Word of God, "Conjured items tend not to last long", so while you CAN technicly make food/drink appear out of nowhere, you wouldn't be able to actually get any sustenance out of them because at some point whatever you ate/drank would simply disappear from your system.
          • To add to the above, Dumbledore conceded in the Half-blood Prince that Tom Riddle's mother could have used her magic powers to feed herself if she still had them. Probably the real reason for the new "Law" is that JK Rowling felt uncomfortable about the above facts and added a Retcon to lessen the potential for the abuse of wizard powers. Although, in doing so, she contradicts herself somewhat.
          • There are ways she could have used her power to feed herself even without conjuring food.
          • If Gamp's Law does indeed dictate that wizards can't conjure food out of thin air, where does Dumbledore get the random tray of tea and cakes from in Goblet of Fire, when he and the main three are comforting Hagrid about Rita Skeeter? I really doubt he had them waiting in his office for such an occasion and he just summoned them, or summoned them from a shop nearby and effectively stole them.
            • He is Headmaster of the school; perhaps he has a house elf have tea on standby in case he needs to summon it.
            • None of the above. Gamp's law says only that you cannot conjure food out of nothing, or something that is not food. You can Summon it from somewhere else, or multiply it if you've already got some but you can't simply make food appear out of nowhere. The tray of tea and cakes that Dumbledore "conjured" was likely something that the house elves in the kitchens had prepared it beforehand, and Dumbledore just transported it to Hagrid's hut. Same with money. (Although you probably can't Summon anything from Gringotts). If the world worked that way, then governments would just print more money and hand it out, and all of our problems would be solved, tada.
    • You can still duplicate and change food, right? Couldn't you just duplicate the meat that you happen to be made of, and then change it to something less squicky?
      • This just makes me think of this method going horribly wrong and giving you "magic" tumors.
    • Food is also a lot more complex than conjuring a steak or cupcake. it has to be made of very specific chemicals in order for your body to digest it and for it to be of any use to you. While some things can be transifugred into looking like things that can be used as food (like a rock turning into a dog), it's very possible that if one inspected the "dog" more closely, the chemicals would be more similar to a rock and the dog-like appearance is only superficial. In short, you probably could summon a four course meal out of thin air, and it might even taste and smell good. But you wouldn't be able to digest it, which means you wouldn't save yourself from starvation, and you'd probably get a terrible bellyache.
      • Ok, so the food can be "duplicated". Well, what is the extent of such multiplication? Can a wizard literally feed a crowd of people with five breads and two fishes? Or, on the practical side, carry small pieces of non-perishable food with them and duplicate them whenever they are hungry, and regular food is anavailble, such as, I don't know, when three teenagers are on the run from the authorities and are forced to spend their time in the wilderness?
  • So, the Avada Kedavra is stated multiple times to be unblockable. That's its main advantage: It's instant death that can't be parried by any known defensive spell. Well, we've seen that people can duck behind statues and walls to avoid being zapped, right? So, shouldn't the killing curse theoretically be easily countered by strategially-chosen conjurations? I mean, if a flimsy Protego charm can't block it, couldn't a wizard summon a physical steel wall to intercept the blast?
    • Dumbledore does this in his battle in the 5th book with Voldemort. He summons parts of a statue to block the curse. I'd assume transfiguring a steel wall would take a bit more time than the curse takes to travel. Perhaps rocks or something similar would be easier to conjure or transfigure quickly enough if you were prepared. However I don't recall if conjured or transfigured objects were shown to stop the AK or not.
    • We never see that much conjuration (aka "making something out of nothing") in the books, and Dumbledore is supposed to be a transfigurations master (He taught it at Hogwarts before becoming headmaster). So it is possible that a quick conjuration or transfiguration that is strong enough to block the killing curse cannot be done by everyone. As for summoning something into the curse's path: You need something to summon, and the killing curse seems to have some effect on dead matter (it sets fire to a desk in book five), so it is entirely possible that it could shatter a weak barrier.
    • Well, the killing curse obviously penetrates clothes, so it can bypass very weak barriers. On the other hand, something the strength of a small statue can take the hit (and be destroyed in the process), so it has an upper limit somewhere.
    • Why not just make some sort of magical reflective armor, or at least encase yourself in a pillbox type enclosure where you could shoot out, but it would take a very precise shot to shoot in. Mirrors seem to reflect spells to great effect, so a giant magical mirror-plated automaton would be nearly unstoppable.
      • Do mirrors really deflect spells? At the moment, I can't really remember reading that. But I like the idea with the automaton. Could be dangerous, though, as most spells will be reflected at odd angles and could hit the wrong persons.
      • At least, until they did a Glisseo on the floor and you fell on your ass. Or attacked you with flying birds. Or Accio'd you against your armor. Or did a Finite and turned off the magic. Or just Vanished the stupid thing. And this is a bit like asking 'Why don't soldiers just wear head to foot bulletproof armor?' or 'Why doesn't everyone fight in a tank?' Well, because all the battles we see are footfights where movement matters? (I'm now imagining everyone attempting to lug magical armor to, and through the Department of Mysteries. We have to save Sirius...let me build some quick armor! We might have to take it apart to get it through the phone booth, though.)
    • A better question, in fact, is why people aren't constantly Disillusioning themselves during battle? Sure, it's not perfect invisibility, and it would be pretty easy for the other side to keep undoing, but it can't hurt, during any pause in action, to do it. (Unless you're worried your allies might hit you by mistake.)
      • There are a few reasons that people have come up with. Firstly, we know the Disillusionment charm doesn't work prefect with movement, so it probably doesn't work right with moving lights near it either. Like most dueling magic causes. If a Stunner passing near you causes a reddish 'Predator effect' in midair for a second that they can aim the next Stunner at. And, of course, they can see where all your Stunners come from, regardless.
