Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (novel)/Headscratchers/Unsorted Examples

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Please check JK's FAQs before asking a question that may have already been answered.


Unsorted Examples pt1

  • The choices of duelling partners in the final stages of The Battle of Hogwarts: particularly how Volders is fighting McGonagall, Sprout and Slughorn, while Bella fights Hermione, Luna, and Ginny. Ok, I get how Bella is weaker than Voldy, and how Hermione, Luna and Ginny are proficient duellers, but it still seems nonsensical that the second-most powerful dueller on Voldy's side (and one of the best duellers on either side) is fighting three kids. It also bothers me that Sprout and Slughorn should be the ones to duel Voldy, alongside McGonagall. As teachers, they clearly are skilled, but they don't even have specialities lying within using magic - Gardening and Cookery. On top of the fact that Slughorn is very very very fat, and all three are bloody old, it seems a bit ridiculous that they should be duelling Voldy, rather than somebody like Flitwick (a former duelling champion!) or Kingsley.
    • Um...Kingsley WAS there, Sprout was off duelling someone else, probably throwing her evil plants of death at people. But I see your point, Bellatrix seems a little too strong to just fight three girls barely of age. But, by this point she's frickin' insane, she was probably too wound up and crazy to fight effectively, whereas Voldy was still keeping his head.
    • As for their physical conditions, I think those should mean very little for wizards and such (case in point: Yoda). Not to mention that you could hardly speak about "choice of duelling partners" in such situation. It's a fight, it's chaotic. You fight whomever you've got pinned against. Naturally, all the best fighters available horded on V as the most dangerous opponent, so Bella got the rest (We don't know how many opponents she went through before ending in a stalemate against the girls).
  • It bugs me that Lucius Malfoy gets redemption because he loves his son and wife. I know, I know, he might have been sent off to jail at the end of book 7 off screen, but my point is that he was PRESENTED in a very positive light in the 7th book, despite all the horrible things he has done in the past and his former high-ranked Death Eater position. This is pretty much applied to all the Malfoys, but I really only have issue with Lucius because really, Draco is pretty much a stupid kid and Narcissa wasn't an active Death Eater and we don't have any proof that she really did anything, while we know for sure about Lucius being a devoted Death Eater and we know at least that he used to arrange "torture Muggles" nights. With all due respect to the sincere love of Lucius to his family, I'm sure a lot of Nazis, other racist murderers, mass murderers, just regular murderers, terrorists, mafiosos, rapists, etc. loved their family – it still doesn't excuse what they have done.
    • It was confirmed that the Malfoys "weaseled their way" out of Azkaban AGAIN (surprise surprise), so Lucius really never suffers the full consequences for his actions. However, that makes him and his family pretty believable - the survivors who can worm their way out of anything. Fair? Who knows. Happens in real life? Heck yeah.
    • Remember that Lucius is the only Death Eater shown to give even a fraction of a damn about anyone at all, so, whilst not completely absolving him, he certainly is a hell of a lot better than any of the others.
    • I don't know that he was presented in a positive light, just a less-negative-than-some-of-the-other-Death-Eaters light. Which is fair enough.
    • And Lucius and Narcissa betrayed their dark lord because of their love for their son. Narcissa telling Voldemort that Harry was dead saved his life. While the Malfoys are still evil pricks, they DID end up saving the wizarding world. So that's a plus, I guess.
    • I think Lucius is meant to be seen as a pretty pathetic figure in the end. He starts out as a devout Death Eater but completely fails at every task Voldemort gives him. Eventually even Voldemort thinks he's a joke. Everything Lucius does is either cowardly or self-serving or both. That isn't exactly a positive portrayal. Especially since the Malfoys are neither punished or redeemed by the end of the battle. They all walk off into relative obscurity, unworthy of much attention or consideration. A life of insignificance might be the best penalty for Lucius.
    • Also, where did "Lucius loves his wife and son" come from, anyway? In book two, we see Lucius making Draco feel like crap for only getting second in his class (after Hemione, a muggleborn) and pretty much all of Draco's character faults can be traced to trying to please the douchebag. Lucius is a terrible father. And we see Draco sitting between Narcissa and Lucius at the World Cup in the fourth book, which is usually only reserved for very small children and children whose parents do not get along.
      • Setting Draco up on an impossible mission to get himself killed as a punishment against Lucius would not be very effective if Lucius didn't actually care about Draco on some level, and yet this is exactly what Voldemort does in HBP. We can say that Lucius is truly crappy at expressing his love for his son, but that doesn't stop him from actually feeling some. (How many other people genuinely care about their families but are awful at actually showing it? Too many.)
  • During the Death-Eaters' regime in the seventh book, what would have happened to a wizard or witch who was the child of a Muggle-born wizard and a Muggle mother (or vice versa) under the new laws?
    • Supposedly the child would be little more than a Muggle-born, so in this case treated as though they were a Muggle-born. This is, of course, if papers weren't forged like some families were doing. To determine how 'pure' the blood is gets done by how many immediate family members are magical, mainly focusing on grandparents first then parents. So if papers were forged that the Muggle-born had two magical parents, the child would be treated as a half-blood. It gets rather complex the more combinations you bring into the discussion.
    • The whole idea the Ministry was putting out at the time was that any witch/wizard without any actual witches/wizards in their immediate family got their power by stealing it from a real wizard, hence creating squibs. While any mixed blood would definitely be looked down on and treated like second class citizens, it was only those without any magical parentage that got punished.
    • Why the wizards don't leave? I mean, they are being accused and incarcerated, so why they don't leave magical Britannia? They can apparate or use Floo powder or dozens of travel mediums and the entire Death Eater power base is just in the isles, so what stopped them from go abroad? Or better yet, flee to the Muggle word. Just like Slughorn shows, they could easily charm new proprieties, steal food and money, and above all else, it is a very big place to hide. Instead, they ended up like hobos and tramps (if they where lucky) in a Fascist regiment. Are wizards really that stupid? Even the Muggleborn side?
      • Probably many of them did leave the country, there were a lot of students going to Hogwarts after all. There's the possibility that they couldn't leave because the Death Eaters were controlling the magical transportation through and from Britain(not sure if it's canon, but it sounds right), and that threats like 'register yourself or your entire family gets it' were all sprung on the Muggleborns before they could consider leaving the country through muggle means (Heck, maybe some death eaters shot down aeroplanes etc) Also perhaps it didn't start out as 'you are a muggle you must die' more like 'please come to the ministry so we can check your files' so the muggleborns would come willingly.
  • It seems Harry had the following things going for him when he walked into the forest to confront Voldemort: the Horcrux inside him, his intent to die for the people he loved, and his blood in Voldemort's veins. Which of these did what again? My working guess is that the blood kept him alive, the Horcrux didn't do anything except go away, and the sacrificial intent shielded the defenders of Hogwarts, but I still feel like I'm missing something.
    • He also had the loyalty of the Elder Wand, which probably would have been hesitant to kill its owner, but not its owner's enemy's piece of soul.
    • I'd go so far as to say that's the long and short of it. Harry didn't die because he was the master of the Elder Wand. Dumbledore meant for Harry to actually die, sacrificing himself to kill the bit of Voldemort and to create the hearth-protection on the defenders of Hogwarts. The only thing that saved him was that the Elder Wand intervened. That's also why he wasn't hurt when Voldemort zapped his seemingly-dead body.
    • It wasn't the fact that he was master of the Elder Wand that saved him (in the forest when 'Morty hit him with the AK)... it was the fact that Harry was, himself, the final Horcrux. 'Mort's killing curse actually killed the part of himself that rested in Harry... of course, 'Mort didn't KNOW Harry was a Horcrux. The Elder Wand intervened when Voldemort fired off the AK in the final battle... Harry was able to "reflect" an "un-reflectable" spell, simply because the Elder Wand knew who its true owner was.
      • He didn't just have the Elder Wand. He had all three Deathly Hallows, and so was the master of death. Dumbledore knew he could bring the Hallows together, which is why he gave the clues to finding them to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and only them.
        • Didn't he drop the ring just before he was about to face Voldemort? And the cloak?
        • ^ One could argue the point that he had also mastered the Resurrection Stone and Invisibility Cloak by that time, too. Granted, the seemingly useless ring seems to have only one definitive useful purpose, gaining courage through images if your dead loved ones.
        • Also, the fact that he dropped the ring and cloak didn't change the fact that he owned them.
    • I don't think it was any individual element. IIRC, Dumbledore mentioned that so many extremely powerful magics had created a chimera of a magical bond unlike anything the Wizarding World had seen. Harry had a part of Voldemort's soul & Voldemort was essentially of Harry's flesh. Individually, either could have profound magical effects. Combined, it meant their souls were tied together with some darn good rope. And to add icing to the cake, a hesitant wand. From what I can figure, the process was more or less: AK is fired, hits. AK burns both souls and sends them to the Afterlife (or tries to, anyways). Horcrux is destroyed in the process. The Power of Love is still tying them together, however, which manages to hold Harry's soul (and the attached Voldemort shard) on the edge. Voldemort's own soul (or what's left of it) almost gets pulled in the process (remember, he collapsed and everything). This burns out the remaining link. Harry's soul, now free of its leash and still not past the Point of No Return, goes back. Meanwhile, the Ancient Magic of Love Protection was invoked when Harry gave his life for the others, rather than by the kill itself. That's why it worked even if Harry managed to return from the edge of the afterlife.
      • That's apparently what Rowling had in mind - she said that she wanted to make it that the defying death things were completely accidental, not formulaic and easily replicable.
    • In this troper's mind, this was all sort-of planned in Dumbledore's big Batman Gambit. In book 4, after Harry had his blood used in the resurrection ritual, there was a throwaway line about Dumbledore having a "look of triumph" in his eyes, that is quickly explained away by Harry being tired. My logic is that Dumbledore guessed that, given Harry's status as a Horcrux, and Voldemort's body now carrying on the protection his mother gave him, that it would very likely be the case that Voldemort couldn't kill Harry. He probably also guessed that Snape would eventually show Harry his memories, and, being the Manipulative Bastard he is, fed Snape the information that would drive Harry to sacrifice himself. Granted, Word of God 'does' imply that nobody really knew what exactly would happen, but Dumbledore probably had some good guesses.
      • Canonically, that is exactly what happened; Dumbledore confesses such in the "King's Cross Station" conversation towards the end of Deathly Hallows, right down to admitting that he was guessing. The problem here lies in that this would mean that Dumbledore had no plan on how to save Harry up until book four, which puts a decidedly different spin on Dumbledore's original intentions.
  • If the protective spells used in the beginning of the seventh book prevent any Death Eater from getting within X distance of the protected house (forgot what, let's call it "100 meters"), but include vertical distance and thus allow you to be 100 meters above, why the heck didn't the Death Eaters just drop a house, an elephant, a boulder, a tank full of enraged or charmed poisonous snakes, a bomb, or any number of other things on top of them? I mean, we have things that could easily and reliably kill from miles above or even miles away horizontally, without even using magic. Are they that focused on conventional offensive spells that they don't even acknowledge alternatives?
    • The spell blocks anything except Order members/Harry and friends from getting through. Seemples! *squeak*
    • Why, if the spell managed to bounce a flying Voldemort off, would a rock work? Yes, yes, no limit fallacies and all that, but Death Eaters are limited in what they can summon to heights as well, and the protective enchantment might shield against evil projectiles to an extent. Besides, wizards have no idea about high explosives.
    • And that's assuming that Death Eaters would even deign to stoop to lowly Muggle tactics.
    • Because trying "smart" tricks to circumvent magical spells is more likely to backfire than do anything useful? (See Fred and George's attempt at entering the Triwizard Tournament). Magic doesn't work by logical principles, people.
      • On the other hand, we know that the blood protections do not work to prevent Muggles from offering violence to Harry Potter on the premises of Privet Drive; we've seen Harry put in a choke hold, swung at with a frying pan, and have a bulldog set on him, not to mention all of Dudley's "Harry Hunting". The Imperius Curse has an obvious use here... and so does simply paying money to the sort of Muggles who will willingly do such crimes.
      • Fred and George used magic to circumvent the system. No word was ever produced as to what would happen if Cedric had put Fred's name in instead of his own. Yes, Dumbledore likely thought of every scenario, but Fred and George attempted the easy way to circumvent the system. The best example that would have proven or disproved the theory is lacking because Harry's view of the scene was lacking. Did any of the Death Eaters following him with Voldemort hit the barrier as well? And if they did, how many fell off their brooms (and likely hovered in air due to the spell)?
      • Asking someone else to put their names in is a possibility, but I'm more wondering why no one thought of the simple solution of a friggin pole.
      • ^ Because a) Dumbledore, like a Dungeon Master, probably thought of that, and b) carrying a pole through Hogwarts would be rather conspicuous.
        • When Dumbledore grabbed Harry in the film version of GoF and asked him a bunch of questions, he also asked something along the lines of "did you get one of the older students to do it for you?", implying he hadn't made measures against that. Which is odd.
        • As fake Moody explained, it took a strong Confundus charm to get Harry's name into the Goblet, as the Goblet is extremely powerful, and would've just thrown the extra name out/destroyed it.
        • The Charm wasn't needed to get Harry's name into the cup, but to get it in under the name of a fourth school, and make the goblet believe there was supposed to be four champions.
      • ^ Conjuration. Walk up to the goblet, conjure a pole, use the pole, dispel the pole.
      • Even simpler solution. Write your name on a slip of paper. Hand slip of paper to 7th-year student. Pay him some galleons to toss it in for you.
        • Isn't that one of the tricks Ron accuses Harry of having used? If Ron can think of it, presumably Dumledore can.
    • You're assuming that magic works on legalistic rules. I don't imagine that it works in such a way that a Death Eater can't be a hundred meters from Harry. Rather, it works in such a way that Harry is protected while he calls chez Dursley home. More likely it works on the same rules that your parents go by, if that makes any sense. If your parents say that you can't have any cookies until you get "back to the house," and you go to a friend's and eat cookies there, saying that you were technically "at the house" won't stop you from getting five across the face. It doesn't matter what the word of magic is, it's the spirit of magic that matters.
      • Contradicted by the Goblet of Fire sequence. If intent matters more than exact words then Harry should never have been forced to compete, because regardless of any slips of paper, Confundus, or anything else, Harry had no intent to form a magical contract at that time. Except that he was indeed forced into one anyway. In the Potterverse magic does indeed appear to be legalistic, not intent-based.
  • Why, oh why, why on earth did they decide that they needed to wear that locket in the seventh book? It wasn't for lack of better place to put it, as they had a bag of holding and another bag which could never be opened by anyone except Harry, either of which would be more secure than their necks. And even if context didn't tip them off that it was cursed and not nice to wear, they quickly figured out that it did, in fact, have a strong malignant effect when worn that they'd have been much better off avoiding. And they keep wearing it. And while I won't blame them for being caught off guard when it actually tried to kill Harry the first time, the fact that he continued wearing it even after that and gave it a second chance to kill him is absurd. He deserved to die for that.
    • The only thing I could think of is that the locket could exert some sort of 'pull' on anyone of interest who came too close; sort of fogging their heads up just enough to make it seem obvious that you have to wear the locket, you just have to. (Justifying, justifying...) It might help to explain Umbridge's inordinate interest in it, too: I mean, talk about a stickler for the rules (well, the ones she likes), but she let Fletcher off for the price of a locket? (Thinking about it this way at least made me a little less annoyed.)
      • This might also explain why Dumbledore decided the potion in the cave had to be drunk. Also (even though these have perfectly reasonable character-based reasons)) it could also add a second layer of explanation to Ginny trusting the diary and Dumbledore putting on the ring. It doesn't have a strictly solid textual basis, but it's entirely plausible that it was standard practice for Voldemort to guard his Horcruxes with mind-clouding magical effects in addition to the tangible protections around them.
    • Don't forget that Harry knows what happened the last time someone tried to wear a Horcrux. The ring was deadly, and that wasn't just spending time with it, it caused irrevocable damage almost instantly when it was put on. Good thing the Horcruxes generally prefer to screw with those who associate with them than to kill them.
      • No he doesn't..he doesn't know at that point it was putting on the ring that maimed Dumbledore, just that he was injured while retrieving it, for all he knows it could have been a protective spell around the hiding place that did it.
    • The three of them were extremely paranoid. They were hiding from the wizarding world and were carrying around a piece of Voldemort's soul while making freaking well certain he didn't find out what they were up to. All while marked for death and imprisonment and while Death Eaters and Snatchers were on the prowl. Harry didn't want to take the slightest chance that the locket would be stolen or lost. Even if he put it in his bag, there's no guarantee that the bag wouldn't have been lost or stolen, which would again mean no more Voldemort soul which would mean wasting time and possible danger trying to retrieve it.
      • Wearing the locket around his neck is no safer than putting it in that locked personal bag he also wears around his neck. It is probably safe to assume that the locket will mess with you if it's in your immediate possession though, otherwise they could have just put it in any makeshift bag to hang around their necks to protect themselves. It's not clear how the thing works.
      • Seriously, though, deciding to keep wearing that thing is like Frodo keeping the Ring on his finger: Plot Induced Stupidity.
    • I agree that it was very stupid. There's a line when they get the cup of Hufflepuff and one them (I think Hermione) says "Well, at least we don't have to wear this one", and kept it in their bag. Which means that they're fine with keeping a Horcrux in their bag if forced to, so it would've been much much safer to not wear the locket. Also, Hagrid had given Harry a mokeskin pouch, and no one but the owner of the pouch could take anything out of it. So that would've been the perfect place to put the locket, but Harry seems to have been holding an Idiot Ball and promptly forgot about the pouch seconds after obtaining it.
    • Wouldn't having it in the pouch exert the same effect? This is Voldemort's soul we're talking about.

Unsorted Examples pt 2

  • I don't care how dangerous or forbidden Fiendfyre is: If Hermione knew that it could destroy a Horcrux, she should have at least mentioned it rather than letting them search for months for something capable of destroying the locket Horcrux, treating the sword like they couldn't complete the quest without it once they knew it worked and then relying on Basilisk fangs to kill the rest. You're a smart person—you can find some way of using that spell without causing too much trouble, like Apparating to a tiny desert island right before casting it and Apparating away. As for the dark nature, if Unforgivables are ok that's ok, and with dark magic being sold and taught openly surely she could've gotten hold of it if she didn't know how to cast it. And she definitely knew of it, since she recognized it and knew that and why it would destroy a Horcrux when it was used.
    • I would tend to assume Hermione didn't know it, considering how Dark a spell it was, and as for learning it or buying it—how, or from whom, in the middle of the forest? Remember, the three of them were completely cut off from society.
    • If you don't know what happens to people who use evil magic just because it's more effective, even for a good cause, just ask Anakin Skywalker.
    • Who knows if it even needs fuel. Might as well hop all the way to the nearest settlement or whatever. (Not to mention that finding deserted islands to 'port to isn't quite easy.)
    • First off, how many "desert islands" does Hermione know about personally? Second off, Fiendfyring something is a guaranteed way to destroy anything and everything flammable as long as the fiery creatures can keep running, eating/burning stuff, etc. They'd have a field day in a forest, or (pardon the pun) a cornfield, and therefore using Fiendfyre on the tiny locket would probably be only marginally less noticeable than tripping the Taboo-sensor. The only reason that it stayed inside the Room of Requirement was because there were non-flammable walls enclosing the entire area.
      • Well, she knows that Ron went to Egypt between books Two and Three. Lots of deserts in Egypt, that's all I'm saying.
      • And even if you hadn't been there before, how could you possibly miss landing on Antarctica?
      • Sure, no one would notice the sudden spike in sea levels from all of the ice in Antarctica melting.[1]
      • You know, they never stated the fire dies out. Maybe, it it goes uninterupted, it could burn down an entire desert? Subtle.
      • And that's ignoring the problems of getting out of the country in the first place.
      • Yeah, really. IIRC, Quidditch Through The Ages mentions that Apparation between continents is quite difficult, and likely to result in Spliching (something Ron wouldn't be keen to experience again). As smart as Hermione is, she's not all that experienced at teleporting. Chances are, she wouldn't even make it across the English Channel.
        • The English Channel is only 150 miles wide at its widest point, and only 21 miles at its narrowest. Wizards routinely apparate greater distances than that; Hogsmeade is several hundred miles from London, for one example. What Quidditch Through The Ages is talking about is the inadvisability of inter-continental apparition, and by "inter-continental" they mean things like 'from North America to Europe', not 'from England to France'.
      • No, the only reason the fiendfyre stayed contained in the Room of Requirements is because it's a magical pocket dimension. Fiendfyre doesn't just burn flammable things, unless you're going to tell me that a tiara made of solid silver is somehow flammable. Fiendfyre eats everything. It is sentient fire. That is why Hermione never conjured any of it up.
        • Metals can burn, if you have the right conditions (usually involving the presence of carbon and extreme temperature). Also silver has a very low melting point for a metal, so practically any fire would have destroyed the tiara if it hadn't been horcruxed. The fiendyre worked because it's magical enough to break the protective enchantments of the horcrux, and simple temperature did the rest.
  • Anyone else bugged with Dumbledore's uber Omnipotence in the last book? He was always portrayed as a smart guy, but all of a sudden we're supposed to believe that he KNEW Harry would find all the Horcruxes, even though the only clues he left him were for the Hallows, and the location of one Horcrux in particular (the cup) was only deduced after the kids ACCIDENTALLY got themselves caught and taken to Malfoy manor? He acts as if almost everything went according to plan, when chance obviously played a hand in events.
    • He gave him everything they needed, the skill and knowledge to pick up where he left off. He didn't know that Harry would find them. But with the knowledge of Voldemort he imparted he damn well hoped that he could. The last book was Harry (somewhat literally) thrown into the wilderness to see how his skills shaped up without his omnipresent guardian.
    • Dumbledore makes mistakes, and makes decisions without consulting those affected, and when questioned his response is usually along the lines of Because I Said So. Dumbledore knew that a number of things he was doing were dickish or stupid (e.g. putting on the ring which would've killed him, which he openly admitted was a big mistake), and he did them anyway. There are a number of times in the HBP where Harry questions his decisions, and Dumbledore never gives him a straight answer, at one point saying yelling "I'm much cleverer than you" to Harry. Whatever his good points, Dumbledore promoted obedience over independent decision making.
    • Also, I got the idea that Dumbledore didn't know the locations of the cup or the tiara. He can't leave more clues for Harry if he himself had no idea.
      • Obviously Dumbledore didn't know the location of either the cup or the tiara. The tiara was right under his nose in the room of requirement the entire time. He'd have made a beeline for it if he had known. He showed Harry the last known location of the cup (stolen by Riddle from Hepzibah Smith) and taught Harry how Voldemort thinks and acts in the hopes that he could use that information to trace it down.
      • Harry almost explicitly said that Dumbledore wouldn't have known where the diadem was; he said something about how Dumbledore and Flitwick, being the model students that they were, wouldn't have gone into the Room of Requirement to hide things. And remember in Book 4, Dumbledore mentions a room full of chamberpots that he didn't understand.
    • Keep in mind, Dumbledore had one major failure: Snape. Harry's quests and assignments were Plan A, with Hermione and Ron able to carry Harry's knowledge of the Horcruxes if Harry died. Snape was the other side of the plan for killing Voldemort, and that plan completely backfired.
    • It was also implied that Dumbledore didn't know that they'd be able to figure out everything. He says at the end that he had "hoped" that Hermione would figure out about the Deathly Hallows and then have the sense to not let Harry go running off after them willy-nilly.
    • Simple: Dumbledore is BAD ASS.
    • To answer the OP's original question about Dumbledore's near-omnipotence, I say unto you: "Do you know what the dead do with most of their time? Watch the living."
    • To answer the OP's original question (different troper), the only alternative Dumbledore had besides knowing/believing that they would have found all the Horcruxes was basically to give up (especially when it was implied that he didn't know where the other Horcruxes were, so he wouldn't have been able to help in that regard anyhow). In the end, either they completely succeed or they fail, all or nothing, and Dumbledore was definitely wiser than to give up on the boy and the boy's friend who have overcome near-impossible odds many times before it became obvious that they would have the biggest hand in the battle against the greatest dark wizard of all time. For lack of knowing for certain the outcome, all he could hold onto was hope, and so his postmortem and premortem actions were on the assumption that they would succeed, as opposed to thinking it all futile and not doing anything while believing they would fail.
  • The three primary characters had very little time towards the end of the last book before Voldie discovered that his Horcruxes were missing. Time was of the utmost essence. And yet they sat down and had a meal with Aberforth (granted the conversation at the END of the meal was necessary for plot and character development). That's okay, though, because we all know that the bomb isn't disarmed until the last second, and that when the camera isn't on the clock itself, time does strange things.
    • There was one particular thing there: they had no way to get into Hogwarts, which is what Aberforth told them. In order to get in, they had to convince him to help them, because he had the only key to the last secret passage. So, if you don't know how to get where you want to go, best to ask for help. And eating after everything they'd been through probably wasn't a bad idea either.
    • I'm pretty sure Harry would have jumped into action once his scar begins to burn way worse than it did the past months. Besides—aside from the reason given above—it would be a great idea to pack in some calcium and carbohydrates to get ready for the biggest evil Badass of all time.
    • They hadn't slept, hadn't eaten, and were recovering from a Dementor attack. It doesn't seem like a quick meal of bread, cheese, and wine while trying to get help from Aberforth was that unwarranted.
  • How do the Malfoys, who used Unforgivable Curses multiple times each, "weasel their way" out of punishment just because Narcissa helped Harry a little? (Especially Lucius because he actively fought for Voldemort, so did Draco, Narcissa probably did too)
    • Because Narcissa's aid was a significant, and arguably vital, part in the defeat of Voldemort. That plus Harry Potter being the forgiving type towards the Malfoys could swing it easily, especially given that immediately after the events of Deathly Hallows, it's hardly unreasonable to presume that the Ministry of Magic would be feeling extremely charitable towards Harry and any requests he happened to make.
      • Significant? Vital? Voldemort is a moron. What would he have done if Narcissa had said Harry was alive? AK him again. To absolutely no effect. We know this because he does that later. Frankly, had she said he was alive, the duel would have probably taken place right then, only Harry would just have to grab a wand from the nearest Death Eater instead (who would be way too shocked to put up resistance). Frankly Voldy is way too stupid to try anything but magic, even if he could win by bludgeoning Harry to death with a stick.
        • Wrong. Voldemort's AK in the great hall didn't work because the Elder Wand wouldn't overpower the simultaneously-cast counterspell from it's true owner. If Voldie AKed Harry in the forest a second time, Harry would be dead, as he had no chance to defend himself, and no longer had any protection from things like bits of Voldie's soul hanging onto him. Also, he did have his wand in his pocket, he just didn't want to be tempted to use it to defend himself when he went to meet his death. And who's to say that after the party died down, the Malfoys weren't arrested, tried and sent to Azkhaban? All we see is the party (where the Malfoys are sitting nervously expecting someone to confront them at any moment), then cut to 19 years later, where we only see Draco. His parents might still be in Azkhaban, and he might have served time there himself.
        • Expeliarmus isn't a counterspell. It's a disarming spell, causing whatever was in a persons hand to fly out of it. AK was already launched and it hit Harry to no effect.
    • There's no reason to believe that the Malfoys didn't pay their due between the end of the Battle and Nineteen years later. For all we know Draco could have been in Azkaban for 9 years, released, THEN got married and produced little Scorpius.
    • Also, ever since the beginning of book 6, Narcissa seemed unwilling to follow Voldemort. I believe she only did because she was afraid for her son's life. Draco was only 16, and so slanted from his father's (and probably mother's) prejudice, how could he be expected to be anything else? He showed potential for good at the end of book 6 and, had he been given more time, I think he might have taken Dumbledore's deal. He was frightened, just like his mother. In book 7, he does show some mercy, if you look closely at encounters with him.
      • Because when you run a successful counter-revolution and you win you still have to work with the people that were on the other side if you want a lasting peace. The US learnt that the hard way in Iraq. Remember how they threw all Ba'ath party members out and the country went to hell? Same principle, unless the new administration wanted to re-fight this war with different names in 20-ish years time, then they had to swallow their righteous indignation and forgive and forget. Winning a war is the easy part, winning the peace is the hard bit. I suspect there was probably something like the South African peace and reconciliation committee involved. Plus heroes are kinda obligated to be heroic and gracious in victory, vengeance and punishment is for villains in the Potter-verse.
  • Harry Potter's just a bit too fond of the Idiot Ball when it comes to using his magical items sensibly. Sirius Black, his beloved Godfather, gives him a magic mirror which allows him to communicate with him any time he wants. Harry promptly puts it away somewhere and forgets about it, even when he really, REALLY wants to check with Sirius to make sure it's OK. Then, in 'Deathly Hallows' he gets a magic bag which, when he puts something in, nobody else but him may get it out. PERFECT place to put a Horcrux...except when a certain author wishes to do an irritatingly long homage to The One Ring. So instead Harry puts the damn thing around his neck and acts like a Jerkass for several hundred pages and almost gets killed as a result. It even gets to the Ron arguably engages in a Lampshade Hanging after rescuing Harry from drowning.
    • Thank you. It really bugged me that Harry & co. were determined to wear that thing around their necks, despite the fact that they knew an evil soul lived in it, and was corrupting them. Even if they were too dumb to put it in the magic bag, um, hello pockets anybody? They even say they're glad the cup doesn't have a string so they don't have to tie it around their necks...even though there was no reason to wear the locket in the first place.
    • Probably would have been the exact same thing as wearing the thing if Harry put it in his bag in terms of mental exhaustion, just because he isn't explicitly wearing it doesn't mean it won't effect him due to mere proximity. The reason why they actually wore it is probably because it would be a bit more of a chore switching the amulet to another person should they have to extricate it from whatever extra dimensional space it is currently in, especially if the person is rather irritable as would likely be the case.
    • The bit with the mirror, IIRC, was that Harry didn't know what it did, as when Sirius gave it to him, he was to busy having a hissy fit to really care. He didn't find out what it was until Sirius was already dead.
      • He knew it was a method for contacting his godfather and put it away vowing never to use it cause he figured it would result in Sirius getting captured, however between this and the ending much time had passed and he no doubt (in his panic) forgot about the package he hid and put out of his mind much earlier in the year. He only had moments, in his mind, to come up with a plan to save Sirius and as far as he knew Sirius was most certainly being held at the Ministry, it wasn't a matter of talking to him, it was a matter of getting to him in time.
        • In response to Harry knowing the present was a way to contact Sirius, no, he did not. Sirius just told him to use it when Harry really needed him, or something vague to that effect, and Harry never even opened it. Its appearance at the end of the book serves to make the situation more poignant: all this time he had a way to save Sirius but did not know about it.
        • On top of that, he suddenly realizes at the end of the book that he had the mirror all along and spends several minutes figuratively kicking himself over it.
    • Just because his bag could only be opened by him doesn't mean that it couldn't have been stolen or lost. And even if the Horcrux couldn't have been taken out, it still would have meant that they would have wasted time and endangered themselves trying to get it back.
  • Wouldn't it have been easier to steal around someone's neck than in a bag no one but Harry can take things out of? Imagine if they'd still had the locket when the Snatchers caught them. Presumably someone would have searched them and found the locket. Even though they would've had no idea what it was, it wouldn't have been too hard for one of them to go "Hmm, this looks valuable. Yoink."
    • I'm still of the opinion that one of the enchantments on the locket was an Idiot Ball. There was no reason for them to carry it around and degrade their mood and friendship, it was the locket causing all intelligent thoughts about it to be ignored.
  • Just had a thought, though most of the muggle-born wizards who were accused of "stealing" magic by Umbridge and co were sent to Azkaban in Deathly Hallows, some became street beggars. But they were muggle-borns, couldn't they have moved in with other relatives or looked for a council house and signed on to the Dole until they picked up enough skills to get a non-magic job. Which could have taken a while, yes, but would have given them somewhere to live until the regime blew over.
    • Some of them probably have. There are presumably thousands of wizards in Britain. Assuming roughly ten percent of them are Muggle-born, there would be hundreds lining the streets if every one of them took to begging. Probably the ones left behind are the ones who didn't have any Muggle connections left, as Lily would have been if it had happened to her (after all, she couldn't very well go to Petunia now, could she?)
    • Most Muggle-borns probably don't maintain enough of a legal identity among Muggles to return to a life among their parents' kind. If they applied for public assistance, they'd be asked why they hadn't previously done so...and, if they admit they'd been working in the interim, why they haven't been paying their taxes up to now.
    • Plus, imagine being an adult having to read adjust to the Muggle world after essentially becoming more Wizard than Muggle. Especially since you would have, at best, a fourth grade Muggle education.
    • Keeping in mind that the regime was obviously, visibly turning against Muggles, many of them probably didn't want to put their relatives in danger by staying with them.
    • There's also the fact that a lot of hate crime was obviously going on and the most popular wandmaker in England had disappeared. Who's to say that there weren't some real wizards and witches who had their wands "confiscated" by hacks or rogues masquerading as "peacekeepers" or something. With no way to cast magic and no way to get a replacement, what else could they do?

