My biggest complaint is really one of style more than a specific plot device.
Rowling has said she knew how the series would end from the start. And I believe her, because the first couple books were short young adult novels. And the last book was a short novel stretched out to fill a uniquely long book, all wrapped up with a fast, pat ending.
The last book’s pacing is really awkward and tiresome, and I genuinely believe it’s because she wanted to make it epically-sized but still wanted to use the plot she’d cooked up years ago.
If I wanted to point out something more specific, it’s how limited magic got over the course of the series. In the first few books, wizards seem POWERFUL and like they have all sorts of THINGS they can do, but after the fourth or fifth book, it seems more like wizards have about a dozen tricks. Obviously Rowling realized that she couldn’t just keep adding new amazing powers without the whole thing getting silly, but it felt to me like a bad attempt to add “realism” to an inherently unnatural situation.
I think is a little harsh. First, she went on one date with Neville, and all signs point to the idea that they went only as friends. The out-all-night, time-of-his-life date is a fabrication of the movies. Didn’t happen in the book. So I don’t think we can count Neville.
Okay, so then we’re left with Michael Corner, who she dated for an entire year, Dean Thomas, who she dated for half a year, and Harry, who she ended up marrying. There is no evidence for other boys off stage. So, three boys in two years, and all long-term relationships. Yeah, what a skank!
Oh, and she was in Fifth Year in the sixth book…she’s only one year behind Harry. So she was 13 for the Yule Ball.
And as a novice Potter fan, I can’t get over the fact that ANYBODY would realize that letting professors hand out points to their own houses is a Titanic sized conflict of interest in the first place.
But it’s an inescapable trap, isn’t it? How are you going to guarantee that Snape ALWAYS gives the proper points to Slytherin, for example, and isn’t unfair?
Are there enough classes so “unaffiliated” professors could give out points without losing too much? Maybe a system where one could only give positive points to other houses and only negative to their own. That way, worst case scenario every house breaks even. Professors would still be on the honor system to give points and take them away when it’s due but at least you’ve prevented someone from stuffing the ballot box so to speak.
We must be reading different books. I’ve read all seven multiple times and have yet come across this ‘responsible adult’ you seem to intimate exists in the HP universe. It’s my main beef with the books, in fact.
Harry lives with people who lock him in a closet under the stairs. No one tells him important information that could keep him alive. He has teachers who abuse him. Everyone doubts what he is telling them even his friends. He has a half-giant protector who is far more likely to get him killed due to idiocy about dangerous monsters than his main nemesis is. Kids walk around with the equivalent of loaded guns in school and are quite willing to use them on each other at the drop of a hat. The janitor is a psychopath. Ghosts of murdered children wander the halls, but no one attempts to find out who killed them. Just the hazards that are left around and brought into a kids school should make lawyers giggle with glee at all the potential lawsuits.
Well, you see there is this spell that solves that problem. It isn’t mentioned, but it is implied. It is the same spell that keeps anyone from screaming. “My God! the rules to Quidditch are idiotic!”
Not every prof at Hogwarts has a house. Hermione’s Alchemy prof does not head a house, nor does Trelawney. I’m sure there are others–the Muggle Studies prof for another.
I have no problem believing that Harry is surrounded by irresponsible adults. I had a teacher in middle school who raged at us and threw chalk, erasers or anything else she could get her hands on. We never thought to tell anyone–this was 1975 and adults did all kinds of crazy shit in my world. IMO, there are more kids that have lives like Harry then we care to think about (except the bit about the wands, of course).
That sounds like a terrible system to me. The purpose of all this house points stuff is to promote good behavior and discourage bad behavior. But if for instance Professor McGonagall wasn’t allowed to deduct points from any House but Gryffindor, students from other Houses aren’t going to take her classes as seriously. Someone like Draco could act up with impunity. Well, I guess REALLY bad behavior would still get him sent to the Headmaster or sentenced to detention, but point deduction is the Hogwarts method for dealing with minor offenses like talking in class, forgetting your homework, or bothering other students.
No good would come of forcing a professor to use different methods of dealing with bad behavior for students from different Houses. A weak-willed professor would probably just try to ignore all but the worst naughtiness. Someone like Snape would probably be putting naughty Gryffindors in detention for every little thing and deducting the minimum possible points from misbehaving Slytherins. Someone like McGonagall might come up with some alternative method for punishing minor offenses from other Houses, like factoring “classroom behavior” into their final grades, but even that would not really be fair to the whole class. It would also largely remove peer-pressure as a way to encourage good classroom behavior. If Draco makes a bad grade in Transfiguration because he talks in class and never does his homework, the other Slytherins won’t care. If the same behavior is bringing down their House points total, his dormmates are going to call him on it.
This is very poor logic. The market for ‘Muggle Money’ could very easily exist entirely among wizards. There is absolutely zero need for Muggles to know about wizard money, anymore than you have a need to know about … dirhams if I exchange Canadian dollars for dirhams (and back).
Goblins could, if one is to look at this logically, merely be exchanging said monies back with wizards who for various reasons need “hard currency.” At a proper spread I am sure.
Oddly in reading this thread, although I never particularly liked Potter, it seems about 75% of the complaints about supposed holes of logic in HP are really about preference or poor logic themselves.
Last month I exchanged Canadian dollars for Dirhams in Dubai. The rate at the time was around 3.25 Dirhams per dollar. Or am I being whooshed here somehow?
When Harry goes to the Ministry for his hearing in the Order of the Phoenix, the goblin/dwarf guy walking through the crowd is saying something about there being a lot of galleons being traded.
I just recently re-read the sixth and seventh book, and here’s one plot device that bugs me a bit: In the sixth book, we see that the Horcruxes that Dumbledore discovered the hiding places of had powerful curses and/or gateways requiring elaborate knowledge of magic to discover. Main example: In book 6, in the cave where Voldemort hid the locket Horcrux, Dumbledore had to offer it blood, propel the boat by magic, drink the potion, and then, for anyone who got to that point, there was a lake full of Inferi to contend with. If Dumbledore hadn’t discovered that one, there’s no way Harry knew enough to get to it. Lucky for Harry, the Horcruxes he had to locate himself in book 7 were merely hidden - there was certainly a degree of security about them, but nothing that required advanced, Dumbledore/Voldemort-level magic.