Harry Potter Plot Holes

[lordsurya08]

To be honest, this forum has dried up recently, so I though, why not have some book talk? So go ahead and tell us the biggest plot holes in Harry Potter.

I'll start if off:

1. Population of Hogwarts: assuming 5 boys per year per house, each house has a mere 35 students, and the whole school 140 students. This, needless to say, is unusually small.
2. How is it that none of the wizards are noticed when entering Platform 9.75? We are told that Muggles simply don't pay attention, but this seems to be a load of bogus. 140 students, traveling in and out of the barrier 4 times a year...and the Muggles don't see them?

 

[PeteAtoms]

Point 2 doesn't seem to be a big issue to me. It's a case of muggles being oblivious. And in a book series as fantastic (full of fantasy) as Harry Potter, there are much bigger pills you have to swallow.

 

[sophie]

To be honest, this forum has dried up recently, so I though, why not have some book talk? So go ahead and tell us the biggest plot holes in Harry Potter.

I'll start if off:

1. Population of Hogwarts: assuming 5 boys per year per house, each house has a mere 35 students, and the whole school 140 students. This, needless to say, is unusually small.
2. How is it that none of the wizards are noticed when entering Platform 9.75? We are told that Muggles simply don't pay attention, but this seems to be a load of bogus. 140 students, traveling in and out of the barrier 4 times a year...and the Muggles don't see them?

The number is actually closer to 500, Rowling confirms. She also states that the numbers were unusually low during Harry's generation for a number of reasons.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

Namely the casualties of the first wizarding war.

 

[Plotinus]

1. Population of Hogwarts: assuming 5 boys per year per house, each house has a mere 35 students, and the whole school 140 students. This, needless to say, is unusually small.

Not for a minor public school, as Hogwarts clearly is. St Custard's had 79 pupils, and Jennings' school (the name of which I forget) seemed to have very few too, although I suppose that these were prep schools.

The things you mention aren't plot holes, just oddities, if that. There are much bigger plot holes than these. The business with the wands at the end of the fourth book, for example, struck me as quite problematic at the time. The spells pulled out of Voldemort's wand don't correspond to the spells he's supposed to have cast with it.

 

[lordsurya08]

Not for a minor public school, as Hogwarts clearly is. St Custard's had 79 pupils, and Jennings' school (the name of which I forget) seemed to have very few too, although I suppose that these were prep schools.

The things you mention aren't plot holes, just oddities, if that.

Well, Hogwarts is one of the major wizarding schools in Britain. In 7, Hermione insinuates that Hogwarts is possibly the only school in Britain - this is when the trio are discussing the new mandatory Hogwarts attendance, and Hermione says that nearly all wizards in Britain attend Hogwarts, with only a few being home-schooled or going to foreign institutions.

Besides, I wouldn't call any school "minor" if it's participated in the TriTournament.

I do agree with your plot hole about Priori Incantatem in 4.

The number is actually closer to 500, Rowling confirms. She also states that the numbers were unusually low during Harry's generation for a number of reasons.

500 is still an abnormally low number of wizards teens in an entire nation (see my previous post)...btw, what were those reasons?

 

[Plotinus]

Well, Hogwarts is one of the major wizarding schools in Britain. In 7, Hermione insinuates that Hogwarts is possibly the only school in Britain - this is when the trio are discussing the new mandatory Hogwarts attendance, and Hermione says that nearly all wizards in Britain attend Hogwarts, with only a few being home-schooled or going to foreign institutions.

Besides, I wouldn't call any school "minor" if it's participated in the TriTournament.

Yes, but the wizarding community is clearly extremely small compared to the population at large. There is only one (very small) village in the country which is composed entirely of wizards, and everyone seems to know almost everyone else personally. So while Hogwarts may be a major institution in the wizarding world, it's still a minor institution in the world of public schools.

 

[Earthling]

Out of everything the OP could have possibly mentioned, two things that are not really plot holes and easily explainable are brought up?

Also, Hogwarts has plenty of female students too, amazed this wasn't realized, so the math is wrong anyway on your predicted total number of students.

There's discussion in books like GoF about spells that specifically cause Muggles to be distracted/forget stuff - see the Quidditch World Cup - so completely reasonable to assume something similar goes on at Platform 9 3/4.

 

[Speedo]

IMO, the biggest plot hole is Avada Kedavra. Impossible to block, impossible to counter, instant death. The good guys don't use it (that I can recall) and the bad guys use it pretty freely. Why is it that the bad guys aren't utterly and completely winning?

 

[BukoJuko]

There are more good guys than bad guys...

The bad guys would need an AOE version of Avada Kedavra to win

 

[Speedo]

Look though at the three battles thought between the OOP and the Death Eaters prior to the final battle at Hogwarts. In all three the two sides have basically even numbers. In all three the Death Eaters all throwing killing curses around everywhere. Yet they only manage to kill two* of the Order (Sirius and Mad-eye). Either the Death Eaters have absolutely terrible aim, or the Order has dodging skills straight out of the Matrix.

