Headscratchers / Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Please check JK's FAQs before asking a question that may have already been answered.

Following issues have their own Headscratchers:

• The Ministry
• The Prophecy
• Film-Specific Headscratchers

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SNEAK?

• Why would Hermione put a sneak curse on the parchment in the DA, as a punishment, rather than a tongue tying curse to stop them from talking about it in the first place
  • To humiliate the SNEAK for ratting out on them, and to expose them publicly as the traitor to the rest of the DA because they sure as hell aren't gonna learn who betrayed them from Umbridge.

DIY Muggle Medicine, And Not A Muggle Doctor In Sight?

• Trying stitches when magic wouldn't heal Mr. Weasley was smart. Doing it themselves with household items was stupid. Out of all the muggle born witches and wizards in Britain, not one of them had family who was a surgeon or doctor? Hell, Hermione's parents would've been a step up and they're dentists!
  • Wizards are absolute idiots when it comes to problems you can't solve with magic. Seriously, this answers pretty much every question on the Harry Potter Headscratcher page. Most wizards don't have an ounce of logic in them. And why would they need it, when they can literally wave a stick and make it go away?
  • Wizards mistrust muggle doctors, and probably for good reasons. As for relatives, only parents of wizards, and probably siblings, are allowed to overpass the Statute of Secrecy, and having a medical degree is not that common, nor it is to be a muggleborn wizard. So yes, is not totally unlikely that no muggle doctor was available.
  • Hermione's parents are dentists, and likely know how to do stitches. And it's not unreasonable to think some of the staff at St. Mungo's were muggleborns who decided to become doctors because it was a family profession.
  • If Hermione's parents know how to do stitches then is likely she knows too, therefore there's no need to call them as she is there.
  • She has no reason to know anything more than the basics of their profession, and certainly doesn't have medical training.
  • There's two possible situations; or Hermione knows how to stitch a wound (and that's exactly what happens) because her parents teach her, or she doesn't know therefore is unlikely her parents do (which isn't a requirement to be dentist). In any of both cases calling a dentist to stitch a wound doesn't sound right.
  • In what universe do medical professionals teach their children to perform procedures outside of basic first aid?
  • Assuming they have skills in oral surgery, they'd still be better than wizards. At least they'd have access to proper stitches. And there's still the real possibility that there's muggle born hospital staff that are taking after muggle relatives.
  • Then this headscratcher is impossible to answer because is based in a lot of speculation. Are Hermione's parents skilled in medical stitching? Who knows? Are there muggleborn wizards healers? Probably, but it's impossible to know for sure. Among the muggleborn wizard healers are some of them who happen to have medical professionals as parents? Again, who knows. The only person who can answer this headscratcher for sure is J. K. Rowling.
  • Why are y'all operating under the assumption that if Hermy's parents know how to put in stitches, then that must mean that Hermione does too and that if Hermione doesn't know how to do it then her parents don't either? Even if her parents gave her a crash course in dental surgery, it'd still be in theory at best because you need a license to perform that kind of procedure on a living breathing human. Hermione's 15 years old.
  • Dentists most definitely do know how to put in stitches, which is almost as basic to medicine as knowing how to boil water is to cooking! DDS is Doctor of Dental Surgery, and they are indeed doctors, able to prescribe controlled substances and to diagnose and treat within the reach of their specialty. Gingiva are, if anything, trickier to suture than skin is, being both fewer layers and more friable (meaning they tear more easily). As to whether Hermione would know how, well, if she grew up in her parents' practice, she's probably seen a lot, and asked questions about all of it; either or both of her parents may have enjoyed showing her what they were doing and explaining the details. Practicing suturing on a model of some sort, using proper instruments, may well have been a game she got to play sometimes. (Especially with Hermione's "be prepared" attitude in the later books, if she didn't already know how, she likely made darn sure she learned!) However, Hermione would also know she wasn't a real doctor herself, and outside of an emergency she's more likely to suggest getting a "real" doctor to do the suturing.
  • It is a little bit weird to expect that Hermione can do stitches just because her parents are dentists. But even putting that aside, it seemed that their attempt at stitches was mere childlike curiosity. No serious healer would even try it, or even entertain the thought, given the dim view wizards take on muggle endeavors. So, it is not even a matter of them not finding a doctor or anyone else qualified to do it, they were just reckless muggle studies enthusiasts trying some procedures they vaguely heard about and thinking "Hey we could do that, how hard could it be ?". In other words, yes it was stupid, but perfectly in character for Arthur.
  • Hermione grew up in in a family of dentists, not in the dental practice. She went to Muggle school for the first five or six years of her schooling life, away from her parents' practice, and she was still way too young to learn anything about dental procedures anyway. Would you trust a fifteen-year-old with nuclear safety simply because both her parents worked in a nucelar plant? As for Arthur, he was fascinated with everything Muggles without completely understanding them and just tried to sew himself up because he heard about it.

Dumbledore ignoring Harry

• When asked by Harry why he ignored him the entire year, he explains that if he treats Harry as a familiar person, Voldemort might try to exploit that. However, he's not treating him like he treats the other students. He will speak to them if asked a direct question. In the movie, Harry practically shouts "Professor Dumbledore!". Normally, Dumbledore would stop, and at least give him 5 seconds.
  • If Dumbledore had spent too much time with Harry, Voldemort might have used their connection to spy on Dumbledore and break into their intelligence. Dumbledore instead tried to have Snape teach Harry Occlumency. Had Harry learned it successfully, there's a chance Dumbledore might have stopped being so cautious. Either way, in the end it seems Dumbledore realized that he caused Harry more pain by leaving him alone.
  • That somehow excuses his behavior? We're not talking about "spending to much time" here, it's spending 5 seconds to respond to a direct call like he would've done to any other student. And besides, preventing V from breaking into their intelligence was as simple as not discussing any intelligence in Harry's presence until he master Occlumency, which, of course, DD should've been teaching him himself.
  • Yes, because if Dumbledore ignores Harry entirely then Voldemort has no reason to use Harry as a puppet. If Dumbledore treats him as a normal student then Voldemort might try something sneaky like possessing Harry and making him ask seemingly innocent questions that would tip Voldemort off to either what he's planning or what he might know of Voldemort's operations. He could even use Harry to spread false information to Dumbledore. It does make sense but there's no real way to let Harry know without also potentially warning Voldemort.
  • Except that he couldn't possess Harry. At best he could plant visions in his head. DD himself never mentioned that; he only said V could try to spy on him through Harry. And even if that'd been a possibility (and it would've also been conveniently just strong enough that V could make him ask questions but not stab himself in the throat), so what? DD would've known that, so he would've been on his guard. As would've Harry, had he'd been told the truth.
  • How much does Dumbledore know about the nature of their connection? Seeing visions could be the extent of the connection- or possession might be possible. It's implied that this is a highly unusual scenario, one that Dumbledore was not entirely prepared for. He certainly didn't intend to ignore Harry for the rest of his life; hence the occlumency lessons.
  • The given information is based on what Harry told him the previous year, where he was able to spy on Voldemort for an extended time. And Voldemort had no idea. By that logic, Voldemort could be doing that at any time without Harry knowing. Dumbledore seems to find out after Nagini attacks Arthur that Voldemort now knows about the connection, probably through Snape passing information. So now with definite confirmation that Voldemort knows about the connection, that's when he gets Snape to teach Harry occlumency. Because he knows ignoring Harry is not something he can keep doing forever. While brilliant, he's still a human being having to deal with a teenage boy. He wants to communicate with Harry but can't risk Voldemort finding out what they're doing. So yes it wasn't a particularly well-thought out idea, but a perfectly human response to a difficult situation.
  • Well, putting the movies aside, as most of it can be chalked up to Artistic License, in the books, Dumbledore is not mistreating Harry that much. He is ignoring him compared to their previous interactions of course, but for example, Ron, who is the chosen one's best friend, is mentioned to have barely interacted with Dumbledore in 6 years. Most students only interactions with the headmasters is through the feasts speeches, and that's it. Even Harry only talked with Dumbledore after the usual end-of-year actions, and that would be highly unusual for an normal student. The point of distancing himself was to avoid giving reasons to Voldemort to try and experiment with the link. When he realized that Voldemort might try anyway, he tried to give Harry some defenses. But it is only after the battle at the ministry that he realized that Voldemort would be too hurt to access the link willingly anyway, and that even if he did dissuade V from spying Harry's mind, the loss (Sirius, Harry's year long PTSD and mood swings, his growing resentful, restless, reckless and impatient with his commands, etc) was not worth it.

