Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (novel)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
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Please check [https://web.archive.org/web/20120204062438/http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/faq.cfm?ref=aboutthebooks JK's FAQs] before asking a question that may have already been answered.
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******** Why not, if said living man is already starting to get an (admittedly undeserved) reputation as a mentally disturbed attention-seeker? ''Especially'' if there's no reliable way to establish that he is of sound mind, and it suits ''you'' damn well to cling to the hope that he's delusional? Fudge is doing the equivalent of sticking his fingers in his ears and going "LALALALA I can't hear you," and we already know that there are several higher-ups in the Ministry of Magic who are former Death Eaters, and to whom Fudge's willful blindness is very convenient indeed, and they'll of course be on his side and thus take it upon themselves to make it more difficult for anyone genuinely interested in finding out the truth.
** Why didn't Harry attempt to prove he wasn't lying about Cedric's death? Simple. He's ''fifteen years old,'' and frankly, not the smartest fifteen year old alive. He's not a good strategist. He can think on his feet and come up with plans on the fly, but rational, thought-out planning? Not his strong suit. Add to it that he's gone through the trauma of seeing someone he knew die, and knowing he was indirectly responsible for the death (Cedric wouldn't have been there to die if Harry hadn't suggested they both take the cup), and that he's told Dumbledore what happened and for several weeks believes that Dumbledore will make people listen. So what happens when he finds out this isn't the case? Harry's reaction isn't to set out to prove he's right, it's to get angry that people don't believe him. He starts shouting. He gets sarcastic. He all but outright demands that people believe him ''because it's the truth, dammit.'' You might cry [[Idiot Ball]] at this, but knowing the teenagers I do, I find it to be a very realistic reaction.
*** The real [[Idiot Ball]] in that scene is held by Dumbledore and McGonagall, both of whom ''also'' take the attitude 'You should believe Harry/us simply because we say so', instead of allegedly older and wiser heads suggesting some magical means of investigating and proving Harry's claim. Particularly awful in that Dumbledore is the premiere Legilimens in Magical Britain, and so more than anyone else in the scene is the authority who could testify on whether someone's brain is actually sprained or not.
== If you want a job done right, you've gotta do it yourself... ==
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* What I want to know is why Harry didn't see the Thestrals at the end of his fourth year, but could see them at the start of his fifth. He'd seen Cedric die by then, and didn't see anyone die between end of fourth year and start of fifth, so what changed?
** This was explained in [[Word of God|an interview]] actually, and the fanfic is basing itself partially on the interview. It's explained that when Harry sees Cedric die, he loses his "innocence", but doesn't have time for it to sink in yet as he's still in shock. Thus after the summer, after it settles on him, when he comes back, he understandably freaks when he sees the Thestrals.
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20080317115108/http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/faq_view.cfm?id=21 Rowling said] that she didn't want to add the thestrals at that point because they would disrupt the flow of the narrative, tacking on a new subplot (just what are those skeletal horse things?) into the denouement of the fourth book that wouldn't be resolved until the fifth book. So she made up some bullshit about Harry needing to "process" Cedric's death before he could see the thestrals.
*** Read that as Rowling didn't think of the idea of thestrals pulling the carts until book five.
**** ...and you'd be completely wrong. [[Word of God|She]] said explicitly in an interview that she knew what was pulling the carriages (Thestrals) from the beginning.
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**** Of note: Until Fred, George, and Harry were banned from the Quidditch team, no named IS member (since they were all, with possibly one non-Gryffindor exception, Slytherins) would have wanted to do that, since it would make the House Cup competition lean more in favor of Gryffindor.
** We have no evidence at all that Prefects have the ability to take points away (as far as I can remember). The only possible evidence is that Percy says 'five points from Gryffindor', but he is clearly flustered and not thinking straight, so it might just a reflex for him to say something like that. We never get any indication that the points were actually deducted.
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20110918182306/http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/faq_view.cfm?id=40 Word Of God says that Prefects can deduct points.]
** I got the impression that Prefects can deduct points from anyone who is not a Prefect, but the IS can deduct from anyone.
** They can also deduct points for any reason. I seem to recall that after Draco pointed out that he was part of the IS, he took points from Harry because he doesn't like him.
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*** For that matter, if you're going to keep prophecies that need to be kept safe, especially when you're setting them up in a hall stacked on top of each other, why glass spheres? Why not a Plexiglas cube, or an iron tube, or something?
**** Or better yet. [[A Wizard Did It|CHARM]] them unbreakable.
***** Or do what muggles do with breakable objects and either fasten them to the shelf so they don't fall off, or put them in padded containers.
== "Need to Know" Nuttiness ==
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*** Because although Hermione is smart, she's not omniscient. In essence, she's not the right type of nerd - she's a ''magic'' nerd; what she appears to know about the Muggle world in canon is roughly what one would expect an intelligent almost-12-year-old to know. I'm honestly not sure that she necessarily knows advanced Muggle things like relativistic physics or ''exactly'' how computers work.