Unsorted Examples pt3

  • In Deathly Hallows, we see Harry using three wands and causing more damage than the standard single wand. Why doesn't everybody use multiple wands in that case?
    • When?
        • Moody did mention 'someone' loosing half a buttock due to misfire...
      • That would probably be hideously expensive. And not especially useful for the majority of applications.
        • Maybe when buying a wand, it will only choose a wizard who doesn't already have one to begin with (though the rules are different when you win a wand in combat). So unless you happen to have won a lot of wands, it's just not worth it. You could buy multiple wands sure, but without the allegiance there wouldn't be much of a power gain.
    • Maybe if a person uses more than one wand, either the wand they aren't attuned to starts getting less and less usable, or of they use two wands with a strong link to themselves they get into competition and eventually "pull the wizard apart" (metaphorically or explosively) when he or she tries to multicast a stunning spell one too many times?
      • What I'm getting from that is that wands are jealous, possessive, and territorial. Man, wands are pricks.
        • Yes, yes they are. But think of it like a person who switches between a calligraphy pen and a felt-tip pen. As the person prefers the calligraphy pen because the felt-tip doesn't have enough force feedback or stroke control, or the felt-tip because the calligraphy pen is too scratchy, they rely more and more on the one with which they are more comfortable, and get more practice with it, and become even more comfortable with it. It's sort of the same way with wands, only instead of the ink from two separate reservoirs flowing through it to mark paper, it's your energy flowing through it to warp reality.
      • Probably because using multiple wands would be like using a single battery to light up multiple bulbs arranged in a parallel circuit. IOW, it would drain the caster's energy much more quickly, and the increased effect is not that great because not all wands are compatible to the wizard.
    • The most widely-used wandmaker in England was missing and the Ministery was confiscating wands left and right. New ones would have been hard to come by.
    • Also, the few times multiple wands/spells are used, they don't just have more powerful, they're unpredictable. What if, using your uber-powerful-ten-wands-tied-together-stick-of-DOOM, you tried to bake a cake and instead accidentally destroyed a country with a magical nuclear explosion? When Harry, Ron and Hermione-three tired, weakened, confused teenagers-try to disarm Snape, they end up smashing him into a wall and nearly kill him. No point killing an enemy if you turn everyone else around you and yourself into a pile of smouldering ash.
  • Voldemort had the children of Hogwarts under his control for nearly a year. Why didn't he use that time to brainwash the kiddies into becoming little Death Eaters? Almost all the students volunteer to fight against him in the end, so we know he didn't.
    • He wanted to (he did make attendance obligatory), he put Snape in charge of running the place and Snape was working against Voldemort. So Maybe Snape lied in saying he was brainwashing the kids, while making sure the non death eater teachers were free to teach the kids properly.
      • What makes you think he didn't? Carrows taught Dark Arts to kids, Muggle Study lessons were used to trumpet anti-muggle propaganda, what else do you need? Besides, let's not forget that for the length of the DH Voldemort was intent to remain a grey eminence until La Résistance is crushed so as not to instigate a full-scale rebellion among wizards. It turned out he was right as the rebellion did break out after he went gunz blazing against Hogwarts.
      • He tried to do that, definitely. Turns out, torturing eleven year old kids is not the best way to win their loyalty.
      • Additionally, he had not even a full year to start his brainwashing program, and most of the students who wanted to stay knew Harry personally. That's gonna trump an obviously eeevil education. (Plus, the older students may very well have told the younger ones who hadn't had as much contact with Harry not to listen to the Carrows).
  • Why on Earth did Voldemort allow known members of the Order of the Phoenix to work at Hogwarts, educating the next generation of potential Death Eaters instead of killing them and replacing all the lessons with propaganda? Young children are relatively easy to brainwash most of the time, so why was the whole school not staffed totally by Death Eaters?
    • And it is stated in the books that Voldemort idolizes Hogwarts and the teachers, to him it's the real home he never had and everything he wished to have. He could only bring himself to destroy the teachers from his school if they openly opposed him; he did receive the best magic teaching at Hogwarts after all; and surely, with Dumbledore and Potter dead and defeated, the remaining teachers would understand that he is almighty and all powerful and wouldn't dare to cross him. Voldie is the Evil Overlord made flesh.
    • None of the teachers are members of the Order except Snape (who's a triple agent), Moody and Lupin (who no longer teach). Harry himself tells that to Slughorn at the beginning of book 6. Beside, you never see Flitwick or McGonagall around Grimmauld Place do you? The teachers ARE supporters of Dumbledore however, but Voldemort could hardly kill them all and keep the school running (as was his plan by making attendance obligatory). He'd then have to fill the school with Death Eaters, and seeing as there's only 20 active death eaters at most, that would hardly be practical.
      • Actually, McGonagall did come to Grimmauld Place once in Book 5. I don't have it in front of me, but I seem to remember something like Harry thinking she looked very odd in a muggle dress.
      • So use the Imperius Curse on them. Simple.
      • Except the Curse can be resisted, especially when used for long periods of time. Since Voldemort was planning to control Hogwarts forever (He didn't know he'd be defeated in a year, after all), it would be awkward to keep the teachers imperiused (Barty Crouch Sr. 9 months to shake off the curse, Harry was able to do it after a few short applications). I wouldn't want to be one of the Carrow Siblings when Flitwick or McGonagall breaks free of the curse and decides it's time to kick your ass. Voldemort probably figured that with his "loyal" Death Eater Snape in charge, he didn't need to do anything else to keep the teachers in line, after all, he just had to tell the teacher that if they step out of line, the kids will be the one to get most of the punishment.
  • The giant Ass Pull from the seventh book, "the trace." It's a complete flip-flop from the rest of the series that explicitly stated that the Ministry couldn't detect WHO was doing magic, just where.
    • I always thought it was more like the Trace could detect underage wizards, not underage magic, so they could tell if magic was performed in the vicinity of an underage wizard, but they still wouldn't know if they'd actually performed the magic or someone else.
    • So when Dobby performed magic at Privet Drive Harry got in trouble. How about all those underage kids that have older friends doing magic, or their family at home constantly performing magic around them? Do they get whisked off to be tried at the ministry as well? Alternatively, underage wizards could get away with doing magic in their own house as long as older wizards lived there.
      • Word of God states that for underage wizards who live with wizard families, the Ministry more or less trusts the parents to control the children. What they're mostly concerned about is magic performed in Muggle areas, what with that pesky Statute of Secrecy and all. So Dobby's pudding trick wouldn't have called upon Ministry officials if he'd tried it while Harry was staying with the Weasleys, for example.
      • "the Trace could detect underage wizards, not underage magic, so they could tell if magic was performed in the vicinity of an underage wizard, but they still wouldn't know if they'd actually performed the magic or someone else." If this is true, then why doesn't Harry get in trouble in GoF when Arthur reverses the Engorgement Charm on Dudley's tongue? Or when Tonks magically packs Harry's trunk and cleans Hedwig's cage in OotP? There was no way for the Ministry to know that there were adult wizards/witches at Privet Drive at those times, so why wouldn't they immediately assume that Harry was the one doing magic?
      • Arthur is the head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts department. Tonks is an Auror. Either of them could easily have left a note with the relevant Ministry department of 'I may be using magic in this vicinity today; disregard alarms from that location' and passed it off as official business.
      • That makes sense in GoF, but it doesn't make as much sense in OotP, since the Order were working mostly without Ministry knowledge/consent, so presumably someone in the Ministry would have been very interested to know what 'official business' Tonks was getting up to in the home of Harry Potter, whom the whole Ministry was against.
      • It's also possible that someone in the government did have some sense and turned off the alarms on Harry. (If not the actual Trace.) It's also possible they did send him some warnings afterwards, which never made it to him because of the protection around him, or the Weasley adults just discarded. (Or maybe the warnings went to the Dursley's, oops.)
      • Actually, this would explain why from book 5 onwards the Order guards consistently stayed out on the sidewalk and never tried to talk to Harry. It's not just because 'Dumbledore ordered them to ignore him' or somesuch, to reference that fanfic cliché. Its because they're trying to stay outside the range of the Trace and unlike book 4 and Arthur Weasley, they have no 'legitimate' reason for being there.
    • If the Trace can only detect if someone nearby is casting magic, then when an underage Tom Riddle murdered the Riddles, why wasn't the ministry at all curious about an underage wizard casting magic in an area where no underage wizards lived? (Or was Tom 17 when he did that?)
      • We're never really told what age Tom is when he kills his dad and grandparents. Either he was old enough to not have the trace, there wasn't a trace at the time (it was 50 years ago), or the least likely but still possible he didn't directly kill them but later claimed to. Keep in mind he'd have been 17 halfway through year 6 because his birthday is on December 31. He could have done it over the Christmas break in his 6th year.
      • The Gaunts lived way out away from town and were all magic. Yes, technically Morfin was living by himself, but the Ministery didn't necessarily know that. All they would have known was that someone used magic in a place that they already knew was the residence of a magical family, a family with a daughter no less (so for all they knew, Merope still lived there and had a child, or even that they had younger magic relatives staying over).
    • Actually, at least in Order of the Phoenix, the Trace tells the Ministry that magic has been performed in the vicinity of an underage wizard. Madame Bones made it a point to state that Harry was the only known wizard living in Little Whinging (brought up because of Mrs Figg, who said she lived near him, and she had to elaborate that she was a Squib and thus didn't show up in the registry). This is also why children from magical families are trusted to control their child's use of magic, because the Ministry wouldn't be able to tell just who had used magic, which is why Fred and George get away with using magic over summers without Ministry notices (Otherwise, they probably would've been expelled a dozen times over). Besides, Ron quickly points out that Harry can't still have the Trace, being seventeen—the point of concern for them is that the Death Eaters might have somehow changed the way the Trace works, in order for them to more easily locate Harry, perhaps even to the point of being able to tell exactly who had used magic. As it turned out, however, it wasn't the Trace at all that allowed the DEs to find Harry, it was because he said 'Voldemort', which had been made Taboo by that point. (Which was really very smart on Voldy's part, considering the only people shown to not be afraid of Vodemort's name are Dumbledore (who's dead), Harry, and perhaps certain very high up Order members.)
  • Why on earth did Harry take Hedwig with him in a cage in book 7 when they were doing that clone thing? Or take her with him at all? He could have just sent her away with a letter to keep her safe. What exactly was the cage meant to accomplish? Protect her?! It just seems Rowling put her there so she could kill her off.
    • That's how he was trying to keep her safe. She's already been injured in the past when he's sent her off on mail runs—with both Voldemort and the Ministry out to get him, keeping her home is in her best interests. It just sucks that someone decided to kill her anyway.
      • Also keep in mind that he had her stored inbetween his knees inside the sidecar, meaning she would have been well protected for flying spells. It was only after the bike spun upside down, causing the cage to fall out, that she became vulnerable.
    • Don't forget, all the other Harrys had fake snowy owls in cages. The Death Eaters all know Harry has an owl so sending her off beforehand would look suspicious.
    • They sort of resolved this in the movie. Harry lets her fly instead, so none of the other "Harrys" had to have a fake Hedwig. She dies trying to protect Harry.
  • Why did Regulus sacrifice himself to retrieve the horcrux? The fact that Kreacher had escaped from his situation before and that elves can apparate with humans alongside them (such as Mundugus) should have told him that it was perfectly possible to leave that place alive with the damn thing, simply by repeating the events of last time; have Kreacher drink the potion, grab the locket, have him drink from the lake, and hold onto him while giving him an order to apparate back home and take Regulus with him. Sure, this would have meant Kreacher would be in horrible pain again, but was it worth his life to insure that didn't happen, when he himself was going to suffer the same pain beforehand? Was he so guilty over his actions that he deliberately decided on a suicidal plan to obtain the horcrux?
    • Because Regulus joined the Death Eaters more out of spite than really believing in their Pureblood supremacy BS, andhe regretted it. Also, Kreacher respected his master because, unlike Sirius and everybody else, Regulus treated Kreacher as his equal; you know, the same relationship Harry has with Dobby. Kreacher realizes this, and even if he doesn't admire Potter outright, he starts hating him less and even respects the half-blood for wanting to honor the Black family and making Voldemort pay for (in Kreacher's eyes) hurting his master. Kreacher becomes half-crazy from the paradox of having served his master so well and to the letter that he allowed him to effectively commit suicide, and then left him to die alone and was forbidden from telling anybody.
    • Maybe he...didn't want to make his friend, even if he is a house-elf, drink a potion that makes him relive horrible experiences, wish for death, and barely come out alive with nursing? If he had made Kreacher go through that again, a lot of people would have seen that as his crossing the Moral Event Horizon.
      • I think Kreacher was much, much more hurt and traumatized by the fact that not only did Regulus die, but that he had to leave him behind as he was being killed. Given the choice between that and the potion, I think Kreacher would have taken the potion in an instant.
      • Kreacher may have been willing to do it, but Regulus may not have been wiling to do it to him. It's easier to sacrifice oneself than to inflict that same horror on someone else. Harry certainly wouldn't have done it to Dumbledore if he wasn't explicitly and repeatedly ordered to.
    • Regulus was a dead man either way. He stole Voldemort's horcrux, one of (at the time) 5 artifacts that makes sure Voldemort can't die. He also had a tattoo that would lead Voldemort straight to him in the case of defection. Regulus knew he was dead either way, so he sacrificed himself to zombies rather than have the death eaters hunt him down.
    • I was under the impression that Reg sacrificed himself specifically to spare his family both the shame of his defection plus the wrath of Voldemort when he discovered his soul-hidey place was gone.
      • Which he DIDN'T until mere hours before the Battle of Hogwarts.
  • Why is it that no one has a problem with Draco Malfoy naming his son Scorpius? The family theme-naming is fine with me and I understand that the wizarding world has different naming traditions, but I've never heard any stories about benevolent scorpions.
    • Because it's awesome. And hey, Draco's named after dragons, which in the Potterverse tend not to be very benevolent either.
    • Draco and Scorpius are also constellations, which is similar to how Sirius and Regulus are named after stars.
  • Page 167, Hermione says she has never done a memory charm. However, three chapters ago she stated that she had charmed her parents to move to Australia, assume new identities, and forget their only daughter. Care to explain it to me?
    • Possible she used the confundous charm mentioned in book 3, the one that confuses you enough that the Minister will buy the kids thinking Sirius is good. Though thanks for pointing that out to me I forgot about that line.
      • She changed their memories, she didn't remove them. Different spells.
        • So, after the war was over and Voldemort was dead, did she go back to Australia and save them? If so, would she be able to recreate their memories of her?
          • That's not what he meant. There are two types of memory charms, one that destroys the old memory (the one Hermione had never done and presumably much harder) and one that "layers" a new, false memory on top of the old one (the one she did do). No recreation is necessary, she merely undoes the false memory, and the original memories are returned as normal.
          • As stated above, there are two different memory spells- Obliviate, which, well, obliterates a memory or else renders it inaccessible (more the latter, as it is stated in Phoenix that Lockhart was getting his memory back), and Confundus, which is what is used on Marietta Edgecombe in Phoenix to lie about the DA meetings, and frequently on Dawlish the auror (notably in Hallows when he gives a separate date for Harry's removal from Privet Drive), and alters memories, or, confounding them. The latter was most likely what Hermione used.
    • If Obliviate completely removes memories, why does the Ministry official on the Muggle camping ground-owner in GoF? Why wouldn't he realise that he had hours of blank space where a memory should be? Wouldn't modifying/replacing the memory make more sense that just leaving the guy with hours of missed time/blank space that you would expect him to get suspicious of? Also, Harry says a couple of lines later that he "recognised the symptoms of one who had just had their memory modified." So apparantly Harry thinks that Obliviate modifies rather than replaces memories.
      • The first time we see Obliviate is from Lockhart who probably intentionally either removed the memories or modified them to make the person believe he did the events. The only reason he completely lost his memory was because of the broken wand and he was intentionally trying to remove their memories. I believe a properly cast Obliviate modifies the memories rather than removing them, which makes more sense in the Muggle's situation as he'll have his memories modified so he'll forget any "irregularities".
      • Foaly from Artemis Fowl explains, basically, you brain is very good at completing the gaps and will make up stuff to compensate. Memory is extremely malleable, after all.
    • She said she confounded her parents. That doesn't mean she did. My mother has a fragment in a series of HP fragments where Hermione's parents were actually killed by Death Eaters. Hermione lying is more in-character for her than her confounding her parents.
  • Fred died in the battle of Hogwarts (as much as I'd like to pretend he didn't.) So what happened to his hand on the clock Mrs. Weasley has, the one that has the name of each Weasley and tells where they are at any given time?
    • I guess it might be stuck in "mortal peril" (the last position it was likely in) until somebody removes it, if it is possible. Either that, or the clock is enchanted to permanently vanish the hands of any deceased family members.
      • ^That, or it's stuck on "trapped eternally in the otherworldly abyss". It'll switch to either "Living in eternal glory" or "Getting raped by the raging fires of the damned" depending on how the judge rules.
    • Perhaps it changed from "Fred" to "Fleur", thus defaulting to the newest member of the Weasley family?
    • Or maybe the handle simply fell off, evaporated or (since we are talking about Fred here) exploded?
  • Did Hermione's parents ever get de-brainwashed? Were they ever confirmed as back in Great Britain or still in Australia, or were they simply never mentioned again?
    • Simply never mentioned again as the after events of the finale left them in Australia. It's possible that Hermione went and found them later but unless a Word of God comes out about it we don't know.
    • No, they're currently running a dental office in Melbourne with their adult son, Henry, and teenaged daughter named Hermione (they always wanted a daughter so they can name her that).
    • This troper believes that Rowling did confirm that Hermione tracked them down and fixed up their memories.
      • Meh. More "Word of God" stuff. Would it have killed her to write the story in such a way that this stuff actually gets mentioned within the books and not in various interviews she gives after the event, therefore giving the impression that she is making it up to cover plot holes...?
      • If she did that with everything, the book series would've been twice as long.
        • I'm sure they would. But if she considers these thngs she introduces to be important enough to clarify and make sure people know how they were resolved in interviews, then surely they are important enough to be in the book. Lesson of the day? Only introduce stuff you will provide a payoff for.
        • No one like plotholes.
        • An unresolved subplot is not a plot hole.
          • Not mentioning all specific things that happened in between the last chapter and the epilogue is not a plot hole. Stop using that term when it does not apply.
          • Still, no-one likes unresolved subplots either.
              • Still, people have different tastes and ideas. J.K tries to include resolving of sub-plots, and some will complain about the unnecessary infodump (I know I would)
        • She introduced the subplot to explain something no fan ever specifically asks (why did Hermione's parents let her come?), it's not unreasonable to hope that she would resolve this without having to be asked either. While I didn't wonder too much about it (so distracted was I by, you know, the massive deaths that still had me crying), I think the foresight she had to include Hermione's excuse for leaving her parents could (easily) have included the resolution. Then again, she may not have anticipated the fact that people seem to find the use of memory charms disturbing, and so perhaps she completely forgot it where fans that zoom in on that topic were left wondering.
        • Hermione said in the book that if she survived the battle against Voldemort, she'd go find her parents and reverse the charm. Since she survived, I believe it's safe to say she tracked them down and unbrainwashed them.
  • Two matters recently came to my attention. They always pitch a tent and camp out for the night, but they happen to have a bag with theoretically limitless space: why don't they tuck that away and stay in THERE!? The other thing is Hagrid: how can he possibly exist? Conception would be quite the task. If his father was the giant, it wouldn't fit. If his mother was, it'd be very very messy.
    • The answer to the first question is, really, "How would they get out again?". And what if something happened to the bag while they were inside it? As for the second... his mother was the giantess. This is mentioned in at least two books (Goblet of Fire and Half-Blood Prince). One assumes that Hagrid's father was either extremely well-endowed, or had quite good aim.
      • What's the Rumiko Takahashi quote again? "I don't think about it, and neither should you?"
      • Human male midgets can and do father children with women of average height. Likewise, women with gigantism can marry normal-sized men and raise families. The biology works.
      • Genitalia in humans tends not to vary too much, even with dwarfism or gigantism entering the picture. Giants being another species who are explicitly described as ridiculously huge, one imagines that their junk is scaled up.
        • The problem I had with this is, logistics of the thing aside, why would Mr Hagrid (a wizard) be attracted to Mrs Hagrid? After all we are not talking about a human woman who just happens to be 20feet tall, we are talking about a female member of a species who are described as looking like green/grey mountains with mis-shapen boulders for heads. Certainly doesn't turn my crank and I can't imagine it would for anyone else. Not to mention the probably language barrier given how ostracised giants are....
        • Uh, people bang horses and sheep, too. There are always going to be people out there with bizarre fetishes - the only difference here is that the fetishist and his fetish can leave behind a baby, which sheds light on their unusual behavior where a dude might hump cows his entire life and no one else would ever find out about it.
        • Perhaps he likes REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY big butts and he can not lie? Other brother's might deny, but when a giant booty shambles in he gets SPRUNG, son...
        • Considering the mother ran off after he was born and Mr. Hagrid raised him since then it sounds like it was a REALLY wild one-night stand that ended with a basket on the doorstep.
        • There are people who have giantess fetishes in Real Life. Hagrid's father was probably one of them.
        • Who says he was attracted to her? She was attracted to him, obviously. If a 20 foot tall, violent monster decides she's into you, she may not take no for an answer. Oh, and as for the genitalia issue, I'd like to point out that among apes, genital size does not correlate to body size, really, at all. An adult gorilla has about twice the mass of an adult human and yet the genitalia are many times smaller. So there's no reason to assume giants and humans are necessarily incompatible in that department.
    • The tent had the same properties as the bag. On the outside it looked like a tiny pup tent, but inside it was as big as a 3 bedroom apartment.
      • It's not quite the same. The bag is more subject to damage than the tent, what with it being tinier and more fragile.
        • Plus, someone could just pick the thing up and walk off with it while they were inside. I doubt any of them would want to go to sleep and wake up to find that some dog dragged them two miles in the opposite direction they were heading.
          • Or ever.
  • In Half-Blood Prince, Lupin tells Harry that there are no Wizarding royals. Yet when Neville faces Voldemort, Voldemort refers to the Longbottom family as "noble" and urges Neville to join his cause. Has anyone satisfactorily explained what "noble" means here?
    • It's a reference to how old the Longbottom family is as a pureblood line. Some pureblood ideals hold that being pureblood means they're above everyone else. It's referenced earlier with the "The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black" that some purebloods think they are socially superior to other familes. Specifically in the Black's case being a Black made some of them think they were royalty. Voldemort was trying to say that Neville is superior to "less pure lines" and hoping he'll surrender to avoid ending a precious pureblood line.
    • Moreover, Voldemort grew up among British Muggles in the mid-20th century, so probably shared some of their class consciousness. He might even have intended to institute noble titles among wizarding folk once he took over the world, to formally elevate pureblood families over those with Muggle ancestry.
      • The idea of purebloods being nobility/royalty predates Voldemort. The book about pureblood families Hermione reads is called "Nature's Nobility" and Marvolo Gaunt mistakes the sign of the Deathly Hallows for his coat of arms. Also, it seems extremely suspect that Voldemort would seek to apply aspects of Muggle society to the wizarding world, not to mention the fact that his entire view of Muggle society came from a working class orphanage.
  • So if Harry couldn't die until the Horcrux part of him was exterminated, does this mean that in every other occasion where he nearly gets killed (and there are too many too count)... Harry wouldn't have been killed, anyway?
    • Not necessarily. If for instance he'd died from the Basilisk Venom in Chamber he'd have died for real horcrux and all. Any point after Goblet of Fire where Voldemort takes his blood is up in the air depending on the circumstances. The main reason Harry survived though is because of the Elder Wand. Dumbledore had originally planned it so that when it came time Harry would die and that would be it. The plan changed once Draco became the Elder Wand's master and finally when Harry won the wand himself. The wand realized Harry's intentions and thus killed the horcrux in him but left him relatively free from harm, but also thanks to Voldemort's creating something similar to a horcux for Harry by using his blood in his resurection.
    • Probably not, except for the basilisk incident. He COULD have gotten his soul sucked out of him in the third book, though, so that would be just as bad. And at any time he appears to be in mortal danger, his friends were usually also at risk of being killed, so he always had something big to lose if not his own life.
    • He very well have been able to "die," but possibly his spirit would have continued on in the same hazy, half-dead form that Voldemort's was in until he was able to complete the resurrection spell in Goblet of Fire. However, since Harry likely would not have known * how* to possess others and bring himself back, he would have been stuck in A Fate Worse Than Death.
    • Unless Harry was killed by some means that could destroy a horcrux, the horcrux would have been fine. It just would have been a corpse that wouldn't rot instead of a human being. Similarly, if Neville had killed Nagini with any old weapon, Voldemort would have gone from having a live snake horcrux to having a dead snake horcrux ... but Neville used the Sword of Gryffindor, which was capable of destroying both Nagini and horcrux at the same time.
      • Your comment about the Sword of Gryffindor actually just gave me a new question, where I had never been bothered by it before... Voldemort destroys the Horcrux in Harry by using 'Avada Kedavra'. But a big portion of the book is trying to find ways to destroy the horcruxes. Why couldn't they have used Avada Kedavra on the inanimate horcruxes? The part of Harry that is ALIVE wasn't impacted by the curse, so apparently it can 'kill' just the pieces of soul, too. And the Trio certainly wouldn't have had any problem getting up the feelings necessary to 'mean' they wanted to kill the horcrux, nor would they be at risk of splitting their own souls because they wouldn't have been killing a person.
        • Either they never even thought about it or they didn't think they'd be able to do it. Assuming they thought about it they could have either come to the (possibly mistaken) realization that it wouldn't work properly or they couldn't get the spell right. We're not really sure casting Avada Kedavra on a horcrux would do anything but set it on fire as we've only seen it used on inanimate objects a few times before.
        • Ah, but Voldemort did that AK with the Elder Wand—the most powerful wand there is, the only one that was able to repair Harry's. Maybe AK wouldn't work on a Horcrux from a regular wand, just from the Deathstick? Of course, that leaves the question of why Dumbledore didn't give it to the Trio to destroy the Horcruxes. But he did give them the sword, in a way...and he felt (correctly) that the wand was extremely dangerous in the wrong hands.
          • The Deathstick cannot be given willingly. It will only reveal its full potential if the new owner subdues the old one, without any agreements between them and without giveaways.
        • Additionally, Avada Kedavra takes a great deal of power to perform. False-Moody says in the fourth book that the whole class could have pointed their wands at him and said the words and virtually nothing would have happened.
    • It's not because of being a horcrux that he couldn't die. It's the Blood Magic - Harry could return as long as Voldemort was alive with Harrys blood in his veins. And, I guess, Voldemort should be the one to kill him, I'm not sure here. So, Dumbledore's plan changed after Voldemort got resurrected - remember the "triumph in his eyes" when he heard about Voldemort using Harry's blood. After that point, dumbledore was pretty sure that Harry would have a choice to go on or stay after being "killed" by Voldemort.
  • Whatever happened to that Firebolt? During the airborne chase, the broomstick spins to the ground. Wouldn't there be some chance of a little Muggle boy happening to find the broom, stuck in his backyard tree- then later, playing horsie on it, and propelling himself into the ceiling or something?
    • Even the wizard kids have to be taught how to use broomsticks before they can fly. It seems likely that it would just be a broom with delusions of grandeur in the hands of a Muggle. Until Harry casts accio Firebolt and it flies back to its master.
      • That's a good point. Of course, Neville didn't know beans about broomsticks but broke his wrist anyway. So yeah...
        • Neville is also a wizard with significant inborn magical abilities. WE also saw that brooms are not easy to command for the inexperienced even when trying way back during their first lesson. I would not be surprised to find out that brooms are sort of like wands, inherently magical but primary focus the weilder's natural power. So in the hands of a Muggle a broom is useless, otherwise they'd be illegal.
  • Why is EVERY good guy such a pussy? They have a perfect chance to stop Tom "Voldemort Hitler Dracula" Riddle's army with the killing curse, yet they just knock them out. I don't think it's unforgivable when it's used to stop the freaking holocaust? That's like having the choice of shooting a Nazi General in the face with an 50 caliber rifle or hitting him on the head with a flower pot and taking option 2 because you don't want his blood on your hands (possibly ensuring the deaths of 1,000 innocent people).
    • Godwin's Law. Seriously though use of the Killing Curse has more effects on wizards than initially thought. It's up in the air but apparently a fully cast Avada Kevada can shatter the user's soul even if they're not making Horcruxes. It's generally thought by the public that only really bad people can use it as you really have to want that person dead to successfully cast it. On the line in the middle of a fight you might have a last minute regret doing all the syllables putting you in a tight spot and wasted magic and time.
      • A: There are plenty of ways to kill someone with magic; Incendio, etc. The problem with using the Killing Curse is that it literally does nothing other than kill someone; QED from the Christian perspective Rowling seems to be writing from, it rips a person's soul out of his body, and seems to powered by hatred rather than just anger or self-preservation. Also, it's been bugging me how many entries here don't seem to distinguish between murder and self-defense when they say that killing rips the soul apart.
      • A: As Dumbledore says, murder is not as easy as the innocent believe. It's easy enough to say you would kill someone in a certain circumstance, it's quite another to experience it. B: Not wanting to kill people doesn't make someone a "pussy" it makes them a person with a basic respect for human life. Which alone makes that person far superior to a Death Eater.
    • "The power of a soul untarnished and whole" was kind of what gave the good guys power over the bad. Dumbledore pointed out that murder breaks the soul and Voldemort was all too happy to rip his apart.
    • When? At the beginning? The implication is that some of them do use the Killing Curse—Remus, at the very least, admonishes Harry for not being willing to risk the lives of enemy combatants, and Aurors were authorized to kill people during the first war.
    • It's established that you have to really want to honestly and truly cast any of the Unforgivables. This means that in order for any of the good guys to use the Killing Curse, they'd have to really, really want to murder someone. And somehow, this troper doubts that "I'm killing this person to stop them, even though I don't want to kill at all" would count.
    • It's also kinda possible to kill people without using an Unforgivable Curse (and thus skipping over all the "you must really mean it" and "your soul will be shredded" risks). Point your wand at someone's head and say "Reducto" and see what happens.
      • Which makes me still wonder why Harry used Cruciatus instead of (say) Sectumsempera on Carrow.
      • Exactly. There are lethal spells other than the Unforgivables, and its not "murder" to shoot back at the people trying to kill you in a war.
  • What happened to Voldemort's body? His soul (or what remains of it) is trapped in Limbo, and the bodies of the Death Eaters are briefly mentioned as being set aside in an old classroom. But where is his final resting place?
    • It's mentioned that they buried him in the school grounds.
      • Did they? Despite knowing that it was an unprecedented privilege to allow Dumbledore be buried there?
  • Does Harry have a mullet? Because I remember reading something about him having "hair down to his shoulders," and that would so FREAKIN' AWESOME!
    • I have hair down to my shoulders, do I have a mullet? No, thank God.
    • A mullet is a specific haircut. Harry(and probably a lot of the others hiding in the wilderness at the time) simply hadn't been able to go and get a haircut.
  • Why does everyone go on about Rowling putting things in this book only to screw with shippers? Yes, this troper knows that Rowling has taken a number of take-that's to Harmonians and the like, but couldn't it just be that she wrote the Epilogue to show that Harry and his friends actually have a happy life for once? This troper also read a review were someone complained that Rowling only mentioned that Sirius had the girl pictures in his room to ruin slash fanfiction ('cause there's no way he could have been bisexual, nope). Why do people have to act like every little thing that doesn't go their way was some conspiracy to ruin their fanfiction options? It's not like canon has ever prevented people from doing slash and the like.
    • Probably because the epilogue doesn't show they had a great life. It's nothing more than a badly written "here's what we named our various kids..."
      • Wouldn't a life in which they were settled and not being chased by crazed murderers be a step up?
      • Not if it's badly written.
  • During the trios' avoiding-capture-picnic they are constantly searching for food: buying it from supermarkets via the cloak or eating mushrooms and the like. Now I know that there is this rule of "no summoning eatery" but there is a way to extend already existent food. Why by Merlin's beard did they not do that?!
    • Hermione mentioned that it was possible to make more food if they already had some. The one possible explanation was that none of them actually knew how to do it. The only reason given in the book - very sarcastically by Ron - was that the food that they had with them was so bad that there was no desire to make more of it. As for why they didn't just Summon food from inside of a house or something, they'd probably be worried that someone would notice food zooming around places and they'd be found.
      • They spent a whole summer preparing for the quest. How come they didn't gathered a stash of provision either in the Burrow or in Hermione's Bag of Holding?
      • This troper always assumed that they did, but Hermione unpacked it at Grimmauld Place.
      • I'm fairly certain Hermione stated that she had food, but she took it out because she assumed they'd come back to Grimmauld Place after their infiltration of the Ministry.
      • The "make more food if you have some" is what makes you scratch your head most. Hit the dumpster of ANY resturaunt and you're sure to find a bit of clean food if you're willing to lower your standards, or buy ONE 99-cent cheeseburger and everyone should be well-fed!
        • Perhaps the extending of the food you have also duplicates the mould etc. So, one cheeseburger would only last a day or two duplicated, before it becomes completely inedible. Also, would you really want to eat cheeseburgers for every meal for an indefinite amount of time?
          • Actually I wouldn't mind eating the same thing for every meal of every day, I've attempted it but my school serves something different for lunch everyday.
            • Not to mention that if the choices are 'cheeseburgers for every meal' and 'go hungry', bring on the cheeseburgers! Look, I'm living in a tent in the damn woods while an enemy army is out searching for my ass. If I've got to have the same Happy Meal breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, I'll still be happy just to not be having to put up with MREs.
  • In the earlier books, the Unforgivables are, well, unforgivable. The good guys don't use them, and it was a sign that Crouch had been getting as bad as the Death Eaters that his people had used them. Fast forward two books, and we have the good guys using both Crucio (successfully!) and Imperio. I'm not complaining that the good guys aren't perfect; I'm complaining that this change is never mentioned. There's no sort of "Look how far we've fallen" or attempt at justification or guilt or anything to mark that the good guys are suddenly using spells that are - or were - Unforgivable. Why?
    • Crouch used it to round up criminals: even though they might have been Death Eaters, Voldemort wasn't in power and they weren't at war. Since the return of Voldemort however, it is a war, and hence the difference.
      • It's still bad writing to never mention this major change in additude toward the Unforgivables.
        • No, it isn't. First of all, "unforgivable" is not just a fancy word - it's a legal status. It's the wizarding court that didn't forgive them. Since the whole goverment is corrupted in DH Harry and Co are forgivable for not giving two strokes of a dead dog's cock about it. Secondly, the curses are nor equaly bad: Imperious is obviously the least severe and neither Harry nor McGonagall use it to force people do any embarrassing stuff. As for Harry's Cruciatus, keep in mind that Amicus tormented the school for a year and was willing to set children up under Voldemort's wrath just to save his cowardly hide. Oh yeas, and he spit on McGonagall. Harry just gave in to a more sinister but still momentary impulse than the one with Bellatrix, that is all. And anyway, with Voldemort approaching and one Horcrux still not found it's not as if they were in any position to take to psychological self-analysis and "What have we become" monologues. It would've just broken the pacing of the scene.
            • Remember that Barty Crouch, Sr., made it legal during the first wizarding war to use Unforgivable Curses on Death Eaters. They may never have actually taken that law off the books.
      • The situation has drastically changed. It's like murder is unforgivable, but a soldier killing an enemy combatant in wartime is no longer murder. I don't think the author has to write a justification for it. It's subjective of course, but sometimes, less is more, and most good books don't spell everything out.
        • The most simple explanation is that the law has officially been changed at this point. The Ministry is now being controlled by Voldemort and one of the changes he's made is that the Unforgiveable curses are no longer illegal. Remember at Hogwarts, students are encouraged to use these curse on other students for practice now. Technically, Harry's use of the Imperius and Cruciatus curses in book seven is not illegal at this point.
        • Except that Harry used Crucio on Bellatrix in Order of the Phoenix, before Voldemort took control of the ministry (Fudge was still in power).
        • Illegal and immoral are two very different things. Just because torturing someone in a way that canonically requires you to enjoy it or controlling someone's mind is legal doesn't mean it's moral. And there was never, at any point, room for a discussion or at least a mention of this important change in philosophy? Come on.
          • Desperate times call for desperate measures. When they used the Imperius, it was in the middle of an unprecedented break-in during which there was no time to stop and go, "Hey, what are you doing?" And afterwards, since their unprecedented and heretofore IMPOSSIBLE break-in had actually been successful, all it proved was using extreme measures was successful in an extreme circumstance, and nobody was complaining. This Troper actually found it more realistic if, after the break-in, none of the trio was comfortable sitting and going, "So, who wants to talk about that Imperius curse we just used and how horrible it was?" and everyone just wanted to move on from it. It's easy to set absolutes for "This is what we will never do" when everything's fine and dandy and there's a safety net to catch you when you fall, but when your back's against the wall, you do whatever it takes. That said, when forced to resort to something truly unpleasant, sometimes you just want to put it behind you.
            • That is not the point. Having to resort in something morally ambiguous/wrong because there is no other choice is fine, as log it is acknowledge this was a bad thing to do, but there were no other way. The problem is that the entire series kept saying how evil the Unforgivable were and how bad is to use them, but suddenly, in the last book it is not an issue anymore. There is no What the Hell, Hero? moment, no questioning if it was the right thing, nothing. It is like the Unforgivable were suddenly OK since it is the heroes who were using.
              • No, it's not. It's clear that the heroes have descended into pretty morally ambiguous territory. It doesn't take the author beating the reader over the head with that message to figure it out. The fact that Harry was able to successfully use the Cruciatus curse at all shows that he's in a really dark place. McGonagall having a conversation with him to the effect of, "Gosh, Harry, I can see you're obviously filled with inner turmoil!" "Yeah, professor, that act I just committed was really morally ambiguous!" would have been stupid.
              • Imperio was needed to get into Gringotts. Crucio didn't have any real purpose and it doesn't get the excuse of "desperate times call for desperate measures". I get that Harry was angry at Amycus, and that the latter had been torturing students and spat at McGonagall, but if you can't expect the heroes to behave differently, what makes the difference between the heroes and those they fight? This isn't a simple "flawed" moment-it's torture. Cruciatus requires you to want to torment, and it's Harry who does that, I can see why people wanted to see a paragraph of reflection or a What the Hell, Hero?.
  • Voldemort hid the diadem in the Room of Requirements some 20 years before the events of the books. He was adamantly sure that he was the only one who'd EVER discovered the room. Uhm, is Rowling implying that all those mountains of stuff accumulated there in mere 20 or so years and that nobody in the long history of Hogwarts had ever found it before?!
    • It depends largely on what he thought to open the room with. If he thought "I need someplace that no one has been before" he'd get an empty room to store the diadem. The room appears differently to different people and changes drastically in your word usage.
      • Fair enough. So, how did the diadem end up in the common storage then?
    • He's very vain. I'm sure he expected all of that stuff to have been magically generated as a way to hide the diadem, and I'm sure some of it was magically generated at one point or another.
    • My interpretation was that Voldemort assumed he was the only person who knew the Room of Requirement could be summoned at will. Every single other person who ever came across the room until the DA stumbled into it completely by chance and never worked out that it could be done again. This is shown as another sign of Voldemort's arrogance, since he never realized that the House Elves were fully aware of the room.
    • I've always thought that everyone has misunderstood the 'Room of Lost Things'. Voldemort didn't hide anything there at all, the same way that no one carted the broken vanishing cabinet back there. The 'Room of Lost Things' is just where real things go that you leave in the Room of Requirement, in any configuration it's in. You leave a book in the DA room, and turn off the room, it's in the Room of Lost Things, at least until you bring the DA room back. And we know the House Elves use it as a disposal, so most of the stuff in the 'Room of Lost Things' was just left there. What Room Voldemort thought he was leaving it is is an interesting question, perhaps he though the he found the Secret Throne Room for the Heir of Slytherin or something and left the Diadem there. (What might be a hilarious idea is that he left it somewhere else, the House Elves found it, and threw it away.)
    • I've always thought that the diadem was never hidden in the Room of Requirement in the first place. Harry wanted The room where everything was hidden". My interpretation is that everything that had ever been hidden in Hogwarts, including the diadem, appeared there. Which brings us to the question: Why didn't Harry just ask for the room with the diadem in it so he wouldn't have to do any searching.
  • Shouldn't Voldemort become a ghost? I mean, it's people who fear death who come back as ghosts, right?
    • He became that screaming baby-from-hell thing in the ethereal King Cross. There wasn't enough soul in him for a whole ghost.
      • That was a remarkably reasonable, satisfying answer for this page.
  • Just had a case of literal Fridge Logic, how come Harry can still see at this point in the series. If you need glasses at that young, your eyesight will get progressively worse as you age and there is never indication of Harry getting a stronger prescription. Wouldn't he be blind as a bat by now?
    • Glasses do not have a negative or progressive affect on eyesight. That's just an old wives tale. The natural progression of nearsightedness means that it progressively gets worse on its own during the childhood/teen/young adult years, then it reaches a plateau only to start going in the other direction during middle age/old age, meaning that someone can be nearsighted as a child and farsighted as an old man. And again, let me reiterate that this has absolutely nothing to do with the presence of prescription eye wear.
    • It's actually a bit more vague than that as the Dursley's only ever gave him glasses out of a bargin bin and I doubt they'd have checked the prescription very often (if ever) even at that young of an age. It depends on his eyesight but in some cases if someone gets stronger prescriptions regularly then their eyes get lazy and deteriorate faster. It's possible he's on the low end of his glasses and simply has adjusted to being able to see well enough (plus there's always magic).
    • This troper had glasses in the third grade (age eight, so probably not too far off from Harry) and is now 18, yet I got my last prescription at 12. Eyesight deterioration varies incredibly widely between individuals, so it's not inconceivable that Harry got his last pair at ten. I could be totally wrong, this is experience over medical knowledge talking. Probably more accurate to the real reason though, this is a book about wizards and magic and the fight against evil. Do you really want to read about Harry's trip to the eye doctor? Eyeglasses are good distinguishing features, but to an author? Just another feature unless they get lost or broken. That eye doctor trip might well happen, just offscreen and JKR didn't think it was worth a throwaway line.
    • Are you serious? Not everyone who has glasses as a kid ends up going blind. Especially not by the time they're seventeen. I wouldn't worry about it.
      • I think what really should bug in this aspect is how come Harry never attempted to fix his eyesight in all those years?! Puny muggles can do that but mighty wizards with abilities to grow bones ab initio and heal near-lethal wounds can't?
        • 1) Sure, maybe they just can't. Magic can't do everything. Lots of characters wear glasses, including Dumbledore, a contender for most powerful wizard in the world. 2) Spells for altering your body are risky—remember Eloise Midgen's nose. 3) Even if we assume that it can be done and done safely, it would presumably take a specialist, so when was Harry supposed to go to one? Most people who have permanent nonessential surgery don't do it while they're still kids in school. 4) If all that isn't enough, maybe Harry is just fine with wearing glasses, for God's sake. It's not a prohibitively debilitating handicap. I can't believe this is even being asked.
    • First, Magic seems to have a unique interaction with eyes. I think they mention at one point that Dragons are almost completely invulnerable to magic except for the eyes. Second, giving a character a physical flaw like that is humanizing. Harry Potter is a boy who can wave a wand and create fire, adding flaws like his bad attitude in Books 5 and 6 and his eyesight make him easier to relate to.
      • This troper's eyesight has actually improved as he gets older
  • Dumbledore has Snape pass the sword to Harry in a wildly convoluted way so that if Voldemort reads Snape's mind he doesn't learn about it (apparently Snape had a hefty explanation ready of why he put a sword in a frozen lake in the middle of the forest). But wait, isn't he worried that if Voldemort reads Snape's mind he might learn that Snape'd been giving him the go-round for the past twenty years?
    • Page 689: Dumbledore is concerned that Voldemort would learn this from reading Harry's mind, not Snape's.
      • My bad. But I thought it was established that reading Harry's mind causes Voldemort excruciating pain and in an earlier conversation with Snape Dumbledore assumed with confidence that Voldemort wouldn't try it again.
      • Wrong. Dumbledore said that possessing Harry caused Voldy excruciating pain. He didn't say squat about infiltrating his mind, otherwise he couldn't have 1) implanted the false vision of Sirius at the Ministry, and 2) read Harry's mind when he arrived and bailed Bellatrix, without both things being overly painful.
        • It wouldn't be too hard to suspect that Voldemort could order someone else to look into Harry's mind or another loyal death eater might find out on accident and pass it onto Voldemort. It was simply Dumbledore being overly cautious.
    • Presumably they would have tried to be equally careful about Snape's other doings—and remember, he's very good at Occlumency. And at any rate, from what we've seen of Legilimency it only gives you images, not feelings or thoughts, and since Voldemort thought Snape was The Mole for him, Snape would have had a plausible excuse for sitting in on meetings of the Order and stuff like that, as long as he was able to withhold or misrepresent the details. And beyond that, well, yeah, I'm sure they were worried, but that's what made it a brave thing to do.
      • Snape does have a Pensieve. Possibly he stripped any thoughts that would betray his status as The Mole from his mind before any face-to-face meeting with Voldemort, causing himself to genuinely think he was loyal to the Death Eaters until he returned to his office and re-installed those extracted thoughts and memories.
    • Another factor in the convoluted passing down of the sword was that, according to Dumbledore's portrait, there were specific conditions for being able to take the sword in the first place, a test of courage or time of need.
  • Dumbledore couldn't give Harry the sword, but what about the Basilisk's fangs? He could safely give them to Harry back in the time of HBP, couldn't he?
    • He could have suggested Harry could have gone back into the chamber for a basilisk fang if the one that was stabbed into the diary had run out of venom but there's a lot we don't know about the fangs. For instance taking them and then not using them might waste the venom that was storred in the fang when it died. It was probably easier just to have the sword passed on in secret.
  • Where is the limit of magic? Voldemort tabooes his name with a curse that destroys every magical protection to anybody that says it. Why not curse the word "hello"? Why not the atmosphere to kill every muggle that breathes it? Why not make an Imperius curse to everybody, or make the death eaters invulnerable to all magic and weapons?
    • The Taboo was practically (but, and this is the important part, not quite) Deep Magic. It was very old, and very powerful, and the only two things it does are cut through (not batter down) any guarding spells that are weaker than it and act as a homing beacon for the person who cast it. Casting it on a word for which you are not on the watch would be a waste of effort, unless you knew exactly where your target was and just needed to get through a less powerful but still pretty darn strong spell to get at them and you didn't mind millions upon millions of false alarms. I think it may have also been limited to Great Britain, though I doubt that's canon. You can't curse the air or use an imperius curse on everybody because it takes too much power and (in the case of the imperius curse) focus, and you can't curse the air to kill muggles because it would be incredibly difficult to write and cast a spell with both the power and finesse to kill everybody, but only kill nonwizard humans, and because nobody insane enough to try has thought of, attempted, and succeeded at it.
  • It might be a small detail, but it still bugs me... a lot. When the trio infiltrate the Ministry and Harry polyjuices into Runcorn they do not know who he is, Harry has not seen him... yet he is able to imitate his voice flawlessly.
    • The thing about your voice staying the same once you've taken the polyjuice potion was only in the movie. In Chamber of Secrets it is explicitly stated that harry and ron's voices turn into Crabbe and Goyle's. This turns into Fridge Logic for me when you consider that Harry states in Deathly Hallows that he had never heard Goyle or Crabbe's voice (I forget which) before they were all in the Room of Requirement during the battle of Hogwarts.
      • That was just Lampshade Hanging on the fact that, despite being pretty big characters for seven books, those two never spoke at all until that point.
      • It still doesn't explain why Harry was suprised when he heard him speak, though he should have heard it when they used the Polyjuice Potion.
        • You're remembering incorrectly. The exact quote is this: "We're gonna be rewarded," said Crabbe: His voice was surprisingly soft for such an enormous person; Harry had hardly ever heard him speak before.
        • You hear your voice differently to how other people hear it, because the sound is transmitted to your ear through the skull. So hearing Crabbe's voice while Polyjuiced into him isn't the same as hearing it while he's talking to you.
      • Not forgetting that Crabbe had been in all of Harry's potions and Care of Magical Creatures classes—surely Crabbe was called on to speak at some point?
      • Don't forget the fact that Crabbe was really, really, idiotic—the teachers probably gave up on him early on, but before then, Harry could've heard him speak once or twice in class—which is why he hardly ever heard him before, but not never—he apparently heard him speak once or twice before, it just wasn't recorded in the books for comedic effect.
      • It's possible that the Trio hearing being able to speak in their own voices during the use of Polyjuice potion in the movies is just so we don't get confused about who's who. Perhaps to everyone else their voices sound like those they are portraying, such as with Crouch Jr. impersonating Moody in the fourth film.
      • Two points with the voices. Firstly, the Polyjuice incident happened when Crabbe was twelve or thirteen, and he is now seventeen or eighteen. Voices do change during that time. Secondly, your speech isn't just about the sound your larynx produces; you do have some choice in the matter: being a slow talker versus a fast talker, or, in Crabbe's case, speaking very loudly versus very softly.

