History Headscratchers / HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallowsUnsortedExamples

** Because it's [[RuleOfCool awesome]]. And hey, Draco's named after dragons, which in the Potterverse tend not to be very benevolent either.

*** Fair enough. However, the Marvolo ring cursed Dumbledor to near death the moment he put it on, obviously not needing to drain any "mana" from people. Such a ward was uncharasteristcally thoughtfull and competent for V, I must say, which begs the question of why weren't the other horcruxes charmed to be lethal to the touch, like the necklace in HBP. Again, I can understand the diary, since it was supposed to be used to release the Basilisk, but why not the others?

*** For that matter, why did he feel the need to kill Snape at all instead of just disarming him suddenly? Did he not understand how allegiance transferred or something?

** The whole idea the Ministry was putting out at the time was that any whitch/wizard without any actaul witches/wizards in there immediate family got there power by stealing it from a real wizard, hence creating squibs. While any mixed blood would deffintly be looked down on and treated like second class citizens, it was only those without any magical parentage that got punished.
** Why the wizards don't leave? I mean, they are being accused and incarcerated, so why they don't leave magical Britannia? They can apparate or use Floo powder or dozens of travel mediums and the entire Death Eater power base is just in the isles, so what stop them to go abroad? Or better yet, flee to muggle word. Just like slughorn show, they could easily charm new proprieties, steal food, money and above all else, ''is a very big place to hide''. Instead they ended like hobos and tramps (if they where lucky) in a Fascist regiment. Are wizards really that stupid? Even the Muggleborn side?.

** I don't think it was any individual element. IIRC, Dumbledore mentioned that so many extremely powerful magics had created a chimera of a magical bond unlike anything the Wizarding World had seen. Harry had a part of Voldemort's soul & Voldemort was essentially of Harry's flesh. Individually, either could have profound magical effects. Combined, it meant their souls were tied together with some darn good rope. And to add icing to the cake, a hesitant wand. From what I can figure, the process was more or less: AK is fired, hits. AK burns both souls and sends'em to the Afterlife (or tries to, anyways). Horcrux is destroyed in the process. The Power of Love is still tying them together, however, which manages to hold Harry's soul (and the attached Voldemort shard) on the edge. Voldemort's own soul (or what's left of it) almost gets pulled in the process (remember, he collapsed and everything). This burns out the remaining link. Harry's soul, now free of its leech and still not past the Point of No Return, goes back. Meanwhile, the Ancient Magic of Love Protection was invoked when Harry gave his life for the others, rather than by the kill itself. That's why it worked even if Harry managed to return from the edge of the afterlife.

*** Fred and George used magic to circumvent the system. No word was ever produced as to what would happen if Cedric had put Fred's name in instead of his own. Yes, Dumbledore likely thought of every scenario, but Fred and George attempted the easy way to circumvent the system. The best example that would have proven or disproven the theory is lacking because Harry's view of the scene was lacking. Did any of the Death Eaters following him with Voldemort hit the barrier as well? And if they did, how many fell off their brooms (and likely hovered in air due to the spell)?

*** Wearing the locket around his neck is no safer than putting it in that locked personal bag he also wears around his neck. It is probably safe to assume that the locket will mess with you if it's in your immediate possession though, otherwise they could've just put it in any makeshift bag to hang around their necks to protect themselves. It's not clear how the thing works.

** There's no reason to believe that the Malfoys didn't pay their due between the end of the Battle and Nineteen years later. For all we know Draco could've been in Azkaban for 9 years, released, THEN got married and produced little Scorpius.

*** Because when you run a succesful counter-revolution and you win you still have to work with the people that were on the other side if you want a lasting peace. The US learnt that the hard way in Iraq. Remember how they threw all Ba'ath party members out and the country went to hell? Same principle, unless the new administration wanted to re-fight this war with different names in 20-ish years time, then they had to swallow their righteous indignation and forgive and forget. Winning a war is the easy part, winning the peace is the hard bit. I suspect there was probably something like the South African peace and reconciliation commitee involved. Plus heros are kinda obligated to be heroic and gracious in victory, vengance and punishment is for villains in the Potter-verse.

*** He knew it was a method for contacting his godfather and put it away vowing never to use it cause he figured it would result in Sirus getting captured, however between this and the ending much time had passed and he no doubt (in his panic) forgot about the package he hid and put out of his mind much earlier in the year. He only had moments, in his mind, to come up with a plan to save Sirius and as far as he knew Sirius was most certainly being held at the Ministry, it wasn't a matter of talking to him, it was a matter of getting to him in time.

** Some of them probably have. There are presumably thousands of wizards in Britain. Assuming roughly ten percent of them are Muggle-born, there'd be hundreds lining the streets if every one of them took to begging. Probably the ones left behind are the ones who didn't have any Muggle connections left, as Lily would have been if it had happened to her (after all, she couldn't very well go to Petunia now, could she?)