Purple Fire, Empty Lips

• At the end, it is mentioned that the curse that Dolohov had used on Hermione was less effective because he couldn't talk, but isn't that kind of the whole point of non-verbal spells?
  • Maybe Dolohov is poor at non-verbal spells?
  • The spell is weaker because he's not trying to do a non-verbal spell, he's trying to do it verbally with no voice. Non-verbal spells are done in the mind. There's no indication that non-verbal spells are weaker than verbal ones. When Harry threw Snape across the room during a lesson with a Shield Charm, the strength of Protego is clearly because Harry is angry. Other characters have used "Protego" verbally before and it's never had an effect like that, so it's not stronger because it's said out loud. There are plenty of examples of non-verbal spells being incredibly strong when used properly.
  • Spells seem to have different rules and operations depending on the spell. This particular curse might've been more powerful if Dolohov had spoken it.
  • Makes sense. The next book does imply that levicorpus can only be cast non-verbally.

Doom & Gloom

• So, you have to have observed death, horrible, horrible death, to see the Thestrals? So, why couldn't Harry see them from the first year? Cedric died to Avada Kedabra, as did Harry's mom. Is his mother's death not horrible enough?
  • It's not a "Horrible death" that one has to see, but a death in general. It might mean one has to see death, and have the understanding of what they saw in order for them to see Thestrals. Thus the reasoning why he can't see them in year one. He couldn't understand what he saw as a 1 year old, let alone remember it.
  • Harry didn't actually see his mum killed, he only heard it. Otherwise, he would've recalled the sight of her death when confronted by dementors, not just the sound of it. Word of God holds that he was lying in his crib at the far corner of the nursery, and didn't see her confronting Voldemort in the doorway.
  • That makes the flashback scenes in Deathly Hallows Part II quite problematic.
  • Not necessarily. Most 1-year-olds can sit themselves up unassisted, so there's no reason why Harry wouldn't try to sit up as long as he wasn't properly tucked in.
  • Also, first-years don't travel by Thestrals anyway.
  • Yes, but thestrals pull the carriages that the older students ride from the Hogwarts Express to the castle.
  • Someone else suggested that whether you can see Thestrals or not has to do with innocence. According to this fanfic, there's a certain type of innocence that you don't lose until you see someone die, after which you can see Thestrals. When Voldemort killed Harry's parents, he was too young to understand what was going on, so remained innocent. When Wormtail killed Cedric, Harry was old enough to understand, so lost his innocence.
  • What about animals? In a truly biological sense, humans generally react more to watching one of their own die, as opposed to another animal. But this isn't always the case; for example, in the film Waltz with Bashir, one actual line from a psychiatrist described a man who had finally taken in the horrors of the war he was fighting when he saw horses dying in droves from illness and starvation. Or what if you were watching a beloved pet parrot die (as parrots can live for decades)? What exactly is the level of pain one has to feel after seeing death to see Thestrals? Because most of the students having probably seen a bug get smooshed before.
  • As someone whose Undergraduate Dissertation was on animality in the Harry Potter books, it seems it would depend upon the circumstances. It's the same way that it's possible that a person see another person dying and not be moved. However, can other animals see Thestrals? Which ones? And when? Can only magical animals see Thestrals (and the same thing can be asked regarding Muggles/wizards)? Do magical animals (or animals in general) also need to see someone (or some animal) die to see Thestrals? If an animal (magical or not) can always see Thestrals, does that mean they have a deeper and more rooted understanding of death than humans? Or if they have to see death like us, does that mean that death is a puzzling mystery to animals as it is to us? What are the crazy ethical consequences of this to the magical world???
  • Animals' deaths probably don't count. According to the marginal notes in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Ron once had a pet puffskein that died when Fred used it for bludger practice. Ron presumably witnessed this first-hand, else, the twins would've surely covered for one another about what happened to his pet, and he wouldn't have known why it died, yet Ron couldn't see the thestrals. As for animals' seeing thestrals, they probably don't fully comprehend death enough to ever penetrate their invisibility, as it would negate the protective function of this power if any predator that's made a previous kill could see them.
  • Wait, Fred beat an animal to death?!
    • Well, on the Chamber of Secrets videogame released an year after the book, Ginny spent time looking after the Puffskein to make sure the twins don't use him again, so apparently he didn't die then.
  • Thinking about Thestrals, why didn't Quirrell's death allow Harry to see them?
  • He had his eyes closed, and was probably unconscious by the time Quirrell actually died in the books.

Thestrals timeline

• Wwhy Harry didn't see the Thestrals at the end of his fourth year, but could see them at the start of his fifth? He'd seen Cedric die by then, and didn't see anyone die between end of fourth year and start of fifth, so what changed?
  • This was explained in an interview actually, and the fanfic is basing itself partially on the interview. It's explained that when Harry sees Cedric die, he loses his "innocence", but doesn't have time for it to sink in yet as he's still in shock. Thus after the summer, after it settles on him, when he comes back, he understandably freaks when he sees the Thestrals.
  • Rowling said that she didn't want to add the thestrals at that point because they would disrupt the flow of the narrative, tacking on a new subplot (just what are those skeletal horse things?) into the denouement of the fourth book that wouldn't be resolved until the fifth book. So she made up some bullshit about Harry needing to "process" Cedric's death before he could see the thestrals.
  • Read that as Rowling didn't think of the idea of thestrals pulling the carts until book five.
  • And you'd be completely wrong. She said explicitly in an interview that she knew what was pulling the carriages (Thestrals) from the beginning.
  • Well, it is not exactly as though Rowling does not have an incentive to lie on this topic (along with any other claim to have "thought of it from the beginning"), though just because she has an incentive does not mean she is lying. So, it comes down to a case of whether you choose to believe her, and there is a reason to not believe. Without evidence one way or the other, it cannot be definitively stated whether or not she knew about the thestrals from the beginning or not.
  • Besides, whether or not you think she lied, bringing up the thestrals at the end of the 4th book would have disrupted the ending quite badly. She would have had to devote some paragraphs to how the thestrals are suddenly visible, which would have been jarring compared to all the other stuff that was happening, leaving readers going "...What?" Either she gets people claiming she BSed stuff on her own creatures, or she would have gotten complaints about throwing something into the last few pages that, at the time, would have seemed contradictory to how the carriages were at the beginning of the book. Also, "Harry was too in shock" makes a fair bit of sense anyway, and even if it doesn't, it's also semi-plausible that he might have been just barely able to see them but just didn't care (again, because of being in shock).
  • To see Thestrals, you must not only have watched someone die, but also realize what it is you're seeing. Hence, even if Harry had directly seen Voldemort kill his mother at the age of one, it wouldn't have made him see the Thestrals because he wouldn't have comprehended what it was he saw. (By comparison, Neville and Luna can see the Thestrals because they watched family members die when they were old enough to understand what was going on.) And as is stated in the first book, Harry never actually sees Quirrell die. He blacks out while Quirrell is still struggling, and when he wakes up to see Dumbledore, he doesn't know that Quirrell is dead before Dumbledore tells him. By contrast, when Cedric dies, Harry knows exactly what is going on, and so this event is what makes him able to see the Thestrals. However, the process isn't immediate; maybe because the first shock of the death numbs you, and it's only when you actually have processed what happened that the Thestrals become visible. (That, and Rowling didn't want to include a brand new plot point at the end of book four.)
  • Could have been interesting to see if Harry had gradually started to see the Thestrals as he processed Cedric's death. Maybe they'd gradually fade in; for some time when one walked close to him he'd think he saw something moving, but nothing's there... or is it? And then maybe he'd start catching short glimpses of them, until finally he was able to see them all the time. But, since he wasn't anywhere near a Thestral while the processing was going on, we'll never know how it might have happened.
  • Going off the "loss of innocence" mentioned above, liken it to films and TV. With Quirrell's death, he was the villain so Harry had no reason to be sad about that. Look at how many kids' films kill off the villain and that's ok. But remember the first time someone was Killed Off for Real in something you saw? You had to comprehend that a good person was killed, would not be able to come back and would not be around any more. Harry probably didn't have time to fully process Cedric's death while school was still on because his friends surrounded him and could take his mind off it somewhat. Then he goes home for the summer and the reality sinks in. He has nowhere to hide so he has to comprehend that Cedric was legit murdered and can't be saved. Perhaps there's also overlap with the Five Stages of Grief too? You can only see the Thestrals once you've gotten to Acceptance.