      • There is also a theory that casting magic through a Disillusion charm undoes it. And the same with a standard invisibility cloak. (But not Harry's.)
      • Additionally, having your allies hit you by mistake seems be a common concern in magical duels, which is the 'reason' they tend to be one-on-one. However, despite 'accidentally hitting your allies' not making much sense in general, it does make sense if you literally cannot see them or tell who they are, and can just see that some guy, right there, is casting spells.
      • The real problem is that magical dueling itself doesn't make a lot of sense as presented. The 'smartest' fight in the entire series is when Draco realizes that Peruvian Darkness Powder plus Hand of Glory means no one but him can see anything, and at that moment he could have taken out all the good guys with a switchblade to the throat if he had felt like it. No one else seems to have any grasp of tactics.
  • What bugs me about the HP sections of this wiki is that some tropers are far too eager to offer "It's magic!" as the "explanation" for everything, even when a little thought shows that this can't be the case. For example, the OWL Astronomy examination in OotP takes place in June, despite it not being nearly dark enough in June in the Highlands; my mind boggles at the tons of Peruvian Darkness Powder that would be needed to create an artificial night over the entire area visible from the top of the Astronomy Tower, to say nothing of the effect such a massive, conspicuous, and wide-area spell would have on the Masquerade.
    • It's mentioned in the earlier books that the Astronomy classes take place around midnight. It can be inferred that the OWL takes place at midnight as well. But then the Astronomy class is screwed if it's cloudy or rains on the night of the OWL.
      • We're not just talking about midnight here; we're talking about midnight in June, in the Highlands of Scotland. According to one site I once saw discussing OotP, sunset would be only an hour or so earlier (and they posted a screenshot from a planetarium program to prove it). Even with a perfectly clear sky, they'd be lucky if it were dark enough for two or three of the very brightest stars to be visible.
      • It's magic!
    • This troper would like to know why it is impossible to do astronomy in June in the Highlands. Does Scotland not have stars during the summer or something?
      • The closer you get to the poles during solstices, the more of an effect they have on how long you see the sun. For example, at the North Pole during the summer solstice, the sun is visible for days. In Northern Scotland, near the summer solstice, the sun is out for a majority of the day and sets for only a few hours. This is why it's hard for you to do astronomy—as there's very little nighttime in order to do it in.
    • Perhaps they set at midnight in June because it would be difficult? It's the Ordinary Wizarding Levels, which are meant to be incredibly hard and challenging examinations, so it's not too much of a leap to think that maybe the examiners just wanted to increase the challenge. Alternatively, the Astronomy OWL is in June because all of the OWLS are in June, and the test structures questions around stars and planets and things that would be visible at that point in time.
    • They have magic telescopes that don't need total darkness to operate. Duh.
      • What's really stupid is that they have access to something that could easily be used as a magical planetarium—the Great Hall. Just change the ceiling image to a simulated night sky, and have the students use that. Sadly, Rowling doesn't have 1/100th the imagination at figuring out new uses for existing spells that her fandom does.
      • Taking an astronomy final indoors would probably be seen as the equivalent of taking your driving test on a VR simulator. It's not just whether you can spot things or manipulate the equipment, it's whether you can deal with the wider environment while doing so.
        • You do realize that the reason they build planetariums in the real world is to teach astronomy courses with them, right? For that matter, they build driving simulators for the exact same purpose—to use in driver's ed class. You might still take your exam under live fire, but you do a lot of the training in simulation.
  • Word of God is that Voldemort can't feel love because he was born under the effects of a love potion, ergo there was no true love between his parents. Reaches a bit of Unfortunate Implications when you think about artificial insemination. I mean, does that mean that all people born through artificial insemination are heartless sociopaths or what?
    • That's not Word of God at all. Full quote as follows:
      • J.K. Rowling: It was a symbolic way of showing that he came from a loveless union – but of course, everything would have changed if Merope had survived and raised him herself and loved him. The enchantment under which Tom Riddle fathered Voldemort is important because it shows coercion, and there can’t be many more prejudicial ways to enter the world than as the result of such a union.
    • It wasn't the lack of love itself, it was the fact that Riddle had the potion in his system which could easily damage sperm.
      • What? I took it more as an artistic stroke on Rowling's part, the love potion in itself having nothing to do with how Voldy turned out but just giving the reader a nod to the fact that he is a creature without love. Like JK said, symbolic.
    • Is that really the Word Of Rowling on this topic? That makes no sense at all, considering that arranged marriages seem to be the norm for pureblood high-society. Wasn't it more a matter of his childhood? (Being abandoned by his father, his mother dying, growing up being abused by his peers in a Muggle orphanage...)
      • I'm not 100% sure that pureblood marriages are arranged. And even if they are, "arranged marriage" is not always synonymous with "loveless marriage". Often, the parties in an arranged marriage go through a courtship or they grow to love each other after the marriage, i.e. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy. It could be that, in Voldemort's case, the absence of his mother's love plus the fact that his father was body-and-soul raped by his mother plus the inherited instability from the Gaunts plus growing up in a grim Muggle orphanage all combined to make him how he was. (If you'll notice, it wasn't just Lily's sacrifice that kept Harry from dying; it's explored in detail in Fridge Brilliance.)
      • I also don't think pureblood marriages are arranged. There's actually no evidence of this, it's more of a Fanon idea. The only one I can think of is the suggestion of the Gaunt family's severe incest that must have been related to arranged marriage. There are certainly restrictions on who is acceptable to marry, hence all the blasting-offs on the Black Family Tree, but for most of the characters in those societies, it would be a non-issue finding a pureblood mate. Out of all we see from pureblood society, Sirius and Andromeda are the only two that we see who do not consider bloodline when it comes to their companionship. The belief in pureblood supremacy would limit who those individuals would associate with, befriend, and fall in love with. Bellatrix seems to have been in a loveless marriage because she knew it was expected of her to marry a pureblood man, but it is never suggested that this marriage was actually arranged.