*** That'd probably be hideously expensive. And not especially useful for the majority of applications.

** [[FanWank Maybe]] if a person uses more than one wand, either the wand they aren't attuned to starts getting less and less usable, or of they use two wands with a strong link to theirself they get into competition and eventually "pull the wizard apart" (metaphorically or explosively) when he or she tries to multicast a stunning spell one too many times?

*** What makes you think he didn't? Carrows taught Dark Arts to kids, Muggle Study lessons were used to trumpet anti-muggle propaganda, what else do you need? Besides, let's not forget that for the length of the DH Voldemort was intent to remain a grey eminence until LaResistance is crushed so as not to instigate a full-scale rebellion among wizards. It turned out he was right as the rebellion did break out after he went gunz blazing adainst Hogwarts.
*** He tried to do that, definately. Turns out, torturing eleven year old kids is not the best way to win their loyalty.

** And it is stated in the books that Voldemort idolizes hogwarts and the teachers, to him it's the real home he never had and everything he wished to have. He could only bring himself to destroy the teachers from his school if they openly opposed him; he did receive the best magic teaching at hogwarts after all; and surely, with Dumbledore and Potter dead and defeated, the remaining techers would understand that he is almighty and all powerful and wouldn't dare to cross him. Voldie is the Evil Overlord made flesh.

*** Actually, [=McGonagall=] did come to Grimauld Place once in Book 5. I don't have it in front of me, but I seem to remember something like Harry thinking she looked very odd in a muggle dress.

*** Except the Curse can be resisted, especially when used for long periods of time. Since Voldemort was planning to control Hogwarts forever (He didn't know he'd be defeated in a year, after all), it would be akward to keep the teachers imperiused (Barty Crouch Sr. 9 months to shake off the curse, Harry was able to do it after a few short applications). I wouldn't want to be one of the Carrow Siblings when Flitwick or [=McGonnagall=] breaks free of the curse and decides it's time to kick your ass. Voldemort probably figured that with his "loyal" Death Eater Snape in charge, he didn't need to do anything else to keep the teachers in line, after all, he just had to tell the teacher that if they step out of line, the kids will be the one to get most of the punishment.

*** We're never really told what age Tom is when he kills his dad and grandparents. Either he was old enough to not have the trace, there wasn't a trace at the time (it was 50 years ago), or the least likly but still possible he didn't directly kill them but later claimed to. Keep in mind he'd have been 17 halfway through year 6 because his birthday is on December 31st. He could have done it over the christmas break in his 6th year.

** Actually, at least in Order of the Phoenix, the Trace tells the Ministry that magic has been performed in the vicinity of an underage wizard. Madame Bones made it a point to state that Harry was the only known wizard living in Little Whinging (brought up because of Mrs Figg, who said she lived near him, and she had to elaborate that she was a Squib and thus didn't show up in the registry). This is also why children from magical families are trusted to control their child's use of magic, because the Ministry wouldn't be able to tell just who had used magic, which is why Fred and George get away with using magic over summers without Ministry notices. (Otherwise, they probably would've been expelled a dozen times over, lmao.) Besides, Ron quickly points out that Harry can't still have the Trace, being seventeen--the point of concern for them is that the Death Eaters might have somehow changed the way the Trace works, in order for them to more easily locate Harry, perhaps even to the point of being able to tell exactly who had used magic. As it turned out, however, it wasn't the Trace at all that allowed the DEs to find Harry, it was because he said 'Voldemort', which had been made Taboo by that point. (Which was really very smart on Voldy's part, considering the only people shown to not be afraid of Vodemort's name are Dumbledore (who's dead), Harry, and perhaps certain very high up Order members.)

* Why did Regulus sacrifice himself to retrieve the horcrux? The fact that Kreacher had escaped from his situation before and that elves can apparate with humans alongside them (such as Mundugus) should have told him that it was perfectly possible to leave that place alive with the damn thing, simply by repeating the events of last time; have Kreacher drink the potion, grab the locket, have him drink from the lake, and hold onto him while giving him an order to apparate back home and take Regulus with him. Sure, this would have meant Kreacher would be in horrible pain again, but was it worth his life to insure that didn't happen, when he himself was going to suffer the same pain beforehand? Was he so guilty over his actions that he deliberately decided on a suicidal plan to obtain the horxcrux?

*** If she did that with everything, the bookseries would've been twice as long.

*** This troper always assumed that they did, but Hermione unpacked it at Grimauld Place.

** Hermione mentioned that Yaxley was momentarily disoriented upon arriving at Grimauld Place, enabling the trio to disapparate again, but... Couldn't they have used that opportunity to at least STUN Yaxley? And the specifics of the Fidelius Charm don't even matter if they were willing to kill him, which would mean they could have remained at Grimmauld Place instead of risk their health/lives out in random forests... But it seems [[StupidGood the life of an evil Death Eater was considered more important by Hermione than she and her friends own lives]].

