Plot and worldbuilding problems in the Harry Potter novels

[Glasgow Mega-Snake]

I wouldn't call this lazy worldbuilding. It's like George R.R. Martin has said in a lot of interviews, some authors are 'architects' and some are 'gardeners', meaning some do a lot of outlining and worldbuilding beforehand and only then start to write, while some just start writing with some vague endpoint in mind and make most of it up as they go.
Both approaches are fine, with longrunning series the latter just means there will be some insonsistencies, because you can't go back and change the books that are already published. Honestly HP is a lot more consistent than some other series, like say The Dark Tower. With ASOIAF you really notice that GRRM didn't think of some central story elements until later.

Though I have to admit the Triwizard Tournament/Voldemort connection is pretty contrived. Hogwarts is dangerous enough as it is, Not-Mad-Eye could have just made up some excuse to get Harry into the Forbidden Forest and kidnapped him from there. Just say the spiders ate him.

Generally, not to post that 4chan thing, but the whole thing around Harry seemingly obsessed with preserving the status quo except for a few token things around half-bloods is a problem for me. There is no care for most of the problems in the Wizarding world, almost all characters (except for Hermione in some circumstances, which are usually portrayed as her being a bit 'bleeding heart' OTT) have no interest in resolving these huge injustices (including literal slavery) - they just don't like Voldemort and his extreme facism. Harry's entire goal is to literally join the police to preserve the status quo.

I suppose all of this is less of a plot hole, and more a fundamental disagreement of values. It is just particularly stark that in a novel supposed to be about good vs evil, the ideals of a child in a fantastical world boil down to "better things aren't possible".

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Some of this bothers me, too, when looking back. A lot of the central plot derives from dividing children into different houses at the age of eleven by some weird psychological reasoning. (Like, hey kid, are you more brave or more smart? Please choose, this will determine who you're friends with during seven years of school.) One of the houses is literally proto-fascist... and still after defeating Voldemort nobody thinks about changing the shitty house system, no, actually all is fine with Slytherin because Snape did some good things.

And the whole plot with Hermione and the house elves is really, really cringy. "Actually, they like being slaves, don't bother changing it. Lol, she's so naive for trying to free them."

Rowling seems to have a really centrist viewpoint. A lot of YA fantasy series have similar issues, you have to defeat the big bad dark lord, but institutional change isn't on the table. That's understandable when we're talking about quasi-medieval worlds where e.g. abolishing monarchy wouldn't seem realistic, but HP takes place in the modern world, so some actual changes should be possible.

Speaking of politics, how exactly is the Minister for Magic appointed? Are there elections? Don't think it's ever mentioned in the books. When Cornelius Fudge resigned and Rufus Scrimgeour took over, who decided that?

 

[kvetcha]

I wouldn't call this lazy worldbuilding. It's like George R.R. Martin has said in a lot of interviews, some authors are 'architects' and some are 'gardeners', meaning some do a lot of outlining and worldbuilding beforehand and only then start to write, while some just start writing with some vague endpoint in mind and make most of it up as they go.

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this is a great observation.

 

[SamAlbro]

I've heard this before, but why does Voldemort care if it looks like an accident? He's Voldemort. He's a hammy supervillain who goes around in public murdering people and trying to take over the world. Why does he care if Harry's death looks like an accident or if his return is exposed? Because his return is exposed just a year later and nothing about his plan gets derailed at all. He still takes over the Ministry, he still gets all his followers back.

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there was a year between his return and the ministry believing he was back. That year was likely critical to rebuilding his organization.

 

[Sheepinator]

Quidditch doesn't sound like it would be fun to watch. A team that's 14 goals down and hasn't even scored once can win by one lucky move, and a team that's 20 goals down won't want to catch it, so the game could keep going on and on. Even hardcore sports fans get bored watching a blowout.

 

[janusff]

not to mention that quidditch is stupid dangerous and children probably shouldn't be playing it.

but i guess if you can fix a broken arm in no time it isn't that big of a problem but damn it hurts to break something!

 

[S-Wind]

That doesn't really work when the Wizarding World and the Muggle World are portrayed as being almost equally unknown to each other. People in the Wizarding world act completely mystified as to how the Muggle World works. That shouldn't be the case if Wizards attended Muggle schools up to age 11.

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I recall an interview with Rowling where she answers the question of how schooling in the wizarding world works before the age of 11.

Her answer was that in the wizarding world children are homeschooled up until that age. So I guess magical children of muggles, like Hermione, attend muscle schools until that age.