  • Why do the Aurors and Harry and his gang not use the killing curse when fighting the Death Eaters? I don't remember if they do, though, but is it really that bad if used for self-defense?
    • First: it's illegal, even in self-defense. It has been legalized under certain conditions for certain people (see here). Second: As Bellatrix says to Harry in Book five, you have to mean an Unforgivable. Just pointing a wand and saying the incantation does nothing if you haven't got some homicidal tendencies (Also see the 'Unforgivable' discussion above). That said, This Troper agrees, it would be dead useful in many self-defense situations. But I guess the protagonists in a 'young readers' book can't go running around killing people.
    • Also, the fake Moody said that it also requires a lot of power; "Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it - you could all get your wands out and point them at me and say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much as a nosebleed."
      • And the series has shown us that Aurors are exceptionally powerful wizards, being the elite of the elite, and Harry and co are all exceptionally powerful wizards...
        • Exceptionally powerful fifteen and sixteen-year-olds who had never so much as tried the curse before, when it was shown during the series that it is very important to actually practice with spells before attempting to use them in a combat situation.
    • Refer to a JBM higher up in the page.
  • This has been moved from Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone's Just Bugs Me page.
    • Wizards can duplicate food. Why aren't they out there feeding the starving people in sub-Saharan Africa, or at least making life a little easier for the urban poor and homeless? Same real world economic constraints that prevent these things in real life?
      • First of all, when does it say that wizards can duplicate food? I thought that was pointed out in Deathly Hallows that they couldn't. Second, assuming they can, there's that thing called the Statue of Secrecy. You don't go helping humanity when you're trying to stay completely secret from them.
        • It says they can't create food. It says you can modify it and duplicate it, but not create it. All this goes under the whole not giving Muggles magic thing.
      • Giving away food to nations doesn't work in the long-term perspective. You'll inevitably end up with a whole country of dependents on your hands who no longer see the point in sustaining themselves.
        • So? That's only a problem when it's costly for you to sustain them. Give a man a fish: he eats for a day. Give a man a fish every day: he eats for a lifetime. Also, they could probably make a magic item that gives endless food, though that can be problematic as it's easier for tyrannical governments to hoard it. Of course, since they don't have magic, you can just overthrow them.
        • The saying goes: "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime". Give him a fish every day and he just becomes dependant and easily exploited.
          • The problem is that it's not normal to sustain a whole nation at your expense for indefinite time - they'll degenerate.
            • If people don't have enough food, they'll degenerate. Keep it up long enough and they'll die. Also, people in first-world countries that don't have a job can beg for enough to live on. Have we degenerated?
          • How exactly do you plan on exploiting someone who can't do magic? You might as well try to exploit a rock on the basis that it can never fight back. Also, not being normal just means that they don't do it, which is exactly what I have an issue with.
            • Expense? What expense? We are talking about magic, aren't we?
      • This blog post details exactly why letting another country become dependent on you is a bad thing, whether or not cost is an issue.
        • I don't see how. It seemed to be something about the war on terror or the war on Iraq. I didn't see anything about giving anybody anything.
      • Still, giving some extra water to refuge camps wouldn't hurt anyone. This troper finds that most magical societies have an issue with exhibiting almost evil levels of negligence. For example, Muggle 5-year-old girl is raped and murdered. Muggle-born wizard is not going to help either because he/she is forbidden by law or just aloof to the whole issue. "They will just want magical solutions to everything" is a terrible reason to allow people slow and terrible deaths. That said, JK doesn't spend too much time world building, so it is ignorable in the story.
      • If you brought in large amounts of food to a nation going through a war, all you'd do would be to undercut the local businesses. Aid groups prefer to buy food locally when they can and only ask for food donations when there simply isn't food available. Of course that doesn't explain why wizards don't use magic to handle easily curable diseases rampant in the Third World or cure injuries beyond the abilities of Muggle groups.
        • Maybe it would break the statute of secrecy for those diseases to be completely eradicated over night for no apparent reason. Or maybe the wizards can only cure one person at a time and/or need to physically be there to heal people. And maybe they're just not that altruistic.
          • No, charging for your services, when you don't really need the money, or refusing to help your folks with the garden is "not that altruistic". Hogging cures to deseases and devices that could save thousands of lives is being an inconsiderate callous asshole.
        • Dumbledore was altruistic enough to allow Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages to be published in Muggle editions to support Comic Relief, wasn't he?
    • We've established why wizards can't simply hand out food - it breaks the economy, makes people dependant on wizards, etc. - but what about subtly influencing the weather, or conditions of terrain, in third world countries to make growing crops easier?
      • Wizards can't conjure food from nothing, remember? But they could multiply the food people already had.
      • Now this is from someone who kinda dozed through geography, but I remember that the weather of every place on the whole planet is connected to the sun, the angle the earth lies to the sun, closeness to water and the weather of of other places. If you change the weather so it rains over Africa or Texas, the ensuing cooldown of air and change in waterfull-ness of the air [2] would influence wind and the weather of other places.
      • Yes, it might be possible for wizards to overall improve the planet but are these people really going to feel obligated to fix the world?
        • Ain't it kinda an obligation of every person living in the world to try and improve it?
        • There is also a utilarian motive to improve the world if you have the ability to do so without exhaustive effort—the nicer the world is overall, the nicer your own living environment is likely to be. After all, if war and starvation and economic exploitation and etc. didn't all hurt gazillions of innocent bystanders as well as the people responsible for them, we wouldn't object to them so much.
  • In the sixth or seventh book, some of the people in the Order are secret keepers to their own hiding place. So, why didn't Lily or James become secret keeper to their own hiding place? If that person just stayed in the house, there would be no chance of them being captured, thus, no chance of Riddle finding them. I've also wondered why no ever tried to make Harry the secret keeper. Protect the baby (who can't talk, at that point), and the secret's safe. Of course, I can buy that no one would try the latter (and that there could be a plausible explanation for why it wouldn't work in the first place), but the former? No.