Unsorted Examples pt4

  • Okay, I hope this hasn't been brought up and/or discussed to death already as I think dead horses shouldn't be abused, but was I the only one to be bothered by the fact that the supposed 'blood bath' in Deathly Hallows was not that...bad? To me it seemed like JKR basically made a list of characters she could kill off who came as close as possible to being proper major characters (but yet wouldn't matter so much to fans that said fans would fling themselves off cliffs en masse) as some kind of padding between the Sirius-Dumbledore combo previously, and Snape in this one. I mean come on: Colin Creevey - yes, terrible on account of him being so young and all, but hardly a major character - Lupin and Tonks - off-screen death, beloved characters but whose presence had been touch-and-go at best - Fred - Ok, disrupts the Fred&George balance as it's only the two put together that make a real character...and so on with the background characters. No wish to start a fan war here, it just bugs me. Obviously the main trio is untouchable, but if you really want to make your fantasy adventure 'mature' by pulling off an Anyone Can Die, then do it right: kill off Neville or Ginny, etc. (...am I a horrible person?)
    • Absolutely! Explicitely killing some of the main cast would mean that the bad guys really mean business. And the idea of fantards flinging themselves off cliffs is just adorable! It would be even more satisfying to read about then the massive bawwww-attack of some twat who learned that Dumbledore was gay.
    • No, you are not alone. Personally I figured that the entire book appeared to have been commanded by a list drawn up of "who can I kill that will have the most emotional impact for fans, but the least impact on the plot? Without egregiously crossing the limits of 'kid's book'?"
    • Dude, in a school of only a few hundred people, at least fifty people died. That's more or less a bloodbath. What bothered me was that, even though they were major characters, the time spent focusing on their deaths was just so limited it didn't leave as much of an impact as even, say, Cedric's death from GoF. Yes, yes, I know, the plot didn't allow for much time to dwell on these things, but a lot of it still felt rather brushed-over. The transition from "loved ones dead" to "happily ever after" felt abrupt, as well (it may have been about a 20-year gap in book time, but to the readers it was only a few pages). And it also seems odd that Ron could make a joke about Peeves/the war just a couple hours after his brother died. I'm just sayin'.
      • Doesn't seem unrealistic to me. A few months ago, my grandfather passed away; and during the funeral, his immediate relative (i.e. his children- which includes my father) was able to chat with the guests/each other and LAUGH with them. During the ceremony. I assume that just because a loved one dies, doesn't mean you can't think of, talk about, or do, any other things that is able to distract you from the pain of loss.
      • This is Fred we're talking about. Ron retaining the ability to make jokes in the wake of his death is exactly what he would have wanted.
  • Did Ariana Dumbledore get raped by the muggles when she was 6? I know it wasn't ever elaborated on more than "attack", but unless it was that bad it doesn't seem like anything less than rape would cause her to be that messed up and cause Percival to want to murder them, risking arrest in the process.
    • This is a likely scenero however depending on how baddly she was beaten (throwing stones, etc) it's entirely possible she was just hurt very badly but not raped. It's possible you'd be dramatized too if you were beaten to an inch of your life just for some accidental magic.
    • I thought she sustained physical brain damage.
    • While I'm pretty certain that some kind of sexual harassment was involved, I doubt that it was more than inapproriate touching. I think that it was mostly physical violence and psychological torment.
    • I think that she was gang-raped by the Muggle boys, not only because of the horribly traumatic repercussions of being raped, but because of something else I've noticed throughout the series. There are a lot of descriptions of child abuse in the books by parents or guardians or other authorities. Harry is verbally and emotionally abused by his aunt and uncle, who sit by while Dudley physically harms him. Neville is dropped out of a window by his grandfather, who is also later mercilessly verbally abused by Snape. Snape, in turn, is neglected as a child and constantly witnesses his parents fighting, which upsets and terrifies him. The students at Hogwarts are tortured and beaten by the Carrows. All the forms of child abuse save one are there—physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and verbal abuse (all of which are described, rather than just mentioned in passing). The only form of child abuse that is never mentioned is sexual abuse. The fact that we are never told any details of the form this attack on Ariana took leads me to believe that she was raped as well as being beaten. Rowling does not shy away from descriptions of abuse that many of the children in the books are forced to endure, and I think that if Ariana had just been horribly beaten by the Muggles, she would have said so, since (as stated previously) there are a lot of descriptions of physical torment. But the nature of her attack remains ambiguous. So I think that yes, they gang-raped her.
    • I can't imagine that she was raped. Remember, the boys were scared of her and thought she was trying to kill them. They simply saw her doing things that weren't possible and attacked her. I could easily see a six year old being traumitized from serious beating, not to mention the blows to the head probably caused brain damage. Besides, if I thought something wanted to kill me, I probably would look for "places" to stick my most sensitive organ.
  • Voldemort trusting Snape. I mean, presumably, Voldemort uses Legilimency on all his Death Eaters to hear the truth. Sure, we know that Snape is a very accomplished Occlumens, but do you think Voldemort would really just shrug after being blocked by Snapes Occlumency? I imagine that he would be furious that Snape was hiding something (and I believe Dumbledore said that false memories are easy to notice and it's also obvious when someone is using Occlumency, so that's not an argument). So why didn't Voldemort FORCE Snape into letting down his guard?
    • Well, Narcissa did lied to him that Harry was dead didn't she? So either V was more scary looks and crazy talks then actual craft or he only used telepathy on those he already suspected. Apparently, Snape was very good in NOT raising such suspisions.
    • The official excuse is that Dumbledore is also a Legilimens.
    • Snape could have well fooled Voldemort by focusing on all of his negative emotions whenever he was scanned, his hate for Harry, his resentment of Dumbledore... with Snapes skill with Occlumency he could have fooled Voldemort into thinking that was all there is.
    • Remember that he is a Triple Agent, with both Dumbledore and Voldemort believing he's on their side; he could very easily have excused every action he took that Voldemort could see. Sitting in on Order meetings? He's supposed to do that. Spying on Malfoy for Dumbledore? Of course D would ask, and Snape would have to do it. The ring horcrux? It led to Dumbledore's death. By simple virtue of being a member of the Order for Voldemort, Snape is inherently justified in everything he does as a member of the Order. The only danger that poses to V is where Snape's true loyalties lie, and he proved those well and fine when he killed Dumbledore.
      • I don't want to spoil Book 7 for you, but when you get to the chapter "The Prince's Tale" you'll find out why Snape really killed Dumbledore. It was because Dumbledore asked him to. Snape was a good guy after all.
  • If Voldemort had supposedly invested so much time and effort in protecting his Horcruxes, why didn't he install a magical alarm system that activates every time anyone enters the hiding place? Having something that says, "Hey moron, someone's in your top secret hidey-place, get over here and kill someone" would be really useful. He believed that he could feel if the Horcruxes were destroyed, sure, but what about stolen? He doesn't want that to happen either.
    • He doesn't even think anyone could ever know, much less actually find them, much less steal them, much less destroy them. He's proud. He thinks he's invincible. Mention a burgular alarm to him, and he'll laugh in your face. And, then probably kill you.
      • But he does bother to put traps around the locket Horcrux; he'd have no need to place traps if he thought it'd never be found. He might have thought that no one would ever get past the traps, but then why not put alarms on the non-trapped Horcruxes?
      • The locket was one of his first Horcruxes, so he was still worried about keeping it as secure as possible. Once he had five of the things, each became comparatively less valuable, because the odds of anyone finding all of them were so low.
  • How does Snape get away with all those things? Killing Dumbledore? On his orders. Torturing kids? Better than the Carrows. MURDERING THE MUGGLE STUDIES TEACHER? What could justify that? Granted, he was in the presense of Voldemort, but can we really forgive him for killing her as she begged for her life?
    • You also have to factor in Redemption Equals Death. He probably wouldn't have been forgiven as easily, by Harry especially, if he hadn't died being a spy in addition to giving Harry vital help and aid to finally defeat Voldemort.
    • The teacher was killed by Voldemort, not Snape.
    • And if Snape had killed her, you know that Voldemort/Some death eater would have anyway if he hadn't..
      • Indeed. Even on the hypothetical "Snape killed her" that didn't actually occur, If You're So Evil Eat This Kitten is a test that double agents and undercover operatives in general sometimes have to deal with. Fact is, even though he didn't kill the Muggle Studies teacher, Snape probably has had to do plenty of horrible things as an undercover Death Eater that we never saw because we're in Harry's perspective. That's a price you have to pay to keep your cover intact when dealing with the worst that humanity has to offer.
        • Remember that Snape has twice helped kill an Order of the Phoenix member in order to maintain his cover. He helps set up Emmeline Vance for a lethal ambush in-between books 5 and 6 (mentioned in the opening chapter of book 6), and at the end of book 6 he kills Dumbledore (on Dumbledore's own orders, of course).
  • Bill is the Secret Keeper for Shell Cottage, i.e. you can be the secret keeper for a Fidelus Charm protecting you and your location. So why wasn't James or Lily the Secret Keeper for their house in Godric's Hollow? Why did they rely on someone else?
    • That...is a good question.
      • It was the one that bugged readers since they first learned of the Fidelus Charm. The best way to hide a secret would be to have the secret keeper be under protection of the same secret. Bill's case means that the theory that the secret keeper couldn't be someone protected by the secret was debunked. We can assume it was plot induced stupidity or Bill is a special case. It's possible since he's a curse breaker he (or someone else) discovered something new about the Fidelus Charm since the Potter's case (it has been about 15 years).
        • If nothing else, the Potters' deaths would provide the impetus to keep researching the Fidelius Charm. The book shows that even common magic can be improved upon, Snape was re-writing his potions textbook in his spare time.
      • Dumbledore was the Secret Keeper for 12 Grimmauld Place. Bill is the Secret Keeper for Shell Cottage. Peter is described as the Secret Keeper for the Potters. As in, the people, presumably no matter where they were. Which I imagine is safer, provided you have someone you can trust, but enchanting a person rather than a place probably complicates things. For one thing, Bill could just leave Shell Cottage and say, "Hey, there's Shell Cottage, it's so rad." But if James was protecting the location of himself, then going up to a stranger and going, "Hey, I'm here!" wouldn't do much, because the Fidelius Charm would protect him from being seen in the first place.
        • So then why didn't James become Secret Keeper for Lily and Harry and Lily for James? I get that the charm is difficult to produce but we're talking lives here.
        • I think the point was that you can't be the secret keeper for yourself, possibly as a rule of how the spell works, or else just because then you'd be permanently hidden and could never reveal yourself to anyone again. You'd completely drop off the radar and basically cease to exist as far as everyone else knew! In other words, the target of the spell matters. If it's a place being protected, anyone can keep the secret, but if it's a person, the people being protected cannot be the keeper.
        • Which doesn't explain how anyone can see Harry the first 17 years of his life, before Pettigrew dies. Hagrid shouldn't have even been able to find him in the rubble of the house, as the fact no one knew Pettigrew was the Secret-Keeper requires that no third parties were told, or they surely would have spoke up when Sirius was accused.
        • The ideal solution would have been to have one of the Potters be the Secret Keeper for the Longbottoms and one of the Longbottoms be the Secret Keeper for the Potters. Or they could have just used Dumbledore... canonically, he volunteered for the job and James & Lily turned him down.
    • New Bug: why was Ron able to tell Dobby about Shell Cottage if Bill's the secret keeper? More importantly, in such a way that Harry can understand him well enough for it to be spelled out in the book?
      • The Fidelius Charm wasn't placed on Shell Cottage until after the escape from Malfoy Manor, and as a direct result of same. The Charm wasn't necessary until it was known to the Death Eaters that Ron was aiding Harry and not sick at home.
      • Above theory doesn't hold. Consider this exchange:

Harry: "How are they protected?"
Bill: "Fidelius Charm. Dad's Secret-Keeper. And we've done it on this cottage too; I'm Secret-Keeper here. None of us can go to work, but that's hardly the most important thing now. Once Ollivander and Griphook are well enough, we'll move them to Muriel's too. There isn't much room here, but she's got plenty. [...]"

(Page 482, American Scholastic hardcover release.) Bill explicitly talks about the Fidelius Charm having been peformed previously on the cottage. The way he speaks implies that it wasn't done in reaction to the little scene at Malfoy Manor, but that it's been there for a while to keep everyone protected (at the very minimum, since the moment Ginny got back home for her Easter holidays). Not to mention, it adds yet another hole to the whole explanation of the innards of the Fidelius Charm: If Arthur Weasley was the Secret-Keeper of Muriel Weasley's house, how can Bill speak so openly of the place? According to Snape in HBP, someone who's not a Secret-Keeper cannot speak the name of a place that's been Fideliused.
        • Except Snape's wrong. Harry is able to open a flue connection to Grimmauld Place in Order of the Phoenix, which he does the normal way, by speaking the name. It seems more likely that other people simply won't understand him if they did overhear him. (Which raises the interesting point that Snape could have led an invasion of Death Eaters there at any time, even before Dumbledore died. He just had to send people via flue.)
      • He was not wrong. He was deliberately lying to Voldemort.
  • Why didn't the Taboo have an effect at Grimmauld Place? I mean, it was obviously working before that because it caught them on Tottenham Court Road, and they said Voldemort many times while in Grimmauld Place. Were the protective charms just too powerful at the place to be broken then? And then that makes you ask, what were those remarkably powerful spells and how come Hermione couldn't use them on the tent?
    • Because the spell is the Fidelus Charm, and maybe Hermione doesn't know how to use it? Grimmauld Place had Secret Keepers; the Death Eaters knew someone was in there but they couldn't get in.
      • That's right, I forgot that the Fidelius Charm was on the house.
    • The Potters would need to leave the house at some point, at which point they would be set upon by Voldemort himself looking for Harry. By giving someone on the outside the secret, he can bring them food and such. Bill isn't directly in Voldemort's sights the way James or Lily would have been, so he can still leave the house for supplies or whatever(IIRC he keeps his job during DH).
      • So why not have Dumbledore be the secret keeper? One of your best friend from school isn't exactly an "under the radar" choice, so why not go with the big gun that no Death Eater (probably even Voldemort himself) would risk facing?
        • That was probably Dumbledore's reasoning as well, since he is specifically mentioned to have offered being the Potters' Secret-Keeper. However, they turned him down; maybe they thought he had enough on his plate already and would be better using his strength at protecting those who didn't have good friends willing to die for them. The "deception" thing is specifically mentioned to be Sirius's idea; he wanted the Death Eaters to come after him (and probably had enough self-confidence to assume he could handle them), which would mean that Peter would have enough time to get into hiding himself if the ruse was discovered. It wasn't really such a bad idea; the main reason why it didn't work was because Sirius put his trust in the exact wrong person; he knew there was a traitor in their midst, but never dreamt that this traitor was Peter.
  • The family that Voldemort slaughtered when looking for Gregorovitch. The woman opens the door and sees him, and then begs him not to kill anyone and is obviously trying to protect her family from him. Why didn't that put a protection on the rest of her family? Was it just because she didn't specifically say "Kill me instead of them" or is Lily's love just so much better than everyone else's?
    • Wouldn't that only work if Voldemort blatantly gave her the choice to step aside? He was telling Lily to get out of the way at first.
      • This. It only counts as self-sacrifice if you weren't already going to die anyway.
        • I really don't think The Power of Love would be that picky... Besides, she shielded her children from the Killing Curse with her own body. She clearly made the choice of self-sacrifice, even if it wasn't offered.
      • The mother was not a Gryffindor, therefore she was not super special.
    • Consider this: we don't know if they were all slaughtered! Harry saw the green flash and then the link broke. So pehaps it did work, so V would have to suffice with Obliviating the kids or torturing them into insanity.
    • Going along with this, Voldemort killed tons of people, he was ruthless; I find it unlikely that no one else sacrificed themselves for something they loved threatened them; it's a pretty common thing to do in face of AK.
    • The Power of Love is not picky. Voldemort basically made a magical contract with the right conditions. He was going to spare Lilly because of Snape. Then Lilly made a counter offer("Kill me instead of Harry"). Killing Lilly, he accepted the trade.
  • Kreacher's Heel Face Turn. In Book 5, Hermione was as nice as possible to Kreacher every chance she got. He essentially spit in her face and called her a mudblood. Harry does one nice thing for him in Book 7 by giving him the locket, and suddenly he couldn't be nicer to everyone, including the girl he'd been calling a mudblood just a few paragraphs before.
    • House Elves have a different sense of gratitude than humans. Dobby literally cried when Harry asked him to sit down, as he had never been treated as an equal before.
    • Kreacher considered Hermione subhuman (and she was being a bit condescending in her niceness), whereas Harry was, though Anti-Voldemort, a pro-Regulus wizard with two magical parents who was giving him something specifically to do with Regulus. I still think it was overdone, but the being nicer to Hermione was because he started obeying Harry (his owner, or possibly his former owner to whom he owes a debt by way of Regulus depending on whether a locket counts as clothing or not) in spirit instead of just in letter.
  • Similar to the one above, in the climactic battle, Kreacher calls Harry Potter the "protector of house elves" (or something to that effect). As crowningly awesome and heartwarming the scene is, it just seems a little unfair if you consider that Harry had only been nice to two individual elves (Dobby and Kreacher, and the latter mostly because it served his own purpose), whereas Hermione organized (or at least tried to organize) SPEW, a whole movement dedicated to the betterment of house elves' work conditions worldwide. Heck, even the catalyst for her kissing Ron for the first time was when he said they should lead the elves of Hogwarts to safety before the battle. And yet Harry is the great savior.
    • Well, first off Kreacher still wasn't too happy about Hermione, because she wasn't a pure blood. Also, he didn't know about SPEW, and he probably meant Harry Potter and company. I'm pretty sure that Harry would also be nice to other house elves given the chance, and he was nice to Winky. To top it off, really, it's a climatic battle. I'm sure he was just trying to remind the other elves of what they were fighting for and to "Go kick some Death Eater butts."
    • Plus, while having her heart in the right place, Hermoine was really condescending when it came to her "elf liberation" ideals. Most of the elves are insulted by Hermoine's pro-liberation beliefs and attempts at freeing them. In the fourth book she's thrown out of the kitchen after urging them to seek freedom and in the fifth, after she leaves hats around the common room to try and free them, the elves are so insulted they actually refuse to clean it. Hermoine certainly wouldn't be the best person to use when rallying house-elves.
    • Kreacher's thing was about Harry treating him as an equal. Even if Hermione had treated Kreacher as an equal (without being condescending), due to his view on muggle-borns it wouldn't have meant much. To him, "equal with muggle-born" is still about the same as "sub-human".
    • I was under the impression he was also referring to Regulus.
  • Harry and co. infiltrating the ministry. Ok, am I the only one who sees a problem with this? They are on the run, the whole of Britain is on the lookout for Harry, Ron and Hermione aren't even supposed to be with him (thanks to spattergroit and Australia), and yet, they decide the best way to get the locket from Umbridge is to infiltrate the Ministry, the base of Voldemort's operations? (other than Malfoy Manor, of course, but this is where he's strongest anyway). Why, oh why, couldn't they invest their time tracking down where Umbridge LIVES, and just attack her at her house? This would be soooooo much simpler, and (comparatively) safer. (unless Umbridge actually lives at the Ministry, which wouldn't surprise me...)
    • But how would they have tracked her if she uses floo powder to travel between home and the ministry?
      • This is a good point assuming Umbridge uses floo or apparates between her house and the ministry there's no way they can locate her home without either asking someone or infiltrating the ministry to find out. Either way compromises what they're after and so they just infiltrate the ministry to get the locket from her and also help rescue the muggleborns in the process. Plus assuming they did somehow find where she lived her home would no doubt have wards they'd need to break to get inside.
  • Bellatrix questioning Hermione about the sword. The obligatory insanity excuse aside this was one of those rare and bizarre occasions when actually extracting the information prioritizes over the pleasure of torturing the hell out of the questionee. So, why didn't Bellatrix use Legilimency on her? The girl was completely untrained in Occlumency, so it should've likely worked, and THEN Bella could've safely tortured her to her black heart's content. Even if she went off so far off her rocker she didn't even consider this option, why didn't Narcissa who wasn't insane? On the same matter, why didn't they try to scan Harry to find out that it was really him under the disguise?
    • Now that I think of it, why didn't the Trio receive any training in Occlumency? Harry's failure in book 5 attributed mostly to the general stress of Umbridge's reign, his tutor sucking in his trade and Harry actively willing to peek into Voldy's mind. None of those factors were in place in book 6 and Harry'd just received a cruel lesson about the importance of mind-protection. Moreover, in book 7 Dumbledore repeatedly expressed worries that some of the bad guys could read Harry's mind and thus spell doom for the whole enterprise, but he took no steps to actually help them defend from this danger.
      • Training in Occulmency requires 3 essential elements: 1) a competent teacher, in Hogwarts?? 2) time, DD needed to spend 12 months tellin Harry absolutely nothing at all, there was no time remaining to tell Harry useul stuff; 3) the desire to learn, Harry neede the Dark Lord Broadcasting Network.
        • It doesn't require that much time, given that Bellatrix could teach Draco enough Occlumency to block out Snape in less than two months. (She only had the one summer vacation between year 5 and year 6 to do it in, remember, because she isn't out of jail until book 5.)
    • But is Bellatrix trained in Legilimency?
      • She trained Draco in Occlumency well enough to repel Snape's mind-probing. She'd have to be competent herself.
        • It might not be necessary to be good at Legilimency to teach Occlumency. However in this situation let's suppose she is trained in Legilimency. She doesn't know what training Dumbledore has given Potter or any of his friends outside of what Snape told her who she's known to not trust. If she makes an attempt she might get thrown out of the mind allowing them to take advantage of her distraction. She's weighing her options and decides not to do it until she gets conformation that it is them and then weighs whether it'd be wise to get back up or just call Voldemort. Regardless she's in a highly stressed situation and it's very easy for her to make a mistake.
        • First, you obviously HAVE to be a skilled attacker if you want to teach somebody to be a good defender. Next, uhm, what advantage could Hermione possibly take while being outnumbered, disarmed and tied up? As for stress, that's what the Malfoys were there for - they were not aware of the stress reason, and to them the whole questioning was just a quirk and an annoying hindrance to summoning V and restoring his grace. So it'd be only natural for them to inquire Why Bellatrix doesn't simply scan her.
          • Have you never panicked?
          • Again, Malfoys had no reasons to panic.
          • Remember, Hermione was already spilling her guts in that interrogation; Bellatrix didn't believe her. She was the one who kept insisting that the Trio couldn't possibly have 'found the sword out in the woods, you must have been inside my vault!'. Presumably if she was using Legilimency on Hermione she wrote off what she saw as 'false' images and went 'The girl must be an Occlumens; we'll have to rip out of her the old-fashioned way then!'
    • Hell, if I were freakin' Bellatrix Lestrange, I'd find Legilimency boring.