*** Specialis Revelio. Come on, these people CASUALLY animate hundreds of statues with an incantation and are implied to have caused World War II. You think they'll be stumped by a Muggle code?
**** Well, as Snape's potion gauntlet in book 1 showed, most wizards can be stumped by a high-school logic puzzle. So... yes. (There's also that the one-time pad is a form of encryption that is absolutely unbreakable even by modern supercomputers. There is only one way to compromise it, and that's to steal a copy of the cipher key. Without that, you're fucked.)
*** Because Hermione isn't Bat-Man and unless Sirius had a blurb about being a crypto-nerd in his past, it would have been out of no where and rather tedious to read.
== Harry Potter and the Definition of "Requirement" ==
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*** The room might not necessarily conjure the therapist out of thin air. He might just, you know, steal him away from home for a little while, a la The Replacements. Which poses the question, are there magic therapists? If not, then the kidnapped one would be thoroughly freaked out, methinks.
*** No, they probably just have super-dee special magic drugs to correct brain chemistry and then leave the depressed witch or wizard to work through their other issues on their own. [[Fridge Logic|Which may partially explain why, exactly, the magical community makes up such a small percentage of the human population at large.]]
*** The original question gave me [[
*** Given that the Longbottoms are still hopelessly insane nearly two decades after they were tortured, I'd say that no, there are no wizarding therapists.
**** Or they're ''hopelessly'' insane. As in, nobody can get through to them, either because they're so blocked off or because there's not really anything left of them but confusion.
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== Oh, sure, everyone forgets the girl! ==
* Mrs. Weasley, on Ron being a prefect: "That's everyone in the family!" Gred and Forge: "[[My Friends and Zoidberg|So what are we, next-door neighbors]]?" So what is Ginny, the [[Madwoman in the Attic]]?
** In slight defense
== They're using wandless magic ALREADY?!? ==
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**** Voldemort -- the single most fearsome dark wizard alive -- sent Harry Potter an invitation to a massacre and was actually ''surprised'' that Harry came with reinforcements? Voldemort, whom the Order has been searching for frantically all year, deliberately transmitted his exact location to one of his worst enemies and ''didn't'' expect the Order of the Phoenix to show up? What, did they make him ''swallow'' the [[Idiot Ball]]? Honestly, you talk about [[Idiot Plot]], this is it, right here.
**** Nope. V planned to make Harry curious enough to tootle along to the Ministry alone to get the prophecy as he thought Harry already knew of its existence and wanted to hear the whole thing. When he didn't, V lured him with Sirius. V's DEs (yay for acronyms!) would have creamed Harry and co.but for the arrival of the Order, and here's the point you are missing: Voldemort had no way of knowing the Order would be there - Harry had very little time, after all - because the only reason they were was Harry's message to Snape who V thought was on his side! V showing up at the Ministry was damage control and DD himself calls it foolish thus why V didn't do it in the first place. Yet another apparent [[Plot Hole]] solved with the wonders of logic!
***** While you are correct in that Harry actually was this stupid in canon, its generally considered wise tactics to base your plans on the assumption that your opposition has a brain and will be using it, because otherwise you've created a scheme vulnerable to even the slightest touch of common sense. The original complaint stands: Voldemort was being stupidly overconfident here, in that he quite rationally ''should'' have expected that he'd get party crashers. If nothing else, he knows that the Order has been bodyguarding Harry 24/7 while off Hogwarts grounds ever since the end of book 4. If Harry shows up without his minders, its only reasonable to presume that they'll have noticed his absence and be following him as soon as they can... as indeed they did.
**** Although now we've got to wonder ''how'' Snape managed to get away with it. If V bothers to even slightly reconstruct what happened, he knows that Harry couldn't have ordered the reinforcements, especially as they arrived so late. So...how does V think DD figured out what was going on? Either Snape betrayed V, or Snape isn't as trusted by DD as Snape claims, because there's apparently a member of the Order at Hogwarts that Snape doesn't know about who noticed Harry was missing. (I hope Snape suggested it was Umbridge, who, after all, helped escort Harry out of the castle earlier that night. Mwhahaha.)
***** It's been established that the Order has been patroling the Dept. of Mysteries at night, so its likely that another member bit the dust that night when the DEs showed up. Snape, being their 'inside man' to the Order, could have said something like, "Oh, Lupin was going to take over the watch at midnight, and when he showed up and saw all Hell breaking loose, he sent up the Bat Signal."
== Abusing the Room of Requirement for Fun and Profit! ==
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**** The Marauders actually ''did'' have a "discernible reason for being bullies" -- being on the opposite side of a wartime political divide. I don't think its a coincidence that a group of 'blood traitors' and 'mudblood lovers', who later on grew up to be Order of the Phoenix members, spent most of their time in high school getting in gang fights with the kids who were all pureblood supremacists, who later on grew up to be Death Eaters. Its political factionalism, not random sociopathy.