 

[ascii42]

They have a device that allows people to watch memories. For some reason this is never used in trials.

 

[Sunster]

not to mention that quidditch is stupid dangerous and children probably shouldn't be playing it.

but i guess if you can fix a broken arm in no time it isn't that big of a problem but damn it hurts to break something!

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lol they're flying around like 100+ ft in the air sitting on broomsticks. there should be like 10 deaths per game.

 

[janusff]

lol they're flying around like 100+ ft in the air sitting on broomsticks. there should be like 10 deaths per game.

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yeah i was just thinking about harry falling from the sky in azkaban and if dumbledore wasn't there to catch him he'd be dead. ;_;

 

[Kinthey]

What I'd love to know more about is those living paintings/pictures. Are they a life form? In hogwarts we've even seen them moving to different frames and be able to talk. Does the same go for all the other pictures like the ones in newspapers? Are those all tiny versions of a person forever trapped in a disposable medium?

 

[Idde]

I'm currently listening to the books again and yeah, quite a bit of stuff doesn't make a lot of sense. Still love them though.

Something that strikes me as a bit odd with the Tri Wizard cup: the challenges are supposed to be spectacles, and a lot of students watch the challenges. And seeing Harry face of against the dragon is cool to see.

But the next challenge has Harry submerged throughout the entire task. So you get to see him go under and then...cheer for him when he comes back up? How exciting!

Same goes for the maze. The complete school comes out to see the champions enter the maze and then...stare at the maze walls for the rest of the task?

Just nitpicking of course, but a funny weird realization. At least have some sort of magical screen where the spectators can see how the champions are doing!

 

[BDS]

They have a device that allows people to watch memories. For some reason this is never used in trials.

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Sirius Black appears to have been subjected to a complete sham of a trial that would have immediately exposed the truth had he been given veritaserum or a pensieve had been used.

I can accept that the trial itself was a sham, because that sort of thing happens in real life, but why do intelligent characters like Dumbledore just go along with it and accept it at face value?

 

[alexiswrite]

I don't know I always find this type of analysis kinda bad, it feels like it completely misses the point. Good storytelling is often the things you don't say or talk about as much as it is the stuff you do say and talk about. Given that Harry Potter is in no way about the relationship between the magic world and the real world it doesn't matter at all who specifically in whatever muggle government knows about wizards. A long section where a book breaks down in detail exactly who amongst the muggle officials know about wizards and why, is bad writing, it doesn't add to the experience the books are trying to give you and ruins the pacing. The economic critique is again the same thing to me. It feels like these critiques are written by someone who has no idea why Harry Potter as a world is appealing to people.

Harry Potter is a pretty top tier fiction when it comes to worldbuilding. I don't find it interesting, it's not the type of worldbuilding I like, however the degree to which so many people find it easy to invest and engage in the presented world speaks to the fact that it's a quality piece of work in that aspect.

If "worldbuilding problems" basically means, "unless every tiny portion of this fictional world is explained then it's bad worldbuilding" then, to me, you've lost sight about why worldbuilding is even important in the first place.

 

[Jarmel]

Some of this is definitely valid but some of this is also insanely nitpicky.

 

[the_wart]

lol they're flying around like 100+ ft in the air sitting on broomsticks. there should be like 10 deaths per game.

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If wizards ever invented civil liability their entire civilization would collapse.

But yeah, OP many of these (though not all) are absolutely Cinema Sins style inane nitpicks.

 

[El Bombastico]

How Hogwarts would really be like.

 

[Lost Lemurian]

The Harry Potter books are full of a billion more plot holes, inconsistencies, and examples of things existing only when needed.

The reason all of that stuff gets a pass because the universe is insanely charming. Its exactly like Star Wars; as long as you dont think about anything too hard, you're gonna have a good time.

My personal nitpick will always be the Time Turner. Wizards have fucking *time travel* and they use it to *take extra classes at school*. What??

 

[Jest]

I recall an interview with Rowling where she answers the question of how schooling in the wizarding world works before the age of 11.

Her answer was that in the wizarding world children are homeschooled up until that age. So I guess magical children of muggles, like Hermione, attend muscle schools until that age.

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That would have to be the case but it's still awkward as it means that Wizard parents are essentially forced to homeschool until their children are 11 years old. I mean, if that's the way it works then that's the way it works but it does make one wonder... why? It's just one of those things that isn't necessary to explain to service the story but at the same time shouldn't be that difficult to explain in a way that actually makes sense.