Unsorted Examples pt5

  • What was that baby in Kings Cross Station?
    • V's soul.
      • What's left of it, at any rate.
  • This may have been discussed before (but couldn't find it), but when we finally see how Harry's parents died, we read that James left his wand on the sofa before Voldemort came in. Granted they were probably (falsely) secured with the knowledge that Voldemort didn't know where they were, you'd think they'd still keep their wands with them at all times as a precaution. I mean, what if either of them wanted to lounge around on the front porch?
    • The closest we've come in previous discussions was that James had just got done playing with Harry and they were going to put him to bed then come back down. They were reasonably relaxed for that brief period of time and that cost them. It's never said exactly how long they'd been in hiding up to this point and there might have been many more moments like it. If they'd wanted to go outside of the house they'd have made sure they had their wands, yes, but it was late at night and they were getting ready for bed so there wasn't much need.
      • I see. But I'd love to see the previous discussion. Where can I find it?
        • Sadly it was deleted mysteriously when the original Harry Potter It Just Bugs me page lost the full page of data. We still don't know how it happened and we lost a lot of repeted questions.
  • In Deathly Hallows, Moody explained to Harry that his mother's protection would wear off when he turned seventeen. When Harry died, he could "come back" because his mother's protection was alive in Voldemort. But, wouldn't it wear off because he was already seventeen? Or did Voldemort taking Harry's blood extend it?
    • This isn't entirely correct. There are mutiple theories about why Harry came back and some of them can overlap. The more common is that Voldemort mistakenly created something similar to a Horcrux for Harry when he took his blood which allowed him to come back after the Elder Wand destroyed Voldemort's Horcus in Harry. It doesn't have to be Lily's protection that brought him back, but that could be a factor of the lingering effects.
    • The way I read it was, the protection that ended when Harry came of age was the spell Dumbledore set over the house. Dumbledore had taken Lily's charm and manipulated it into a shield on #4 Privet Drive that would hold while Harry called the house home, until he turned 17. Lily's charm itself lived on in Harry's blood even after Dumbledore's shield was broken.
    • Unfortunately, the text contradicts; Moody specifically calls the protection on the house Lily's spell in the chapter where it ends, and Dumbledore specifically says that the fragment of Lily's spell in Voldemort's blood only lives on as long as the rest of the spell does, and vice versa.
      • It's perfectly possible for Lily to have more than one spell. Even if it was the same spell, the Moody's and Dumbledore's contexts are very different. It may be, for example, that part of the spell protected the Dursleys' house as long as Harry was a child and called it home, but just because neither of those conditions are met doesn't nullify other parts of the spell.
      • Dumbledore states in Book 6: "The magic I evoked fifteen years ago means that Harry has powerful protection while he can still call this house 'home.'" That means, he cast a spell based on Lily's original, self-sacrifice-thin.
  • This has been bugging me for a while. For those who have read The Chronicles of Prydain, you'll recall that in the first book the hero helped save the life of a gwythaint (a bird/dragon creature), something that paid off big-time in the final book where it returns to save his life. I was hoping that the same sort of thing would happen here. Way back in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry and Hermione save Norbert when they have it shipped off to Charlie Weasley. Charlie Weasley works with dragons. Bill Weasley works in Gringotts. So why couldn't Norbert have been the dragon that the Power Trio use to escape Gringotts in this final book? He (or she) could have easily ended up there thanks to the connection between the brothers, and it would have been nice to bring that character "full-circle" in repaying his debt to Harry (granted, dragons don't seem to be hugely intelligent, but Rowling has handwaved bigger things than that). It was perfectly set-up...and it didn't happen.
    • That's just it. JK Rowling may have read that series and didn't want to rip it by having Norbert flying in. That and she probably didn't want to have Norbert change into a Deus Ex Machina. Knowing Charlie Weasly, he may have taken Norbert to his natural habitat, there's no way he (Norbert) would know of the Power Trio's actions.
      • Also, the dragon in Gringotts bank spends all its life underground getting hot swords across the face. It would have been a shame for Norbert to have ended up there not to mention that fact that Charlie most likely wouldn't knowingly allow such a fate to befall one of his rescued dragons.
    • YMMV - I absolutely don't see this as set up at all, given that dragons are at best fiercly territorial and protective beasts, and at worst outright malicious, dangerous creatures. I would've been bugged had it happened like that.
    • Speaking of Missed Moments Of Awesome, we never really got to see how much of a Badass Moody truly was. When Voldemort joined the chase over Little Winghing (sp?), it would've been cool to see him attempt to pull a You Shall Not Pass, instead of simply getting shot out of the air.
    • The reason Charlie couldn't bring Norbert(a) was because he was already in England. So if he wanted to bring any dragon, just for the final battle, he would have to get an international portkey to Romania (wizards can't apparate massive distances), get the dragon ready for transport (a difficult task with a dozen other helpers), and then bring it across, probably the long way. With all this, he would have missed the Final Battle entirely.
    • A third Missed Moment of Awesome was that the Ford Anglia never reappeared. I honestly thought that it would show up after the Acrumantula, what with living in the forest and all, but no, it was left out...
  • Was I the only one that wanted more explanation of why it had to be Harry to go on the Voldemort destruction quest? Sure there was the prophecy, but the whole them of the books until that point was that it's "choices that matter". Why couldn't Dumbledore say, "Hell no, I am not putting the fate of the world in the hands of a 17-year-old boy who isn't terribly talented in magic who has an involuntary psychic connection with the Big Bad" and divided the task among members of the Order? I realize that couldn't happen for literary reasons, since this has always been a Harry-centered story, but it would have been nice to see a more compelling reason for why it had to be Harry than Because Destiny Says So.
    • It's possible Dumbledore thought he could do this in the first place but then once he was nearly killed by destroying one Horcrux changed his mind and came to the conclusion that this is something Harry has to do for himself. Regardless he did put forth the idea that destroying them is easier without alerting Voldemort. Thus it's better to have a smaller group work on finding them. Plus in his mind having the Order handle it can lead to nastier instances either with Voldemort finding out about it or them failiing worse than he did.
    • When doing the single most sensitive part of taking down Voldemort, it's best to keep it to as few people as possible. Also, most of the Order are teachers, whose absense would be very noticeable. The only ones who weren't still teachers were Lupin, Moody, and Nymphadora. Lupin turns into a monster once a month, and occasionally forget his potion, so that makes him an instant hazard right off the bat.
      • Also, Tonks was still considered a kid by some or most of the members, and Moody was... definitely the sharpest bulb in the box.
      • Also, thanks to Voldie's actions, it would be impossible to kill him while Harry is still alive. Voldemort, or potentially someone else I guess, had to kill the part of Voldemort's soul that is in Harry before Voldemort could be killed by anyone.
        • Original poster explaining my position. My thought was that Dumbledore could have told the people something along the lines of "Destroy this one, and then tell either me or my portrait. And yes, this is the only one. Yes I'm sure." Then, if one did get captured and forced to tell what they knew, one of two things would happen - everything would go to hell or Voldemort would be such an arrogant idiot he would actually be more secure, convinced Dumbledore only knew about one Horcrux. There is still the possibility of everything going to hell, but at least there is a possibility that things could still work out okay - whereas if Harry gets caught and Voldemort decides to withstand the pain and go into his mind, you know for sure everything is going to hell. I know it couldn't have worked that way for literary reasons, but still.
          • This leads to the problem of at the point when he can assign tasks he only knows about the cup and the locket and for all he knew the cup could be in the cave. He's certain Nagani is one but you can't have someone go after that until Harry's ready and if necessary I'd think he'd have Snape set for that if needed. He could assign people to the one not in the cave but he'd have very little information to give them to help other than sending Order members on chasing shadows. His problems all stem from the lack of information he has and the hope that Harry can be informed of all of this before his final confrontation.
            • Besideswhich, a war is fought on multiple fronts. Chasing after the Horcruxes will certainly be dangerous, but if they're all hidden like the one in the cave, it's an objective that's easy for the enemy to miss that you're pursuing. All the key Order members are needed to fight on the front lines. Hold the enemy's attention with your army while a handful of kids sneak around undoing the Big Bad's immortality. Dumbledore isn't the only wizard who's opted that plan before.
            • Moreover, to my impression Dumbledore beleived that the less people knew about Horcruxes as such the better. You know, just so that nobody gets any ideas.
      • Also, Dumbledore didn't get cursed by destroying the ring. He got cursed because he lost sight of the danger when he realised that it was a Hallow, and put it on, ignoring the horrific curse that he should have realised that Voldemort put on it.
        • And there's an alternative fanon explanation, that the ring had a compulsion on it, and DD was just more succeptable because he knew already wanted the ring.
  • So, Yaxley gets to break through the Fidelius Charm... and then he can enter... and then face two extraordinarily(Sp?) strong wizards, and another very, very good one. What's the problem? It isn't like he could tell the secret to anyone else.
    • After Dumbledore's death anyone who is given the secret becomes a secret keeper. So once Hermione gives Yaxley the secret via apparition, he can then just tell all the other Death Eaters and they will all be able to get in.
      • No, I am pretty sure only the people who were told by Dumbledore originally become secrete keepers upon his death. Yaxley shouldn't be able to tell anyone the information, even if he knows it.
    • I always just assumed the Trio misinterpreted the thing about the Fidelius charm breaking
    • There's also the fact that Yaxley's Voldemort's top man in the Ministry, and Voldie doesn't tolerate weaklings in his inner circle (Wormtail being little more than a personal servant). Odds are he could do some pretty serious damage on his own before the Trio and Kreacher managed to subdue him, and if he actually killed one of them it would just fray the charm further.
    • Hmm... that makes sense... I mean, risking one of the trio's lives? Yeah, thanks a lot.
    • Hermione mentioned that Yaxley was momentarily disoriented upon arriving at Grimmauld Place, enabling the trio to disapparate again, but... Couldn't they have used that opportunity to at least STUN Yaxley? And the specifics of the Fidelius Charm don't even matter if they were willing to kill him, which would mean they could have remained at Grimmauld Place instead of risk their health/lives out in random forests... But it seems the life of an evil Death Eater was considered more important by Hermione than she and her friends own lives.
    • My plan for this situation would have been: Arrive at Grimmauld Place. Stun Yaxley. Apparate with him to the forest. Apparate back to Grimmauld Place, leaving: Ron NOT splinched and Yaxley Stunned in some random forest and unable to reveal Grimmauld Place's location to the other Death Eaters when he gets back. Not that difficult. I realise people don't think well under pressure and when they only have a couple of seconds to make a decision, but still...
    • Wouldn't Stupefy be just about the first spell to come to mind in that situation anyway?
  • After the big "Snape Loved(s) Lily" reveal, I couldn't help but wonder why Sirius and Lupin never mentioned it to Harry (or at the very least, that they were once good friends). One could say that they (especially Sirius) hated Snape and didn't spend time with him, but surely they would have noticed Lily hanging out with Snape a lot, considering their perpetual torment of him and James chasing after her. One could also say that they didn't think it was important to tell Harry, but when Harry is protesting Dumbledore's trust of Snape to Lupin (even mentioning Snape calling Lily "mudblood"), you'd think Lupin mentioning this fact may have at least given Harry something to think about. I just find it hard to believe that they were too obtuse to not notice or not care.
    • This troper agrees. Snape and Lily were best friends at Hogwarts for five years! It's hard to believe that nobody thought to mention this to Harry. I'll accept that Dumbledore might have kept it a secret as part of Snape's cover. But considering how frequently Harry rants about Snape, it's surprising that another character didn't just say, "You know, Snape was best friends with your mother for a time." McGonagall, Slughorn, and especially Sirius and Lupin must have known. I guess it's plausible that it just never came up. After all, Sirius and Lupin usually reveal backstory details only when directly asked by Harry.
    • It's probably a sore subject for them that their rival was friends with James's wife before them. I also wouldn't doubt they still haven't got over her death or more likely that it might be too low even for Sirius to torment Snape with Lily. After all it's not really a good idea to bring up the dead in an argument as it's usually a mood killer or a call to arms. Not telling Harry about it might be due to the fact that they never really got around to telling him much, especially about how much of a jerk his father was when he was in school. In both cases it probably didn't seem important enough for them to tell Harry with the war going on.
    • Or it's possible that the only other person who ever knew for sure that Snape had been in love with Lily was Dumbledore. I think Sirius and Lupin might have suspected it, but it would have been a really Jerkass move, right after Harry saw the memory of James tormenting Snape, to say "Well, your dad thought Snape was in love with your mum..." Whether or not they'd have meant it to come off as a justification, that's how Harry would have viewed it, and it would have made him feel even angrier at the Marauders, and probably especially towards Sirius (for egging James on) and Lupin (for not even trying to stop them).
  • While I really liked the seventh book over all, it bugs me to this day that I can't think of any justification for Voldemort not just AK-ing Snape other than the fact that Snape had to stay alive long enough to give Harry his memories. I simply don't buy Voldemort not wanting to get his hands dirty; he's obviously shown he doesn't care about that sort of thing, and if his entire reason for killing Snape was to master the Elder wand, why risk the chance that it wouldn't work because he didn't kill Snape directly?
    • Perhaps he saw it as an indignity to keep using a wand he hadn't mastered and had decided to not use the Elder Wand again until he had officially won it.
    • He may also have been afraid of precisely what happened when he wielded the Elder Wand against Harry later; that the wand would deny his attempt to kill its master using it, and may in fact backlash the effect on him.
      • For that matter, why did he feel the need to kill Snape at all instead of just disarming him suddenly? Did he not understand how allegiance transferred or something?
        • How would he disarm Snape of the Elder Wand when he already had the Elder Wand? Hand it to him and then disarm him? That seems like an insane thing for paranoid Voldemort to do. Granted, it would have transferred allegiance if Snape had had the allegiance and he'd disarmed Snape of his existing wand (Except it wouldn't have worked, it would have probably backfired and killed him.), but that wasn't an obvious fact to anyone but Harry. With the knowledge that Voldemort had, and the stupidity that he'd shown about actual magical knowledge (as opposed to just forcing his way past things), he actually was doing pretty good to figure out that Snape might have won it, and him killing Snape would fix that, and he was smart enough not to use the wand against its (supposed) master.
      • I don't think Voldemort knew that, or if he did he figured that a wand known as the 'Deathstick' might have different rules. Or it could be a 'just to make sure' thing. As for why he didn't use the Killing Curse, it could be that you have to really mean it and, even if it wasn't out of the goodness of his heart (ha!), he thought Snape could still be useful, and he probably felt that it was regrettable but necessary. So maybe he thought the Killing Curse wouldn't work?
      • Voldemort only knew that he had to 'defeat' Snape. In his mind, the only way to do that was to kill him. But he didn't want to use the Elder Wand against the person he thought was its master.