Inquisitors vs. Prefects - FIGHT!

• This quote is confusing: "Members of the Inquisitorial Squad can deduct points," and the reply is "He can't, that would undermine the prefect system." This implies that prefects can't deduct points. But then in the 2nd book, Percy takes points off Ron for being in the girls' toilet.
  • It undermines the prefect system because prefects are limited to two upper-classmen from each house, who their professors and the school head choose. The Inquisitorial Squad, on the other hand, is a much larger group, that is made up entirely of Slytherin members, who are basically given free reign so long as they remain loyal to Umbridge.
    • Just a correction here, but there were either four or six prefects in each house as two fifth years and two sixth years were given the status of Prefect. It was not stated if Prefects were simply made Head Boy/Girl in their seventh year or if there were also two seventh year Prefects as well as the Head Boy/Girl.
  • Rowling suggests that Ron was just wrong, and he hasn't been much of a prefect thus far if he hasn't been deducting points. More likely, the Inquisitorial Squad can deduct points at their own discretion, while the Prefects are limited to point deduction based on the school's rules.
  • How can Rowling suggest Ron was wrong when it isn't him who makes the quote? It's the Ernie bloke from Hufflepuff.
  • Then she suggested Ernie was wrong.
  • Either way, how can Rowling suggest that a character got it wrong, just to cover a plot hole? She's writing the books, she should be able to get these details right in the first place.
  • Do you understand what you're saying? A character can make a statement that is inaccurate other wise everything everyone said would always be right. Rowling never implied the statement was a mistake or a plot hole she said it was an inaccuracy the character thought which wasn't true.
  • If you think that that a character says something means it is automatically true and no character is ever mistaken about anything, good luck in life because someone this naïve will need all the help they can get.
  • Alternately, perhaps prefects are limited to point deduction from their own house. Or maybe they can take points from anyone, but it's subject to review by the staff.
  • Or maybe when this person says that the Inquisitorial Squad being able to take away points would undermine the Prefect system, they mean that working hard, being a model student, and having the honour and responsibility of being a Prefect would seem a little less special when another group of people get the exact same powers for none of the work?
  • 'Undermine' doesn't necessarily mean 'overpower'. It's true that it would undermine the Prefect system, because the Prefects can take points (and JKR saying that Ron didn't know what he was doing was in reference to another scene with Ron where he SAYS 'prefects can't take points', which they can), but if the IS can also take points, they can just undo Prefect punishments. Say a Prefect takes points from another student for setting off firecrackers or something; logically, the IS could just take the same number of points (or more) from the other three houses so that the point reduction doesn't influence their standing in the House Cup. Logically, if the two groups of students were working together to monitor and discipline the student body, neither would undermine the other, but in this situation, there's a huge area for abuse of power since the IS doesn't choose its members based on their previous outstanding performance in the school, which probably usually acts as a safeguard as far as the character of the students goes. A student who is known to cheat, bully, or be aggressive with other students probably wouldn't be made a prefect, but they could and were made members of the IS.
  • Of note: Until Fred, George, and Harry were banned from the Quidditch team, no named IS member (since they were all, with possibly one non-Gryffindor exception, Slytherins) would have wanted to do that, since it would make the House Cup competition lean more in favor of Gryffindor.
  • We have no evidence at all that Prefects have the ability to take points away. The only possible evidence is that Percy says 'five points from Gryffindor', but he is clearly flustered and not thinking straight, so it might just a reflex for him to say something like that. We never get any indication that the points were actually deducted.
  • Word Of God says that Prefects can deduct points.
  • Isn't it Prefects can deduct points from anyone who is not a Prefect, but the IS can deduct from anyone?
  • This was explicitly stated. Malfoy deducted points, someone (I don't remember exactly who) called him out, Malfoy explained the new rules, and then deducted points from everybody. He left, laughing, and the group checked the magical hourglasses to see that yes, Malfoy was correct.
  • They can also deduct points for any reason. After Draco pointed out that he was part of the IS, he took points from Harry because he doesn't like him.
  • Prefects are supposed to maintain their own house, and while Prefect might 'take away points' from other houses, these deductions go through the Head of House, or maybe the Prefects, for that other house. So it's less 'punishment' and more 'I'm going to formally tell the people who can punish you.'. So Malfoy can't use his Prefect powers to attack students in other Houses because the other House will simply say 'No, that's not a good enough reason to punish, punishment canceled.'. (It seems possible that Heads of Houses can do these even for teacher punishments, although for some reason McGonagall never does.) What Umbridge did, on the other hand, is set up a system where students can make point deductions without involving the House of the student at all, or in fact involving any adult authority except Umbridge's. (And she simply doesn't care.)
  • Maybe it's just sixth and seventh year prefects that can dock them.

Picking prefects

• How the heck did Draco become a Prefect in the first place, unless Slytherin Prefects are supposed to be 'more influential' instead of 'most responsible leaders', or all the other fifth-year Slytherins would be even more abusive. (Ron might not be the best choice for Prefect either, but at least all he does is joke about punishing people he doesn't like, he doesn't actually ever do it. And he imagines doing it for an actual violation of rules.)
  • Doesn't the Head of House pick the perfects? Snape is shown to favor Draco, he probably made him perfect just because.
  • Or because it's possible that Draco is the least bad choice of the fifth years.
  • You are wrong, it is established that Dumbledore picks the prefects. Why would he pick Malfoy is hard to explain. It's hard to imagine that every fifth year Slytherin is a bigger asshole than him.
  • Remember how DD tells Harry that he didn't make him a prefect because Harry had a lot of other, more important responsibilities re Voldemort? Fridge Brilliance is that he made Malfoy a prefect precisely so that the latter would have less opportunities for developing such responsibilities.

Taking the "Defense" out of Defense Against The Dark Arts - For No Freaking Good Reason!!!