 

[Rogue74]

Basically, Rowling is no Tolkien. And it shows. Books were still fun though.

 

[Z-Beat]

I can say a lot of things about Rowling but lack of imagination isn't one of them.

As for some of the points, I can give it my best shot and play devils advocate

If Lockhart has publicly claimed to possess a werewolf cure, why has nobody ever asked him for it? If I went around claiming to have a cure for cancer but never actually provided it to anyone, wouldn't this immediately expose me as a fraud?

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If I planned to be a fraud long-term and planned to make such an outrageous claim I would've backed it up with the idea that the process or ingredients to do so were scarce and/or could not be obtained again, or use straight up imaginary materials too difficult to obtain to confirm their existence, like the tear of a dementor or some such nonsense. I'm guessing that's what happened.

Much has been written on the subject, but nothing about the Triwizard Tournament makes sense. Why is a young teenage boy legally forced to participate in a life-threatening tournament against his will just because his name popped out of a goblet? Is there no law against this sort of thing? If Voldemort wanted to teleport Harry to his location, aren't there about ten million easier ways he could have done this than engineering an elaborate hoax tournament over the course of many months?

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The wizarding world is extremely lax on its rules about child endangerment. And I assume he needed more prep time, and also needed a valid excuse as to why Harry would disappear from the school for an undetermined amount of time and no one had gone looking for him. That last challenge seemed like a decent excuse. Plus no one was watching him directly at the time, and they knew it wouldn't be the case aside from other competitors, who were dealt with accordingly

A famous problem that has received much analysis: how many kids are at Hogwarts, and how many wizards are there? It seems as though Hogwarts only has a couple hundred students at most; Rowling has claimed a thousand, but even that is astronomically low for a country of 67 million people. If there are only a thousand school-age kids in wizarding Britain, there must only be a few thousand more adults at most. How can their society even survive at that low a number? And speaking of school-age kids, where do kids go before they turn 11 and attend Hogwarts? Are they all homeschooled?

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Magic people seem to have weird-ass life spans and magic isnt specific to Britain. Could probably use those and immigration to conjure up an excuse, but to do so in the books would be a prequel mistake

 

[Elderly Parrot]

not to mention that quidditch is stupid dangerous and children probably shouldn't be playing it.

but i guess if you can fix a broken arm in no time it isn't that big of a problem but damn it hurts to break something!

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Football

 

[Z-Beat]

Basically, Rowling is no Tolkien. And it shows. Books were still fun though.

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Tolkien took the approach of "make so much detail amd explanations that if someone asks you tell them to read a big-ass manual until they give up"

 

[Aaron]

These are the parts that particularly bother me too. Also relating to the Weasley's, if we do take it as given for some reason that you can do anything with magic apart from anything which tangibly changes your economic status/class/ability to subsist - why doesn't Harry just give his best mate some of that endless gold he has in a vault of Gringotts? (Long time since I have read the books, so this may be explained by a vague notion of 'pride' somewhere?).

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Harry offers to pay for stuff for Ron and the rest of the Weasleys pretty frequently, they turn him down every time. It becomes a point of contention in the fourth book when Harry buys Ron a pair of binoculars for the Quidditch World Cup and Ron repays him in leprechaun gold, only to learn later that leprechaun gold disappears. Harry never noticed because money's not an issue for him, while Ron feels bad because they agreed at first that the binoculars would be his Christmas present, but Harry gets him a present anyway after Ron thought he paid him back.

It's also implied that Harry's fortune doesn't leave him with much more than what it'd cost to go to Hogwarts for seven years, though that might just be Harry being cautious (it's mentioned in context of him being tempted to buy the Firebolt in the third book).

IIRC he also offers his Triwizard winnings to both the Diggory and the Weasley families, and finally gives it to Fred and George when no one else takes it.

 

[JonnyDBrit]

Honestly, I feel like of this starts to make more 'sense' - not necessarily in terms of logistics or numbers, but intended feel - if you think of it in terms of the context and perspective of a primarily white minority group, especially a religious primarily white minority group, as understood in a British social context.

So, you get a dedicated school for that minority group that places emphasis on sourcing from that group (though unlike an IRL religious school isn't obligated to accept students from outside the 'faith' in its catchment area). Varying degrees of concentration for that group where it goes from blending in plain sight to to very obvious communities of such, that also kinda just stop at their own edges. Lot of emphasis on funky traditions where you've gotta do the thing because it's part of the culture, even if you've largely grown up outside them. Varying degrees of prosperity between those who've integrated well and adjusted to their surrounding cultural context, and others who technically have established property and housing but make so little in modern economic terms that they've barely got anything but the land and the house which is decaying in places.