Unsorted Examples pt6

  • I don't think this has come up before, so I have to wonder why all the other magical communities in all the other countries of the world didn't do something about what was happening in Britain, or try to help or anything. Yes, I know Voldemort was staying under cover until his enemies in England were crushed and the Ministry of Magic certainly didn't come out and say 'Yeah, we're in the Dark Lord's pocket now'. So what? Are you telling me that no one outside the country guessed at what was really happening? And it's not as if there was no chance of them knowing what was going on; Voldemort having returned was public knowledge long before this point and the behaviour of the Ministry and its sudden turn against Harry twice in as many years would be rather suspicious at the least. I just can't believe that nobody managed to get out of England before the restrictions really set in, or told the other magical governments the truth about registration and persecution and the like, perhaps even Muggle Borns being sent to Azkaban or just being outright Kissed. And even if the different communities have a 'non-interference' policy or a desire to keep the wizarding world secret, which makes sense and which couldn't very well happen if they turned England into a battle field, if they even guessed that Voldemort was taking over they knew that he probably wouldn't stop there and would spread his influence to the rest of the world, never mind the fact that lots of innocent people were being unjustly imprisoned or killed. And please, let's not forget that this is the second time this sort of thing has happened: no one seemed inclined to aid the Order of the Phoenix in the First Wizarding War either, even though that was a smaller affair. I know that in the Harry Potter world everything is England, but I would have liked to at least be given a reason for why the rest of the world doesn't seem to give a damn.
    • Foreign powers watching semi-apathetically as a single nation is locked in a desperate clash with a ruthless force led by a megalomaniac dictator bent on world domination? Now why does this sound so familiar?
      • True, this is a very well documented phenomenon in international politics. Very plausible that no one would have come to Britain's aid (in the Wizarding world, which does not necessarily remember 'appeasement' and its failure) until Voldemort began to look for extra lebensraum for him and his pure blood sycophants.
    • I'd always assumed that the other countries couldn't be sure that something really was wrong. They'd heard of crazy things happening in Britain in the past few years and assumed it wasn't their problem. I'm sure some people knew the problems that were going on but politics (in every country) are difficult to get anything going unless you have solid proof. Keep in mind that the really bad stuff (hunting down muggleborns) didn't start happening until the summer after Harry's 6th year. Most countries if they even had the wizards for a peacekeeping force wouldn't be able to send them unless it became public, otherwise it'd look just like an invasion force.
      • Exactly. Plus, remember, we're only seeing it through Harry's eyes, so we really don't know any more than he does. All he (and we) know is that England stands alone. He may not know that other countries like America, France, Germany, are sending their wizards over to fight Voldemort. I think Rowling left that for the readers to decide. I like to assume that there are a few wizards from outside countries helping them against Voldemort and his men.
    • For the most part, I don't think anything that was going on was perceived as part of a major problem. Either Voldemort was incredibly narrow-minded in his scope, was stopped before he was able to actually start a global war, or Rowling just forgot that the rest of the world outside Britain existed at the time of writing. The second is the most likely scenario, but if it's the first one then it would be more apt to compare Voldemort's oppression to the situation in North Korea. Nobody really knows (or cares) what's going on there so long as they're not crossing borders. He had already gathered a bestial force to wage war in what's most likely ONLY the UK, and only after his power was secured there would he have moved on. It's not like there wasn't a global war before, either; the Grindelwald conflict was global, and tied in to WWII in terms of time.
      • Now I imagine Voldemort actually conquering England, then saying "I now require Spain and Albania", taking over them while everyone else. Soon, voldemort has all of Europe, while China, Japan, Canada, and America say "Oh not my problem." Then, he goes and knocks over China's tea into Japan's rice and America's coffee into Canada's Poutine. Then they all say, "Now, it's my problem."
    • I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thought of this. I had imagined a simple Hand Wave being that international politics never really came into play because those departments never really were encountered in the ministry. Voldemort was the puppet minister of magic, so he probably got the foreign relations to say "Oh, nothing's going on". Diplomats would basically be brainwashed into saying "Everything's alright over there, they got it in control".
  • I think I've finally figured out why Lupin's meltdown at Grimmauld Place bothers me so much: Of course he wouldn't want to pass his lycanthropy on to an innocent child, but (1) why did he never sit Tonks down and say, "Tonks, baby, I love you and I know you want kids, but honey, I'm a fucking werewolf, so procreating might not be the best idea in this case."? She's an Auror; she should have been able to see where he was coming from; and (2) does Rowling really expect us to believe that the Wizarding World, which has spells and potions capable of curing almost every disease and injury under the sun, doesn't have some form of birth control? Think about it: What if a couple of fifth-years at Hogwarts have a little hanky-panky in the broom closet, and she ends up pregnant; is she just totally fucked (pun not intended, but whatever)? I can understand if Rowling is pro-life, but seriously. Pregnancy isn't always a happy or welcome thing, especially if you're a teenager or you have an AIDS allegory that you don't want your child suffering from.
    • Birth control is not 100 percent. Could be an oops baby.
      • Tonks may not want an abortion OR Tonks may not be able to have an abortion because of the shifting. It may be a pretty dangerous thing, shes on the table letting it happen, panics during procedure, and starts morphing needed body parts causing immeasurable damage. Really not a good risk :/
    • Technically yes, but mentally? Remember that the Wizarding world is stuck somewhere in XVI-XVII century (parchement and quills, anybody) with some sporadic inputs of technology (most likely adapted from Muggles). I wouldn't be surprised if the bulk of them are ignorant about the subtleties of the process itself, let alone the possibilities of control. As was pointed out in the general discussion of the Potterverse, there are no Sex Ed classes in Hogwarts .
      • It's the 21st century, I'm sure wizards have figured out how procreation works. They're not stupid. The OP's right. If it was such a big deal, he should've said "Honey, Im a werewolf, perhaps we shouldn't have a child". If she still wanted one, they could just adopt. Maybe if Tom Riddle found a loving family and was adopted, he might not have grown into Voldemort (ok, he probably would have, but you never can tell).
        • It's 21st centure in Muggle world. It's 19th (at best) in the Wizarding world. Birth control achieved structure and widespread in the middle of the 20th.
          • That's assuming a lot. For one thing, social mores in the Wizarding world seem to be roughly on par with the Muggle world. No one really raises an eyebrow at the idea of women in power or with interracial dating (Cho and Harry, Cho and Cedric, Fred and Angelina, George and Angelina, Ginny and Dean). Bigotry exists in other forms, yes—against part humans, against non-humans, against Muggles and Muggle-borns—but no one's behavior is even remotely similar to nineteenth century society. Furthermore, prophylactics have entered and left widespread use repeatedly over the course of history. One herb in Ancient Rome was so effective a means of birth control that it was harvested into extinction. Given the presence of medicinal magic in widespread use (they've cured the common cold, for instance) it's likely that they have birth control. As I've suggested, it might just not work one hundred percent of the time, or could have been faulty, or whatever.
            • Moreover, there are probably as many real-life superstitions about birth-control methods as there are about love potions, dating back to prehistory. In a setting where everything else that's magical is for real, it's only to be expected that some of those would actually be functional.
            • As for women in power, consider this; the Minister of Magic before Fudge was a woman (Millicent Bagnold). And under Fudge, the #2 and #3 slots in the Ministry were also women (Delores Umbridge and Amelia Bones).
            • In historical eras there were two main reasons that women were treated differently from men. One, in a muscle-powered environment the average man and the average woman consume largely identical amounts of food but produce substantially different amounts of manual labor and/or killing power per unit time. Two, inability to control pregnancy, which means women either abstained from sex or spent nontrivial portions of their life partially incapacitated. The Industrial Revolution has largely eliminated the first, and modern medicine has eliminated the second, and so women's equality followed after them. But spells produce the same amount of work and/or violence regardless of the caster's gender, and while they don't appear in canon its easy to imagine contraceptive potions or spells exist (and indeed, wizard society does not show any of the signs of them not existing)[2], meaning that the conditions necessary for sexual equality would already have been achieved by wizards centuries ago. Therefore, its only Fridge Brilliance that their society, while backwards in so many other respects, still seems ahead of or keeping pace with the muggle world re: gender issues.
    • Hell, Muggles have birth control, but we don't always use it. Maybe it was a But We Used a Condom situation and the potion/charm/whatever isn't always effective. Maybe they just didn't use it one time in the heat of the moment. Maybe it was a potion that was improperly brewed, or a charm that was improperly cast. Maybe the condom slipped off.
    • This could just be another indication of how unhealthy their relationship is. I mean, this is a relationship where one can look utterly miserable while the other is beaming. Tonks was very clear with what she wanted and how she felt in the sixth book, but Lupin still held that he knew what was best for her and treated her like a child, really. Then, in the same manner, he dissregards everything previously resolved to walk out on her and the bably. On the flip side, she doesn't take his concerns seriously at all if he could be as upset as he was with the consequences of their relationship while she pretented that everything was pink clouds and sunshine. My guess is that she wanted a baby (or unprotected sex on the wedding night, at least) bad enough to wave off all his concerns and he just gave up the fight at that moment, maybe thinking he could solve the situation later. I don't think that this is directly linked to the sexual freedom the that society, their communication was just that bad.
    • I don't know, I think it's very believable that the Wizarding world (which is rather backwards in many issues such as racism or law, for that matter) might hold Views on contraception? And, as pointed out above, they don't seem to have sex ed. classes. Also there is forgetfulness, condoms breaking etc.
    • Hey, it's also entirely possible that, post-Dumbledore's death, in the pure emotion of it all the two of them made angsty love in an abandoned room somewhere, and Tonk's hair "magically" turned back to pink. During sex, your brain just shuts off anyway. Lupin probably regretted his decision later when he considered the consequences of it all (again, as has been mentioned above, just like Muggles will do). On a side note on Wizard prejudices, I've been wondering why it is there isn't more diversity at Hogwarts. Yes, Hogwarts has a mix of different ethnicities, but if at least the films are any indication, the majority certainly leans toward caucasions, just like it does in Muggle England. The civil rights movement would not have had anything to do with the magical world, like at all. HOWEVER, one could easily point out that, as there is a large number of Halfbloods and Muggleborns mixed in with the purebloods, there'd be numerous cultural cross-overs.
    • Because there isn't that much diversity in the area Hogwarts traditionally receives. I think there is mention that Hogwarts will more or less take anyone with minimum requirements but parents in Americas or Africa are not really going to want their kid so far away. Makes sense to me most characters would be white, and personally I think its awesome how many non whites are actual characters later on. Racism in skin tone doesn't really exist at Hogwarts. It is played out within the wizarding lineage way, which seems like an intense move and is mentioned a ton.
  • How can one tree in Romania - one tree that is not specified to be a magical tree - last for a thousand years? With the diadem of Ravenclaw staying there forever, and never taken up by some - say - squirrel. Or magpie. We're not talking the Petrified Forest or the California Sequoiahs, just an ordinary little tree. No forest fires. No lightning or particularly harsh winds. Not even a spell to preserve the tree for that long is mentioned. How?
  • There is a spell which will notify the caster(s) if somebody says a particular word. It was used to great effect by the Death Eaters to find when somebody said "Voldemort", as only the good guys in the Order would be brave enough to say it. Why didn't the Ministry/Order do the same thing but with "Dark Lord" or even "My Lord"? Even if the Ministry is too incompetent/corrupted to think of it or act on it, it would give the Order a lot of valuable intelligence on who his followers are (that Snape may not know about or may not be sharing).
    • First of all doing that to "Dark Lord" when you could be refering to the Dark Lord Grindelwald or heck any Dark Lord past or present in casual conversation is ridiculous. Second of all "My lord" can sometimes used by muggleborns as a sort of curse as in "oh my lord" so that's out too. Honestly the ministry isn't at fault for this as it's possible the Taboo Voldemort made is dark magic and would be frowned upon. You'd have to put it on something worse like say "Avada Kedavra" to get any real use out of it and even then it'd be iffy if you're teaching it to aurors.
      • And it's not just muggleborns that use the word 'lord' as an intensifier or curse. I noticed in a reread that at one point Draco Malfoy says 'Good Lord' before dropping some obnoxious insult.
    • Remember, also, that this is England, and there are people, such as peers and bishops, who are legitimately addressed as "My Lord".
    • And if the Ministry did try to tag "Dark Lord" as a Taboo, they'd probably have to discontinue doing so after the ninth or tenth false-alarm summons to a Muggle Tolkien reading, Star Wars convention, or Ravenloft game campaign.
  • Why didn't Voldemort simply order all his minions to make an unbreakable vow, that they will always serve his cause and never betray him?
    • There are a few theories I've heard about this. One theory says as long as it is active it constantly drains a portion of the unbreakable vow's subjects' magic (ie Snape and Mrs. Malfoy constantly had a set amount of magic that they couldn't access while the vow was in place). If Voldemort did that with everyone he'd have very little magic but loyal followers. Another theory is you can only have one unbreakable vow working at a time. Which would mean Voldemort would only use it if absolutely necessary. We don't know everything about the unbreakable vow so we can't just make blind jumps in logic otherwise we'd question every moment the unbreakable vow could have been used in the series.
    • He expected that fear would keep the Death Eaters in line.
    • Another idea: He wants to allow for failure. Maybe he wants to punish it with a grand speech, Crucio and AK to make a lasting impression (somebody peacefully kicking the bucket on a mission wouldn't be nearly so dramatic). Or maybe he understands that sometimes circumstances make fulfilling his orders impossible and doesn't want to needlessly lose loyal followers. Presumably, an unbreakable vow isn't intelligent and follows the contract to the letter all the time.
  • It bugs me how Harry immediately rejects Lupin's help without even considering the possibility that they could use it. Sure, Lupin should be spending time with Tonks, but they could have made all sorts of stipulations. Lupin doesn't have to know what they're up to to teach them useful defensive spells and strategies. They might have even been get some "methods of magical destruction" without him getting suspicious. Would a one-hour lesson every other day really cut into his and Tonks' quality time that badly?
    • No way Lupin would content himself with such superficial involvement. Judging from that scene, he had a vehement craving for a chance to escape his painful predicament, if not an outright deathwish. If Harry'd budged even a little, Lupin wouldn't have rested until he was accepted full-time (and we know how persuasive he could be).
    • Also, when you reread the scene pay attention to Harry's tone of voice and word choice; he's screaming insults in Remus' face, not calmly saying no. Harry has issues re: parental abandonment; the instant he heard 'Father of baby wants to leave baby behind', he stopped caring about why, he just went Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!
    • What bugs me is how Harry can live with himself after mentally tormenting a friend like that, especially a friend who has saved his life on numerous occasions, taught him to defend himself and generally been nothing but kind to him. Lupin genuinely wanted to help him and not just to get away from a marriage which he appeared to have been pressured/forced into in the first place and was clearly unhappy about. No matter how he justified it, Harry was being downright evil in that scene.
      • Because that was probably the only way to knock some sense into Lupin and get him to go back to his child. As someone above said, Harry has issues with child abandonment, so he was going to do whatever it took to keep his friend from abandoning his child.
  • So, Hermione was unable to find any curse that would be powerful enough to destroy an Horcrux, even if the power trio launched it together. But Crabbe can cast a spell powerful enough to destroy an Horcrux, even when it was not his intention? As far as we can tell, Crabbe and Goyle were awful wizards due to their stupidity. Harry and Hermione were probably the most powerful teenagers in the books (well, in the books means "teenagers in the books", I know Voldemort and Snape were way more powerful at 17).
    • The trio never found a legal spell to destroy a Horcrux. Hermione knew Fiendfyre existed but would never have tried it, even if she did know how to conjure it, because it's so dangerous. Crabbe didn't necessarily have to be powerful to cast a Fiendfyre curse, he just had to have knowledge of the spell. After all, he ended up being killed because he didn't know how to properly control it.
  • In the Battle of Hogwarts, the house elves join in... using kitchen knives. Why not use their innate magic to attack from a distance?
    • Who says they didn't use both?
    • Kitchen knives + combat teleportation (elves can do this at Hogwarts) + small size = awesome threat
    • Don't underestimate the lethality of sharp kitchen knives in the skilled hands of professional chefs.
  • In the book Harry gumbles about never having learned how to magically heal. Hogwarts has no compulary First-Aid courses? Smart. Real Smart.
    • Hermione uses a potion to cure Ron's wound and then another one - to cure their burns after the heist. So apparently it was taught - Harry was just Book Dumb.
      • are you forgetting that Hermione is a Teen Genius? She knew plenty of things that were outside of the school curriculum from reading so much.
    • Plenty of schools don't have First Aid courses, or at least very extensive ones, and plenty of students who do take First Aid classes in school don't really learn anything. Of course, you'd think that Harry Potter of all people would pay attention to First Aid, but it's not ridiculous thinking that Hogwarts doesn't offer any.
    • Harry did use a healing spell on an injured team mate during a quidditch training session in book six.
      • One that he had just learnt at the start of the year from Tonks, and that only worked to heal broken noses. Not that useful for splinching.
        • Bearing splinching in mind, seems like a bad idea to push first aid. Have it available for those who see the benefit, but not make it a requirement. Then you would have kids like Fred and George deciding "We know how to fix ourselves now lets see what else we can do!"
  • The destruction of the cup, namely the non-chalant way it was done off-screen. Both the diary and the locket defended themselves to the best of their abilities and nearly succeeded. I can understand the lack of resistance from the diadem, since it was destroyed by a spell of mass destruction, and the horcrux didn't have time to sense the danger and react, but the cup? "Oh, well, we just went into the Chamber of Secrets, took some Basilisk teeth and stabbed it." That's some mighty lazy writing there.
    • I agree. Best Wild Mass Guessing I can apply is maybe the spirits of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff in the diadem and the cup held the spirit more in check than in the Slytheryn one, which the horcrux part got along a little too well with.
      • Spirits of the owners stored inside their possessions sounds awfuly like...horcruxes. I don't think so.
      • I don't think he meant spirit as in "Soul" rather in the metaphoric sense.
    • Horcruxes gain power from emotional closeness to their victims. The diary could attack Harry in the Chamber of Secrets because it had been draining Ginny all year, while the locket could defend itself from Ron because it had been feeding off him, Harry, and Hermione for months in the woods. The cup was in their possession for all of a day, and the diadem hadn't been touched since Harry put it on that bust when he hid the Half-Blood Prince's Potions book, during which he likely held it for all of ten seconds, so neither of them had any power with which to fight back.
      • Fair enough. However, the Marvolo ring cursed Dumbledore to near death the moment he put it on, obviously not needing to drain any "mana" from people. Such a ward was uncharasteristcally thoughtfull and competent for V, I must say, which begs the question of why weren't the other horcruxes charmed to be lethal to the touch, like the necklace in HBP. Again, I can understand the diary, since it was supposed to be used to release the Basilisk, but why not the others?
        • The Marvolo ring was being stored with one of the three most powerful magical artifacts on the planet; that might have had something to do with it.
          • Fridge Logic kicks in: they didn't use those horcruxes. Ginny wrote in the Diary, DD wore the ring and H,R&H wore the locket (which all three felt draining them). While they didn't use use the cup (how would you use it anyway?) and didn't wear the diadem (which make the owner smarter so there is some temptation in wearing it).
          • I would think the obvious way of "using" the Cup would be to drink from it. Hepzibah Smith mentions that it, like the Locket, is rumored to possess unique magical properties, although this is never expounded upon; still, the idea that it might imbibe a liquid placed within it with special properties (Holy Grail, anyone?) makes sense. Presumably, someone tempted to do so while it was a Horcrux would become emotionally dependent on it and thus vulnerable, as would someone writing in the Diary or wearing the Ring.
  • If basilisk venom destroys Horcruxes and Harry is a Horcrux, wouldn't it have been destroyed when Harry got his arm impaled by the basilisk fang?
    • A Horcrux can only be destroyed along with its vessel (the unique Harry-Voldemort situation notwithstanding). If Harry wasn't cured by the phoenix and died, then yes, the Horcrux would be gone, but the venom doesn't "exorcise" horcruxes as much as overcomes the protective wards and damages the vessel beyond repair.
  • I'm the person above who explained how the Taboo was supposed to work and why Voldemort probably couldn't just make the atmosphere poisonous to muggles, but here's a more pointed thing than tabooing "hello" and having the death eaters watching the taboo alarms day and night: Why didn't Voldemort taboo the word "horcrux"? Anyone who says it is either an enemy or competition. Is it because the taboo is a government thing, that Voldemort would have had to have gone through the official channels to set it up without a prohibitive amount of effort (if at all) and didn't want any Ministry mice to get curious about horcruxes?
    • A few possible reasons. We're never told how the Taboo was made it's possible that he needed the help of his followers to set up the ritual to create it and them hearing Horcrux so much might get them interested when he'd rather them stay ignorant. Another might be that he never thought anyone would say the word horcrux even if they did find out about them (using a code word instead). Another possibility is that he couldn't create a Taboo on any word but only on someone's name or alias. In short if we knew a bit more about the Taboo and how it was made we'd have a better way to question it, but we're in the dark on a lot so it's safe to say either he couldn't, or didn't think it was worth the effort.
    • Voldemort does know that Dumbledore/Harry are aware of his Horcruxes until the very end of Book 7. He wouldn't have used the word "horcrux" because he wouldn't have expected anyone to say it. Barely anyone even seems to know what it is.
    • Plus, Death Eaters don't magically appear out of thin air. There's presumably some people sitting around monitoring the 'Taboo spell'...so it's entirely possible that if you Taboo a word, the monitors hear it. Or even will know what words they're listening for in advance. Voldemort doesn't want anyone to even know that word, not even his own people.
  • How are Lupin and Tonks brave for deliberately going into battle when they didn't have to, with a son and a widowed mother at home no less?
    • Care to elaborate on the "didn't have to" part? Regardless, they were hardly the only people there who had families, yet rushed into the fight to stop the evil that endangered those very families and everything they held dear.
      • From what we saw, Lupin and Tonks fighting in the battle of Hogwarts ultimately had no effect on it. It wasn't needed and while I understand that it was a war, it's still irresponsible to run out into a battle just because your husband did when you have a family that needs you more.
        • I half agree and disagree with you. On the one hand both parents fighting seems to make little sense when they just had a child. It'd make more sense for one parent to go and the other to remain behind to make sure the child is cared for in the worst case scenerio (which one should stay behind is debatable as they're both experienced). On the other hand "What we saw" of their fight was nothing. For all we know they fought and killed several inner circle members and only fell against overwelming odds.
        • This way you could argue that the contribution of any single soldier in any war is negligible, and that's a rather dangerous idea for the morale. Keep in mind that if the Army of Light wins but they both die, then their relatives will be taken cared of by their friends. If it loses but one of them survive, they'll be eventually hunted down and killed as blood traitors. And anyway I too think it's unfair to say that their death were meaningless, just because they died off-screen (although the way Moody and Lupins were killed off-screen does pisses me off).
  • Yet another Locket Horcrux question: why do they have to open the damned thing to destroy it? can't they just slash the locket and be done with it?
    • Rule of Drama.
    • Perhaps the outer casing was thicker than the inner bit of the locket?
  • Ron and Hermione go down to the Chamber of Secrets to get the Basilisk teeth. Wait a sec, do you mean to tell me that the Basilisk had just laid there for FIVE YEARS completely undisturbed? Are you kidding me? The school underwent probably the biggest crisis ever that nearly got it closed, and they just left the thing to rot in the Chamber and forgot all about it? Nobody cared to check if maybe it had offspring or if there were some other horrible things Slytherin might've left there, the freaking Ministry wasn't interested in studying the beast or just, you know, isolating an incredibly dangerous creature full of deadly venom, the school staff didn't seal the passage just to be on the safe side. How is that possible?!!!
    • Well for some of your problems they needed Harry (or a parslemouth) to get into the Chamber. I suppose Dumbledore could have gone there with Fawkes, assuming that's possible, but it's not really a danger to anyone as only Harry can get there. Also you have to remember that it's a complicated ritual to birth a basilisk (something about a chicken egg, full moon, etc) so there wasn't that big a chance of there being offspring especially since there was only one monster of Slytherin (no mate). Plus it's been over a thousand years, if Slytherin left anything that dangerous besides the Snake I think Voldemort would have used it when he found the basilisk 50 years ago.
      • Yeah, they'd need a parselmouth to get to the Chamber, how's that a problem? Moreover, it's not about danger as such - it's about people in charge apparently not giving a slightest damn. Just to recap: there is an ancient chamber, built by a powerful evil wizard, with AT LEAST one insanely dangerous monster they know about, right under a school full of children. How the hell is everyone OK with that? Can you imagine that if someone found a blockbuster under a school, they'd be content with simply defusing it and leaving it there without any further investigation? The arguments you presented, while valid, look awfully like the self-delusion sessions Voldy attends (nobody will ever find the horcruxes, I don't need to check on them...nobody will ever find the horcruxes, I don't need to check on them...). And even barring the ostensible danger, was NO ONE interested in a real life Basilisk corpse? Studying it, stuffing it for some museum of magical beasts, extracting its venom (I'm looking at you, prof. Slughorn), mounting its head on a mantle...nothing? BS.
        • The way I understand it the Chamber remained dormant for 950 years, because no parslemouth ever found the Chamber. If no other parselmouth appears to find it then it'll remain dormant. Dumbledore probably thought after a difficult experience Harry would want to avoid the Chamber and never brought up the idea of exploring it further for whatever reason. Yes, it seems silly but that's about the only reasoning I can think of. I agree it'd make sense that after Dumbledore realized that the diary was indeed a Horcrux and Voldemort did create more of them that he'd either go down there himself or have Harry retreive a Basalisk fang so that they'd have another way to safely destroy Horcruxes without the Sword of Gryffindor. Ultimately, I think somewhere along the line people either didn't believe the story, or lost interest in it enough that no one bothered Dumbledore or Harry about retreiving anything in the Chamber. Silly I know but the populace of the Wizarding world is weird like that.
      • Alternately, Lucius paid the Ministry to look the other way.
  • Why make such a huge deal about destoying Voldemort post "The Forest Again" chapter? Why make such a big deal about Narcissa not revealing to Voldemort that Harry is indeed still alive? Because of Harry's intended sacrificial move, it's eventually made clear that none of Voldemort's spells hold. "He can't touch them." Voldemort was effectively powerless at this point.
    • At the time it's not known that Voldemort's spells don't hold. I don't think Harry figured that out until he was hit by crucio and it didn't hurt. Narcissa's not revealing Harry was alive is important because it not only redeems her character, but it helps Harry. Even though Voldemort's spells don't hurt him the Death Eater's spells still can.
    • Besides, V could still hurt other people, outside Hogwarts. I doubt that Harry's sacrifice gave protection to the whole wide world, but more likely only to those in immediate danger.
    • Harry's sacrifice protected everyone else at Hogwarts from Voldemorts spells. The fact that he was the Master of the Elder Wand was why he was not hurt by the Cruciatus Curse. If Narcissa had said he was alive, V would have probably tried again, realised the Elder Wand didn't work, and use someone elses.
  • Why does Voldy call Lucius and Bella by their first names and all of the other Death Eaters by their last names? If it was to show that he favoured them, then why does he still call Lucius by his first name in Deathly Hallows?
    • In Bellatrix's case, it may be differentiate her from the two other Death Eaters named Lestrange. Maybe Abraxas Malfoy was a Death Eater back in the day, creating a similar situation with Lucius, and then when Abraxas died, Voldemort continued to say "Lucius" out of habit.
    • That makes sense, especially since in Order of the Phoenix, Lucius refers to each of the Lestranges by their first names and everyone else by their last. But that makes me wonder whether Voldy calls the Carrows and Narcissa by the their first names too. (Haven't read HBP or DH in a while, so if the answer's in there, sorry.)
  • Am I the only one who thought Lily's patronus was SUPER LAME? Is she such an uninteresting character that she gets nothing more creative than the Distaff Counterpart of her husband's patronus? It would be slightly okay if it turned after she fell in love with James, since I thought Snape taking on Lily's patronus was super romantic, but it is implied that her patronus was always a doe, which is just kind of lame. I am disappoint.
    • Counter question. When did she learn to cast a patronus? Before or after she fell in love with James? Keep in mind it's extremely special for Harry to cast a patronus at 13 and most of the DA only learned to cast it because Harry helped them and even then most had trouble. I'm of the opinion she never learned the spell until after she fell in love with James at least on the subconscious level. After all Tonks's patronus changed to reflect her happy thoughts so it's entirely possible that Lily's was reflected by her happy thoughts.
  • Couldn't Harry just put on his Cloak of Invisibility before escaping from the Dursley's house? It seems to me it would've eliminated the need for the dopplegangers. He did it in HBP, when he and D returned to Hogwarts from their mission, so obviously the Cloak can cloak a broom-rider.
    • More to the point, why didn't Harry use Polyjuice to turn into someone else, while the Death Eaters focused on the fake Harrys? Why didn't he just hide in the Dursley's car or disguise himself as Dudley for a day? There seem to be many, many ways to get out of the house without being observed without an epic aerial battle.
    • More simply, why do they care that the Ministry has said that its illegal to portkey or Apparate from Privet Drive? They already know that Voldemort has infiltrated the Ministry, so 'keeping ourselves clear of outstanding arrest warrants' should be of zero priority to them because they'll only be outlawed the instant Voldemort finishes his takeover anyway—which is exactly what happened. (And if they have people like Arthur Weasley who still need to maintain clean rap sheets, then don't involve them in the operation and make sure they have alibis when it goes down. It only takes one adult wizard to portkey Harry away anyway.)
  • After Hermione's wand is taken, she says that Voldemort will know that Harry's wand is broken because of priori incantanum. But her wand broke his wand weeks earlier, and she cast dozens of spells after breaking his wand. Why would that be a concern?
    • Technically the villains could've watched all the spells the wand had ever performed (at the cemetary in GoF V's wand replayed the spells it performed 15 years before).
  • Does anyone else think it's kinda weird that Angelina was dating Fred and then ended up marrying George? Yeah, your boyfriend from school isn't necessarily your true love, but it's still a bit odd to go on to marry the identical twin of someone you dated.
    • I always assumed it was a Twin Swap deal and it was really George she was dating and after Fred died he had to come clean.
    • Technically all we know is that Fred and Angelina went together to the Yule Ball (though we see Fred there without her, oddly). For all we know, that might have been their only date, and we don't know when she and George got together. (Or, for an alternate theory: J.K. didn't mean to do a Settle for Sibling at all, she just forgot which twin she'd originally set her up with.)
  • What exactly happened to Emmeline Vance? She was a member of the Order who died sometime between books 5 and 6; Snape used her death as a way to try to win Bella's trust in the first chapter of book 6, because he said that he gave Voldemort the information that led to her murder. This troper usually used that statement as backup for her belief that Snape really was evil. In this book, he was revealed to be good, but we never heard anything about Emmeline. Was she sacrificed for the good of the Order? Did Snape actually have little to do with her death and just bank on Bellatrix not knowing details? It didn't seem that he could have given information that indirectly led to her death, as she was implied to be murdered, not killed in some sort of battle or something. Does anyone know if JKR said anything on the subject? Or does anyone have any theories?
    • It is very likely that Emmeline Vance did indeed die the way Snape stated. Banking on 'Bellatrix not knowing details' would have been direly stupid of Snape—she's already accused Snape of lying to her in that conversation and so is very likely to go double-check any claims he makes, and out of all the Death Eaters Bellatrix is the most able to go ask Voldemort a question without getting Crucio'ed in the face because she's his #1 gun and most trusted lieutenant. And Tom, of course, knows damn well who actually killed Emmeline Vance and how, using what information he got from where.