*** Do we know when James's parents died? If one or both of them died shortly before this incident, it could be that his behavior in Snape's worst memory was a case of acting out his own turmoil, rather than a normal facet of his personality. Later on, when he'd processed his grief and re-considered the potential consequences of his and his friends' behavior (e.g. that Sirius's "prank" of siccing were-Lupin on Snape could've gotten somebody [[Killed Off for Real]]), he could've realized what a creep he'd become and worked to make himself more of a person Harry's grandparents wouldn't be ashamed of.
** Yeah, sorry about that. I don't like a lot of Severus's behavior but if I were to choose between teen!Severus and teen!James I would definitely hate teen!James more, so I probably sound biased. I can't find the original link I had, but I have another one [https://web.archive.org/web/20110807133908/http://growingbolder.com/blogs/health/mental-health/why-dont-people-change-220458.html here]. I still count James's behavior as far worse than just stupidly callous. Re-reading SWM, it just doesn't look like "normal" teen behavior. The level of physical humiliation is taken to an extreme point and would damage a teen for life.
** What I gathered from the entire Snape/Lily/James story is the following. Lily and Snape were good friends from childhood. However, after Snape goes to Hogwarts, for whatever reason, he makes friends with Death Eater wannabes and takes an interest in Dark Arts. Some of this could be excused by a desire to fit in with his housemates, and resentment over being bullied by James and the other Marauders. Lily stands up for Snape, but at the same time, she is horrified by what she sees him becoming (his growing interest in Dark Arts and association with future Death Eaters). Matters come to a head during the Worst Memory incident. During this incident, pay careful attention to what is happening. Snape is being bullied, and Lily saves him. In response, Snape calls her a Mudblood. People compare this to the n-word; in fact, it's worse. At the time Snape uses this word, there is a group of people (the Death Eaters), who literally want all "Mudbloods" dead, and want to kill as many as they can. In using that word, and associated with Death Eater wannabes, Snape is not only insulting Lily, he is identifying himself with the very people who want her dead. Later, in backpedaling, Snape tries to tell Lily that she isn't like all the other Muggleborns, (echoing rationalizations of real-life racists). Lily realizes that, whatever Snape used to be, and whatever his reasons are, he is turning into a bad guy, and is aligning himself with an evil from which Lily needs to protect herself. (Of course, he would later repent, but Lily had no way of knowing that at the time.) As far as standing by Snape and being a source of light to save him out of darkness, the problem is that a lot of people who are in abusive or otherwise unhealthy relationships use that as a justification; most of these cases end, at best, in heartbreak for these would-be saviors. Regarding Lily/James: true, he was a complete [[Jerkass]], but that is something a person can grow out of, and he did grow up over time; Snape, on the other hand, changed in the opposite direction, and evil is not something you can count on someone growing out of.
** Except that Lily isn't at all frightened about the people Snape is hanging with, or that he's going to become some genocidal terrorist. Even her wording -- I think she says "your precious Death Eater friends" -- is just...odd. She sounds angry and even a little jealous, but not frightened or shaken in the least. And shouldn't she be? If she (and presumably Snape, and every other kid) KNOWS what the death eaters are and are capable of, shouldn't she be scared at what her BFF is becoming? Just imagine saying the words "your precious Al Queda friends" to your wayward mate. Or "your precious Manson Family buddies." You know, it just doesn't work.
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*** That's the problem. We can't go on Sirius and Lupin's word. Lupin is a coward and Sirius is, quite simply, a near-sociopath who seems to be remotely capable of affection. (Which means he isn't really a true sociopath, but you get my drift.) Both men idolize James and both men have never been able to get over Lily and James's deaths. In a way, James and Lily's deaths have arrested part of their development.
*** And as for Snape's alleged proficiency in curses, who do we hear about this from? Exactly, [[Unreliable Narrator|Sirius]]. However, if we go by what we see instead by what we hear, it's ''painfully'' obvious that Snape craved attention, friendship, and affection from the Marauders (otherwise, why the hell would he constantly hang around them, asking for troubles). How much must it hurt that the super-popular, universally loved and loving Potter could share no love for him. That he'd invited ''Pettigrew'' in his inner circle, but not him. And when there was that other popular, charming and brilliant guy, who DID accept him and offered him ways to vent off his bottled up frustration and anger and feel superior, is it that surprising that he fell for it? Of course, he's still responsible for his own actions, but there is no doubt to me that the "good guys" did nothing to stave him off the slippery slope at best, and were pushing him down it at worst.
**** Well, actually, going by what we saw in the flashbacks from book 7 the reason Snape kept hanging around the Marauders is because he is an obsessively vindictive and oversensitive personality that will declare an obsessive feud to the death over the tiniest insult. Seriously, he walked across a train car to deliberately insult people he'd never met before simply because he overheard them saying to each other that they hoped to be sorted into Gryffindor and not Slytherin.