*I'm not counting Dumbledore; he wasn't killed in combat.

 

[Ajidica]

I'm amazed that nobody has mentioned time-turners. It would be oh-so simple to use and resolve the whole book. Dumbledore discovers Tom Riddle because Voldemort, he went back in time, sent Voldemort into some sort of perpetual slumber (Beardy wouldn't kill anyone), and the Wizarding world is a much happier place.

 

[Dachs]

I'm amazed that nobody has mentioned time-turners. It would be oh-so simple to use and resolve the whole book. Dumbledore discovers Tom Riddle because Voldemort, he went back in time, sent Voldemort into some sort of perpetual slumber (Beardy wouldn't kill anyone), and the Wizarding world is a much happier place.

He can't have done, because he already didn't do it.

Though it doesn't create plot holes, the Time-Turner was a stupid device that destroyed immersion and the third book was all the worse for making it integral to the plot.

 

[Lone Wolf]

The third book was great, not because of all that time-turner stuff, though. I consider it the best in the series from a literary point of view. And, frankly, Veritaserum and that lucky potion stuff (the latter, especially) is much more immersion-destroying.

 

[Leoreth]

There are much bigger plot holes than these. The business with the wands at the end of the fourth book, for example, struck me as quite problematic at the time. The spells pulled out of Voldemort's wand don't correspond to the spells he's supposed to have cast with it.

Most important, Harry's parents appear in the wrong order (it's James first although it's established he died earlier).

IMO, the biggest plot hole is Avada Kedavra. Impossible to block, impossible to counter, instant death. The good guys don't use it (that I can recall) and the bad guys use it pretty freely. Why is it that the bad guys aren't utterly and completely winning?

Impossible to block ... except with some inches of stone, apparently. And the feared death-eaters seem to be really bad at aiming.

I'm amazed that nobody has mentioned time-turners. It would be oh-so simple to use and resolve the whole book. Dumbledore discovers Tom Riddle because Voldemort, he went back in time, sent Voldemort into some sort of perpetual slumber (Beardy wouldn't kill anyone), and the Wizarding world is a much happier place.

No, because the time turner can only be used for very important purposes ... like attending classes.


The thing that bothered me most isn't exactly a plot hole, but a problem with "show, don't tell". And it concerns Voldemort. I mean, seriously: this guy was really threatening during the first four books because there were reasons why he couldn't do anything. When people were constantly talking about how terrible he is, it added to the tension. When he got reborn at the end of book four, I expected him to live up to it, but he didn't.

He was described to be the most brilliant wizard to ever have lived, but he was just stupid, most of the time. He was no mastermind, only a manically laughing, card-carrying villain. His minions were incompetent. And he did nothing for one book, and then the worst thing he does is abducting and killing people. Sure, that's horrible and the books manage to get it across quite well, but I expected more from someone who's basically the wizarding world's equivalent of Hitler and up to revenge on top of that.

That's why I didn't like books 5+ anymore.

 

[Plotinus]

Like I said, the wizarding world is supposed to be very small. Voldemort isn't like Hitler, he's more like a mob boss.

I must admit that I found the entire plot of the fourth book to be totally absurd - if all of that was just for the purpose of teleporting Harry to Voldemort's location, then why not just turn his broomstick or something like that into a Portkey, instead of all that messing about with the Triwizard Tournament - but there you go. That's the biggest implausibility in the whole thing to my mind. (Apart from the apparent existence of teenagers who never, ever swear.)

 

[Dachs]

Sure, that's horrible and the books manage to get it across quite well, but I expected more from someone who's basically the wizarding world's equivalent of Hitler and up to revenge on top of that.

The Wizarding world's equivalent of Hitler was pretty clearly Grindelwald. Voldemort was...something else.

 

[Leoreth]

Oh, don't even get me started on all these unsubtly drawn connections between Grindelwald and WW2

 

[Lone Wolf]

Voldemort is completely ridiculous. Sure, good ol' Auntie Ro is no Dostoyevsky, but her main villain is so flat and boring - even in comparison to her "good" characters! The third book was good for being the only one in which this one-dimensional bore is absent (though, to be fair, young!Voldemort isn't that bad). That's a common problem with many authors - their positive characters have at least some depth, but the villains lack it completely.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

He was described to be the most brilliant wizard to ever have lived, but he was just stupid, most of the time. He was no mastermind, only a manically laughing, card-carrying villain. His minions were incompetent. And he did nothing for one book, and then the worst thing he does is abducting and killing people. Sure, that's horrible and the books manage to get it across quite well, but I expected more from someone who's basically the wizarding world's equivalent of Hitler and up to revenge on top of that.

I mostly figured it as him having really broken his own mind making 7 horcruxes, and then having some of them destroyed. He doesn't know it, but he's gotten much more insane and incompetent since.