Unsorted Examples pt7

  • Stan Shunpike just bugs me. First, in book 6, it just bugs me that the Ministry is considered to be True Evil for arresting him because he's obviously not a death eater, he's just joking about it. Um, going around bragging about how you're a terrorist and have all these terrorist attacks planned is going to get you thrown into jail in the muggle world too, even if it is just empty boasting. Then, in book 7, it turns out that hey, the Ministry was right! Stan's one of the guys who tries to attack Harry when they're taking him from Privet Drive, and Harry has not a second of reflection that maybe the Ministry did something right or that he might be wrong, he only says Stan's obviously imperiused. Now, on a mission to eliminate the one you think is literally the only person who can stop you, would you send some useless mind-controlled drone if you had anyone else available? And really, why would you bother to imperius Stan Shunpike, of all people, when you could probably effectively imperius the vast majority of Wizarding Britain's population. The conclusion anyone who hasn't already given Harry an omniscient morality license would reach is that yes, Stan Shunpike is and was a Death Eater, particularly given the skepticism already shown to the "but I was imperiused" excuse in previous books. Especially when Harry only knows Stan from a few rides on the Knight Bus and a couple glances of him as a comic relief character.
    • Well, the only one who actually cares about Stan's imprisonment is Harry, and he's largely an idiot. But to be honest to him, the real problem with the Ministry is not that they arrested Stan, but rather that it was their only achievement (not to mention, of course, the whole ordeal with Umbridge). They are not evil as much as horrendously stupid and incompetent. As for the chase scene in Book 7, while I agree in general, I can at least think of a reason to Imperio Stan: although it'd be uncharacteristically brilliant for him, V could've sent an obviously innocent (well, from Harry's POV, at least) Imperioused person sent after each of the seven dopplegangers to root out the real Potter.
    • It's generally accepted by the adults, or at least Mr. Weasley, that Stan isn't a Death Eater and the Ministry just wanted to look like they were doing anything. They interrogated him and had no reason to suspect him of any Death Eater activity, but they wanted to act like they'd made an accomplishment. And how many Death Eaters do they really have? Malfoy doesn't have a wand, and there were a bunch who were doing other things. Sure, they could take control of the majority of the population, but that's probably a lot of effort. Stan Shunpike was in Azkaban, which the Death Eaters pretty much control, so he's easily accessible.
      • Even assuming Stan Shunpike is not a Death Eater, getting thrown in jail for going around bragging about your terrorist plans is completely reasonable. Try going to an airport, shouting that you have a bomb, and saying "yeah, I was just trying to impress my dumbass friends" when the cops come to get you and see how long you stay out of prison. Now that going to Azkaban no longer involves having all of your happiness and your soul slowly sucked away, it really isn't disproportionate retribution. There are also legitimate, non-venal reasons for wanting to reassure the public and avoid widespread panic, as well as for not entrusting the fate of your nation to three 17-year-old kids. McGonagall and the rest of the Order try and pressure the trio to tell them what they're doing too. No, the Ministry doesn't really deserve a whole lot of trust from Harry & Co., but with Fudge gone they also started publishing useful pamphlets and info. Really, the only thing that the Scrimgeour administration does that is "wrong" is not firing and arresting Umbridge (which, to be fair, is a pretty big one).
      • I don't think anyone, even Harry, was arguing that arresting Stan Shunpike was an unforgivable sin. At the moment that he made the claim, yes, security concerns completely justified hauling him in for questioning, at the very least. The problem was that, once it became clear that Stan was just a blithering idiot and not an actual terrorist, the Ministry continued to detain him without charges, simply so they could point to him as evidence that their anti-Voldemort campaign was going well. Keeping someone imprisoned indefinitely without hope for release for a couple stupid remarks, even minus the constant Mind Rape, most certainly IS still Disproportionate Retribution. At very least, if Scrimgeour wanted public support from Dumbledore and Harry then he should've been prepared to release Stan as a gesture of good faith; that he wouldn't budge even on that demonstrates him to be a bad leader, despite being miles ahead of Fudge.
    • Stan Shunpike is also one of the most likely candidates for a new Death Eater. He's a nobody who likes to pretend he's a somebody. He's weak and he knows it. He's one of the downtrodden and disrespected members of society. A new, powerful gang comes along and is recruiting. He matches the profile to a T for kids who get recruited into street gangs and drug dealing- the offer of being part of a cohesive group, the glamour of power over others, the instantaneous respect and awe you get from your peers. When Scrimgouer said Stan was arrested as a Death Eater, I believed him. Harry's met the guy... once? Good job, Harry.
      • It is still incredibly shaky ground to go from "has the potential to be a criminal at some point in the future" to "hold this man without charges indefinately". If they had any proof they would have actually bothered to put him on trial.
        • I wasn't saying they should have arrested all at-risk youths. I'm saying that Harry has met Stan for all of ten seconds or so, and from those ten seconds we know he's they kind of person who would join a gang, and he was arrested for boasting that he had joined a gang... Harry pretty much has no right claiming the Ministry was being evil when what little evidence he had to go on pointed towards the ministry being right. And, at minimum, he probably should have been arrested anyway for claiming to be a terrorist.
        • He was flaunting his association with the enemy in the times of war. He should've been happy they bothered with keeping him in prison at all and didn't just AK him right away.
        • One more reason Stan's a good candidate for recruitment by the Death Eaters: Scrimgeour's administration gives him every reason to hate the Ministry when it denies him a trial. This troper assumed that was the point of his character, to show that the authorities' unjust methods were actually driving otherwise-neutral people into Voldemort's service.
  • On the subject of manipulating people. When Hermione had been changing her parents' personalities (as discussed above), she at least had the valid excuse that she was protecting them and even so she had felt terrible about it. Fast forward to the finale, where all the heroes grew up happily in the new, ostensibly more enlightened, open-minded and conscientious Wizarding world. What are we told in a non-chalant, humorous and matter-of-fact way? That Ron (who's apparently an Auror(!) now) put the Confundus Spell (basically "Imperius Lite") on a random innocent Muggle...in order to pass his driving test. What. The. Fuck. I mean, he could've taken the test again (I took it about 7 times before I passed), or, hell, he could've bribed the instructor, which would've been bad, of course, but a normal, amicable kind of bad. But nope, he just took his mighty wand out and subdued the feeble Muggle mind and then treated it like a joke. Suddenly, Ron the Death Eater doesn't look so absurd anymore.
    • The Confundus Charm doesn't honestly seem to be treated like a big deal by the characters. It's less an Imperius curse and more like just confusing someone. It's like if you talk someone into doing something by just going off on a tangent, almost. Hermione did it on Cormac McLaggen, and Dawlish had it done to him about four times, and it's been used before casually, though I can't think of other examples. And why is bribery better? It's still using an unfair advantage that you have over someone to get them to do something that they shouldn't.
      • It's better because at least it doesn't violate free will, for the potential bribee is perfectly capable of refusing. Anyway, I only mentioned bribery as a more admissable way to cheat then Mind Rape. Naturally, the right thing to do would be to appoint another test and train harder for it. As for the harmless nature of Confundus, I beg to disagree. Reread the DH, where Snape Confunds Mundungus into suggesting the plan with seven Potters to the order. It doesn't look like "confusing someone" as much as "hypnotising someone into doing exactly as told, including forgetting about being hypnotised". Sure, it's much less severe then Imperious, hence "Imperious Lite". But it's one thing when it's done by a stupid teenager or in times of war, and a whole lot another when it's casually performed by an adult(and Auror at that) for such a triffle reason and treated as a joke. Dark Side always starts from small things.
        • Most of the wizarding world considers screwing around with someone else's mind to really not be that big a deal, unless it gets so far that it completely subsumes the identity and will of the victim and turns them into a puppet/tool of the caster, which is why the imperius is still an unforgivable. Just like a bar fight for us is usually, while not cool, also not a huge deal unless it goes so far that someone pulls a knife or a gun or gets beaten to an inch of their life. Wizards casually obliviate, confund, and use legilimency and love charms on each other and muggles all the time. Many muggles and way too many fanfic writers (judging from the number of times I've read Harry-Gets-Insanely-Pissed-At-Snape-And/Or-Dumbles-For-Using-Legilimency-On-Him in a fic, because, hey, all fanfic writers are muggles) consider all that to be mind rape. And that's why we have a trope called Values Dissonance. A wizard who's been confunded will be a little annoyed, possibly more depending on what they did while confunded, but otherwise will get over it. Ron is one of the more clueless about the muggle world of the wizards, he considers being confunded no big deal, he can't fathom why someone else would think it was, just like you seem unable to fathom how someone else could consider it to be anything but mind rape.
        • While all you say is generally true, it still bugs me because this incident took place in the end of the story. You know, when the heroes are supposed to have grown up, become more responsible, and learned something about the importance of doing what's right, not what's easy, after they'd witnessed the atrocities that ultimately result from the sence of self-superiority and abuse of power. You'd just think there would be some freaking change in their values, especially in regard to Muggles!
        • Why? It's not like everyone's going to be perfect because they've been through a war. That's one of the powers of Harry Potter: the characters aren't perfect (witness, for instance, Hagrid's xenophobia and Sirius's contempt for Kreacher), but they're still good, because people are multifaceted. And hey, Muggles have had the whole "We've been through an atrocity so terrible that we can never do it again." At the time, they called it The Great War, or The War to End All Wars. Nowadays, we call it World War I, because humanity was dumb enough to start another one two decades later.
          • "Humanity" is not an individual sentient being and the last sentence was a gross overgeneralisation. We're talking about one man who fought the evil first hand, then devoted his life to fighting other evils and then used pretty much the same underhanded techniqques that evil did (again, yes, the scale was much smaller, but that's why the slippery slope is called the slope).
    • Besides, it's not like the Confundus Charm robs anyone of their free will, it just confuses them. It's less "yes master, I will pass you" and more "you didn't check your mirrors...did you? Oh of course you did, my mistake".
      • AGAIN, reread the scene in DH, where Snape Confunds Mundungus into suggesting the plan with seven Potters to the Order. It doesn't look like "confusing someone" as much as "hypnotising someone into doing exactly as told, including forgetting about being hypnotised". Sure, it's still much less severe then Imperious, hence "Imperious Lite". But it's one thing when it's done by a stupid teenager or in times of war, and a whole lot another when it's casually performed by an adult(and Auror at that) for such a triffle reason and treated as a joke.
      • I think it's the fact that it is for such a minuscule reason that it's not considered serious. He slightly baffled some minor Muggle official for a piece of paper/plastic he didn't particularly need in the first place. If there's malice to be found in that, I certainly can't see it. Also, how do we know that Snape's Confunding of Mundungus actually hypnotised him? Maybe it just put into a trance-like state where he would be receptive to anything Snape told him (though not necessarily overpowered by it), was given a set of tactics by Snape, and when he snapped out of it found himself possessed of some genuinely good tactics, so decided to pass them along. Less like brainwashing, more Inception.
        • Seeing how the working title of Inception was Mind Rape: The Movie, I don't think it's a good example. Yes, it may not overpower one's will completely, but it still messes with their mind. How do we even know that it bears no long-lasting consequences for psyche? Sure, they'd hardly be severe, more like a slap on the face than a kick in the nuts, but it is still violence, and it damn better have some justification. Forgive me for my naivety, but I thought that if there was one lesson the'd certainly get out of the whole fucking war, it wouold be the respect for free will.
  • Why didn't Harry and co. summon Kreacher when they were held by the Malfoys? Maybe they didn't think of it at first, but once Dobby showed up, you'd think that they'd have thought, "Hey, House Elves are really helpful in this situation, maybe two would be better and safer for all involved."
    • For that matter, why did they never summon Kreacher? They were worried about him and what was happening at Grimmauld Place. Isn't it possible that the Ministry might have captured him and tortured him for serving the enemy? Why weren't they more concerned?
      • If it did, then summoning him would probably lead the enemy to the Trio. On the other hand, it'd been already established that elves, when not bound by their conditioning, can stand for themselves just fine.
        • How would they follow him? We've never seen anything in canon that can track a house-elf. And they already know that Bellatrix or Narcissa can't give Kreacher any orders if Harry has ordered Kreacher not to accept them; they tested that in book 6.
        • Well, neither did we know untill the book 7 that saying V's name could be a bad thing. The point is that summoning him would've been a great risk, and avoiding it was one of the few smart things the Trio did.
    • Perhaps house elves are not quite as useful as people think, and cannot apparate into other people's property. Otherwise, at some point, they'd be used as thieves and assassins. It's worth noting that Dobby does not appear to apparate into Harry's house in the second book, either. So how did Dobby get into Malfoy Manor? Because Lucius freed him without actually 'firing' him. I.e., the magic binding Dobby to Lucius was removed...but Dobby still 'worked' for him, and thus, technically, still had access to Malfoy Manor, because at no point did Lucius say 'You are no longer in my employ, Dobby'.
  • Since V was absoultely adamant that only he was allowed to kill Potter, why was Pettegrew's reluctance to do it considered a sign of treason punishable by death?
    • This is more about the fact that even if Voldy allowed him to kill Potter, Pettegrew still wouldn't do it. It's more about "If I let you kill him, would you want to do it?" than actually killing him.
  • During the escape from Privet Drive wouldn't it make more sense to turn everbody into Potters, so that the DEs wouldn't dare to use AK at all? Besides, the more Potters, the more confusion, the easier to escape.
    • It's probably because the real Harry Potter needs some protection from the Death Eaters in case they do go after him, so having that many Potters would mean that he would either have no protection or be the only one with protection. Either way is too risky since the Death Eaters would know he is the most well protected Potter.
      • What do you mean? The'd still go in pairs, of course, and would cover each other.
  • Why is Parseltongue now a learnable language? It's been established since book 2 that Parseltongue is a magical language, it can't be learned by any normal means and is strictly hereditary (barring otherwise unnatural soul transferences). How, then, is Ron able to simply memorize a sound with a particular meaning, and then repeat the sound? That's pretty much the definition of learning a language- you learn the sound, associate it with the proper meaning, and repeat the sound. Grammar and syntax can be figured out after you've built up a decent vocabulary.
    • To tell the truth, Ron only "learned" one word, it was the only word Harry uttered in his presence, and it'd been pretty obvious that the word means "open", so he didn't need to accociate anything. It is still a giant Ass Pull, of course, because the Parseltongue is not hissing - it is merely how the profane percieve it. It is the same as if somebody managed to imitate the sound of a working dial-up moded and expected to be able to establish a valid internet-connection that way.
      • The Chamber entrance wasn't keyed to fluency in Parseltongue, only to a specific vocal sound which just happened to have a meaning in Parseltongue. It worked for the same reason that McGonagall, who had no idea what a "lemon drop" was, could still have used the sound of that phrase to access Dumbledore's office door.
    • Parseltongue was established as a "learnable language" in Book 6, actually; it's fairly clear from the Gaunt flashback that Dumbledore can understand it, even if he can't speak it (although he probably would've been able to repeat a couple of basic words if necessary). I got the sense that it was somewhat similar to Mermish or Gobbledegook - the rapid speech patterns and strained noises required to communicate in it makes it very difficult for humans to learn, but not impossible (makes me wonder if Barty Crouch Sr., speaker of "over two hundred" languages, knew Parseltongue as well). Salazar's line just so happens to be genetically predispositioned to speaking/understanding snake-language instinctively, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that is the only way to learn.
      • No, that doesn't show any learning at all. The memory was extracted from a parseltongue-speaker, and I assume that Dumbledore could only understand because he is literally watching someone's perceptions. Harry doesn't have to consciously interpret parseltongue, and thus any memory extracted from Harry would probably also be automatically translated. Again, it's also been stated outright in canon that it can only be understood by someone with the innate trait, not that it was simply a language spoken by a magical species that is "difficult" to learn.
      • Err...no, that memory comes from Bob Ogden, who doesn't understand a lick of Parseltongue. So there really is no other conclusion to reach than that Dumbledore knows some amount of Parseltongue, and that it is therefore a learnable language...if still an incredibly difficult one.
  • How easily forgiven Ron is. Seriously. He rage-quits on the group and just leaves, after being bitchy for what might have been months! He LEFT them, and they could have been dead for all he knew! Harry and Hermione went through a lot without him. And suddenly Ron saves Harry's life and everything is A-OK with Harry? Hermione should have been allowed to kick the stuffing out of Ron and then throw his whiny ass out back to Shell Cottage! NOTHING justifies allowing Ron back into the group!
    • Because saving Harry's life, retrieving the sword of Gryffindor, AND destroying the Horcrux that has been tormenting them for months on-end apparently qualifies as "nothing."
    • And besides, Hermione calls him out on ALL of what you just stated. Which, incidentally, he outright states that he feels is entirely justified. But they were miserable without Ron's presence and have precious few allies to begin with; ultimately, they were incredibly glad to have him back, and forgave his personal failings (eventually) in light of his recent heroism. Ron isn't perfect, but he IS a courageous and loyal friend, and your suggestion that they reject his return for petty personal reasons is, frankly, ridiculous.
      • I like how you consider abandoning your friends at their greatest time of need constitutes loyalty. It's not the first time he's done that. In fact, inviting him back is the "petty personal reason"- they were lonely without him, but it didn't slow them down on their mission.
        • And I like how you and the rest of the Ron the Death Eater crowd seem determined, somehow, to ignore all manner of canon in order to paint Ron Weasley as a horrible selfish monster, instead of the well-rounded, heroic-but-flawed character he actually is. For one thing, you're forgetting the (rather paramount) influence of the Locket; he left them in one moment of weakness because the thing had been preying on his insecurities and doubts for months. Cracking under that kind of strain, particularly as he immediately wanted to go back as soon as his head was cleared of the Horcrux's "voice," is not an unforgivable offense.
        • Anyone who sees Ron's flaws for what they are is automatically Ron the Death Eater, eh? Ron-lovers, however, just attribute characteristics that don't fit. Ron has turned tail twice in four years. That pretty much precludes the possibility of defining him as "Loyal." Hermione and Harry remained loyal to each other and the mission. The locket was affecting all of them equally- they shared the locket between them, remember? The horcrux only put them in a bad mood- no real change in personality. There's no reason to assume it affected Ron more unless you're just looking for an excuse for him. Saying that he only did so "in a moment of weakness" really doesn't help the case. If a person is only loyal until they have a "moment of weakness" then the are not, by definition, loyal.
        • Wait, it "didn't slow them down"? From a Horcrux-hunting standpoint, Harry and Hermione make absolutely no progress during the period that Ron was separated from them. Then, in a couple hours, BOOM: Ron returns, they get the sword, and the Horcrux is gone! That's gotta go a long way toward patching up lingering hurt feelings, and even then Hermione felt the need to both verbally and physically abuse him to drive the point home (which, again, Ron considered fully justified).
        • You seem to be mistaking coincidence with causality. They happened to find the sword at the same time Ron happened to come back. Did Ron bring the sword to them? No. Snape did. He put the sword there, he cast the patronus. There's a good chance that if Ron didn't pull Harry out, Snape would have.
        • So ultimately, Ron is not a perfect character. He's also not the raging, horrible, flighty, immature Jerkass you seem to consider him. He's a basically good man who was in a particularly vulnerable spot and taken advantage of by a pure-evil object containing the soul of Wizard!Hitler, but who ultimately resisted its temptations at the final turning point and killed it, before going right back to the "courageous and loyal friend" mentioned above. Or do you have a case you'd like to argue where Ron behaved this way after the Locket debacle? Because expecting them to throw their best friend out on his ass based on some imagined slights that never actually materialized is, once again, freaking ridiculous.
          • Hi, just to butt into your argument for a second. Ron only destroyed the locket because Harry wanted him to, so that really isn't a plus for Ron's character. Also considering the "Locket Debacle" is when the story picks up again means there is never another lull for Ron to desert them again doesn't mean he's gotten any better. If this was the first time He'd done this there might be some sympathy but considering he did it in their 4th year as well it sets itself up as a pattern, not the one off that you are so desperately trying to make it. Also given your excuse of him being under the influence of Wizard!Hitler then Harry and Hermione should have snapped as well. By your logic Harry should be forgiven every bad thing that he has ever done and he's perfect in every way because he has been carrying a horcrux in his scar since age 1 and you can't tell me one truly bad thing he's done ever since he got rid of it.
      • Well, on the subject of Ron being the only one who cracks: Every person is different and has different flaws and weakpoints. Ron happens to be selfconscious and having and inferiority complex, which is the Perfect point for the horcrux to exploit, which it does. Just like harry suffers under dementors most of all, because of his past, Ron suffers from the horcrux most, because, it was already established, that he has inferiority and selfconsciousness issues, brought up to the eleven by the necklace. And, as much as falling victim to the Dementors doesn't make harry a coward and a weakling, neither does falling for the horcrux Ron an traitor - he just happens to have a flaw best exploited by the necklace.
        • Yeah, Harry faints to dementors, but he doesn't faint when confronted with non-magically induced fear. Horcruxes aren't the only thing in the series that's led Ron to abandon Harry. If the horcrux was a one-time thing throughout the series, then it's totally understandable. Ron's fandom igores the fact that he did this in Goblet of Fire, no horcruxes required. Then they just assume he's a changed man and will never let it happen again. When it happens again in DH, they say it's all the horcrux's fault, and none of it is because of Ron's inherent character traits. I don't buy that.
        • I feel the need to point out that Ron said something like he wanted to come back as soon as he left (i.e. as soon as the Horcrux was off and he could think clearly again) but got caught by Snatchers and then couldn't find Harry and Hermione because of the protective enchantments. Seems to me like this moment of weakness was only a few minutes long, not months. Ok, yes, it was still a rotten thing to do, but you can't hold one mistake (or two, if you count Goblet of Fire) against him forever. Otherwise people like Snape and Dumbledore and, hell, everyone are also evil. For another thing, I think people really blow the Goblet of Fire incident out of proportion. Ron didn't do anything unforgiveably terrible to Harry. He had a fight with him. A stupid, petty fight, yes, but they were teenagers! Plenty of teenagers have fights like that every other week. No relationship is completely free of conflict. No one ever says Harry is a despicable excuse for a human being for constantly snapping and yelling at Ron and Hermione in OotP, or when he abandoned Hermione over a broomstick in PoA. At least Ron's fight with her then was justified (he thought her pet killed his and she was refusing to apologize) Now who sounds the most douchey in those cases, Harry or Ron? My point is, if you can forgive other characters for flaws, why not Ron? No one is saying he's perfect.
        • "forgivable" and "forgettable" are different. What Ron did was essentially throw away 3 years worth of trust- he refused to hear Harry's side of the story for his own petty feelings. You could forgive him for something like that, eventually, but it's unwise to just forget that it ever happened. The fact that he still harboured feelings of jealousy which the locket preyed upon exemplifies that. I think this is a problem with the series as a whole, not just Ron - "forgiveness" seems to equate to "forget it ever happened." Harry brushes all bad incidents under the rug when he forgives someone. Most readers just follow his train of thought, but I like to place myself in the character's shoes and wonder what I would have done. Ron isn't evil, but if I met him in real life he's not the kind of guy I would be friends with for long. This brings me waaay back to the OP's question: Ron is forgiven easily because Harry seems to play the "forget it ever happened" card whenever he forgives someone. He seems to treat every incident as an isolated case- Draco is forgiven because he didn't identify Harry at the Manor, and Harry just forgets that Draco has been doing many bad things (especially in 6th year). Peter Pettigrew... well, he's pretty much second to Voldemort for ruining Harry's life, but as soon as Peter hesitates to kill, Harry thinks the man's redeemed himself (seconds before his death, of course).
          • There's also the part where Ron Weasley is a big fat liar. He claims he wanted to come back shortly after getting away from the Horcrux, but he couldn't find them? In the book, Ron storms out circa the dinner hour... but Harry and Hermione don't move the tent until its almost noon the next day.
          • Ron also provably lies in that sequence when his stated reason for leaving is because he's worried about the safety of Ginny and his parents... but during the months he's gone, he never once goes to check up on either of them. He never even communicates with them, and while Ginny might be hard to reach at Hogwarts his parents and Bill (remember, he's staying at Shell Cottage in the interim) presumably have methods they can get in touch by.
  • So, on the verge of the final battle they are evacuating smaller kids through the secret passage to Hogsmead...that is teeming with Death Eaters and Dementors and has anti-apparition alarms. Aren't they missing something with that brilliant idea?
    • Considering that the Death Eaters were too busy leading with the battle at Hogwarts, I really doubt that they would cause trouble at Hogsmeade. As for the dementors, I bet they could arrange the kids to be put into groups with one student who could do a Patronus I bet there are a few of them that can do it even if it's difficult to do.
    • Plus, it's fairly likely that most, if not all of the dementors stationed in Hogsmeade would have been repurposed for the Battle of Hogwarts. Harry's point to McGonagall is fairly sound; with all of Voldemort's forces focused solely on attacking Hogwarts Castle, security surrounding Hogsmeade would be rather lax. And as for the last point, since the remaining Order members were apparating directly into the Hog's Head, I think it's pretty clear that Aberforth somehow managed to prevent his pub from being affected by the "alarms."
  • What was the charm to protect Grimmauld Place supposed to do? All that Snape would have done is say "kill". Or something. Nothing too dangerous or difficult.
    • The shut-off trigger for the enchantment wasn't the word "kill;" it was the spell realizing that whoever was entering was not Severus Snape. Since Snape never enters the house after Moody sets up "Old Dusty," we have no idea exactly what it would have done, but it's probably safe to assume that it wouldn't be pretty.
  • Why the hell didn't Voldie hide at least one of his horcruxes in the Chamber of Secrets? he thought that he was the only person ever to find the Room of requirement, but that's in a relatively accessible place. And he didn't even bother to curse the diadem or anything. The Chamber of Secrets he could've been sure that only he could get into it being the last Parseltongue on earth.
    • Presumably, he didn't want one Horcrux (the Diary) to act as a "key" for any of the others. Remember that, while Voldemort might have considered it within reason that someone (i.e. Regulus) could figure out that he had a Horcrux, he was absolutely certain that no one would ever figure out that he had Horcruxes, plural. Since the Diary was intended to be used someday to reopen the Chamber and release Salazar's Basilisk upon a new generation of Muggleborns, he wouldn't have wanted to risk two Horcruxes (and thus the exposure of his use of multiple Soul Jars) should that plan go south. Better to hide the Diadem in the unrelated but (in his estimation) just as impossible-to-find Room of Requirement.
    • Oh, and plus, its general agreed-upon that he hid the Diadem either right before or right after his job interview with Dumbledore. That means he would've been fairly pressed for time so as not to alert the headmaster's suspicions, which would probably prohibit him from visiting the Chamber or placing more intricate protections on the Diadem.