** About Snape, ''[[Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (novel)|Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows]]'' said it with Snape's memories: Lily knew who Snape was hanging around with, knew what his "friends" were doing, what perhaps Snape was doing. Lily and Snape had been friends since they were ten. And suddenly, when Lily tried to help Snape (admittedly, I understand that it is humiliating for a popular friend of yours to help you in those instances), Snape snapped at her and insulted her in the worst way. For Lily, that was just the climax of a great series of bad things Snape had been doing for a year or even more time, which she had tried to explain away because he was her friend. This was not Lily taking the easy way out; this was Lily thinking that maybe he was so much into the group that she had no chance of bringing him out. Also, it could be that her thoughts went "if he insults me like that when I help him, what will happen when he gets angry on some other thing?" Besides, Lily, even if she was really mature and intelligent, is still fifteen years old, and she doesn't have the hindsight us readers have.
*** All this is true, though I've seen the [[Power of Friendship]] in instances like this on an amazing level too many times for me to really believe that, at fifteen, there was really no chance of pulling Snape out. I mean, I'm really young to be saying this, but I've seen it a ''lot'' in my short life. (And after all, Snape ''did'' pull himself out even later in life and when he was deeper in - and it was directly because of Lily. I believe that if, after blowing him off, she had metaphorically 'left a door open' for their friendship, this could have resulted in Snape having a [[Heel Realization]] - but that's just from what I've seen of friendships, which, admittedly, probably isn't as much as older people.) You do have a point, though it's not something I would make, it's still a solid point that makes sense. The only other thing is about Lily being fifteen, and therefore not having the experience or hindsight to realize that she could still have changed him - well, I'm not going to say specifically, but I ''am'' a bit younger than Lily was at that point, and if I had a friend that came from a troubled family and was getting into gangs/drugs/cults/etc, and was being bullied, I would definitely stick by them no matter what (of course, even I have limits, I wouldn't put myself in a vulnerable position/in an abusive friendship with somebody who was mentally unstable - which Snape wasn't, but I would definitely stick by them and be there for them and try to pull them out.) If this hypothetical friend of mine called me the N word when I tried to help them, I would ''still'' be there for them and try to help - there was no reason for Lily to completely shut herself off. Sure, I would understand her leaving the friendship out of anger, but what bothered me the most, I think, was her complete and absolute refusal to have anything to do with him later. She cut herself off from him completely, and I have a problem with that. And I ''am'' younger than she was, so I don't think it's a maturity issue. (And - ''please please tell me I didn't offend anyone with this post. If I did, I'm seriously sorry because I'm not sure how my opinion looks to other people''.)
**** Remember that the Wizarding World is at ''war'' during this time. The Death Eaters aren't just a racist hate gang -- they're a racist hate gang that is also officially a terrorist group that is openly fighting the government and murdering people in the streets. And remember that Severus ''genuinely'' joined the Death Eaters and stayed there for years -- he only tried to change back once Voldemort targeted Lily in 1981, but that still leaves 2-3 years of being a full-on loyal Death Eater between Hogwarts graduation and the death of the Potters, let alone what he was up to before he left school. When your nation is at war and someone you know chooses to enlist with the enemy army, what else can you do? Given that this is a war where the enemy wants to ethnically cleanse people like Lily, its even worse. From Lily's point of view, Snape has announced his intention to sign up with an army of people who explicitly have 'murder Lily Evans and everyone like her' as one of their life goals... the idea that we could even begin to criticize her for walking away from Snape at that point is staggering.
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** Regarding James, I think that Sirius and Remus did tell Harry that Lily wasn't interested in James at all until he pulled his head out of his arse and mellowed. He may have still been a bit of a prankster, but if he was given the Head Boy position, combined with the situation out of Hogwarts (the First War with Voldemort had been going on for several years already), maybe he finally managed to grow out of the childish behaviour shown on the memory, and that's when Lily started to show some interest in James, when she saw his mature side.
*** This is where my suspension of disbelief goes right out the window, because I had the idea pretty clearly stuck in my head that James was a sociopath (as well as Sirius, but that's beside the point), and sociopaths just don't change. They can't. Maybe [[A Wizard Did It]] and magicked him out of his sociopathy? Sorry, I know this isn't canon, but just look at his behavior and tell me he's not a sociopath.