    • This was discussed on the Deathly Hallows page, and it's assumed that someone made a discovery that allowed the person being protected by the secret to be the secret keeper since James and Lily died (plus we wouldn't have a story). Also making a baby that can't talk the secret keeper wouldn't be smart, because if only the baby knows, then no one else knows, and the baby has no way to tell others which can be very bad, especially if the secret is "keep X hidden". It's never explained entirely who knows what about the secret when it's cast; for instance, does the caster know the secret, or does the secret keeper have to tell them? If the latter, good luck ever finding the baby again.
    • I think it's because to be a Secret Keeper, there should be a mutual agreement between the Keeper and the other people involved. Obviously, a baby is too young to understand the circumstances, let alone agreeing to it. As for why James and Lily cannot become the Secret Keeper of their own house is beyond me.
    • Maybe the target of the spell can't be a secret keeper for the spell. The reason the Order memebers became secret keepers is that they specificaly weren't targeted, only the house itself was the secret, while Lily and James were specifically targets to be kept secret and so couldn't be their own secret keeper.
      • So you mean the ones hidden aren't the Potters' house, but the couples themselves? That's not going to work because the Fidelius charm doesn't seem to work on living objects that's constantly moving around. If so, then Sirius could just use a Fidelius charm on himself instead of going to hiding.
    • Possibly James and Lily wanted to leave somebody who wasn't part of their Secret with the means to locate them directly, in case of an emergency. If they'd been their own Secret Keepers, but their friends suddenly needed help, the Fidelius charm would've prevented anyone else from getting in touch with the Potters in time for them to do any good.
  • Wait a minute. Harry survived the Killing Curse because his mother died trying to protect him, yes? Power of love, etc. So... in Voldemort's entire reign of terror - and, presumably, in Grindewald's, and in similar circumstances - nobody has ever died protecting somebody they loved? Never ever? Not even once until Lily Potter came along? And if they have, then why aren't there more cases of death-curse immunity knocking about?
    • It's entirely possible it has happened before, but there were vastly different circumstances. For one, the caster of the killing curse probably didn't use a horcrux, meaning the caster just died. It's probably not a famous case because it happened to no one important, or in the worst case scenario, the person saved died because no one found them in time, plus no witnesses to what exactly happened. Walking in on the scene, you'd see three dead bodies: two killed by the killing curse and one dead from starvation. You wouldn't think someone sacrificed themselves for the child and a rare magical rule took the life of the murderer, but rather a murder-suicide over a child's forgotten body. (Copied from the Philospher's Stone Just Bugs Me)
    • Perhaps the person dying has to be standing there, doing nothing, while being killed? That's what Lily did, and it's also what Harry did at the end of Deathly Hallows when he let Voldemort AK him because Harry was a Horcrux, and afterwards the students and teachers were less affected by Death Eaters curses than they should have been. It would account for the rarity of the protective effect kicking in, since how often is someone going to die to protect someone they love by just standing there and letting themselves be killed?
    • It's been stated by Word of God that it wasn't just that "I'm going to stand here and protect you", it was the fact that Voldemort presented the choice of "If you just step aside and let me kill him, I won't kill you" in Lily's case, and the weird mash-up of Elder Wand + Semi-Protection in Voldy's blood + sacrifice + horcrux= plot-induced not-quite-dead-yet. And the time in the woods didn't protect Harry completely, it's been stated that he COULD have died if he wanted to, but he was given the opportunity to rise again. The problem is choice...
    • Hold on a second. How could Lily have taken "Stand aside girl"(I'm paraphrasing here but Riddle wasn't being very clear on Lily's options here) to mean he was actually going to spare her? For that matter, couldn't James have just escaped if he wanted to? Apparation is still an option in that case. So what makes his sacrifice unworthy?
      • While Lily might not have realized she was being offered the chance to live because of how upset she was, I think Voldemort was very clear on Lily having the chance to survive. After all, if he was planning on killing her anyway he wouldn't have ordered her to stand aside so he could kill her child, he would have killed her and THEN gone after Harry. James might have been able to escape, sure, but we don't know if he could have managed it or not (does it require a wand?) but Voldemort didn't give him an opportunity to live. That's why I think that Lily must have realized that she was being offered the chance to live (she already knew he was there for Harry which is why they went into hiding in the first place) and because she was offered that chance, her sacrifice was enough to protect Harry. It has nothing to do with James' worthiness as a sacrifice, Voldemort just intended to always kill him and if any old 'well, he could have escaped but didn't' were enough to get Harry's protection, it would be much more common and Voldemort would have heard of it before.
        • So in other words... Snape asking Voldemort to spare Lily made it possible for Harry to survive, setting everything into motion?
          • Exactly. Snape asked Voldemort to spare Lily. So Voldemort gave Lily a chance to live. But Lily didn't take it and sacrificed herself, hence the protection for Harry. Had Snape never asked for it, Voldemort would just kill both of them, and there would be no magical sacrifice and no magical protection. It's not "I'm gonna die protecting my baby". It's "I'm gonna be offered a chance to live, but I'm gonna refuse AND die protecting my Baby."
        • It's presumably also got to be a genuine chance to survive, not a trick or bluff, in order for it to count. If the killer says "stand aside" merely as a ruse, intending to zap the obstructing enemy as soon as his primary target is dealt with, then what's sacrificed is only a few seconds of life, not an entire lifetime. Voldemort had fully intended to murder James all along—they were enemies, after all—and would've still killed him once Harry was dead, if Harry's father hadn't put up a fight. So James's standing between his family and death, while certainly a Heroic Sacrifice, was too fleeting of an intercession to bestow love's protection.