    • WMG: After killing Myrtle, he knew Dumbledore suspected him as the real culprit and knew about the chamber of secrets. He assumed Dumbledore would have had plenty of time to investigate, especially after he became the Headmaster of Hogwarts.
  • Why didn't Harry, Ron, and Hermione try explaining to Griphook that they needed to hold on to the sword? Harry actually mentions that while Griphook's deal is that he gets the sword, he doesn't stipulate when. Why not, when they were initially trying to get Griphook's help, tell him that the sword is necessary to defeat Voldemort, and that it will be a while before he can get it. He may have said no, of course, but is that any reason not to try?
    • Griphook was already on the verge of flipping out at them as it was; they had to pacify him by consenting to his demands, and even the slightest explanation of why they need the sword might tick him off. Griphook didn't really give them much room to speak. Besides—even if the Trio didn't know about it—he was working for Voldemort. Would he have been swayed by their explanation?
  • When the Trio are flying the dragon after the heist, Harry is concerned about when and where the dragon is going to land, and whether it desides to fly oversea and what if it notices and wants to eat them...uhm, why don't they just apparate away?
    • Because they would apparate with the dragon, or at least part of the dragon? There is canon evidence that you can side-apparate with someone else accidentally by grabbing into him/her(Hermione brought their persecutors to grimauld place that way) so they might not want to risk it.
      • That's kind of a stretch. One thing is an actively pursuing them wizard who actually grabbed Hermie, and another is a dragon they merely ride on. It's not like they were commonly apparating parts of the landscape with them, is it? And even if they do take a part of the dragon with them, well, sucks to be the dragon. As for the risk, again, Harry was worried (rather legitimately, I might add) that the dragon will take god know where or just eat them. What was there to risk?
        • The wizard merely grabbed their robes, and got side apparated with them(Either because they haven't practiced enough to select who gets side apparated, or everyone you're "touching" gets aparatted when you side-apparate), they were in the dragon, so either they transport a chunk of the dragon with them, or the whole dragon. The trio aren't precisely know for risking the life of anything they might consider sentient innecesarily.
      • Fan Theory here: Apparation next to a creature that magical(that resists most spells) might not work or be hazardous- taking a chunk out of the dragon by accident seems like the 'best' case scenario to me. Also the dragon has had a pretty terrible life of slavery already, having a chunk taken out of it would be just overkill.
  • The whole Potter-assassination scene bugs the hell out of me for two reasons.
    • First the major one. Why would the Potters leave their wands apart? No, I don't care how "safe" or "relaxed" they felt - I dare you to find at least one moment in all the seven books, when anybody, no matter how safe or relaxed they were, didn't have their wand on them. You won't. And there's a good reason for that, namely the fact that the wizards use their wands all the time and for everything. Dick jokes aside, the wands are practically extensions to their bodies.
    • Regarding the wands, wasn't it stated that James had been playing with Harry just before the attack. Given that wands are valuable, (perhaps invaluable), potentially dangerous, and breakable, maybe he thought it wouoldn't be such a good idea to have his wand within reach of a baby.
      • Indid, he was. In fact, as witnessed by V, James was "making puffs of colored smoke with his wand", which rather clashes with your theory.
    • Now the humongous one. James yells to Lily: "Take Harry and run". Ok, he's staying behind to cover their escape, as befits a man, good for him, I mean it. Except that, where's she supposed to run? No, that's not a rethorical question, I honestly want to know what the contingency plan was. You know, like a portable time-independant portkey (we know they exist, Crouch used one), or a Vanishing cabinet (it is mentioned, that they were popular during the First War) with a self-destruct mechanism, or a detachable room that lifts off and flies away, while the rest of the house explodes, or litrally anything that doesn't leave them locked insinde their own house to be slaughtered like cattle. Seriously, NOTHING?!!! These allegedly brilliant wizards didn't prepare ANY emergency escape route? How did they even manage to "thrice defy him" when they seem to be completely unconcerned with their own survival?
      • We don't necessarily know that there weren't any of those safety measures you stated. Maybe Voldy was blocking the way, or he was in the nursery too fast for Lily to do anything other than shield her son(like grabbing the broom under the dresser or whatever). They didn't really have a reason to be very uptight about as of the minute safety- nothing had attacked so far, they were under the very secure fidelus curse and there's no way their friend Peter would betray them. As for them not having their wands on them...no idea. People have misplaced/temporarily forgotten more important things. Maybe it's the magical equivalent of forgetting to put your watch on?
        • We saw the whole scene from V's POV, there was no indication that he had to overcome or block anything, and Lily had enough time to barricade the door. So, no. As for the rest, I said it and I'll repeat it: when you plan contingency measures, you do not placate yourself - you expand from the worst possible scenario, where all conventional means of protection have failed like, in our case, where their friend Pettegrew was captured and tortured horribly into revealing the secret. The wands - no, it's rather the equivalent of forgetting to load your gun before going into battle. It wouldn't bug me so much, if it was about ordinary people, but potters were supposed to be brilliant and relatively battle-hardened, yet still they commit such unfathomably stupid blunders.
        • They were smart and capable, but they were also twenty-one-year-olds, so I think it's something of a stretch to call them "battle-hardened." In any event, though, my guess is that many witches and wizards do put down their wands for a few minutes every once in a while, while in the comfort of their own homes; the proper equivalent is forgetting to load the shotgun one keeps next to one's bed in case of burglars, not before going out into battle. One can't stay 100%-alert, 100% of the time - Voldemort caught them at a vulnerable moment and capitalized on it. Were they somewhat foolish for not enabling themselves a second's-notice escape path? Probably. But not so much that it seems out-of-character for what they had done already (refusing Albus as Secret-Keeper, for example).
        • Just to expand on this- 21 year olds *with a 1 year old*. I'm going to assume noone posting on here has yet experienced what life is like with a teething baby? This may not be the Potters having an uncharaciteristc epic fail. Sleep deprivation is a real and traumatic thing that leads to visual and audio issues, incomplete thoughts and lack of concentration beyond standard. Its one of the few things that Hollywood gets right (Think everything being washed out colour in The Machinist)
          • Indeed I haven't, so I can only trust your word. Does it really degrade people towards Too Dumb to Live level?
        • Calling them relatively battle-hardened owned mostly to the fact that despite their young age they'd "defied Vodlemort thrice". Thrice. Don't you think that such an outstanding achievement requires quite a bit more awareness than that of a common wizard? Secondly, the shotgun-in-the-house analogy doesn't fly well with me, because shotguns are supposed to be kept unloaded and it would be indeed weird for somebody to drag one around their house all the time (much less weird, of course, if they are being hunted). But wands? They are not weapons, as much as, well, not exactly prosthetic limbs, but close. Yes, maybe wizards do put them away sometimes, although I can't conceive why would they, but for all the seven books we haven't seen a single time they do. Thus the coincedence strikes me as contrived. Now if V'd somehow influenced them to drop their guard, that would've been cool, but as it is, it's just a poorly executed Diabolus Ex Machina. Finally, refusing DD as a Secret-Keeper was dumb, no doubt, but it could have at least some possible justifications: they didn't feel all that close to him, James wanted to cheer up Sirius after his break up with his family, by showing his deep trust and whatnot. But failing to enchant some suitable trinket, say, a bracelet that you can wear all the time, into a portkey activated when you tear it apart? What possible justification could be for that?
        • In addition, there is also the simple fact that they joined the Order of the Phoenix upon graduating from Hogwarts, at age 18. So they've been fighting in a war for three years. Take a look at that again: they have been fighting in a war for three years. At this point you damn well should act like you are "battle-hardened", because anybody with three years of front-line combat service during wartime is "battle-hardened" by definition.
    • Another thing is, I don't recall that you must have a wand in order to apparate and from V's recollection of the events he didn't bother to place any anti-apparition curses on the house. So...?
    • Let's try to picture this from the Potters' perspective: James has just handed baby Harry over to Lily for bedtime when the front door gets Alohamoraed open and Voldy comes walking in. Realizing he left his wand on the table, he tells Lily to get out of there while he charges Voldy. Giving that James is one of the best in the Order, and is known to have an appreciation for Muggle things, he probably knows a bit about Good Old Fisticuffs and hopes to, at the least, buy Lily the time to escape and, and the best, surprise/stun Voldy long enough to grab his own wand and fight back. However, he gets A Kd in the hallway before he can do this. Lily likely had her wand on her but, having already started up the stairs and in the process of carrying their only child, likely went up them out of panic (completely forgetting that they likely had a back door), especially with the green light shining from downstairs. She'd probably planned to hide Harry in the nursery and fight back herself, but then Voldy gave her the ultimatum: "Move out of the way, let me kill the boy, and I'll spare your life." This triggered her Mama Wolf reflex and she instead went down fighting.
        • Indeed, let's shall. Where does it say, BTW, that James had any special appreciation for Non-Wiz things? Regardless, the question still stands. Where was Lilly supposed to run, according to James? Back door? I doubt you could escape even a regular burglar that simply, yet alone the frigging Voldemort. And who's to say he hadn't got the house surrounded? Also, Lily was no match for V and should've understood it. Escape was the only solution. So where was the emergency Portkey or whatever and lacking that what prevented her from apparating away?
  • (This one was sparked by the movie, but applies to book and movie equally): Why the screaming blue hell didn't Dumbledore just have his hand amputated? Snape says the curse was spreading from the original infection, but mentions nothing about it metastasizing like a cancer. Cut the damn hand off and live, you doddering old coot!
    • Do you really think that a curse of such magnitude could be stopped by something as mundane as a knife? Exactly how Snape managed to "contain" the damage in one hand is unclear, but the magicks required were probably extremely complex, meaning that this would have been an incredibly risky move on Dumbledore's part. For all we know, lopping off the hand could have "released" the curse and allowed it to spread through his entire body, killing him almost instantly.
      • You know, what would've solved this Headscratcher nicely? Adressing it in the fraking book. You know, like in two lines of dialogue. Snape: "I've managed to contain the curse in one hand, but eventually it will spread. I say we cut it off now. I have just the spell for that!" DD: "Wait, Severus. We should first make sure it won't release it to ravage through my body instantly." One magical test later, Snape: "Oh shit, it totally will." You see? No room for ungrounded assumptions, confusion or terrible *cough*lousywriting*cough* suspicions.
  • So, Only thing that can fight off the Dementors is a patronus. And, we learn in this book, that none of the Death Eaters (And, I suppose, not even Voldemort Himself) can conjure one. So, how the FUCK is it a good idea to have servants you can't do ANYTHING against in case they decide to rebel and/or turn against you?
    • That's why they are not servants - they are allies. Their goals merely agree with V's ones (spread misery and death among Muggles), so they work tohether. And why would they turn on Death Eaters? DEs destroy those who can cast Patronuses, thus ensuring the free reign of Dementors. Besides, I don't remember anything actually forbidding DEs to cast Patronuses. Hell, Umbridge managed to cast one, so I guess evil happy thoughts work too.
      • I remember reading that Snape was the only Death Eater to be able to cast one, I think Word of God stated that. So, why would they ally with potentially undefeatable foe who would have no qualms to turn on you after anyone capable of harming them were out of the picture?
        • First, this is the same Word that stated, that "the wonderful and terrible power of heart" locked inside the Department of Mysteries was in fact a fountain of rape drug. I'd take everything that woman said with a bi-ig grain of salt. Again, if Umbridge managed it, I don't see why others couldn't. Second, what was their choice really? Dementors were already there, they didn't even need to be freed or summoned from hell or whatever. The options were either being their allies or their dessert. Also, if DEs weren't complete idiots, I guess they'd make sure they had some Patronus-wielders left to protect them. Besides, maybe V personally wasn't afraid of Dementors, having neither happy memories nor soul (almost) for them to suck, and, as was duly noted elsewhere, Voldemort doesn't give a shit about anything not called Voldemort.
  • This kind of sounds like a stupid question, but could Voldemort be killed without all of the Horcruxes being killed? I get the impression that Voldemort, in his original body, is sort of a horcrux himself. What would have happened if Dumbledore had managed to AK Voldie? Because if it meant that, well, there would still be bits of his soul lying around to take care of- who cares? They're practically dormant- wouldn't it have made sense to kill the big bad first and then go after the objects? What if Harry had just killed off Voldemort and the snake without trying to sacrifice himself? The connection between them would essentially be broken anyway, so while a bit of Voldemort may still be inside him, his scar wouldn't have to hurt anymore.
    • Either the soul fragments were like lives in a video game(If somehow they killed Voldemort, a horcrux would become a normal object again and the soul piece would go to Voldemort's body) or as long as there is one horcrux intact, Voldemort's body would go as if nothing had happened to it.
    • Well, I guess you don't quite understand what horcruxes are for: as long as a horcrux exists, the user doesn't die. That's the sole purpose of a it. That's why Voldemort didn't die The night he tried to kill harry. So, as long as a horcrux remains, he won't die. And harry was a horcrux, if he wouldn't die, Voldemort wouldn't either. BUT, there is one thing - when Voldie was hit wis his own Avada Kedavra, he was reduced to a weak spirtish form, unable to do anything but to stick to creatures' heads. So, if he would be hit with AK again, same thing would happen. But this time His servants would help him sooner. And, besides, without Voldemorts Body with Harry's blood in it, harry would have no way back from the "King-Kross Station", he'd be killed for real.
  • Why did Dumbledore never tell Harry that he would eventually have to sacrifice himself? Yes, I don't think anybody'd respond too well to "you're going to die, and you're going to let it happen", but for God's sake, Harry understands pretty early on that there's a big chance he won't make it through to the end anyway. Not to mention the fact that Dumbledore had been fairly damn sure that Harry would live through it. Couldn't he have saved the kid a little agony? He could have even given him the snitch and told him what to say when the time came- garnered knowledge of the Deathly Hallows notwithstanding, Harry wouldn't have had to've known there was the Resurrection Stone inside it.
  • I'm confused as to exactly how Yaxley would have been able to tell other Death Eaters how to get into Grimmauld Place. Ok, As far as I can tell, the boundary of the Fidelius Charm is only on the interior of the house. I assume this because the Trio cannot Apparate from/to the interior of Grimmauld Place. They have to Apparate to/from the front step, under the Cloak. Therefore, when they Disapparated from the Ministry to Grimmauld Place, how were they able to take Yaxley 'past the boundaries of the Fidelius Charm?' In every other instance they Apparate onto the front steps. And if the Fidelius Charm extends to the front steps, why would they need the Cloak when standing on it?
    • Maybe he wouldn't be able to let the other death eathers inside, but just the fact that their location was compromised was enough risk: the death eather would be outside the house 24/7, waiting for them to go out for whatever reason. Or they would try to enter via other means, like House elf transportation.
    • But the Death Eaters already knew where the house was. They'd been hovering outside 24/7 for weeks, as far as I recall.
  • The Order communicates through Patronus. Did Snape never use this method of communication? Otherwise, it would be tricky to explain why his Patronus is the same as Lily's, unless no one in the order could put two and two together.
    • Word of God clarified soon after Book 7's release that Snape indeed never utilized the Patronus-communication trick, instead relying on less reliable but more circumspect methods of keeping in contact with the Order. Since he couldn't be expected to be sending out a whole lot of Patronuses while spying amongst the Death Eaters, this wouldn't have been too difficult for him to justify.
  • Percy's apology struck a nerve. I'm not the biggest Percy fan around, but the reader was never given any explicit insight into Percy's side. The side the reader did get was: Percy was happy about a promotion, his father wasn't happy, words were exchanged, and then, Percy did some admittedly jerkass things. Trying to look at things from Percy's POV, however, there are some facts that are never dwelt on. Percy didn't know Harry on a deeply personal level (a fact Harry acknowledges), two of Percy's siblings and his girlfriend were put in danger under Dumbledore's watch, and another student died under Dumbledore's watch. Perhaps Arthur was gentle, at first, in trying to point out that the promotion wasn't what Percy thought it was, but if Arthur jumped on Percy for showing happiness at his promotion, demonising that happy pride and making it clear he thought Percy was being arrogant and a fool when it's been made clear to everyone that Percy is both intelligent and an extremely hard worker, Percy's decision to more-or-less cut ties is much more sympathetic. The thing is, though, Percy isn't given his side of the story, whereas, all the other main unpleasant characters are: Snape, Voldemort, etc.; the good characters, with the sort of exception of Molly, and many readers alike automatically assume Percy was 100% in the wrong, and then, suddenly, he appears, verbally cuts himself down, and he's redeemed, with no implication that perhaps he, too, is owed an apology. I wasn't shown the argument or made privy to Percy's feelings and thoughts, but he went from a three dimensional character to essentially a villain Butt Monkey who was made to acknowledge the righteousness of the heroes at the end.
    • Be careful, for this path leads to darkness. Next you'll find yourself arguing, that, maybe, just maybe, Dursleys actually had some reasons to dislike or even be afraid of the presence of Saint Potter in their domain, who, for all they knew (i.e. jack squat, since DD never bothered to explain anything or even deign to appear in person), could very much blow up their home one day or do something else whereupon none of their neighbours would ever speak to them again. And that is HERESY.
      • ^That^ also, Harry wouldn't have been around for that, and while JK could have added some lines of explanation, it would have gone against how the family was dealing with it. It was still a fresh wound that some were doing their best to not deal with (anger or guilt for realizing mistakes of assumption), or were casually joking about to mask the anger (the younger ones who didn't have enough life experience to really get it). It would have been quite awkward to randomly bring up, and Harry didnt care enough about percy to persue it. Plus, he was abused growing up, his experience with most Weasleys was his good family except for Percy who he saw as pompous git due to interactions at school and general comments. So it would make sense to him to believe the little bit he had heard at more or less face value. And like the Dursley situation, it is all RIGHT THERE. A younger kid wont get it, and it is subtle enough to not derail form the story (which is centered on harry's character except for the opening of book 4). But, it is there to see. I saw it pretty quickly (second readthrough the series?), but I was going through an oddly similar circumstance (just not as severe, obviously). Its a bit of Fridge Logic really. Those without much familial strife or even smaller failies could easily assue Percy was an asshat, those with bigger families or some family shame/secrets would see it in a "Hey now, even Author has to have had a moment." Personally, it makes sense that Author would freak on Percy more than the others because Percy was so smart,and should have seen the truth.
  • Okay, either I'm being dumb here, or there is a pretty big plot hole, but how did the Death Eaters manage to get to the wedding? Wasn't the Burrow under a zillion protection and concealment charms?
    • They'd seized the Ministery by that point, and thus gained access to that powerful ward-breaking something of plot convinience the Ministery apparently had in stock.
  • The day the trio escape from Gringotts is the same day they Neville takes them to the Room of Requirement. However, on the trip through the passage there, Neville mentions that he's heard about the dragon escape, and specifically mentions that Terry Boot was told off in the Great Hall for yelling about the escape. However, firstly, Neville shouldn't have known about the escape, as it happened at most a few hours before the trio meet him. Secondly, even if Aberforth had got the Evening Prophet or something and told Neville about the escape, by then Terry would have been living in the room of requirement, and considering the need for the passage to the Hog's Head they obviously weren't eating in the Great Hall anymore.
    • "...by then Terry would have been living in the room of requirement..." - not necessarily. It stands to reason that some of the rebels would keep low profile so as to remain with the main crowd and provide intel to the "hard core". Apparently, such great knews warranted blowing his cover. Or maybe Terry didn't have anything to do with the resistance at all and just decided to announce the news to everyone.
  • Snape does all in his power during the 6 books to expel Harry from school. Fine, he hated him because of his father etc. But in the 7th book we learn, that he knew from the beginning that Harry was essential in defeating Voldemort and thus needed to remain in school. So, if he worked for the plan, why in hell did he try to expel him?
    • Funny thing is, can you name a singe occasion, when Snape actually does something to that end? I mean, actively, like framing Harry or manipulating him to break rules? He doesn't. Oh, sure, he's always there to gloat when the Scarhead screws up (which happens with the rough frequency of all the freaking time) and threaten him with expulsion, and take away points, and give detentions, but that's pretty much it. And he can do it, precisely because he knows that Harry will never be expulsed. As for why he does it, well, somebody has to keep the kid on his toes.
      • Why, exactly, does Snape need to keep Harry on his toes? Between the Dursleys' abuse, the fact that someone tries to kill him every year and there's an evil wizard out to kill him, Snape's antics seem a little petty.
        • Because the kid is reckless, shortsighted, and, honestly speaking, pretty dumb, and all DD does is condone that kind of behavior. So Snape, pointless as it may be, keeps reminding him that he is not in fact above the common rules, so that kid exercises at least some caution in shoving his head in the next meat-grinder he can find. Because hey, guess who ends up having to save his hide half the time? Sure, he could be doing it more efficiently, if his hatred to Marauders didn't keep getting in the way.
          • Encouraging a child to believe that authority figures are unsympathetic, unhelpful, and personally don't like him is the most ass-backwards way of trying to get a kid to bring emergency situations to the attention of authority rather than trying to handle them himself that could possibly be imagined.
          • Harry's not dumb at all. He's a little lazy, yes, but he's proven time and again that he's clever when he puts his mind to it. He's also impatient and reckless, but he is a teenager. All teenagers are like that. They grow out of it. If Snape wants to be an effective teacher, it would make more sense to use patience and common sense rather than bulling tactics.
            • Ain't he then? I beg to disagree. Let's not get into each particular case here[3] - they were all raised on the respective pages, few of them could be even somewhat justified, but it doesn't change the fact that the kid does AN AWFUL LOT of stupid shit, ever stupider and more destructive by the year (so much for "grow out of it"), as for being particularly clever or cunning...care to give an example, because I honestly cannot recall anything. And I can't help but blame DD for condoning and forgiving this irresponsible behavior (and Rowling, of course, for using this cheap device all the time to create drama) for the sake of indoctrinating the kid into being "his man through and through", which requires tons of positive stimula. Of course, even DD understands, that total impunity would kill the kid even more assuredly than V could, but he cannot get his own hands dirty, so the thankless job of being the negative stimula falls unto Severus (you don't seriously think DD couldn't restrain Snape, had he wanted to?), who a) is a horrible pedagogue (no argue here, he is), b) doesn't like the kid (or rather everything he represents) personally, and c) has to keep himself in Malfoy's good looks to remain DD's link to the udnerworld and thus cannot show affection to the kid even he wanted. Hence the heavy-handed tactics.
              • One at a time. He was eleven years old during the incident with the dragon. Not only that, he was an eleven year old who came from an abusive household. Snape had already proven to be untrustworthy. He hadn't even met Dumbledore yet and he had only met McGonagall a handful of times. Hagrid was the one who rescued him from the Dursleys. He was trying to keep Hagrid out of trouble. Yes, the responsible thing would be to tell an adult, but Harry hasn't had many trustworthy ones in his life and, again, he was a child. He shouldn't be expected to act like adult. I admit, the stunt with the car was stupid. One of Harry's character flaws is recklessness, but that is still no excuse for Snape to be a bully. And why would Harry admit to hearing voices that no on else could hear? There was no logical reason at the time to believe that there was a giant sn\nake in the pipes. Harry didn't tell anyone because he was afraid he was losing his mind. Anyone else would of done the same. Again, there was no reason at the time to believe the diary was that dangerous. Harry thought Riddle was misinformed about Hargrid being the killer. Ginny was the one who stole it back. I've mentioned this before, but teenagers aren't known for their common sense. If Harry had a few lapse in judgement, like the broom Sirius sent, it isn't anything to condemn him for. Snape does bear a lot of the blame for what happened in the shack for his inability to think clearly. He's the teacher, after all. The same goes for the pensive incident and training Harry in mental defenses. There was no excuse for such heavy-handed tactics.
              • Snape is aware from the beginning that Harry is prophesied to face Voldemort; at this point the idea that Snape wants to try and encourage Harry to act like a normal kid and stay safe would be absurd. We criticize Dumbledore for his asinine insistence that 'Harry must have a normal childhood!' when doing so is both futile (as Voldemort and his minions will keep coming after Harry no matter what) and counterproductive (as the attempts to keep Harry 'safe' leave him less trained and prepared to survive the dangers he must inevitably be assailed with). So, why should we think Snape is any better when he's not only allegedly making the same mistake, but choosing a sadistic and cruel method of doing it? Hey, Snape, if you want Harry to be a better survivor then maybe you should mentor him, not torment him. As is, at least three major plot points in the series, one of them leading to the death of Sirius Black, ultimately turned on the fact that Harry didn't trust Snape any further than he can spit... which, given that Snape gives Harry no reasons to trust him and deliberately tries to alienate him, is all Snape's fault.
  • OK, so the only way to destroy a Horcrux is to render it "beyond magical repair". Death counts as "beyond magical repair". So, what happens if a living Horcrux (e.g. Nagini, Harry) dies a natural death? Does the Horcrux inside them count as destroyed?
    • Most likely, their corpse would just continue to serve as a Horcrux. Just because their own soul left their body doesn't mean the Horcrux-creator's would; a dead body is still an object, after all. Presumably, said corpse would then be as immune to "conventional" destruction as the Locket or the Diary.
  • In the Ministry, there is a statue of a wizard and a witch on thrones made of muggles. How could they tell they were muggles since muggles and wizards look very much alike?
    • Muggle clothing. Except in the movies, in the books wizards don't dress like muggles
    • The same way that you can tell that a fat, long-nosed person in Nazi propaganda is supposed to be a Jew. They were highly stereotypical and overexaggerated depictions of muggles, not true-to-life sculptures.
  • Is it just me, or are the death eaters terribly uncreative? I'm not just talking about the lack of guns, as is the usual complaint, but even on the magical side, they seem really, really unprepared. Every single battle tactic pretty consists of them charging in wands blazing and figuring out what to do during the battle itself. They've apparently never heard of buffing up before battle, something muggles managed to figure out within a few years. In addition, we know that magic items exist in this series, but they are very rarely used. We know the death eaters are capable of raising inferi, but they never seem to use them during battle.
    • It's not just the Death Eaters. It's the entire wizarding world. None of them, not even their best and brightest commanders, show the minimal tactical sophistication that we would expect out of the lowest-ranked guy in a class at Infantry Squad Leader School. Voldemort is considered a terrifying mastermind of wizardkind that almost toppled a government simply because he was able to figure out elementary concepts like home invasions, terror raids, and hostages. In real life, any random street gang member could think of the same thing. The wizarding world apparently has no formal education for wizard-raised children in any subject other than magic, and it shows.