*** The same thing can be said for Snape... He was always interested in the Dark Arts, and he had a clear nasty streak from an early age (shown when he made that branch fall on Petunia for insulting him. Involuntary magic or not, it shows that he had a inborn desire to cause people pain from when he 9 years old.) He was just as much a bullying git as James/Sirius, only he never got over it. He continues bullying ''children'' for the rest of his life. For 16 years after the death of the woman he loved, (which was his own damn fault for becoming a Death Eater in the first place,) he continues to gleefully torment her son at every opportunity, just... because? He dared to exist, or something? He started the animosity between himself and Harry, not the other way around. If Snape hadn't treated him like crap from the moment he laid eyes on him, then Harry would never have hated him. Sure, Harry would deliberately antagonize Snape from then on, but he did nothing to make Snape treat him badly from the first day. Snape was so immature and petty that he decided to start a rivalry with an eleven-year-old, again, just for existing. I could understand it if Harry had come strutting into Hogwarts with an enormous ego like James's, but he didn't. Therefore, Snape had no reason to hate Harry, he's just a nasty and vindictive person at heart. Also supporting that is the way he treated Neville. He bullied Neville because he blamed him for not being targeted instead of Harry, despite the fact that obviously a baby cannot be responsible for anything, it was Snape's own actions as a Death Eater that brought about Lily's death. He is a vengeful lunatic for tormenting Neville for something that he did himself. I'll never understand why Snape fans like to forget about the fact that [[
**** Snape shows a lot less sociopathic tendencies in my opinion, than Teen!James did. Snape was completely trustworthy after he changed sides; sociopaths aren't trustworthy, ever. Sirius especially, but also James show blatant tendencies toward not being able to empathize: In SWM the words "coldly," "coolly" and "indifferently" are used to such an extent in describing James and Sirius's tone that it stuck out like a red flag to me. James and Sirius were literally completely indifferent towards the extreme physical humiliation they were inflicting on Snape. Yes, Snape grew up to do bad things, but this was probably in part a result of never having experienced anything else by the hands of other people. As for a 9 year old having an inborn tendency to causing suffering . . . just . . . WTF?! . . . Voldemort, sure, he was never normal according to JKR because magic was involved in his conception. But . . . a normal (extremely lonely and ostracized, sure, but normal otherwise) kid? Seriously. Sure, he was a jerk as an adult. But as a little kid, that's taking it way too far.
** [[Sarcasm Mode|Yeah, because the words 'coldly,' 'cooly' and 'indifferently' have never been used to describe Snape either.]] Alright, maybe that is going a bit far, but plently of other characters had just as awful a childhood, or worse and still became better people. Snape's not the only one with a [[Freudian Excuse]] you know. There might not be much justification for James being such a dick, but Sirius? Sirius had parents who were just as, if not more abusive than Snape's. They were all about blood purity and Dark Arts. Can you really blame Sirius for loathing Snape on sight? The first thing he hears out of Snape's mouth is how much he wants to be put in Slytherin, the House known for turning out Dark Wizards, and that he wants Lily to be there too. From that moment on Sirius classified him in his head as Death Arts-loving scum who was dragging some innocent girl down with him, and therefore thought he deserved everything he got. There was no other conclusion he could have come to, and that's not his fault. Also, James and Sirius probably hated him even more when they found out Lily was Muggleborn, because they knew that Snape hated other Muggleborns. They probably thought that he was abusing/using/mainpulating her in some way. How were they to know that he wasn't? And as I said before, however horrible James and Sirius were as children/teens, they still grew out of it and became much better/kinder people than Snape (particularly Sirius.) Snape had absolutely no redeeming qualities other than his love for Lily, (which was an extraordinarily selfish love at that, otherwise he would have wanted her to be happy, even though it was with James instead of him) And Snape's horrible treatment of Harry was a disgusting insult to Lily's memory. He had every right to dislike Harry because he reminded him of James, but to outright loathe him and make sure he was aware of it at every possible opportunity? No. Just no. I don't know how he lived with himself. I think he'd be lucky if Lily could ever forgive him for that. I couldn't. And as for Snape being trustworthy, that's a joke. He wasn't loyal to Dumbledore because he realized that being a Death Eater was wrong, it was because he was angry with Voldemort for killing Lily. He never turned to the good side or was loyal to Dumbledore. He just turned against Voldy because of his own selfish reasons, and had to obey Dumbles to avoid being sent to Azkaban.
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*** Do these boys also attempt to murder their peers or at least send them to certain death just for lulz? (If Sirus failed to understand what he was doing when he was sending Severus to Lupin, he wasn't a jerk - he was either a sociopath or a braindead).
**** It wasn't as if Sirius forced Snape into the shack where Lupin had transformed. Sirius all but dared him to go in there and Snape went of his own free will. While it was stupid of Sirius to do that in the first place, part of the blame falls on Snape for being stupid enough to go into a creepy shack based on a rival's opinion.
* Point of order for every reference to 'sociopathic tendencies' in this entire entry -- there is a reason that a clinical diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder (aka 'sociopathy') requires that the subject be over eighteen, and that is because several of the diagonostic markers are ''normal'' behavior for adolescents and are diagnosable only if they persist in an adult brain. In plain English... teenagers actually can be that huge a bunch of asshats and still grow up into sane people, so, the anecdotes prove nothing.