  • "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" says explicitly, "... the fundamental difference between being an Animagus and Transfiguring yourself into an animal [is,] in the case of the latter, one would become an animal entirely, with the consequence that one would know no magic, be unaware that one had ever been a wizard, and would need someone else to transfigure one back to one's original form." This seems to be a direct conflict with two instances in the original seven books. 1) Krum Transfigures his head into a shark in Goblet of Fire. How did he know what he was doing to continue the task/not go insane with the animal's perspective of having a half-shark-half-human body? (Also, not positive, but I'm pretty sure it says that he unTransfigured himself, which is also said to be impossible.) 2) Slughorn Transfigures himself into a chair. Without knowing that it was Dumbledore coming, was he hoping that a friendly, extremely talented wizard was just just going to come along and guess that the armchair was human so he could return? Because I'm pretty sure it's Dumbledore who puts him right again.
    • The first one can be Handwaved with the explanation that it's a partial transfiguration and he hasn't completely changed into a shark. There's also a bit of a crack theory that he's really a shark animagus and only partially transformed to hide the fact. As for Slughorn, it's never said he transfigures himself into a chair, does it? It could just be an illusion. If, however, that is the case, perhaps transfiguring yourself into a rock or something similar wears off after a while, unlike an animal transfiguration.
      • People don't actually need the 'unregistered' theory with Krum. He could be a registered shark Animagus-in-training, and not trying to hide it. Sure, Hermione looked up the registered ones in a previous book, and would have remembered Krum, considering there were only seven names, and would have probably mentioned this...except that was the British list, which Krum wouldn't be on. For all we know, you don't have to register whereever Krum lives, anyway. Or only have to register when you've mastered it, which Krum hasn't.
    • It may also be that transfiguring onesself does not entirely erase the human awareness immediately. And while Krum's head was a shark, the rest of his body was not, so possibly he was able to deduce that he was not entirely a shark, either, which kept his awareness lingering. It may also be that the vast majority of animal life does not have the opposable digit necessary to hold a wand - something necessary for most wizards to use magic.
      • Or the possibility that while being transfigured, one is put into stasis and would simply be frozen until someone else chose to change him. It may have been likely enough to risk it - Dumbledore knew that the specific piece of furniture was Slughorn, which means that there are probably ways to detect if an object is actually a person transfigured.
      • AND judging by the rules that food can't be created from magic, it's possible that transfigurations eventually correct themselves on their own. It seems likely that the length of time it takes for this to happen is significant, since otherwise the subject would be (in a practical sense) useless - it would be necessary that the transfigured item would have to stay in its changed form in order to be useful. And, although wizards "can't" make food using magic, this would be nonsensical if the item transfigured into food remained food. It's not possible to guess the digestive rate of any individual, but it's possible that the amount of time it takes to ingest nutrition from transfigured objects is not long enough (in some cases) for it to then be crapped out and eliminate the risk of a plastic doll turned to cheesecake to damage the individual.
    • As for Slughorn, maybe his fear pushed him to do this - living as a chair may be better, in his mind, than being dead. (Voldemort would probably have thought so.)
      • We can be fairly certain Slughorn didn't transfigure himself, since it only took Harry looking harder at him to see that he wasn't a chair. It was an illusion.
      • Even if he did transfigure himself, we can't know for sure that a wizard's mind is always displaced. This rule may only apply if the thing you're transfigured into has a mind of its own: if it's an inanimate object, or something innately brainless like an ordinary plant, then there's nothing to superimpose itself over the subject's consciousness and they retain their own intellect by default.
    • It's also possible that people are reading a distinction that isn't that. Transfiguring yourself into an animal and being an animagus might be the same thing...it's just that animagi know how to do it without hitting the two obvious pitfalls. It's not just Transfiguration, you also have to learn how to keep your mind and do it without a wand, but it is basically Transfiguration. Rather like driving a stick is mostly the same as driving an automatic, but you need to know a tiny bit more. (As for Beedle the Bard, it's a book for kids, and not having kids try to Transfigure into animals is basic 'don't try this at home' stuff.)
      • As possible evidence of this, both Sirius and Remus appear to know, and know the other knows, a spell to 'unAnimagus' someone else. Possibly that's because the first dozen times you try Animagusing, you're going to forget you're a wizard or at least be unable to turn back, so need someone there who knows that spell.
  • Individual wizards being ridiculously powerful bugs me. Dumbledore can take out 4 guys without breaking a sweat and single-handedly turn the tide of a battle. Voldemort is rumored not to attack Hogwarts because he is afraid of Dumbledore. Apparently, the only reason Grinderwald ruled so long was because nobody could beat him in personal combat, and once Dumbledore decides to fight him and defeats him, that ends his reign of terror. I'm sorry, but what? This is ridiculous; it's like if the reason Hitler was such a powerful dictator was because he was really good at MMA and could only be brought down by another really good MMA champion or something.
    • I always assumed that a wizard's strength doesn't matter as much as how well they've trained and researched. After all, those three wizards were considered geniuses and worked hard and long to get what spells and abilities they have. It wouldn't be that hard to assume that most wizards and witches are complacent, like Ron, and only do what's necessary to pass and graduate. The strongest ones are those that are gifted with learning and keep training for years. Yes, Dumbledore is said to have done things with a wand that OWL instructors hadn't seen before, but he also wanted to reach that ability and had been working at it for years.
    • It also seems to be that the actual 'amount' of magic a wizard has depends on the individual. Neville at one point refers to himself as 'practically a Squib'. Given that he is initially a poor wizard that could not compare with his classmates in talent and aptitude for magic, it seems that individuals naturally have a different ability to use magic. It's also notable that Snape tells Lily in the Prince's Tale, 'you've got loads of magic', suggesting that there is a limit to the power a wizard can reach based on the 'amount' of his/her magic, and that some people just have more magic in them than others do.