• The Strawman nature of Umbridge is self defeating on the part of the Ministry of Magic. The minister believes Voldemort is dead and can't accept that he is alive. Fair enough. But why would he want to shortchange a generation of students of Defense Against the Dark Arts? Even if Voldemort is indeed dead, there's bound to be another dark wizard to turn up. Maybe not as dark, but Aurors exist for a reason. Did he want a generation of crappy Aurors? Also, Harry, Ron, and Hermione can't think of anybody but Voldemort that would attack them. You'd think that after shouting his name, which wasn't working until nearly halfway through the book, they'd make the argument of another dark wizard arising in the future.
  • A number of veterans from the old war state that when Voldemort was first in power, it was a horrific time. Now, having gotten past that, no-one wants to believe that they have to go through it all over again, so much that Fudge will refuse to believe the evidence of his return unless it's staring at him in the face.
  • As for the Aurors, they have special training after Hogwarts as well, right? Assuming a students passes the necessary O.W.Ls and N.E.W.Ts under the new "Minstry Approved" curriculum, they can then undergo proper practical training when they apply for Aurors.
  • For a real life example, look at the reaction to the rise of Fascism in the build up to World War II. Many people in power had gone through the horrors of the 'war to end all wars' less than twenty years ago and were willing to do anything to avoid another war, including sticking their metaphorical fingers in their ears.
  • It's outright stated in the book. Fudge (and by extension Umbridge) doesn't want Hogwarts training young students in DADA because he thinks Dumbledore is going to use the kids as a private army to attempt a coup.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Dark Wizards have to be trained somewhere. Maybe Umbridge (and by extension the Ministry) were trying to make sure that no wizard was skilled enough to become a powerful threat.
  • Was Rowling deliberately invoking a reference to the gun control debate, or did she simply miss all the implications? Because, yes, 'if we don't let anyone learn how to use magic to fight then we won't have to fight any Dark wizards' is about the same type of reasoning as 'if we make it illegal for anyone to have weapons, then we'll be safer from criminals having weapons'. Since the latter has any number of politicians in the real world who will strongly advocate for it, its thus entirely believable that the former will have people in the Ministry of Magic advocating for it.
  • In regards to why Harry, Ron, and Hermione never thought to say another evil wizard, it's the case that they picked up the Idiot Ball. Despite that there's still Death Eaters out there that do cause trouble even when their alleged leader is "dead", there are break outs of deranged dark wizards from Azkaban, that two years ago Sirius Black was all over the wizarding news as a dangerous threat (yes, he's not bad, but the rest of the wizarding world isn't gifted with breaking the Fourth Wall), and there's just the random horrible wizard that loves to torture or kill others, the Idiot Ball stops the three of them from ever thinking of this.
  • Forget Sirius. Barty Crouch Jr. killed a student four mouths ago. At Hogwarts. (According to what the Ministry says happened, at least.) Why would students in Hogwarts need to learn to protect themselves, indeed?
  • Umbridge's response is easy to predict. The Ministry approves the curriculum and it will teach you everything you need to know to fight off Dark Wizards. Until then, the adults will take care of it. *smug smirk*
  • You cannot admit that the curriculum is bereft of practical training and the next second promise that it will teach the students to fight, not even Umbridge could pull it. Rejecting Harry's, let's be honest, unfounded announcement of V's return is one thing, but that's straight-ass Double Think. And the Ministry has already proven itself powerless to either recapture Black or keep him away from Harry, and that is also something Umbridge cannot deny.
  • There were so many holes in Umbridge's argument with Harry, that even the dimmest student in that classroom could see it. Harry could have argued based off statments in the previous few posts above; we need to defend ourselves against Death Eaters, Sirius Black, whatever killed Cedric- while we're at it, how exactly did Cedric die, Professor Umbridge? What sort of accident made him drop dead? Let's see her try to answer that. Heck, what about the boggarts, and the werewolves, and the vampires, and goodness knows what else lurks in wizards' closets? You're saying you don't need to defend against those? But no, Harry jumps straight to the Voldemort argument, and continues to aggravate her, and lands himself repeatedly in detention.
  • The above is true, but as has been pointed out elsewhere on the page, Harry is an angry, hotheaded fifteen-year-old, and fifteen-year-olds who can think rationally when they're angry are about as rare as unicorns. There's a reason Tranquil Fury and Dissonant Serenity seldom have teenagers on their example list.
  • Well you're not surprised that Harry wasn't the only one who rebelled against her, are you? Umbridge is not a trained educator; she's a bureaucrat who's babysitting teenagers. There are classes that are meant to prepare you for the industry you want to work in and the tutor just photocopies pages from one textbook and makes you read it aloud, not caring whether any of the information was retained. Umbridge's attempts to control the way the subject was taught didn't work and she'd lost any power long before the year was up. 90% of the school was resisting her just because her arguments were so flawed.
  • While Fudge's reasoning was paranoid nonsense, the idea of not teaching students to do the practical spell casting was detrimental to their O.W.Ls. During those end of year exams, they had to demonstrate they can perform all of the spells they learned that year and the only way to do that effectively was to practice them all year long.

HORRIBLE BURNING COAL FACE.