* ''Or'', how about we stay away from [[Ron the Death Eater]] and [[Draco in Leather Pants]] as the OP stated, and realize that yes, Snape, James and Sirius ''all'' did bad things but ''all'' also had reasons for doing so? Yes, they had varying degrees of justification, and yes, ''nobody'' in that scene was ''entirely'' faultless. But it was ''not'' entirely Snape's "fault" ''nor'' was it entirely James and Sirius's "fault." '''And why can't we just leave it at that?'''
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*** Yes, there is such a reason, and it's the same reason as for the half of entries on these pages - it is bad writing. When a '''seemingly''' wise character makes an atypicaly stupid blunder, they aren't ought to have an excuse for it - it maybe just the author's blunder. Note, that as concerns DD, it's anything but the only example. As for the cas in point, ok, I wasn't entirely just when I said that the tears HAD to cure this particular venom. The bad writing part is that nobody cares to even suggest it, in particular Harry, who experienced the awesome healing powers firsthand.
*** No amount of Phoenix tears will replenish that amount of blood. Besides, can YOU cry on cue? Fawkes was really messed up when Harry was injured - "OMIGOD VOLDEMORT'S COMING BACK MY ONLY HOPE IS HARRY AND A MOTHERLOVING BASILISK IS TRYING TO EAT ME!!!" But this time it's just, "Ouch, that's gotta hurt." Besides, how do you explain a guy just screaming blue murder suddenly apparently unharmed but chalk-white and unconscious from blood loss? Plus, Fawkes is one of only two tame Phoenixes ever (the other, Sparky, is a Quidditch team mascot, and how likely is it that a Quidditch team sends their Phoenix round to heal injured Order members?) so the Ministry would put two and two together, assume DD has spies at the Ministry and arrest him. Nice Job Breaking it, Logic!
== I HATE YOU! I! HATE! YOU! ==
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** As Dumbledore admitted himself at the end, he screwed up everything because he thought Harry was too young to learn the truth.
*** Actually, it makes sense to conceal some things to Harry. We learn the full truth only in book 7, and it's obvious that Dumbledore couldn't tell it all. So Dumbledore has no idea how to tell Harry just the part of the truth he needs to know to act as needed.
*** ''Some'' things, yes. But ''this'' thing? Harry ''already knows'' that he has some kind of mental connection to Voldemort, via the visions! Simply telling Harry 'Errr, I'm afraid the connection might work both ways, so we need to be careful what we say in your hearing' is hardly going to break Harry's brain; its a very logical outgrowth of shit Harry already knows.
== Really? Now '''Hermione''''s got the Idiot Ball too? ==
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** This one makes sense, as the only people that should be in the Department Of Mysteries would be trained personnel, the Unspeakables themselves, or someone being led by them. That room itself wouldn't have any reason for visitors, unlike the prophecy room. It's akin to putting up a rope around a bottomless pit in a top secret facility; anyone that knows about it should know of the danger.
*** Even people who know about a danger can trip. OP's right; there should be a rail or something around it.
*** Also, that's still not correct safety engineering. I used to work in a nuclear reactor; despite the fact that the only people allowed in the facility were trained reactor plant operators, we ''still'' put warning signs on everything remotely hazardous. And we most especially put those signs on all the 'do not step close to this unless you really like gamma radiation' things. Rational people would put similar warnings around a 'do not touch this portal unless you really like dying' object.
** The veil ''was'' on a dais. It's not like it's just sitting there in the room, you have to walk upwards a bit to get to it.
== Ooh, I've been hit! Hey, I'll just walk through this shiny veil thing! ==
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**** I always felt that the blood protection was against Voldemort and his minions specifically. The dementors were sent by Umbridge, not LV, so they may have been able to ignore it entirely.
**** [[Hand Wave]] doesn't even begin to describe it. How the heck would the protection tell one from another? Did the Dementors show their credentials? What is even the point in such "filter"? An enemy is still an enemy, no matter his origins, especially if it's the darkest and foulest of all beings and ''natural allies to Voldemort''. So what, Harry is safe from V's minions who are mostly dead or in Azkaban, but if another aspiring Dark Lord decides to make himself a name by killing the Boy Who Lived, the boy's screwed?
**** For the last freaking time: [[
***** For as many times as it would take to sink in: THIS! IS! STUPID!!!! It is a lazy excuse at the best of times, and it flat out fails in a world where magic is subject to natural laws and restrictions.
***** /bangs head repeatedly against wall/ No, it's NOT subject to natural laws! You can jump up and down on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, magic itself seems to have intelligence, information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light... sweet Jesus, there's hardly a law of physics that isn't broken. Magic does not care how ''you'' think it should work, it works how it wants to, which happens to be that it is able to tell whether a threat is sent by Voldemort or not. You can whine about that all you like, it's just how magic works.