    • If guns didn't exist and the only way to fight someone was in an MMA fight, you better believe your Hitler scenario would work. The wizarding world only has magic to work with. A powerful wizard could therefore only be beaten by a more powerful/cunning wizard.
      • Not really. Even before people came up with guns or even advanced melee weapons, other factors than being the strongest mattered in leadership. Using the MMA analogy, you may be the best fighter in the world, but you'll still be taken down by, say, ten competent fighters. Especially as most magic in the Potterverse seems to be of the "point and zap" variety, so being surrounded/outnumbered is a big deal.
      • It's magic. It isn't meant to make sense. Dumbledore is simply amazing at magic, and so is Voldemort - that's why, when V died, the DEs lost the war - Voldemort was their Game Breaker, because he was so ludicrously powerful. Ever wonder why those hundreds of DEs didn't overthrow him? He could curbstomp them.
    • Partially Conservation of Ninjutsu. Perhaps this is less disconcerting for people who have watched a lot of anime, but how many series are there where people who draw from the same power source, or sometimes even lack something making them inherently better than others, can take out whole armies on their own, only to be stopped by someone else of their class.
  • Has anyone wondered how Moody could see through Harry's invisibility cloak? It is obvious that Moody's eye couldn't be fooled by illusions or tricks, but Harry's cloak is a Deathly Hallow, a relic of the Grim Reaper himself. Even Grimmy could not see through the cloak once he gave it to the third Brother. It goes unnoticed in the 4th book because this was not revealed. It just seems that an object made by an entity as powerful as Death could trump a magic eye.
    • Perhaps Moody noticed something unnatural about where Harry was hiding. He could have sensed that there was somebody in the room that he couldn't see, and just assumed it was Harry by somehow knowing Harry had a good invisibility cloak in his possession.
      • Alternately, the Deathly Hallow Cloak wasn't really made or owned by Death Personified, but was a really long-lasting invisibility cloak that had its reputation inflated by the story. Assuming that All Myths Are True, then it's entirely likely that Moody's eye might have picked up the subtle movement Harry was making as he was panicing at the time. That or Moody's Eye might have something else significant about it making it possible to see through even Death's Invisiblity Cloak.
      • Simpler theory; Moody's eye was enchanted by his old friend Dumbledore, using the Elder Wand. Therefore it can counteract one of the Deathly Hallows because it's empowered by another one. And there is evidence to suggest that Moody's eye was a unique artifact; Umbridge "repurposed" Moody's eye for her door-knocker, thus suggesting that someone as important as the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Magic could not requisition or purchase one.
    • If I recall correctly, Dumbledore says that the whole "items obtained from Death himself" thing is most likely a myth and that the hallows are probably just 3 exceptionally powerful magical items crafted by a trio of genius brothers.
    • Maybe it blocked his vision completely, and he was able to infer that Harry was there under the cloak because he ahd a "dead spot" where he couldn't see anything.
    • My theory is as follows: since this is the Cloak of Invisibility, made either by Death himself or some unknown, ludicrously strong wizard (Merlin?), it isn't inconceivable that the Cloak has some form of intellect of its own, and sensing that Moody was a friend (at that time), let Harry be seen, knowing with it's ancient-magic-Hallowy magic that Moody's supposed ability to penetrate the Cloak would come in useful later on. The Cloak seems to be the most subtle Hallow - it doesn't overwhelm with power by completely hiding the user from everything, it influences how things are going to happen; knowing, for instance, that Dumbledore was out to save Harry from the Mirror in Book 1, it revealed itself. Had it been Voldemort in the room, it would have kept Harry hidden. Come to think of it, it does that in Book 7: though Voldemort is around as strong as Dumbledore, the Cloak lets Harry & Co. sneak right past him into the Shrieking Shack.
      • Or, on a related note, the Cloak might be just as devoted to its rightful master as the Wand, and do what it must to ensure it remains with its owner. If that includes temporarily reducing its capacity for concealment so its invisibility can be penetrated by Moody's Eye, thus ensuring it will be mistaken for a normal, temporary invisibility cloak rather than one of the Deathly Hallows, then it will do so the instant it becomes apparent that the Eye is good enough to pick up clues (difference in air currents, ambient heat, etc) that something unseen is present. If its true nature as a Hallow were revealed, plenty of people would try to steal it from Harry, but an ordinary cloak of invisibility would be returned to him at the end of term even if confiscated by a professor.
    • The most obvious solution is to remember that Harry had, at that point, stepped on and sunken into a trick stair to his knees. Which meant that nothing below the knees was covered by the Cloak anyway. All Moody had to do was look through the staircase and he'd see body-less legs. (Sounds like an odd thing to do, but the ability to see just 'people' without walls and floors would be incredibly useful.) Of course, Harry thinks Moody can see him and is looking right at him, but we have no real evidence of that, and it's just as likely that Moody is staring where there must logically be the rest of a person, but one he impossibly cannot see. Moody calls him Potter before he's visible, but that's after Snape talked about how it's Harry's parchment and thus it must be Harry's clue. And then he gets wigged out by the Map revealing his real identity and basically forgets about the Cloak.
  • If statues, pieces of scenery, etc, can block spells, then just what else could? How flimsy does something have to be before a spell can get through it? I will accept that spells have impact force, as seen when Dumbledore is knocked off the tower, but it's clearly not that which kills you. So if a spell hits you through your clothing, why doesn't that stop the magical effects? Is it just because it's thin? What if you were wearing a bulletproof vest, or body armour? Why are these people so incredibly uninventive when it comes to protecting themselves?
    • Magic is a funny thing; it's not made clear whether spells are designed naturally to interpret clothing, armour, or hats as parts of the body when landing spells. For all we know, perhaps previously wizards tested what exactly blooks a spell with suits of armour and found that when wearing said armour, it made no difference and the spell still connected. This would make sense and possibily brings to mind special magic protecting armour (such as dragon hide gloves, etc.), but large scale armour limited mobility and wasn't as effective in longer battles, so it was gradually decided that dueling robes would be better suited. I think that it depends on the amount of force an object can take and how powerful the spell is for it to blocked by outside interfearance. After all, some hit objects burst into flame or explode, but still take the spell.