• Sirius justifies popping his head in the fire by saying, "This was the only way I could come up with of answering Harry's letter without resorting to a code... and codes are breakable." Has nobody in Harry Potter's world ever heard of a one-time pad? Sure, Harry and Ron would be too dim to know about it; and Sirius, while considered smart in school, is probably too into magic to research Muggle methods of secret communications. But what about Hermione? She's exactly the kind of Muggle-born nerd who should be familiar with the idea. With all the adventures the trio keeps getting into, she ought to realize that they might need secure communications in the future and start research on cryptographical techniques that don't require a computer during her vacations.
  • Those are people who have issues with the telephone. And to Hermione's defense, she seems a lot more knowledgeable about Magic then anything else. Besides, the vast majority of peoples, nerds included, don't even know what a One-Time pad is.
  • What is a one-time pad, anyway? Odds are, even J. K. Rowling doesn't know what it is; if she doesn't know, then neither does Hermione.
  • It's an encryption algorithm which uses a randomly generated key of the same length as the plaintext. As long as you can follow it perfectly (which usually boils down to making sure the key is truly random, never re-using it, and making sure it never falls into enemy hands), the code has been mathematically proven to be unbreakable. You are right that Rowling is unlikely to have ever heard of it; she has admitted that she is bad at math. But is there an in-universe explanation for why Hermione hasn't stumbled across it?
    • This plan wouldn't work judging by the words "and making sure it never falls into enemy hands"!
  • Why would she? She never seemed interested in the Muggle world; she even spent most of her summers with the Weasleys instead of her own family. If she did think they needed a secure communication system, then she would've just gone to magic.
  • Specialis Revelio.
  • How would she have gotten the one-time pad to Sirius securely? There were times in Harry Potter where it could've come in handy, but how is this one of them? Also, maybe Arithmancy includes a spell to "reverse the last calculation that was performed on this paper," which would break the unbreakable code.
  • Had she thought ahead, and she should have, then she could have left it in Number Twelve when she was there during the summer in case Sirius, or anyone else from the Order, needed to contact her or the other members of the trio secretly. Of course, she would have to teach someone how to use the pad (it's easy; just shift each letter of the message by the number indicated on the pad and destroy each page after use); but Sirius is the perfect candidate, since he is always in the house (and thus able to encode messages for other people at headquarters if necessary), and he has lots of free time. If she thought about it before the previous year, then she could have also given the pad and instructions to Sirius during their face-to-face meeting in "Goblet of Fire". Indeed, considering they are corresponding with the most wanted wizard in Britain at the time, this would have been a sensible precaution. And had she given pads to Harry and Ron and instructed them in their use, then Harry could have given one to Sirius when he talked to him in the fireplace before the first task and told him how it works. Now, if for some reason she figured it out after she came back to Hogwarts but before this particular message from Sirius, then she still could have given it to him, along with an explanation of usage, when he once again used the common room's fireplace for communications. It wouldn't have done much to secure THAT conversation, but it would have safeguarded future ones (particularly avoiding the one where Umbridge almost caught Sirius by the hair). Now, it is true that perhaps one-time pads are breakable by magic, but Sirius's wording about codes being breakable doesn't suggest that to me. If codes were routinely broken by normal spells, then he wouldn't have bothered to mention them as a possible security tool; his usage suggests that codes do protect messages, but can be broken by sufficiently determined/skilled cryptanalysis, and that he came into the fire because he wanted to have complete message protection. But cryptanalysis is useless against a perfectly executed one-time pad (hell, even if they mess up in the execution, then it would likely be strong enough to withstand whatever inexperienced code breaking Umbridge or the Ministry can throw at it).
  • You apparently didn't think it was funny or at all clever, then, when Hermione (or Harry) would suggest an obvious idea that Ron (or Harry) was passing over in favor of a complex magical bypass (only, in this case, replace "complex" with "illegal")?
  • You can't use computers and such at Hogwarts; Hermione explains this in Goblet of Fire when they are suggesting Rita uses a walky-talky, she explains equipment like that gets all messed up because there is 'too much magic' at Hogwarts and it distorts the equipment. That probably also goes for mobile phones.
  • You don't need any electronics to use a one-time pad. Paper pads, while a bit laborious, work just fine.
  • As previously stated, if JKR doesn't know of the one-time pad, then Hermione won't. As smart as she is, her knowledge is limited to how much the author knows (same for any character in the novels). However, alternatively, there was that mirror that Sirius gave Harry, which Harry only ever opened after the man died. Honestly, you'd think he'd bother to ask about it when he got the gift, or at least inspect when he got to school. It would have saved him a lot of trouble, as he could have instantly communicated to Sirius.
  • Clear case of Fan Myopia! In this case, said fan seems to be a cryptography nerd. Hermione, although smart and, well, nerdy, is just not a crypto-nerd. Though perhaps there exists a wizard-version of cryptography.
  • There is a real possibility that somebody out there has created a spell capable of automatically decoding codes. Secondly, even if that isn't the case, as any intelligence veteran worth his salt will tell you, mathematicians lean heavily on the reliability of a one-time pad. Proving something is "Mathematically impossible to break" means jack all, because they are only crunching numbers rather than talking about the actual strategies one uses against codes. One of which is to take a look at the code itself and try to gauge what stands for what. A number or letter repeated frequently enough is probably a vowel ('E', 'A', 'I', or less commonly 'O' or 'U') or a "frequent consonant" ('R','M', 'N', etc). If you know the language the codemaker is supposed to be communicating in, you can match up their alphabet and crank out several reasonable guesses about what an individual word is and go from there. Couple with the fact that the Western Alphabet is limited, and the English one is even moreso, and it is entirely possible to break these "Unbreakable" codes even without the pad. Heck, that is exactly what the Western Allies did when intercepting several German, Soviet, Spanish, and Portuguese codes in WWI and WWII, because they knew that they had an inborn belief in the impossibility of a security breach without the pads, and exactly what the Germans did with the Soviets later in the war. These things are not failsafe even using Muggle methods in the real world, and in a setting that involves magical spells that reveal hidden secrets, it's entirely understandable that Sirius would be paranoid about responding in written form.
  • The way one time pads work is that the key changes for every character. So the same letter repeated multiple times in the encoded message won't refer to the same unencoded letter. For example, an "A" will sometimes be a "C" but sometimes be a "F". Without the key, you can construct any message of that length. Other criticisms (ie magical methods) are still valid though.
  • Yes, you can construct any message of that length. Which is exactly what you do several times over; then you leaf through them and see which one "fits." Horribly time consuming, but it works. The Death Eaters would lack the technology and the manpower to do something like that at the time though, which still leaves the question of magic.
  • Um, no. Harry's message is about 75 words long, so let's say 400 characters. The number of possible messages of that length is 27 to the 400th power. You could not leaf through them in the lifetime of the universe.
  • Because although Hermione is smart, she's not omniscient. In essence, she's not a typical nerd - she's a magic nerd; what she appears to know about the Muggle world in canon is roughly what one would expect an intelligent almost-12-year-old to know. She doesn't necessarily know advanced Muggle things like relativistic physics or exactly how computers work.
  • Specialis Revelio. These people animate hundreds of statues with an incantation and are implied to have caused World War II. You think they'll be stumped by a Muggle code?
  • Because Hermione isn't Bat-Man and unless Sirius had a blurb about being a crypto-nerd in his past, it would have been out of no where and rather tedious to read.
  • It seems that people are forever overestimating Hermione. She may be clever, but that doesn't mean she knows everything. Especially not about the muggle world, which she hasn't properly lived in for seven years by the final book. Also not being born in the wizarding world does mean that there will be a lot of things about that she doesn't understand.
  • Even assuming they don't have some sort of code-breaking spell, a one-time pad relies on the receiver having the key. How's he supposed to get the key to Harry when the mail is screened? And Harry receiving obviously coded messages would be suspicious and probably all the justification they need to arrest him.
  • Above, in the first Headscratchers about Muggle medicince, Hermione was supposed to have understood how to stitch up an inujury. Now she was supposed to be a crack cryptologist who, as a fifteen year old girl understands one time pad codes that the large majority of people outside of the industry have never even heard of. Mind you, she would understand some better aspects of numerology better than others as she was taking arithmancy, but she was learning about divination using numbers, not coding messages.

Harry Potter and the Definition of "Requirement"

