One thing that DOES bug me is that it’s never explained why the Potters couldn’t have apparated out of their house when Voldemort showed up. (Obvious answer: sake of the story). I’m sure though that Rowling could come up with an answer if asked, though.
Also, remember that Harry and Hermione really didn’t change anything that had already happened.
I believe Rowling said that the Weaselys were home-schooled, so that’s probably the case with most wizarding kids, (I’m assuming the rich ones like Malfoy had tutors).
There are, however, some things I personally wonder:
If you bring a cat to Hogwarts, do they have to be spayed or neutered?
When Slughorn had the elves test the wine for poison, did he make sure to have an antidote nearby?
Did Hermione even have the authority to free the house elves at Hogwarts? (Plus obviously they’re allowed to pick up clothes, if they do everyone’s laundry, I’m assuming. You have to hand them clothes)
If Tonks and Teddy were metamorphamaguses, wouldn’t the school have to worry about them going to Hogsmeade and trying to buy booze and cigarettes?
Did Dumbledore fix Hagrid’s wand for him?
Why did Charlie need a new wand?
Shouldn’t the Quidditch players be wearing helmets?
Does the Queen know about the wizarding world? Have there ever been any wizards or witches from royal families, or nobility? Then you really COULD have a half-blood prince. (And in some countries, like Germany or Russia, “prince” was often a title of nobility, not just royalty)
Do wizards pay taxes to the Ministry? Do they vote?
Do certain muggle laws apply to wizards (like constitutional ones, I guess)?
What exactly did the centaurs do to Umbridge?
Could Kreacher have disapperated Regulus off of the island with him? And could one bring bottled water with them, or even lemonade, or iced tea?
Did anyone ask Myrtle how she died (before Hagrid was framed, that is)? And if not, why? Did they not realize she was a ghost? It’s not like nobody knew about her, she was confined to the castle by the Ministry.
Are there vets for magical creatures? What about zoos? Also, if you have to put an animal to sleep, is the Killing Curse okay? (Note: this would be my ideal job in the wizarding world: vet for magical creatures. And how cool would a Wizard Zoo be?)
How did Myrtle’s parents get to Hogwarts, since they were Muggles?
What happened to the acromantula colony after the Battle of Hogwarts?
Shouldn’t there be an Ethics in Magic class?
Why didn’t Professor Binns know that the Chamber of Secrets was real – hadn’t he been at the school back when it had been opened?
If I have a house elf, can I give them orders to rest if they’re sick? Or hang out with me and watch tv? Or order them to take a day off? After all, if it’s an order, they have to take it, right? And I know they can’t wear clothes, but can I have them wear a certain type of towel?
Can you have a vampire/werewolf hybrid?
Did they use the Chamber of Secrets for anything later? I mean, all that empty space could be put to good use if you clean it up.
Would Verita serum trigger Hermione’s jinx? What about torture, like the cruciatius curse, or the imperius curse?
Did the python make it back to Brazil?
Even though he believed Harry was The Chosen One, when Voldemort originally planned to kill him, did he ALSO plan on killing Neville, just in case?
Are there any drugs or potions wizards become addicted to?
I cant believe how much people get into this stuff. Especially when we visited the Harry Potter world down at Universal studios and I saw people buying costumes and magic wands.
Harry isn’t mediocre at magic - he’s a mediocre student. He’s actually great at performing magic - he pulls off a fully corporeal patronus when he’s only 13, his dueling skills with expelliarmus are unmatched, he’s a fantastic broom jockey, he has no problem apparating, etc. He just can’t sit in a classroom for hours on end and study them, the way Hermione does.
I read all the books about a decade ago, when my kids were babies but my nieces who were older were way into the books. I thought they were pretty entertaining and Rowling did a nice job of world-building. The very end was a bit of a cheat, but I thought the climax of the final book (and the series) was very well done and it felt like the stakes were appropriately high. I also felt like some of the books, especially the later ones, could have been a lot shorter.
Now my kids are 9 and 11 and I’m reading the series aloud to them - we’re about to finish Book 2. They’re really loving it and I’m enjoying the re-reading, knowing where the story will go.
I agree with others - it’s not Shakespeare, and there are better works out there, but I think it’s very solid entry into the pantheon of children’s lit classics.
This always amazes me, not because people are into it but just how they dress up.
Ms. Cups and I were at Universal yesterday. It’s practically 100 outside and the humidity is just shy of re-goddamn-diculous, yet kids are dressed in full-length wool robes. I’m wearing a cutoff and shorts and I’m about to die. I have no idea how these people don’t pass out.
Collateral damage from the fight at the Department of Mysteries. I’m sure it was specifically mentioned in the last chapter of book 5, I can look up the page later.
Yup, a stray shot destroyed box where apparently every last Time Turner was kept. I suspect that event was included so people wouldn’t be wondering why they didn’t keep one on hand to undo any major losses in Books 6 and 7.
But yeah, the Ministry authorizing a student to use one to take more credits makes no damn sense.
This is essentially my POV on the series, as well.
The first three books charmed me. Rowling created a fascinating world, and interesting characters. Yes, it’s clearly a children’s series, and yes, the fact that she was a novice as a professional writer came across, but these didn’t make these books any less enjoyable for me.
Particularly once we got to book 5, it was clear to me that Rowling had begun to paint herself into a corner, plot-wise, and she wasn’t sure how to get out of it (ISTR that “Order of the Phoenix” was delayed from its original planned publication date, and I suspect that Rowling suffered through writer’s block while developing it).
While I think she’s claimed that she had the idea for the Horcruxes from the start, they definitely felt like a last-minute bolt-on, in order to make the final two books work. I read all of the novels (books 3 through 7 upon their initial release), but I don’t know that I have a huge amount of interest in re-reading anything past book 4 now.