    • Also - and I'm sure there's a better way to say this - clothes have tiny holes in them that the magic could penetrate, while something such as a statue would not.
  • Okay, so say you're a man. Then you take Polyjuice potion to turn into another man, and while impersonating that man, you impregnate a woman. Who is the biological father of the child? You, because you're technically still you, or the man whose body you're using?
    • Polyjuice just opens a bag of Squick if you think about it too much. Other questions would be if you were a woman polyjuiced into a man and got a woman pregnant, then who's the father? Questions get worse the more you think about it, so it's best to just smile and nod and forget about it.
    • Even disregarding the squicky applications, the possibilities of Polyjuice are "nauseatingly limitless". Say a wizard commited a crime and escaped, but was recognized by wintesses. How can the prosecution prove that it was really him and not another wizard under Polyjuice? Even if he doesn't have an alibi, he can claim that the culprit abducted him, held him captive for the duration of the crime, then Obliviated him and let him go. Apparently, Obliviation is irreversible, as demonstrated with Lockheart, so if he presents a gap in his memory to the court, they won't be able to find out what was in it. And if the court will not accept such arguments, what exactly stops real criminals from using this very scheme to frame people?
    • A memory charm is treatable. Gilderoy is being treated at St. Mungo's, and although he can't remember much, they take his fondness for autographs as a sign of recovery.
      • Well, giving autographs was always sort of reflex for him. Besides, he fell under a botched spell performed with a broken wand, and it took them nearly three years in St. Mungo's to achieve even such a meager improvement.
      • I always thought he was so badly damaged because the wand was broken, so the damaged wand made the Obliviate less memory-erasing (probably easily reversible by someone like Dumbledore) and more magically-brain-damaging.
    • Consider this: Twins have identical DNA. But if twin A gets a woman pregnant, we don't consider twin B the biological father, now do we? A polyjuice potion basically turns you into a twin of the person whose organic material you harvest for the potion, ergo the situation you describe would be identical to the one I just described.
      • Yeah, but unless they confess, we wouldn't know which twin knocled the lady up, would we? So the problem still remains.
      • Polyjuice is only temporary. It probably wouldn't change your DNA either - if you conceived a child while transformed, it wouldn't have the DNA of the person you impersonated, it would have yours. It even being possible to conceive a child while polymorphed as the opposite sex is another question.
    • This brings a similar question to my mind: what if you're a man, use Polyjuice Potion to become a woman, and then end up pregnant while still transformed?
      • I guess that if you obsessively took Polyjuice Potion (difficult to do while sleeping, you'd need help) you might be able to carry the baby to term but since it only lasts for an hour the egg would have to be fertilized in less than an hour which is highly unlikely. And the odds of immediately ovulating upon taking the potion are really low, too. And is taking another dose causing the transformation to happen again or continuing it? Really, this is the sort of thing that might happen if m-preg's aren't possible and someone is deadset on having a child with another man but it won't happen accidentally.
        • It would continue the transformation. Remember fake!Moody in Goblet of Fire - specifically, his regular hip-flask usage?
        • Considering it takes a few days for an egg to get fertilized and implant itself, and Polyjuice Potion only lasts for one hour, and human beings have this habit of going to sleep for several hours at a stretch each night, it's not likely to be an issue. Soon as the transformed person stops to snooze long enough for the potion to wear off, the body reverts and any pregnancy that might've been pending is terminated. Same way Trevor the Toad didn't explode from reverting to a tadpole with an adult-toad-sized swallow of Shrinking Solution in his suddenly-minute belly.
  • I've always been wondering this: What exactly is the difference between a jinx, hex, curse, charm, enchantment, bewitchment, and so on? They never really explained that.
    • Well, to start with, the umbrella term for all incantations in the HP universe is spell. As for the rest, I'm paraphrasing here, but Word of God says this; a charm is a spell which doesn't fundamentally change the nature of the object, but adds or changes properties of it. For example, casting a spell to make a pillow talk would be a charm. A curse is a spell which is meant to seriously harm an opponent and cause lasting damage. A good example of a curse would be Sectumsempra. A hex is a less harmful, but still unpleasant, form of a curse, and a jinx is a less harmful version of a hex. Enchantment and bewitchment are interchangeable terms for the effects of a spell.
  • This is something that I've always found odd: many wands seem to incorporate ingredients derived from fairly rare creatures; Dragons, Unicorns, Veela, Phoenixes. Although some materials are probably centuries old (and perhaps from eras where dragons were more commonplace?), you would think, from what we've seen, that there could be only so many animals to sample from. Why, then, is it so incredibly rare for a Priori Incantatem reaction to take place, as it did with Harry and Voldemort's wands in the fourth book? You would think that there would have to be many wands with brothers/cousins/whatever made. Although, this raises another question- if brother wands do not function against one another, why not avoid creating brother wands in the first place?
    • Your second question answers the first. Wandmakers do avoid creating brother wands, that is why PI is so rare. Harry's wand was comissioned by DD with Fawkes' feather after V's fall in order to provide Harry with an extra level of protection. Sure, the wand chooses the wizard, but who said you cannot urge on its choice a little?
      • Huh! I wonder which interview that came from. One wonders why Olivander went through most of the wands in the shop before getting to the final. Maybe it was just like "Crap, where did I put that thing again? Oh, well, we'll find it eventually."
        • An interview with my common sense. As for the second part, remember that according to DD's brilliant master plan Harry is to be kept in the dark about...well, everything, for as long as possible. Thus the charade with the wands could've been set up to avoid possible suspicions or to discourage Harry from refusing that wand (which would've been perfectly understandable).