Tl;dr, wizards are Catholics, and especially non-British Catholics in the UK

 

[Idde]

I recall an interview with Rowling where she answers the question of how schooling in the wizarding world works before the age of 11.

Her answer was that in the wizarding world children are homeschooled up until that age. So I guess magical children of muggles, like Hermione, attend muscle schools until that age.

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So that's how Crabbe and Goyle got so big and intimidating.

 

[kvetcha]

Honestly, I feel like of this starts to make more 'sense' - not necessarily in terms of logistics or numbers, but intended feel - if you think of it in terms of the context and perspective of a primarily white minority group, especially a religious primarily white minority group, as understood in a British social context.

So, you get a dedicated school for that minority group that places emphasis on sourcing from that group (though unlike an IRL religious school isn't obligated to accept students from outside the 'faith' in its catchment area). Varying degrees of concentration for that group where it goes from blending in plain sight to to very obvious communities of such, that also kinda just stop at their own edges. Lot of emphasis on funky traditions where you've gotta do the thing because it's part of the culture, even if you've largely grown up outside them. Varying degrees of prosperity between those who've integrated well and adjusted to their surrounding cultural context, and others who technically have established property and housing but make so little in modern economic terms that they've barely got anything but the land and the house which is decaying in places.

Tl;dr, wizards are Catholics, and especially non-British Catholics in the UK

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informative! thanks.

 

[Ushojax]

 

[Fevaweva]

I always thought thgat Hogwarts was just one of many wizarding schools in the UK. Its just this one is basically Wizard-Eton.

 

[turtle553]

Honestly the only thing in HP that ever bothered me was Quidditch. The entire game seems pointless if the Snitch has so much influence with awarding the team 150 points and ending the game.

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The scoring used to bother me more. It seems the rules of the game have not kept up with broom technology. Older matches could take days until the snitch was captured. Now faster brooms have shortened matches. Also it seems like at Hogwarts, the scores were used for house points. So even in a blowout loss, catching the snitch will give your house a lot of points.

 

[Squid Bunny]

I think there are definitely issues with the Harry Potter world, although I have to completely disagree in regards to the TriWizard tournament. The Goblet of Fire spitting your name out is legally-binding, a magical contract. There are no laws for it because it IS the law.

That said, Quidditch is a load of bullshit thanks to the seeker. However, if you remove the snitch and just add a timer, it becomes a pretty fun hockey on brooms game.

 

[Brakke]

If I planned to be a fraud long-term and planned to make such an outrageous claim I would've backed it up with the idea that the process or ingredients to do so were scarce and/or could not be obtained again, or use straight up imaginary materials too difficult to obtain to confirm their existence, like the tear of a dementor or some such nonsense. I'm guessing that's what happened.

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Also it isn't even fantastical that a rich famous dude would make nakedly false claims as puffery. That's like. Extremely standard. How many healing crystals has Gweneth Paltrow sold?

The scoring used to bother me more. It seems the rules of the game have not kept up with broom technology. Older matches could take days until the snitch was captured. Now faster brooms have shortened matches. Also it seems like at Hogwarts, the scores were used for house points. So even in a blowout loss, catching the snitch will give your house a lot of points.

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Scoring makes better sense is the context of a Cup tourney. Virtually every book with quiddich has a scene where someone is like "ok Seeker, you gotta catch it but only after we get X points ahead." There's tactics and risk in when to catch. In lots of circumstances, the Seeker is better off helping the Chasers or interfering with the other Seeker to run up the score. But that's risky because it's super bad if the other guy catches it.

It's dumb that the World Cup was apparently a single game, but there we saw the Snitch-catcher lose so that takes the edge off.

 

[Leo]

Yeah, although very engaging, Rowling's writing feels a bit amateurish and improvised sometimes.

Even as a kid, while reading, a lot of stuff bothered me. Even the smallest things, I remembered thinking that it didn't make any sense that the entrance for the rooms of the four houses inside Hogwarts are secret to everybody who isn't a member. Like, it's statistically impossible that in the hundreds of years since Hogwarts foundation no student has seen a member getting in the secret entrance, or even that no kid ever told one of their friends about it.

Don't even get me started on the living paintings and photographs, Rowling went back and forth on how they work depending on her convenience at the moment.