• Does the Room of Requirement give you what you need or what you want? For example, if Harry were suicidal, would he find a psychiatrist or a selection of nooses and pistols?
  • It depends what you mean by need. If Harry wants to take his life, he needs something to do it with. When the Weasley twins first discovered the room, it became a broom closet because they needed to hide from Filch. However, if the room gives people what's best for them, then it shouldn't have become anything at all so Filch would catch them and they would be forced to face up to whatever they did wrong. At the same time, it allowed Draco to work in secret on his plan to kill Dumbledore, to the point where it would refuse to let Harry in, so it isn't capable of making allegiances. So it must give the user what they want.
  • The twins getting a detention and losing house points isn't necessarily what is best for them if they're running from Filch, and it certainly hasn't done anything to change their behavior all those other times they've actually gotten caught.
  • The part with Malfoy deserves a mention. From what is present in the movie, Malfoy wanted the secret room, so he got it. Harry wanted to see what shenanigans Malfoy was up to, so he got a brick wall. Is it just first come, first serve? In that case, what would happen if one person wanted a room filled with kittens while another person stood beside them and simultaneously wanted the other person to not get a room full of kittens?
  • It's been speculated that he wanted a room that no one could find out what he was up to. And him being active in the room gave precedence over Harry wanting to find out what Draco was up to (due to Draco wanting the opposite). This was why when Harry wanted a place to hide the book, even though Draco might have been in there, he was allowed in, because he also wanted a room that no one could find what he was up to.
  • In the book, the reason seemed that Draco could get into the D.A. HQ is that they left it running. The room hadn't disappeared yet, and he just walked in.
  • Depends on how Harry wanted to resolve the situation. If he was depressed, but wanted to feel better, it might be able to conjure a therapist of some kind (though we haven't seen it create a sentient being out of thin air before). If Harry truly wanted to commit suicide, then yeah, it'd give him something to do it with. May be grim, but as the other guy said, it gave Malfoy the place to plot to kill Dumbledore.
  • The room might not necessarily conjure the therapist out of thin air. He might just, you know, steal him away from home for a little while, a la The Replacements. Which poses the question, are there magic therapists? If not, then the kidnapped one would be thoroughly freaked out, methinks.
  • No, they probably just have super-dee special magic drugs to correct brain chemistry and then leave the depressed witch or wizard to work through their other issues on their own. Which may partially explain why, exactly, the magical community makes up such a small percentage of the human population at large.
  • Given that the Longbottoms are still hopelessly insane nearly two decades after they were tortured, there are probably no wizarding therapists.
  • Or they're hopelessly insane. As in, nobody can get through to them, either because they're so blocked off or because there's not anything left of them but confusion.
  • Fridge Horror moment: What if their neural paths were magically rewired?
  • Exactly, there are plenty of irretrievably insane people IRL and also plenty of therapists IRL too; therapy doesn't solve everything. Magical damage, such as what would be inflicted by using the Cruciatus Curse, would most likely be completely out of the capabilities of therapists to cure. Now, as to why there isn't a spell to cure that kind of insanity, however.
  • For that, we turn to our good friends Giles and Tara: "...the human mind is very delicate. Too much can go wrong." "I've heard stories about people trying healing spells... if we did something, it could make things a lot worse."
  • When Harry and company use the room to hold the DA meetings, Harry thinks about what he wants the room to give him, and the room provides. So if he walked in front of the wall three times while thinking "I need a place where I can commit suicide... a place where nobody will bother me, a place with all the appropriate tools..." then yeah, that is what he would get, because that is what he would need in to do what he wanted to do.
  • The Room can't conjure food, so sentient human beings are one of those things, along with food and money, that can't be permanently conjured, thus no therapist. Maybe the Room is designed to do what's best for Hogwarts. When a psycho bureaucrat takes over, the school gives the students what they need to resist. When a student needs a place to hide something or secretly work on something (that was what Malfoy asked for, not "A room where I can continue my plan to kill Dumbledore"), the Room helps the student with no regard for what happens next (it doesn't ask questions, so to speak). If a student asked for a gun or a knife without adding what purpose they planned to use it for, it might comply, but the Room's specific function is to turn into a room that serves the seeker's needs. What kind of room is best for someone who's suicidal to achieve their goal? If a student specifically requested a room to help them commit suicide, causing or contributing to the death of a student would violate the Room's directive to serve Hogwarts, and it would not comply.
  • If it doesn't allow a student to kill oneself, why would it allow a student to hide stuff illegally? Illegally hiding stuff is blatantly against the school rules. The room simply has no guide on what is right and what is wrong, it simply conforms to what the person wants. If they need a bathroom, they get a bathroom. If they need a place to meet for DA meetings, then it gives them that. If they need a room to kill themselves in, then they'd get one of those.
  • It doesn't have to be hidden illegally. What if, say, someone had a diary and people kept stealing it and reading it aloud? They'd need a place to hide it so that stops happening, and the Room of Requirements would be the perfect place for it. Or what if it was somebody's birthday or Christmas and someone needed a place to put the gifts that they were planning on giving? Just because the power to hide things can so easily be misused doesn't mean that there are plenty of perfectly innocuous reasons to use it.
  • Perhaps the room has a way to bend the desire to the overall best outcome, depending on how it's phrased. However, if it's phrased like "Give me a sword so I can kill myself", there's nothing it can do. Which begs the question of what would happen to the dead body in the room. Would it keep the room active (if they asked for privacy) or would it disappear into Hammerspace that the objects are stored in?
  • One of the theories about how the 'Room of Lost Things' got so large is that is where all the 'real' objects left in any incarnation of the room are whenever they aren't needed. I.e., that room is hammerspace. Which raises some Nightmare Fuel about what you'd find if you kept searching. Is there an entire section of corpses?
  • Suicide can easily be committed by pointing a wand at yourself and saying "Avada Kedavra."
  • Or "Reducto," or "Diffindo," or anything, really.
  • Now there's the hilariously morbid image of, should a student request suicide, the door simply opening onto the outside wall of the castle.
  • In response to the Draco question, maybe the Room obeyed Harry's request to show him what Draco summoned. Draco was smart enough to make the Room become invisible to passers-by. Harry could have walked through the wall to enter, King's Cross style.
  • Except that when prof. Trelawney requested a place to hide her liquor (BTW, why would she feel the need to, does Hogwarts conduct booze raids?), she crashes in on him just fine.
  • Trelawney needed it because she was already viewed as a loony as she was. The sherry bottles probably wouldn't help her poor reputation.
  • Harry probably beat his hands against the wall in frustration at least once. Also, the King's Cross analogy is faulty. The wall IS there, it just teleports you to Platform 9 3/4 if you go at it right (And Trelawney is probably hiding the sherry bottles because it wouldn't look too good if Umbridge found out.)
  • She's doing it during the sixth year, Umbridge is already gone.
  • No, it didn't. The reason for why the Room couldn't let Harry in was because Harry didn't know what was in there, and thus couldn't make the proper request for it to open itself to him per requirement. Trelawney got in because she inadvertently asked for the same thing Malfoy had asked for (a place to hide her possessions, the same room that also appeared to Tom Riddle when he requested a place to hide Rawenclaw's diadem). Harry got blocked out initially because he could only make roundabout requests to access the room (I want to see the same room Malfoy entered) rather than directly ask for the same thing Malfoy had requested (I want a place to hide my possessions). When Harry does ask for a place to hide something (the Half-Blood Prince's potion book) he is in fact able to access the same room Malfoy had used, though he doesn't realise it.

Mysterious mind connections are mysterious...

• In the Deathly Hallows, although Harry finally manages to use Occlumency properly and block out Voldemort's visions, he still clearly realizes what's happening to him. In the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore tries to get Harry to learn Occlumency so as not to be tempted by Voldemort's trick. But even had he grasped this technique, he still would have known what was going on. Without anybody telling him what could possibly happen (and considering that the first time Harry had such a powerful vision, it saved Mr. Weasley's life), and given his current annoyance with Dumbledore (and especially Snape), he probably would have chosen to succumb to the attack anyway, and the whole plan would have been moot. The only excuse Dumbledore can get is he didn't know what it's like to have such a connection (it was quite the anomaly), and that his efforts were a desperate resort.
  • Dumbledore wanted Harry to learn Occlumency so Voldemort wouldn't be able to trick him with false visions. Dumbledore's hope was that Harry would be able to sense when Voldemort was trying to penetrate his mind and block that. Harry would be expecting Voldemort to be trying to take information out rather than putting false information in and in theory would try to block that. Of course why Dumbledore chose not to tell Harry that Voldemort could use a false vision to manipulate him is all up in the air.
  • Probably because there were four people at Hogwarts who were members of the Order, who Harry could feel free to go to and verify the truth of any visions he may've had. It just came down to some colossally rotten luck that three of them were forced out of the school and the one left behind was whose guts Harry hated the most.
  • Dumbledore should have realized that the connection between Harry and Voldy couldn't have been stopped by Occlumency since Legillimancy wasn't used to look into Harry's mind. Heck, Voldy, who was a master in both, couldn't stop Harry from looking into his mind. That should have been a major hint.
    • Except Voldemort does use Occlumency to stop Harry looking into his mind, after he realised how dangerous the connection was to him as well as Harry. It's why Harry didn't have as many pains in his scar or visions of Voldemort during book 6. They only started up again in book 7 because the many failures of his Death Eaters was starting to infuriate him even more, and the loss of his horcruxes wasn't making it any easier.

