# What's your least favorite plot device/character/section of the Harry Potter books (OPEN SPOILERS) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 28, 2009, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-least-favorite-plot-device-character-section-of-the-harry-potter-books-open-spoilers/504593 "2009-07-28T20:53:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-least-favorite-plot-device-character-section-of-the-harry-potter-books-open-spoilers/504593/241 "2009-10-19T20:40:49Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Harry Crucios Bellatrix in OOTP Well, Harry _tried to_. Big difference, IMHO. As to all the other examples, I made mention of the UCs being allowed during the war to suggest that they may well have been allowed by the time of _Deathly Hallows_, as well, even if we are not told so explicitly (I just can’t remember). ---
**Author:** ![Leiko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Leiko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leiko)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-least-favorite-plot-device-character-section-of-the-harry-potter-books-open-spoilers/504593/242 "2009-10-19T21:12:28Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > BTW, wrt MacNair disgustedly executing a pumpkin upon learning of Buckbeak’s escape: isn’t June a little early in the season for pumpkins to set? Should still be blossoms, even with magical assistance, I’d say. I’m pretty sure that in the book, he swings his axe into a fence. The pumpkins (which are horribly painted in the sense that they look like illustrations not vegetables; why is it so hard to make a realistic looking prop pumpkin?) are a movie only thing. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-least-favorite-plot-device-character-section-of-the-harry-potter-books-open-spoilers/504593/243 "2009-10-19T21:21:55Z")
Not a fence. Tree stump, maybe, or the aforementioned pumpkin. But not a fence. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-least-favorite-plot-device-character-section-of-the-harry-potter-books-open-spoilers/504593/244 "2009-10-19T22:00:00Z")
Its been years since I read _Prisoner of Azkaban_, but at one time it was my favourite. IIRC they heard a thunk and thought that Beaky was no more. Later Harry and Hermione say McNair hit a tree stump in anger. BTW in _Deathly Hallows_ was’nt McNair dispatched by Hagrid? Poetic I say. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-least-favorite-plot-device-character-section-of-the-harry-potter-books-open-spoilers/504593/245 "2009-10-19T22:43:40Z")
> [@Maiira](#): > > Something I’ve been wondering about: does culture affect the way one does magic? What would Chinese magic look like compared with, say, Ghanaian magic? Would cultural norms dictate what sorts of spells were acceptable? Would certain types of magic be perfectly okay in one culture, but taboo in others? Are the “unforgivable curses” universally unforgivable? Historical events like Salem probably would’ve had a huge effect on American magic in particular, or at least on the East Coast. Would American magic also be influenced by the American Indians, or African slaves? Same with Europe. Would there be some influence from countries that Europe had colonized? I find it hard to believe that there wouldn’t be some manner of difference between magic of different cultures, and that there wouldn’t be some manner of mixing between two or more of these cultures. Most fantasy novels are very Eurocentric with regard to their setting and magical elements. I’ve read some with Asian or Arabian-inspired settings, but these usually stick with those settings and don’t deal with interactions between different magic-using Earth cultures. I did once read a Mercedes Lackey novel called _The Fire Rose_ (Wikipedia tells me its part of her Elemental Masters series, but I only read the one book) that acknowledged that Western and Eastern elemental magic made use of different elements. This wasn’t a major point, but the American heroine encountered some Chinese magic users in San Francisco and learned that instead of Earth, Fire, Water, and Air, their magic system was based on Earth, Fire, Water, Wood, and Metal. Not sure if any of the other books in the series deal with this in more detail. > [@Ruby Sees](#): > > 5 boys in Harry’s year and house. Let’s say that’s average. That’s 40 kids per year. 280 students. That’s not enough to staff the Ministry of Magic, Diagon Alley, The Quibbler, the Daily Prophet, St Mungo’s, just for starters. This point has come up before, and the usual response is that there’s good reason to believe that Harry’s year and house are _not_ average. Harry was born during a brutal wizard war in which many people were killed. This wouldn’t have had an effect on the number of Muggle-born wizards, but couples with at least one wizard spouse might understandably have decided it was not a good time to bring a child into the world. Whether Rowling planned it this way or not, it makes sense that the wizard birth rate would have been lower than usual during Voldemort’s reign of terror. So Harry’s cohort at Hogwarts might have been unusually small. Since house sorting is based on the student’s personality, there’s no reason to expect a perfectly even distribution of students across the houses. It’s not clear from the books how many students in Harry’s year are in the other three houses. There might be significantly more Slytherins, etc., than there are Gryffindors. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-least-favorite-plot-device-character-section-of-the-harry-potter-books-open-spoilers/504593/246 "2009-10-19T23:03:51Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Since house sorting is based on the student’s personality, there’s no reason to expect a perfectly even distribution of students across the houses. It’s not clear from the books how many students in Harry’s year are in the other three houses. There might be significantly more Slytherins, etc., than there are Gryffindors. I know it’s not scientific, but to date I am the only person I’ve ever met who admits to having been sorted into Hufflepuff by the original Harry Potter website sorting hat application back in '99 or whenever the first film came out. Every frakking person I meet says they’re Gryffindor or Slytherin. ---
**Author:** ![Fair\_Rarity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fair_rarity/32/153_2.png) [@Fair\_Rarity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fair_Rarity)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2009, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-least-favorite-plot-device-character-section-of-the-harry-potter-books-open-spoilers/504593/247 "2009-10-20T03:36:24Z")
My estimates about school sizes were just wild-ass-guesses. There is no evidence to say that it’s 5 students of each gender for each house for each year, but nothing really saying it’s different either. Or whatever the population of Hogwarts was, if it was typical or atypical. I really can’t imagine every single wizard family homeschooling their kids until 11. Who knows, maybe they take a “basic skills” pill instead of Skelegro for bones, use the opposite of a Pensieve. I like to think that there are other schools and Hogwarts is just for the British/Irish/Scottish elite. This little things aren’t even really plot holes because we have so little information to have anything contradict itself. Just little things that I read and go “hmmm, how could they not have met before??? What does book 1 Ginny do when her brothers are away?” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2009, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-least-favorite-plot-device-character-section-of-the-harry-potter-books-open-spoilers/504593/248 "2009-10-20T09:03:12Z")
> [@bup](#): > > Lots of stuff in the 7th book. That pirate “radio” station. Not funny. Not important to the plot. Not at all believable in the wizarding universe Rowling had set up, and certainly not something we’d hear about for the first time 7th year. > > Getting the cup out of Gringotts (for the safest bank in the world, they suck). Escaping from there on a _dragon_. > > Turning a bunch of kids into Harrys to make the jump to the safe house (not everyone, mind you, turned to Harry - just the half of the party that were kids - making the kids more of targets than the Order of the Phoenix members). > > That’s a start. 1. Re turning the kids into Harry Potters, they anticipated (correctly) that the Death Eaters were under order tio capture Harry unharmed. The danger was for the Order Members. 2. They had help from a former employee at Gringotts. 3. It is established that the Wizarding world has radio pretty early on in the series. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-least-favorite-plot-device-character-section-of-the-harry-potter-books-open-spoilers/504593.md?page=12)