 

[Deleted member 8741]

I think Harry Potter is fun and imaginative, but this is why I could never write fantasy. I would be so concerned with a world that was perfectly created, that I'd likely seize up and never finish.

 

[Distantmantra]

weasley's live in like a 6 story house with acres and acres of land and they have one of those tents that are basically a house in itself.

i wanna be a weasley

or hell just give me that tent

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They borrowed the tent. This is made clear in the books but never mentioned in the movies.

 

[JonnyDBrit]

informative! thanks.

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This read of the wizarding community brought to you by a British Catholic of Polish descent, so uh, more than a little bias in that perspective, I'll admit

 

[ElectricKaibutsu]

Magic itself makes no sense. Snape created a spell when he was in school. How did he do that? Is it like programming where you create a function, and doing the wand movement and saying the spell name calls that function. But then where is this logic stored to be called?

I read a blog post which had the idea that the spell names and wand movements don't matter, which is why magic can be done without them, like Harry causing the glass to disappear in the reptile house. The reason for the wand movements and spell names is to link them in your mind to the magic you want to happen, so it's more to get in the right state of mind for the magic to work. Of course, that doesn't explain how Harry can use Snape's spell without knowing what it does.

Basically, Rowling understood that none of this stuff matters. The books are so the reader can enjoy being in that world. The scoring of Quidditch games doesn't make sense on purpose, because nothing makes sense. It's supposed to be funny that these people live in this world that makes no sense and they don't notice. She uses words like muggles, Dumbledore, Hogwarts to show that it's all just silly nonsense and whimsy.

 

[Wallace Wells]

I'm currently listening to the books again and yeah, quite a bit of stuff doesn't make a lot of sense. Still love them though.

Something that strikes me as a bit odd with the Tri Wizard cup: the challenges are supposed to be spectacles, and a lot of students watch the challenges. And seeing Harry face of against the dragon is cool to see.

But the next challenge has Harry submerged throughout the entire task. So you get to see him go under and then...cheer for him when he comes back up? How exciting!

Same goes for the maze. The complete school comes out to see the champions enter the maze and then...stare at the maze walls for the rest of the task?

Just nitpicking of course, but a funny weird realization. At least have some sort of magical screen where the spectators can see how the champions are doing!

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I thought they would have been able to see what was going on in the maze because the quidditch stands were so tall? Or were they only tall in the films because I never recall their height being mentioned in the books :/

 

[Bit_Reactor]

I've heard this before, but why does Voldemort care if it looks like an accident? He's Voldemort. He's a hammy supervillain who goes around in public murdering people and trying to take over the world. Why does he care if Harry's death looks like an accident or if his return is exposed? Because his return is exposed just a year later and nothing about his plan gets derailed at all. He still takes over the Ministry, he still gets all his followers back.

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I've always seen this plot point as one of the better things in Harry Potter to be honest. The Wizarding world doesn't want to admit that evil has returned so until it's literally staring them in the face they refuse to believe it. Discrediting Harry keeps the populace in line and keeps the cowards in power from having to use and/or lose said power in attempting to fix the problem.

It's still a whole year that he got to build forces and catch people off guard, which I believe is part of why his plan goes so well. He's been building up resources for a long time before Harry arrives, and then it's at least 4-5 years after Harry arrives that he's still an active player. I found it pretty good, and the whole plot of trying to make Harry look like a loon was pretty compelling considering it's often how society treats people who want to give the harsh truth.

For the rest I don't normally use nitpicks often but I think certain things are just part of writing a series where you put things in and have to justify them, and just because Harry didn't see them doesn't mean they weren't used before. It's a slow build up of new spells and things built in the world because starting with all the things might overwhelm a reader.

I think some of the plot points in the books are definitely "holes" in a sense, and the movies kinda make them worse but I don't think a lot of the things mentioned here derail/make the plot happen. The line I tend to draw is if a solution is presented later that could fix a problem later, that's a huge plot hole and contrivance. Or in this universe to use a blatant example the Buckbeak situation. Time Turners ruined the stakes for future books and movies so much that they have to pretend it doesn't exist. One of the biggest problems in the writing I think.

 

[Lord Error]

I only watched the movies, but the two first ones especially are such children's stories through and through. Charming, but ultimately make very little sense under any real scrutiny. Quiddich scoring and building drama out of points adding at the end of the first one, lol. And really who cares. It's overall very entertaining and so imaginative. I can't even imagine what kind of effort it must have been and what kind of talent it requires to write so much while keeping that level of quality in such a short span of time.