Poor Communication Kills, But No Communication Outright Brutalizes

• Why the heck did Harry not use that mirror, which Sirius gave him specifically for contacting him when he needed him, ever?
  • Harry didn't know what Sirius gave him and thus decides to never open the package. He was handed the package as he was heading back to Hogwarts and Sirius only tells him not to open it there as "Molly wouldn't approve". His reasoning at the time was that it was a method of communication that would either get Sirius in trouble for using, like the last time he tried to communicate via the Floo network, or encourage him to leave the house and thus get caught by the Ministry. He didn't realize exactly how it worked and thus buried it at the bottom of his trunk and forgot about it. In fact, he practically vows not to use it almost immediately. If Sirius had explained how to use it then rather than leaving a note, we might have had a whole different year. You can check US page 523 for yourself.
  • According to page 462 in the Canadian print, Harry decides not to use it after Sirius says it's a way to communicate / let him know that the Occlumency lessons are going bad. Harry didn't want to be the one responsible for Sirius leaving the house again.
  • Maybe Harry never got the hang of Occlumency. It was just that in Deathly Hallows, Voldemort became increasingly agitated and thus forgot to monitor the mental link between himself and Harry (it was established that the reason Harry began to get the Department of Mysteries images was because Voldemort was manipulating the link).
  • The problem here is that Harry talks to Sirius in Umbridge's fire to discuss what he saw in the Pensieve AFTER receiving the mirror. Why did Sirius not ask Harry why he was using the fire and not the mirror then?
  • He got it just as he was leaving for Hogwarts, had put it away, and by the time he needed to contact Sirius, five months had passed.
  • Given how Sirius has spent the whole time brooding (not to mention the implications that he's been drinking) and is bordering on obsessed with Harry, he should have remembered he gave him the mirror.
  • Sirius is in favor of rule-breaking in general, and Harry was using Umbridge's own fireplace, behind her back, to contact him. Sirius probably thought that that was so cool, he wasn't inclined to question or complain about it.
  • The problem with this is that Sirius had used the fireplace in the Gryffindor Common room to talk to Harry twice before that. And not once did he bother to mention the mirror. Heck, the second time he wrote a letter to Harry telling him to meet him at the fireplace. Why didn't he use the same letter to remind him about the mirror instead is beyond me.
  • The Order has a secret means to communicate with each other, which everyone assumes to be Patronuses, but that's completely absurd, as a Patronus showing up in the middle of Snape's class is bound to be noticed, or worse, while he's talking to Voldemort. What if a mirror system is the Order's secret means of communication, and Sirius just stole one and gave it to Harry? And the second Harry uses it, everyone would figure that out (We don't actually know how they work, perhaps it's broadcast to all mirrors), so Sirius only wants it used for emergencies. Convoluted, yes, but it makes sense of both the 'Glowing talking animals' means of secret communications concept, and why the mirror is not used. It's because Harry isn't actually supposed to have one. And it explains why no one's apparently ever seen Snape's Patronous.
  • The mirror is not a secret communication method by the Order, Sirius explicitly said in his note that when he and James were in school, they'd use the mirrors to talk to each other during detention. It's a personal item of his and it makes no sense at all as to why he never told or reminded Harry about it.
  • Nor does it make any sense how he'd have James's mirror in the first place. That's hard to explain. Even if Sirius somehow had custody of the mirror at James's death, there's no way he'd still have it, or even still have his own! The only old stuff of Sirius is the stuff at Grimmauld Place, and he got kicked out of there before he finished Hogwarts, so the mirrors couldn't be there. However, the text doesn't say it's the same set. It says Sirius and James used to use 'them' to talk in detention, and it could just as easily mean 'two way mirrors in general' instead of that specific pair of them.
  • Another possibility as to why Harry should only use them in emergencies and why Sirius wasn't supposed to give that out: maybe they bypass Fidelius and other security charms, like a vanishing cabinet does. Perhaps if you can see a location in real time, you can apparate or Portkey or something there regardless of Fidelius.
  • The "location" would not fit in that mirror.
  • If someone doesn't answer your phone calls, it's less awkward to just start sending them emails than to get into a potentially embarrassing and painful discussion about why they're not answering your phone calls.
  • 12 years of depression followed by drowning your sorrows would diminish Sirius' reasoning ability.
  • And perhaps Sirius was so caught off guard by Harry turning up out of nowhere agitated about James, he just forgot to ask. People forget things like that in real life all the time.

More emergency communication

• Why is it only Sirius who is concerned about providing Harry with means of emergency communication? They all know that the kid is targeted by the enemy and that he regularly gets in danger, yet no one ever thought that it'd be a good idea if he'd be able to get in touch with them should the need arise? Why the hell would Molly "not approve"?!
  • Because, let's face it, Molly is a borderline Smother. She doesn't approve of Harry and Sirius's relationship anyway and wants to make sure Harry is away from his influence. Molly wouldn't approve the mirror either. Though why Sirius didn't tell Harry exactly what it was there and then is Idiot Ball on his part.
  • "Hey, guys (and Molly, and Tonks), I think we should provide Harry with some means of emergency communication, just in case he runs into another trouble, like it tends to happen with him with alarming regularity. Like one of our walkie-talkie mirrors." Done. What was Molly going to say to that? Demand that Sirius is banned from using? That's too obvious and petty. For bonus subtlety he could've had Arthur or Remus as an "independent" party suggest it.
  • Probably because they didn't think he'd need one. He was safe at Hogwarts, where he had the aid of Dumbledore, McGonagall, Hagrid, and Snape in the event that anything went wrong, and all of them were affiliated with the Order and capable of communicating with the others. No one could've foreseen that three of them would've been driven out of the school and that Harry would've been left with the one whose guts he hated the most.
  • Right. He was safe. And had aid. Which is why the bad guys with zero resources and numbers in four kept infiltrating the school under one guise or another year after year, finally abducting Harry and nearly murdering him. Wasn't V supposed to be the arrogant short-sighted moron in this story?
  • The previous poster said that they didn't think he'd need one. They though he was safe, whether he was or not, is another matter. They can be wrong, after all, they are wizards not omniscient gods.
  • Also, the threat wasn't of Harry being in any immediate danger. "Safe" means he wouldn't have to deal with any problems that came up without help. In the previous books, none of the teachers believed him because he was trying to get involved in things that he shouldn't. Here, though, he's the one who's having visions of Voldemort, so the adults have no reason not to believe him if he comes to them asking for help.

Oh, sure, everyone forgets the girl!

• Mrs. Weasley, on Ron being a prefect: "That's everyone in the family!" Gred and Forge: "So what are we, next-door neighbors?" So what is Ginny, the Madwoman in the Attic?
  • In slight defense, the "so far" could have been implied, but then she did ignore Gred and Forge. Mrs. Weasley can be so narrow-minded sometimes.
  • Everyone in the family who has been old enough to become a prefect. (Excluding F&G)

They're using wandless magic ALREADY?!?

• Harry is able to use his wand without holding it when he casts "Lumos!" in chapter 1. But this ability never reappears in the series, nor is any explanation given.
  • And of course fanfics have made all sorts of explanations. Truly it could be as simple as accidental magic, or it could be as complicated as the ability to do some wandless magic (or even more complicated: Remote Casting). Harry never seems to go back and think about how that worked, and thus we tend to forget about it.
  • It's established rather clearly that the link between the wand and the wizard is spiritual, and nothing says that the physical contact is obligatory. Wizards usually hold their wands while casting because they need to point it at the object of casting or to make some magical gestures with it, neither of which a simple non-directional spell like Lumos apparently requires.
  • Remote casting is shown in book 1: Quirrel snaps his fingers to cast a non-verbal Incarcerous, but was probably holding his wand in his other hand.
  • Also, that specific Lumos spell never gets mentioned, even while he's having the book thrown at him for underaged magic. This raises the question if Lumos is a 'spell' at all, or just some sort of wand feature. There are lights that turn on and off via a magical tap (Which also doesn't count as underaged magic), perhaps wands just have an owner-controlled voice-activated light instead, as you can't exactly tap your wand with your wand.
  • Alternately, it's a trivial charm that doesn't even activate the Trace, and thus it's not unreasonable that even someone without any training could do it wandlessly, but not anything else.
  • It could also be an example of the instinctual magic that Tom Riddle and Harry Potter are both shown as being able to tap unknowingly. Alternately, wands may be specifically enchanted to react to a nearby Lumos incantation for just such situations - it'd make the wand harder for a wizard to lose on a dark night in the woods, for instance.
  • Arthur addresses something like this in the seventh book. He says that in tight situations, wizards can perform magic spontaneously. Harry was in a desperate situation and that could have been enough to get enough magic to light his wand.
  • Lumos and Accio Wand are important for finding or retrieving the wand. These aren't wandless magic, just spells that the wand can perform without the wizard physically touching the wands.
  • Fun bit of information: the ability to cast a spell with a wand without physically holding it is a unique property of wands with a phoenix feather core. So it's not wandless nor remote casting, just phoenix feather wands having their own mojo.