Back to the main Headscratchers page

  1. ↑ and that means Harry's next problem is the new DADA is Professor Gendo Ikari
  2. ↑ Approximately the entire adolescent population of Magical Britain spends 10 months out of every year locked up with each other, and yet we never hear of a single teen pregnancy.
  3. ↑ B1: screw up with the dragon-shipping (forgetting the Cloak); rush into a potentially lethal situation without a slightest idea of what he's doing, after being told that it was unnecessary. B2: screw up with the car; fail to report the voices; fail to turn in the diary; partake in potentially-lethal activity (the PJ potion); rush into a potentially lethal situation without a slightest idea of what he's doing, after almost doing the sensible thing. B3: accept an insanely expensive gift from an anonymous benefactor after the events of the previous year; sneak out of the castle while a homicidal maniac is on the loose; screw up with Malfoy; rush into a potentially lethal situation without a slightest idea of what he's doing (see a pattern here?). B4: fail to even consider the option of NOT partaking in the Tournament; forget that his participation was rigged and that going all the way could be a bad idea. B5: screw up with Umbridge; screw up with the DA; screw up with Occlumency and Snape (Pensieve); screw up with Sirius (mirror); rush into a potentially lethal situation without a slightest idea of what he's doing; blame Snape for his own screw up. B6: Sectumsempra, nuff said.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Deathly_Hallows_(novel)/Headscratchers/Unsorted_Examples?oldid=2024251"