Grab a butterbeer and pull up a stool! Join Aureo, Sam, Sierra, and special guest Liz as they dive headfirst into the perplexing plot holes of the Harry Potter book series. From convenient coincidences to the enigmatic Dumbledore, the frustrating limitations (or lack thereof!) of magic, moments of pure wizarding stupidity, and some truly questionable arithmetic, they categorize and debate the moments that make you go “Wait, what?!”
In this episode:
- You can’t zoom parchment
- Thestrals suffer from the Order of the Phoenix’s curse
- Astrology class and clouds don’t work
- Teaching is a hard profession
- Class schedules are a plot hole in real life
- Hogwarts sceptic tank comes with moody pipes
- We draw the line at pens
- The Sorting Hat is their legal counsel
- Wand mafia boss Ollivander
- Mwahahaha or Muahahaha
- Voldemort manifested Harry’s death
First, obligatory “long time fan first time commenter”
i started my deep dive re-reads of HP during law school. This helped my overall forgiveness of plot holes because i started viewing the wizarding world as a different rule structure than our own. Generally our laws in developed countries are formed under a contract theory of some sort. Most commonly called the social contract theory. Basically, government derives its authority from the consent of the governed. And you can view that as an offer/acceptance of a contract.
in HP, thats not as much the case. In social contract theory, you agree to follow the laws and expectations by living under those laws. But magic chooses you. And if we take Fantastic Beasts as canon, there are dire consequences for not obliging to magic’s reign. The ministry of magic seems weak because it is; isn’t the real governing done by magic itself? So of course the answer to most plot hole questions will annoyingly be “because its magic”
That being said, so many questions still about magical law. How did powerful wizarding families never rely on their family lawyers? Good grief, get Aberforth a defense attorney! Also Albus could have used a family trust to get the trio all the things without ministry interference. How was Sirius able to get a life sentence with no trial.. even absent justice protections of any sort didn’t they at least want a salacious public trial to broadcast for entertainment? Did his parents bribe the ministry to do so to avoid aforesaid public media? .. and if they did, maybe it was their lawyer that did it! Aha!
i will stop my rantings. Absent minded raven makes this look easier than it is 🙂
Welcome, glad to have you joining the commenting ranks!
Good points all around. And the whole magic-is-the-ultimate-authority is a really good lens to have for this series, particularly for the thorny issues of Muggle-borns. Like, yes, taking them away from their parents for nine months of the year give-or-take parental consent isn’t *great* from a parental rights standpoint, but if the alternative is Obscurials, kinda hard to argue right?
Borne of much practice, I assure you. My early comments had plenty of their own plot-holes!