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** "Dumbledore surely is a better judge of character than that" - *five minutes of uncontrollable insane laughter*. Ok, seriously though, it makes perfect sense. Snape needed to gain Draco's trust and what's a better way to do it than by (ostensibly) pushing his appointment as a prefect through.
* For the sake of plot? Actually Blaise Zabini seems more worthy of being a Prefect, but Rowling didn't give any details about him until the next book. Likewise Pansy Parkinson isn't exactly Prefect material, but it fits seeing as how she's the Slytherin equivalent of Hermione.
* Remember that by this point in time, Voldemort has returned and all of the Death Eaters secretly know about it... including most of the parents of the Slytherin kids. It's quite possible that any alternate candidate had their parents sit them down and explain to them why they really really really really really really wanted to turn the job of Prefect down if it was offered to them, so Draco could have it. Goodness, its not like Lucius hasn't canonically used threats and extortion on the school board before... that's how he gets Dumbledore suspended in book 2.
== Oh Look, a Pensieve! Gee, That's Not Private ==
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**** Also, by this point Snape has spent the prior four and a half years doing everything in his power to make Harry Potter hate and distrust him. After putting that much effort into it, Snape shouldn't be surprised that he succeeded.
***** Right! Like saving Harry's life in PS (and getting his robe burnt for his troubles) and protecting the Stone (and getting his leg almost bitten off for his troubles)! Or allowing the Trio to get away with harming other students and stealing his supplies (please don't tell me he didn't know - in the middle of a Legilimency discussion it won't even be funny) and then preparing the cure for the petrified ones (and, of course, getting a big nice handful of sod all in gratitude)! Or rushing to save them from a serial killer and a werewolf!
****** Remember that part of Snape's job as a double agent is to convince everyone that he's genuinely loyal to Voldemort, 'Everyone' includes Harry Potter. It isn't until book 7 that Harry finds out what side Snape is really on. Hell, it isn't until book 7 that '''we''' found out what side Snape was really on! So yes, Harry thought that Snape might have been working for Voldemort. ''This is exactly what Snape went out of his way to make Harry believe''.
****** Snape got his robe burned because the trio thought that Snape was the one trying to steal the Stone and kill Harry. They had legitimate reasons to think so, too. Snape went out of his way to be antagonistic to Harry and the other Gryffindors despite the fact that this was was the first year they actually met him. The student's job is to learn the material given to them. The teacher's job is both to teach and to help ensure the welfare of the students so they can learn more effectively.
******* None of that changes the fact, that ''when it really mattered'' Snape was doing a lot to help the kids, even putting his own health and life on the line, and let them get away with a lot, and the kids were aware of it. Whether they chose to ignore it all in favor of their childish grudges, is another matter.
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******* Which means that the best solution for this is 'Get Harry another Occlumency tutor'. Even if Dumbledore has to train ''them'' from scratch first, he has time -- Draco proves that you can learn Occlumency well enough to block out Snape (who is a ''very'' skilled Legilimens) over the course of one summer, and Harry didn't even start his occlumency lessons until after Christmas, meaning Dumbledore has the entire first term to get someone spun up and to speed. BTW, this also highlights again how Snape sucks as an Occlumency instructor, and how the excuse of 'Harry has poor control over his emotions' doesn't fly. Draco is a spoiled temper tantrum-throwing brat, and Bellatrix is a raving homicidal psychopath. Neither of them are poster children for self-control or healthy emotional balance, to put it mildly. And yet Bellatrix was able to teach Draco enough Occlumency, in less than two months, to shortstop Snape. While Snape was unable to teach Harry anything useful in almost six months. This means one of two things; Draco is either ginormously smarter and better than Harry (insert hysterical laughter here), or else Snape is that much worse of a teacher than Bellatrix.
****** You do realize that basing your theory on the assumption that Harry is ''not'' essential to the defeat of Voldemort requires completely ignoring the last two books in the series, right? The above is a giant house of cards with no foundation; watch it fall. Also, yet again you just ignore both plain fact and common sense and make the baseless claim that Snape ''has'' to act like a tremendous dick to maintain his cover, when in a more competently written plot a double agent allegedly trying to infiltrate the Good Guys ''acts like a Good Guy'', instead of openly parading his villainy around on his sleeve.
******* Oh, sure, Harry eventually ''happened'' to be essential to the victory. How plausible was that is for every reader to decide for himself. I can only reiterate my point: pinning all hopes in war on one artless teenager is suicidally stupid, and it only worked because ''all'' the bad guys started acting like they were lobotomized with a rusty fork. You named one of those idiocies yourself. I can name a dozen more. And as you duly noted one shouldn't rely on enemy's future stupidity, well at least not more than [[The Lord of the Rings|once]]. As for Snape and his cover, think of this. Sev doesn't need to infiltrate the Light Side - he has already done it, ''while acting like a dick''. So V '''knows''' that he can get away with being a dick, and there is no reason for him to suddenly start caring for his (nonexistant) image by teaching Harry properly. Meaning that if he does, it'd look suspicious, and for V "suspicious" pretty much means "dead". As for ''why'' he was acting like a dick all that time I can think of a few possible reasons: sucking up to Malfoys, playing up to DD's [[Obfuscating Stupidity|image of gullible old fool]], being a negative incentive to Harry, generally lacking social skills, suffering from the long-time psychological trauma.
