Harry watch stopped working because it was not waterproof and he went swimming for an hour. Not due to magic.
Ahh, that explains things. ‘Problem exists between one wrist and the other’, or something of that sort. 
Wizards might be the ultimate stupid users - they know plenty about magic, but not really how to use tech other than by mimicking what they’ve seen ‘muggles’ do, and they don’t know how to take care of it.
Well - that would apply to most wizards - those who were raised by Muggles would understand their world better. (Did Harry not understand about his watch not being waterproof, or just not care?)
So, uh, yeah. If you use magic to make the spoon stir, uh, presumably someone has figured out a ‘manus tubare’ spell. So, I wonder what that feels like?
Neville Longbottom could have used a good lawyer, to sue Hogwarts for letting Snape harass him the way he did.
For that matter, Harry could have used a lawyer at his hearing.
There are laws in the wizarding community. Hard to believe there aren’t lawyers.
Harry was a teenager, and they’re not always known for good judgment and thinking things like that through. It’s clear from the books that Harry doesn’t always show the best judgment. I ruined a watch pretty much that way when I was just a little younger than Harry would have been.
Not so hard to believe when you realize that Hogwarts is their best school and it doesn’t teach logic or debate or English or public speaking. And that the entire wizarding populace is so credulous that they deny the return of Death Eaters despite mountains of evidence, and they believe a year-old baby saved himself from Voldemort, rather than that someone saved him.
I’ve always liked how fascinated Mr. Weasley was with Muggle technology - didn’t Harry give him a collection of screws, nuts, & bolts for his birthday one year? “Look - you can attach one thing to another without magic, and they just stay that way!”
Seriously? No electronics in any semiauto pistol I’ve ever seen. And unless you’re willing to let a semiauto user get off one shot before your spell stops him, there’s not much difference between the two - just freeze the hammer and it won’t go off.
There are laweyers. Scrim-something-or-the-other mentioned to Hermione that she should consider a career in Magical Law.
They could have used the internet. Like for Astronomy, instead of a telescope, how about getting the pics off the internet. I remember that the Hubble Space Telescope pictures were online even in the mid nineties (when the book was written).
I’ve only read the series once. But in The Goblet of Fire wasn’t there some sort of huge area effect spell cast over the entire county where the Quiddich Cup match was held? Didn’t it render all muggles into some sort of zombified state of amnesia and apathy? I would think such a spell would go a long way toward protecting the wizards from any advancing muggle army. I may be misremembering though.
So where were they at Harry’s hearing?
I suppose Neville might not want to tell his grandmother about the problems he was having with Snape at school, and that could explain why they haven’t sued. But I’d think there would be other kids whose parents might sue, and that would make someone at Hogwarts tell Snape to not pick on kids so blatantly.
Why weren’t they taking photographs in Astronomy? Muggle astronomers have been doing that for a century or so. Looking through a telescope is either just for fun or for public outreach (getting people interested in astronomy by showing them Saturn in a telescope). Even if modern digital photography wouldn’t work for them, cameras do work at Hogwarts, so glass plates presumably would.
Or their astronomy class might be like the astronomy class I took in high school or like the intro astronomy college class Mr. Neville sometimes teaches. Those are classroom science classes. If there’s any observing at all, it’s one trip to an observatory during the semester. The classes aren’t held at night, and the students are not looking through the telescope every time. The exam certainly wouldn’t involve a telescope, even for an observational astronomy class- weather is just too uncertain for that (from what I’ve heard, this is if anything more true in the British Isles).
I always took it that Hagrid thought it was an insult to their memory, not that it was physically impossible - like that it was absurd Harry was told they died in such a common manner, when they really died as heroes.
^
I always thought of it as Dumbledore trusted Hagrid with his life, but not with whole story. Hagrid did not know why Voldy wanted to attack the Potters, or why he targeted Harry.
And we have seen that Wizards cannot survive most things that would kill muggles, like falling a 1000 feet ala Moody.
I took it as a combination of both. They were such skilled and heroic wizards that if they were in such a situation, they would be able to prevent/escape it and that they were such great wizards that they would never have died in a common manner like that. They were heroes!
I don’t really get why they were considered heroes. From what I understand (I’ve only seen the movies) they died protecting their son. Wouldn’t every single other (good)parent in the world do that, wizard or no?
I personally think that anyone who dies protecting another is a hero…
It’s said over and over again that they were excellent wizards, and they died protecting someone other than themselves. Heroes in my book.
If they’re considered heroes, it’s purely due to transitive property - they were the parents of The Boy Who Lived, who was the “real” hero. From what we learn over the series, Lily at least could have saved her own life by stepping aside - Voldy told her he didn’t want her. I don’t remember if he gave James the same choice or if Voldy just killed him preemptively.
But other parents who do so are generally considered to be heroes.
Also, they weren’t just protecting their kid against a run-of-the-mill burglar. They were taking on the leader of an organization that had killed a lot of wizards.
An equivalent Muggle scenario would be a parent killing or incapacitating a terrorist on a plane (or maybe a suicide bomber) to protect their kid. I’d consider someone who did that to be a hero.
But were they actually considered heroes in the wizarding world - by people who had never met them or heard of them before Voldy’s demise? Harry was a famous celebrity almost from birth, but it seems that only people who knew his parents - Dumbledore, Hagrid, Lupin & Sirius, etc., ever thought about his parents.
Oh, I agree. I guess my issue with it is you rarely hear anything about any of the other people who got killed. I’m assuming they died to protect someone else as well.
Or I could be completely wrong. Like I said, I haven’t read the books. I read the first one, but I found the writing horrid.
First thing I thought of was to set up a business doing pre-employment background checks and drug tests, and signing on Hogawarts as the first clients. Way too many dangerous loons getting hired on as teaching staff there.
To the poster above. I think it is established that the Potters were very powerful and skilled wizards, throughout the series.
And I think consensus is that writing wise the first book is the worst. And generally the worst overall.