          • Would it have been necessary to do so, though? If Harry is told that the wand chooses the wizard and is given at least one wand that doesn't work for him (not the entire freaking shop's worth) then he'd likely be convinced and even if he is told that it's Voldemort's brother wand (which isn't really need-to-know information at the time) if it's the one that works for him then it's the one that works for him.
        • Possibly Olivander, like most of wizarding Britain, was still hoping that Dumbledore was wrong: that Voldemort had already been destroyed permanently and Harry would never need the brother-wand of the Dark Lord's. He offered Harry all those other wands to try out first, in hope that one of them would choose him and thus prove that Because Destiny Says So was no longer in effect.
    • Perhaps PI only works for twin cores. If there are multiple brothers, well, they're not twins anymore, are they?
  • Most spells are either Latin-based or made to sound Latin-ish. What, then, are the spells for the non-Western European based cultures? (The ancient Egyptians had magic, and predated the development of Latin by millenia.) I can only assume that there are different magical "languages" each following the rules of their appropriate languages, but then, why are most of the featured spells still (pseudo-)Latin? They should have evolved to the point where the majority of the spells are actually spoken in modern English. Alternatively, the spells should still be spoken primarily in Ancient Egyptian or whatever language the first witches and wizards used, with some more modern spells added on. Also alternatively, the magic users should be fluent in Latin/Egyptian/whatever, and be unable to speak or comprehend English. After all, they try so hard to distance themselves from the Muggle world...
    • Also, unilingual speakers might be physically incapable of producing the sounds necessary to fluently speak less similar languages. At least some wizards and witches came from eastern Asia (or the Middle East), and would either be unfamiliar with or unable to pronounce Latin spells.
    • "why are most of the featured spells still (pseudo-)Latin?" - because all the characters speak a language that derived from Latin.
      • Apart from Fleur and her family, none of the characters we meet has a daughter language of Latin as a native language.
        • Modern English is basically Middle English (a Germanic language) mixed thoroughly with Middle and Modern French (Romance languages) due to the Norman conquest of England.
        • There is also that while the everyday language of most of the cast members is not necessarily Latin-descended, for centuries past the "court language" of pretty much all the educated and/or noble people in Western Europe was either French or Latin.
    • I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that spells are named by their creator (which gets us the English "Point Me" spell), and since Latin is a fairly well known language (that is to say, a lot of people know a small amount of Latin), it just became convention. Also, spells in Latin sound cooler than spells in English.
    • Maybe it's the other way around. Could be that in this Verse, Latin was derived from the language of magic rather than vice versa, because its Romans were as well-armed with magic as with engineering and military expertise.
  • Following the above. When using the Accio spell they name the object being summoned in English. Any object. Which begs the question, if the Essence of Magic, or (who-)whatever the hell they are addressing when they cast spells, can in fact understand plain English, why can't they say the whole spell in English?
    • At various points, characters summon objects without saying the name. I'd guess that you need to know what you want to summon, and saying the name just helps get a picture in your head.
  • I've read the books, but I might have missed something in regards to flooing. It seems an actual fire plus powder and statement of destination has been required when flooing, but in the movies, after the second one, only a fireplace (or toilet) is needed. Fire isn't necessary, and Bellatrix uses the ministry fireplace with no powder or statement of destination to escape; later, the dream team does the same thing. So, what's the canon on flooing?
    • I've always understood it that the Ministry fireplaces are a special case. At one point it's mentioned that it's impossible to Apparate into the Ministry so the only ways in are through the phone booth and the toilets, and in the case of the latter it's probably a modified Portkey spell or something, not floo powder.
  • Regarding the effectiveness of the Killing Curse, what exactly are its capabilities? I know that if it hits someone, they die. Period. Also, it seems to have some kinetic force since it can blow chunks of stone away if it hits them, such as in the graveyard fight in the 4th movie/book. But IIRC somebody said that it's unblockable, or something like that, in one of the earlier books (possibly Moody in 4). So if it's allegedly unblockable, and will kill you unless you dodge, why can everyone block it all the time? Seriously, it seems like all Harry does during the final fight with Voldy in the move is repel his Avada Kedaveras. So am I remebering this wrong, or does Harry just have so much Plot Armor that he can block an unblockable curse?
    • Magic cannot be used to block it. Physical barriers do block it, but they break apart and can't hold for long. The only times spells have blocked killing curses in the series were in Book 4's graveyard duel (because of the twin cores), and in the last chunk of the Battle of Hogwarts (because of that perfect storm of love-induced anti-magic and Voldy's faulty wand). The movies do show wizards regularly parrying what may be killing curses, but that's an entirely different continuity.
  • When Arthur Weasley is trying to pay the camp manager before the World Cup, he needs Harry's help to distinguish between the 'little symbols' that represent numbers. He doesn't even know what a five looks like! Since he's supposed to be the head expert on everything Muggle, does this mean the rest of the wizarding community have never seen modern numerals in their lives? Of the many problems this would cause, how would they even recognise Platform 9 and 3/4s, for a start? What about essay writing, or textbooks? When a potion recipe says heat your cauldron for 30 minutes, do they spell it out all the time, or use Roman numerals or something? What about transactions at Gringotts, how complicated would the calculations be?
    • Mr. Weasley did recognize the numbers; he just didn't spot the "10" on the note at first, because he was unfamiliar with paper money. His mistaking the 20-pound note for a 5-pound note might've been him mistaking the pound sign, which looks strange even to Muggles from other countries, for some kind of weird cursive "5".
  • Here's a big one: why do wizards need wands? Yes, they make magic easier, but how does that work? This is never clarified in the books. Not once. It's not even hinted at. It bothers me that something so fundamental to the magic system gets no explanation whatsoever.
  1. ↑ although a given riot shield would probably only work once
  2. ↑ There is a smarter word for that but it is not in my brain
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