******** At this point you are literally arguing with the author, in that you are asserting that the plot of the book was not actually the plot of the book. Which might be great for planning a fanfic, but doesn't work as a method of literary criticism. The entire series is set up on the assumption that Harry ''is'' the only one who can defeat Voldemort, complete with an in-story prophecy confirming exactly this. With that laid down as canon, we cannot fairly criticize the characters for acting on this belief. (We can, however, criticize them for failing to act ''
== SNEAK, the book, not movie ==
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** Point's moot, anyway. Wouldn't Kreacher have had to ''let'' Harry come through the fireplace? Imagine how likely he'd be willing to do that without a direct order.
*** Nothing in the books indicates that there was such condition, Harry was already disclosed the location of the house, Kreacher wasn't the owner of the house, and in CoS Harry accidentally Flooed into Borgin & Burkes without any permission from the owners, so no, I don't think it was the case. And, as usual, it's not about whether or not would it work - it's about not trying an obvious solution (and it was obvious because when Sirius was talking to them through the fireplace, Umbridge tried to grab him, meaning that he was physically there, therefore "talking" and "walking" via Floo is the same thing).
**** Kreacher is entirely capable of extinguishing the fire if Harry tries to come through, and since he's deliberately trying to set this whole mess up he almost certainly would.
* Harry never says how he's going to get to the Department of Mysteries, and it's entirely possible he was planning on using the flue after hanging up after Grim. Place. He was planning on getting there some other way, probably the Knight Bus, ''before'' the flue was suggested.
** Luna is the only one who asks how he was going to get to the Department of Mysteries after the floo mention, perhaps it was obvious to everyone else...and perhaps Luna was just asking because she, being conspiracy-minded, knows you can't just floo into the Department of Mysteries, or floo into the Ministry and walk there. Except you can when all the security is disabled, like it was. (She does seem rather astonished when they just walk in, although the Narrator seems to think she's inexplicably awed at an empty hallway.)
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** Again, the whole point was for Voldemort to not realize that Harry is, at least partially, in Dumbledore's confidence. If Voldemort knows that, he can use him to spy on Dumbledore. So Harry sees Dumbledore in the Great Hall. Big whoop. Does Voldemort want to spy on Dumbledore giving a public speech? No, he wants to spy on Dumbledore going over his top secret anti-Voldemort plans. The issue is whether or not Harry has any access to that sort of thing. If he doesn't, there's no point in using him to spy on Dumbledore.
*** So don't go over top secret anti-Voldemort plans until the kid masters Occlumency, what's the problem? As for a convenient, non-being-in-confidence-indicative reason to do that, simple: "Harry, your escape from Riddle was a major affront to his overblown ego. He will certainly try to rectify his mistake. You're safe while in my custody, but he might try mind tricks to lure you out. To prevent that from happening, I'll teach you mental protection." Done.
** Plus, what knowledge are they afraid Voldemort will pick up from Harry? Let's go down the list:
*** ''"Harry, I'm afraid Voldemort has targeted you specifically"''. Yeah, Tom already knows this part, and he already knows that Dumbledore knows this part.
*** ''"So I have ordered special security measures for you."'' Tom already knows this, too; as seen in book 7 he doesn't hesitate to ask Snape questions about Harry Potter and possible security precautions around him, questions Snape has to answer at least mostly truthfully in order to keep his cover intact.
*** ''"Also, I'm afraid Tom is in contact with your mind."'' Well, ''duh''. Harry told Dumbledore about the visions as far back as book ''four''. Snape's already reported this to Voldemort as part of his double agent cover. So again, Tom already knows, and he already knows that Dumbledore knows that he knows, so you can say it in Harry's face all you want.
*** ''"Plus, there is a prophecy in the Hall of Mysteries that Tom wants very much, and he might try and use you to get it."'' Tom already knows that the Order knows about the Prophecy and is guarding it from him; by this point Lucius already knows about the people in invisibility cloaks lurking outside the DoM door, remember?
*** tldr;: You can tell Harry the entire plot of book 5 without worrying that you're giving anything new away to Voldemort -- not only does Tom already know about all of it, Tom also knows that the Order knows about all of it.
== Headmistress and Teacher? ==
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** Before that, it doesn't seem like she would have enough time to be both the DADA teacher and Hogwarts High Inquisitor. Perhaps she's using a Time-Turner. Or since she never did any actual teaching anyway, perhaps she got someone else (Filch, maybe?) to supervise her classes.
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