 

[Triggerhappytel]

• And speaking of school-age kids, where do kids go before they turn 11 and attend Hogwarts? Are they all homeschooled?

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Here in the UK kids aged 4 or 5 go to Primary School until they are 10 or 11 and then go to Secondary School (aka High School). Hogwarts is just a stand-in for Secondary School, hence why Harry only finds out about this stuff a few weeks/months before starting Secondary School age.

NB - it is a bit different in some parts of the country where they also have Middle School (from like ages 7-11 I think?) but from my experience the system above is more common.

 

[lexony]

The Harry Potter books are full of a billion more plot holes, inconsistencies, and examples of things existing only when needed.

The reason all of that stuff gets a pass because the universe is insanely charming. Its exactly like Star Wars; as long as you dont think about anything too hard, you're gonna have a good time.

My personal nitpick will always be the Time Turner. Wizards have fucking *time travel* and they use it to *take extra classes at school*. What??

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I think this part is actually really authentic. We have fucking Super-Computers in our pockets and use it to talk about fictional literature.

 

[Lost Lemurian]

I think this part is actually really authentic. We have fucking Super-Computers in our pockets and use it to talk about fictional literature.

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Exactly, it's a charming enough idea that you forgive the inherent absurdity of it.

There's still a ton of things you can do with a time machine that are just never addressed in the text (even accounting for the fact that it seems to work on a "you can't change history" set of rules) and it will forever slightly bug me.

 

[Primal Sage]

What I would like to know is why don't all wizards live in enormous mansions in the middle of nowhere. Why bother to live in expensive houses or small flats in the big city when you can live cheaply in the countryside and apparate to work.

 

[a916]

• A classic example of lazy worldbuilding: forms of magic, technology, and concepts do not exist until Harry is first told about them, at which point they suddenly become commonplace. Even when apparition, the floo network, portkeys, patronus communication, etc. would have been useful in earlier books, they are never seen, mentioned, or used until Harry is first told about them in later books.

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Is this classic or lazy? Because it seems like a trope writers use to slowly introduce people to new concepts vs dumping it all on the user.

Fantastic Beasts does this, where everything is just ho hum and here's just a bunch of stuff everyone already knows and it loses it's luster.

Part of the thing that really worked for me personally was as Harry discovered and was in awe of discovering things, so was the reader.

 

[PopsMaellard]

What I would like to know is why don't all wizards live in enormous mansions in the middle of nowhere. Why bother to live in expensive houses or small flats in the big city when you can live cheaply in the countryside and apparate to work.

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A lot of them are specifically noted as doing exactly that. The only wizard family I recall living in the city was the Blacks, and they'd absolutely be the kind of assholes to prefer that sort of thing.

 

[BDS]

Because it seems like a trope writers use to slowly introduce people to new concepts vs dumping it all on the user.

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There's a difference between slowly introducing new concepts, and having major plot points that would have occurred entirely differently if the characters had access to this seemingly common technology or magic at the time.

It's like if the Empire Strikes Back randomly introduced the concept of hyperdrive after ANH never featured it.

 

[Idde]

I thought they would have been able to see what was going on in the maze because the quidditch stands were so tall? Or were they only tall in the films because I never recall their height being mentioned in the books :/

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Hm, I think it's mentioned in book one that the stands are also really tall. Level with the goalhoops?

But so were the hedges of the maze. I had the idea nobody knew what was going on in there, aside from the champions. Because if they thought they were in real trouble they had to shoot sparks into the air. And then teachers patrolling the outside of the maze would come in to help. And I thought, if people from the outside could see what was happening that wouldn't be necessary.

 

[Primal Sage]

Imagine the Olympics having a final which the spectators weren't allowed to see :-D

 

[Yasuke]

This is not a "CinemaSins thread" where we just ask why Harry didn't shoot Voldemort in the face with a gun or something, this is a thread about Rowling's lack of imagination in many key aspects of the story's overall concept and world, as well as the sometimes questionable political and philosophical underpinnings of the story (insert that 4chan post here).

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Idk dawg, that feels like what this is.

Seeing a mix of people nitpicking nothing issues ("why are the Weasley's poor?" Seriously?) and people who clearly never read the books (or haven't read them in a long time).

 

[Metroidvania]

Heh, the Sirius trial and veritaserum/pensieve thing totally didn't register with me til now, but yeah, rowling was clearly making up/adding shit in as she went along, for sure.

Rule of cool, to some extent, but there are definitely 'new' magic items/processes that would have been game-changers in previous books, after going through some of what's shown in the later novels.