History Headscratchers / HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone

** 1) It's Smeltings, not Stonewall. (and aside: Smeltings are the left over meat juices caramalised at the bottom of the pan after cooking a
roast) 2) Public school in the UK doesn't mean the same as in younger countries. 3) Most UK achools have a school uniform. None include knickerbockers.

** The "discreet" part ''is'' the IdiotBall here. Every minute Quirrellmort spends in Hogwarts is another minute he risks Dumbledore discovering that Quirrell is possessed, at which point Voldemort is stuck in a vastly weakened form and facing off against his strongest opponent. In the heart of that opponent's stronghold. Tom should have not wasted a ''second'' dithering around inside Hogwarts that he didn't absolutely need to, let alone an entire bloody year. And its an IdiotPlot both that he wasted that much time, and that Dumbledore was apparently oblivious the entire year long.

** The thing is that Dumbledore seemed to also know that Voldemort wasn't completely dead. As shown in the seventh book in Snape's memories, Dumbledore tells Snape that Voldy will return and that was only days or weeks after Lily and James' death. It is possible that Dumbledore mentioned this to at least McGonagall and Hagrid as an explanation of why Harry was living at the Dursleys and poeeibly why the house was given such protection.

** Olli did it for appearence sake, obviously. Harry would likely discuss his wand purchase with others (or at least learn about the process), and if every wizard had to go through numerous wands to "be chosen" but him, it would've looked suspicious. Next, for all we know, all the other wands could've been fake (notice how none of them produces ''any'' effect and Oliwander snatches them from Harry before he can do as much as a flick) and who says you cannot attune the wand to a wizard beforehand? Hell, DD could've had the wand made even before leaving Harry with Dursleys (or even before he was born, after he'd heard the prophecy), so they had a chance to test it on him. Of course, if somebody prefers to believe in coincedences too contrived even for the StarWars prequels, there's little that could be done with it.

** Well, Halloween isn't really celebrated as much in the UK. At least, they don't dress up and make a big deal like Americans do.

** Look up Krummlauf in TheOtherWiki

*** I asked that question on this website, which you can see for yourself by clicking this link: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/247702/why-did-the-tv-weatherman-in-philosopher-s-stone-say-that-bonfire-night-was-not?noredirect=1#comment680952_247702, but basically, in real life, 1st November was on a SUNday, so maybe the news guy was a wizard who got dates mixed up or maybe “Sundays turned into Tuesdays” should’ve been added to the list of thing Vernon was freaking out about.

[[folder: Shouldn't Harry be more affected by his neglect at the Dursleys' hands?]]

** For the same reason that VideoGame/{{Mega Man|Classic}} [[BagOfSpilling doesn't keep]] [[PowerCopying his weapons]] [[BagOfSpilling between games]]. It's not allowed by the rules. Would you want to cheat and risk setting off whatever magical rules enforcement was in place?

--> "D'you think he meant you to do it?" said Ron. "Sending you your father's cloak and everything?"
--> "Well," Hermione exploded, "if he did — I mean to say that's terrible — you could have been killed."
--> "No, it isn't," said Harry thoughtfully. "He's a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance."

** Magic, as it is shown in these books, is completely capable of outpacing muggle technology. It already shows signs of steady improvement. New spells, new potions and new tools being invented and often putting old ones to shame. Stagnation can clearly be overcome if they care enough. Wizards have shown they can knockout all electronic devices over wide areas indefinitely, which would really put a damper on most advantages modern organizations of the 20th century had and would really be even worse as "we" become more dependent on such in the 21st. They can solve virtually all chemical and biological based maladies while unleashing the likes of which muggles have no means of dealing with, either by their magical nature or by simple manner of not knowing they exist to begin with. If they can take down digital devices, communication networks and satellite imagery, then irrigation, plumbing, food production, they should be as easy to shutdown or turn against muggles. They have at least three different types of potentially deadly [[AFateWorseThanDeath or close enough]] {{invisible monsters}}, two of which seem only repelled by specific magic. The most destructive muggle weapons also happen to suck for the muggles themselves in terms of actually taking territory and or avoiding friendly fire while the necessary defenses and decontamination shouldn't be that hard to transfigure or charm with sufficient study of them. So here's the proposal; the general community doesn't, or at least at some point in time no longer wanted to worry about whether or not their magical advancements continued to outpace muggles. It was a fight they were tired of and no longer believed in. Racism, for example, used to be much more widely acceptable than it is now. It's only after people saw what they lost from all those groups of natives they made extinct, how slavery was undermining national economies for all but a few lucky people, by seeing just how far state sponsored genocide went to be weed out people with undesirable traits they couldn't help that really weren't very significant to begin with, that racism began to become socially unacceptable in the industrial age. Perhaps, for some reason or another, hysteria regarding an explosion in muggle birth rates compared to their own, the magical community became xenophobic. Fear lead to desperate, often illogical actions and those created a community convinced of it's superiority as the perpetrators largely got away with them. Increasingly heinous crimes against muggles were committed with increasing regularity in more and more places until a series of events [[MoralEventHorizon were so horrible]] magical society was shamed into eventually doing a 180. Muggle domination/extermination became less and less appealing to the point lawmakers and elected officials were doing everything in their power to prevent the catastrophes that line of thinking lead to from ever happening again. Population and or birthrate seem like the most likely causes. All the power in the world really won't matter if you're out bred ''unless'' you really concentrate your efforts on annihilating, enslaving or separating yourself from the "opposition". Being "replaced" in the world by the "inferior" is a [[PrimalFear common]] human [[AdultFear fear]]. As separation was deemed better than annihilation or subjugation it lead to a masquerade. Separation still has it's own problems, and it should be clear that though magic is literally "in the blood", it is ''not'' inherited by blood. It is not strictly biological, as magical traits can skip more generations than biological ones before resurfacing(unless some really coincidental mutations are going on) and muggles with no magical ancestry can still produce children gifted with magic; the assertion that magic was strictly biological was [[ObviouslyEvil treated]] as [[InsaneTrollLogic pseudoscience]] promoted by a Nazi Klansman [[CommieNazis amalgamation]] in the books themselves. Magical people are never likely to disappear completely, but then racism still exists, even if it isn't popular anymore. White people, black people, whatever people, they're never likely to truly disappear by the very way human genetics work, but it hasn't stopped people from trying and unfortunately, social structures, knowledge and philosophies ''can'' be lost forever. Wizards put a lot of stock in ancient tradition, perhaps more than in advancement, which would explain why simply keeping up with the muggles apparently isn't an option, and seem convinced muggle numbers are a threat to its preservation, the acceptance of muggle born magic users into their private club being a fairly recent development met with much backlash. Separation is the best, or at least most "humane" defense of their ancient ways they've come up with so far.

* A flashback in ''Deathly Hallows'' shows kids out and about celebrating Halloween the night Harry's parents were killed, and one even compliments Voldemort on his "costume", so clearly some people were celebrating it.

** Was it Hagrid who said Gringotts was one of the safest places tio hide something? Maybe their defences and precautions are just better than anywhere else?

** Was it Hagrid who said Gringotts was one of the safest places to hide something? Maybe their defences and precautions are just better than anywhere else?

** I think Flamel wanted to die. He was six hundred and sixty five years old!