In short: for me, Harry Potter is a lovely three- or four-book series, that went on for seven books.
The problem with this as a sport is that the Seeker has no reason to catch the Snitch if his team is 160 or more points behind. The scope isn’t a secret.
The World Cup match is especially baffling, as Krum deliberately makes his team lose by ten points. Yes, they’re getting their asses kicked, but they’re only “losing” by ten in any sense that matters. Even losing 160-0, it would make perfect sense for Krum to try to hold off for just a few moments to see if his buddies could score just one or two lousy goals.
It’s no biggie; Rowling just didn’t get sports.
It’s impossible to create a magical world of this size and complexity and not have some holes. And then you have to patch the holes, and the patches don’t always line up.
As always in threads of this sort, I have to recommend the most amazing piece of fan fiction I’ve ever read, which points out all of these drawbacks and more, but is also a loving homage, and a fascinating philosophical work, and a damn fine bit of writing:
As many people have said before, what Krum does, in a properly organized sport, would be called “throwing the game,” and he would quickly be investigated for evidence that he was paid off by professional gamblers, rather than being proclaimed a great hero. Of course, some folks have pointed out that there are games (chess, to name one) where you are expected to concede once you’re clearly beaten, rather than drag out your inevitable defeat. But the Quidditch World Cup score wasn’t anything near inevitable defeat yet. Effectively Bulgaria was still only a couple of goals down.
“Rowling didn’t get sports” is the true answer; I’ve heard a number of people who aren’t particularly into sports respond to criticisms of Quidditch by saying something akin to, “Yeah, but all sports have weird rules that don’t make sense.” Maybe they do, but none quite like Quidditch!
Particularly in the earliest books, she was deliberately following the formula of the traditional British school story to a great extent. Sports–generally either cricket or football–play a huge role in stories like that, and are often a way for the young hero to excel and gain the respect of his fellow students, just as Harry does. Rowling almost had to have a sport, and naturally it had to be magical.
Keeping the seekers magically unaware of the score would make the snitch rule make a lot more sense.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that (as illustrated in the World Cup chapter) in a pro match, the scoring action is so fast that a seeker doing his job properly might not practically be aware of the running score. In that chapter, Harry, who’s a darned fast flyer for an Academy-aged kid, has a lot of trouble keeping up with the action during the match.
That’s fair. Even Homer nods, and overthinking things is a silly waste of time.
For me, ultimately, the Harry Potter books and movies just aren’t my thing. (And as a frustrated writer, I gnaw at my own ankles in abject jealousy over Rowling’s giga-success!)
It could be perfectly reasonable for a Seeker who’s far behind in points to catch the Snitch: It might be considered more honorable that way, or more respectable, or such intangibles. And before you try to claim that such intangibles don’t play a part in real organized competition, remember that most chess matches end with the losing player conceding, and it’s actually considered rude and unsportsmanlike to drag things out to checkmate.
Though I will agree that that didn’t apply to Krum in the World Cup finals, because his team wasn’t actually that far behind. Victory was still plausible.
I don’t think it made sense in the World Cup since I think that worked off tournament elimination, but in general it could make sense to catch the snitch even if it makes you lose because of the point differential system. Remember in one of the books where Harry had to try and not catch the Snitch until his team were a certain number of points ahead due to that system (that same system is used in British league football). They needed those points to place high enough in the rankings, just winning didn’t cut it since it actually counts (Points Scored - Points Against) instead of (Wins - Losses).
If it’s clear a game is going south and you have no hope, it could be worth it to just end it to prevent your team from being 200 more points in the hole than they already are.
If we accept that wizard society has a pretty laissez faire attitude towards child safety (which seems obvious) and that Time Turners allow for only a restricted form of time travel, letting a promising student use one to do a course overload doesn’t seem that wacky. At least not compared to plenty of other things in the series. We know from the 3rd book that Time Turners can allow someone to effectively be in two places at once, but they apparently cannot be used to change history and may not even allow someone to skip backwards or forwards very far.
That said, the real (out-of-universe) reason Hermione was allowed to use a Time Turner was to serve the plot. The in-universe explanation may not have been super convincing, but even in a fantasy setting it’s probably not easy to come up with a really convincing reason why a couple of kids would suddenly but temporarily have the power to travel through time. I thought the rescuing Buckbeak sequence was cool enough to justify this, although YMMV.
I have actually come across something similar handled far more clumsily in another YA fantasy novel. Early in E. Rose Sabin’s A School for Sorcery*, the heroine is running late for a school event (not a life-and-death situation) and wonders if she could use magic to give herself more time. She hasn’t been taught a time travel spell or anything, but just by thinking about it she’s able to turn back time for herself. She’s warned soon afterward that there will be a price to pay for this reckless use of magic and that she’ll lose the same amount of time at some future point. I assumed this would be crucial to the plot and that she’d wind up losing time in a desperate situation, but no. I’ll go ahead and spoiler box this, but it’s really anti-climactic.
The heroine loses time at the very end of the novel, making her late for her graduation ceremony. Seriously.*The title and 2002 publication date make this seem like a total Harry Potter rip-off, but Sabin actually won an award for her then-unpublished manuscript in 1992. She apparently couldn’t find a publisher until the success of Harry Potter made a YA fantasy about a boarding school for witches and wizards seem like a safe bet.
It probably got lost in the fold of discussion, but can anyone tell me how Time-turners were made irrelevant in the 5th book? This is the first I’ve heard of this.
(And in some countries, like Germany or Russia, “prince” was often a title of nobility, not just royalty)