** The Confundus Charm doesn't honestly seem to be treated like a big deal by the characters. It's less an Imperius curse and more like just confusing someone. It's like if you talk someone into doing something by just going off on a tangent, almost. Hermione did it on Cormac McLaggen, and Dawlish had it done to him about four times, and it's been used before casually, though I can't think of other examples. And why is bribery better? It's still using an unfair advantage that you have over someone to get them to do something that they shouldn't.

******* No, it's not. It's clear that the heroes have descended into pretty morally ambiguous territory. It doesn't take the author beating the reader over the head with that message to figure it out. The fact that Harry was able to successfully use the Cruciatus curse at all shows that he's in a really dark place. McGonnagal having a conversation with him to the effect of, "Gosh, Harry, I can see you're obviously filled with inner turmoil!" "Yeah, professor, that act I just committed was really morally ambiguous!" would have been stupid.

** This troper agrees. Snape and Lily were best friends at Hogwarts for five years! It's hard to believe that nobody thought to mention this to Harry. I'll accept that Dumbledore might have kept it a secret as part of Snape's cover. But considering how frequently Harry rants about Snape, it's surprising that another character didn't just say, "You know, Snape was best friends with your mother for a time." McGonagall, Slughorn, and especially Sirius and Lupin must have known. I guess it's plausible that it just never came up. After all, Sirius and Lupin usually reveal backstory details only when directly asked by Harry.

*** Even assuming Stan Shunpike is not a Death Eater, getting thrown in jail for going around bragging about your terrorist plans is completely reasonable. Try going to an airport, shouting that you have a bomb, and saying "yeah, I was just trying to impress my dumbass friends" when the cops come to get you and see how long you stay out of prison. Now that going to Azkaban no longer involves having all of your happiness and your soul slowly sucked away, it really isn't disproportionate retribution. There are also legitimate, non-venal reasons for wanting to reassure the public and avoid widespread panic, as well as for not entrusting the fate of your nation to three 17-year-old kids. McGonagall and the rest of the Order try and pressure the trio to tell them what they're doing too. No, the Ministry doesn't really deserve a whole lot of trust from Harry & Co., but with Fudge gone they also started publishing useful pamphlets and info. Really, the only thing that the Scrimgeour administration does that is "wrong" is not firing and arresting Umbridge (which, to be fair, is a pretty big one).

-->'''Harry''': "How are they protected?"
-->'''Bill''': "Fidelius Charm. Dad's Secret-Keeper. And we've done it on this cottage too; I'm Secret-Keeper here. None of us can go to work, but that's hardly the most important thing now. Once Ollivander and Griphook are well enough, we'll move them to Muriel's too. There isn't much room here, but she's got plenty. [...]"
(Page 482, American Scholastic hardcover release.) Bill explicitly talks about the Fidelius Charm ''having been peformed previously on the cottage''. The way he speaks implies that it wasn't done in reaction to the little scene at Malfoy Manor, but that it's been there for a while to keep everyone protected (at the very minimum, since the moment Ginny got back home for her Easter holidays). Not to mention, it adds yet another hole to the whole explanation of the innards of the Fidelius Charm: If Arthur Weasley was the Secret-Keeper of Muriel Weasley's house, how can Bill speak so openly of the place? According to Snape in HBP, someone who's not a Secret-Keeper cannot speak the name of a place that's been Fideliused.

**** Why? It's not like everyone's going to be perfect because they've been through a war. That's one of the powers of Harry Potter: the characters aren't perfect (witness, for instance, Hagrid's xenophobia), but they're still good, because people are multifaceted. And hey, Muggles have had the whole "We've been through an atrocity so terrible that we can never do it again." At the time, they called it The Great War, or The War to End All Wars. Nowadays, we call it World War I, because humanity was dumb enough to start another one two decades later.

** In this troper's mind, this was all sort-of planned in Dumbledore's big [[XanatosGambit Xanatos Gambit]]. In book 4, after Harry had his blood used in the resurrection ritual, there was a throwaway line about Dumbledore having a "look of triumph" in his eyes, that is quickly explained away by Harry being tired. My logic is that Dumbledore guessed that, given Harry's status as a Horcrux, and Voldemort's body now carrying on the protection his mother gave him, that it would very likely be the case that Voldemort couldn't kill Harry. He probably also guessed that Snape would eventually show Harry his memories, and, being the [[ManipulativeBastard Manipulative Bastard]] he is, fed Snape the information that would drive Harry to sacrifice himself. Granted, [[WordOfGod Word Of God]] 'does' imply that nobody really knew what exactly would happen, but Dumbledore probably had some good guesses.