Abusing the Room of Requirement for Fun and Profit!

• The Room of Requirement, Harry. Everything you could ever want is in that room. All you have to do is simply wish for it. Why doesn't he wish his parents back to life with that room? All he'd have to do is say 'I wish to speak to James and Lily Potter' and bing bang boom! There they are!
  • Magic can't bring people back from the dead. This has been stated and restated over the course of the series. Voldemort came back because he was only mostly dead. The Resurrection Stone only brought back their spirits, and even then, only temporarily. But no amount of magic can bring back someone who's dead, and they don't make any secret of this.
  • Also, it's a safe bet that human beings are one of the unstated exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration, i.e., you can't conjure someone under any circumstances, it's a law of magical nature.
  • Given that in the seventh book, someone praises Neville for "having a knack" for using the room, it could be possible with mental effort. It could be a Literal Genie situation.
  • Or if you wanted something to keep you awake at night, the Room might go the literal route if you asked for your dead relatives back, or what's left of them.
  • Perhaps the room was limited to what was available within the castle/what could be made from the castle. When they make the DADA room, Harry notes that the enemy detectors were from Moody's old office. It's had 1000 years to gather stuff, and when you ask for a place to hide things or where lost things are it just regurgitates everything it has to offer, which is a massive room with mountains of lost/discarded objects.
  • What if you need a place where you can apparate out of Hogwarts? You'd probably blow Hogwart's mind.
  • In that case you'd be able to apparate out of the room itself but not into anywhere in the grounds. And if someone was still inside then outsiders would be able to apparate to inside the room. Or if the person just wanted to get out, it'd create a passageway like it did to the Hog's Head.

Oh deer... that's an unusual Patronus...

• So the most reliable method of communication used by the Order is Patronuses, and when Snape found out that Harry had seen a vision of Sirius being tortured by Voldemort in the Department of Mysteries, Snape went to confirm its truth. That would mean Sirius had seen Snape's Patronus, and most probably, the rest of the Order too. So why is nobody concerned about the fact that Snape's Patronus is a doe? Even if they hadn't seen Lily's Patronus, they must be curious as to why it's so unlike Snape's character (it's implied that one's Patronus is decided by one's character, if not by the bonds they share, e.g. Harry's Patronus is a stag, his father's animagus form), or Harry's Patronus's counterpart.
  • Yes, the most reliable method is Patronuses, but that doesn't mean he used one. Snape knew Umbridge was suitably distracted, and he could have easily used Floo Powder to contact them, as it would have been faster. We don't know for sure how he contacted them but the fact remains that Sirius would have been more worried about Harry then possibly concerned with what Snape's Patronus looks like.
  • Sirius isn't a total idiot. He at least suspected that Snape was in love with Lily; he probably figured it out while they were in school, and he viewed Snape as a pathetic enough loser to never get over her. If Sirius ever saw Snape's Patronus and realized that "holy crap, Lily had the same one!", he wouldn't have been surprised. (JKR once said that Snape never used his Patronus to communicate with anyone but Dumbledore.)
  • Snape did not contact Sirius using his Patronus: Jenny: How did Snape keep his patronus secret from the rest of the order? J.K. Rowling: He was careful not to use the talking Patronus means of communication with them. This was not difficult, as his particular job within the Order, i.e., as spy, meant that sending a Patronus to any of them might have given away his true allegiance. Dumbledore does say that the Order 'has more reliable means of communication than Umbridge's fireplace', which leads one to believe he meant Patronus, but it can't be. It IS possible, though, that this was just a case where Rowling hadn't yet decided everything. We know she had planned Snape's position in the story and his love of Lily from the beginning, but the specifics of Snape's patronus matching hers may have been something decided later. Snape's Patronus could have been something else originally and served the same purposes in the final book, when she decided it was more poetic for her to match his Patronus to Lily's. So, they must have another method of communication by default, since we know Snape didn't send his Patronus. This is probably for the best, anyway, because if it's true that Lily's Patronus was a doe, it would have probably been a horrible experience for Sirius to suddenly be faced with the Patronus of one of his best friends who's been dead for so many years. Not to mention the mental trauma of hearing Snape's voice come out of it.
  • Not to mention that Patronuses (Patroni?) are, quite possibly, the absolute worst form of secret communication imaginable. Yes, they can't be forged (Well, unless you happen to find someone with an identical Patronus and have them take Polyjuice to change their voice.), but it's a giant glowing message that finds you wherever you are and repeated the message loudly in front of whoever you happen to be near. Holy crap, is that the exact opposite of what a secret organization should use or what? It's the same as using a Howlers as a form of secret communication. Everyone reads 'We have our own ways of communicating' in one book, and see a unique method of communication in the next book, and assumes that must be what they're talking about.
  • Perhaps the Order actually uses mirrors, which is why Sirius wasn't supposed to give Harry one. That's an Order mirror he's carrying around, a security breach if Death Eaters get a hold of it. (Sirius does say that he and James used them to communicate in detention, but he might just mean those sort of mirrors in general, not that one specifically.)

Easy Recovery

• In the hospital wing at the end of the book, Umbridge apparently hasn't said a word since the encounter with the centaurs, but two paragraphs later, she speaks perfectly normally and no-one seems to care.
  • They were hiding their disappointment.

Harry Potter is officially a moron

• This is not so much about a fridge logic, but about how Harry behaved in general. So Harry has a vision of the person who is the next best thing to his dad being tortured somewhere in a ominous part of the MoM. First, he breaches into the office belonging to the The Umbridge, he gets information from a questionable source, and nearly forgets that Snape is part of the Order because he hates him. If Harry for a second would have dropped his Idiot Ball, he would notice, that the vision he saw could be wrong, that he could let Snape take care of this, assume that Kreacher's information could have been wrong too, and above all, he should not endanger his closest friends in a rescue attempt at the heart of the Ministry against Death Eaters. Half of the plot only works with puberty making Harry stupid, and the other half is Dumbledore not spilling the beans, which is a problem in itself. Dumbledore could have just said, "Stay the Hell away from the Ministry under all circumstances!" Instead, he keeps his distance from Harry and locks him out of the loop.
  • Dumbledore was trying to minimize direct contact with or instruction to Harry, to keep Voldemort from having the incentive to possess him. Harry, as Hermione mentions, has a "saving-people thing" and isn't always rational. Yes, both characters screwed up, but there were reasons for what they did and they got called on it.
  • After they get rid of Umbridge, why didn't Harry just go back to Snape? He did think Snape wasn't taking him seriously, but he could've thought of making him see sense if that were the case.
  • That actually makes the most sense about the situation. Harry tried to go to McGonagall in book 1 about the Philosopher's Stone, but wasn't taken seriously by his Head of House. Ever since then, only Dumbledore has accepted anything he's said. Why would the teacher who's hated him since he came to the school take him seriously?
  • Maybe it's because he, Harry, was right some months earlier. Just a guess.
  • Harry and Snape are on the same side, but they don't like each other personally at all (not counting Snape's residual love and loyalty to Lily as liking Harry). If Harry has any option but Snape, he's going to take it. In hindsight, a stupid decision, but easy enough to see why he made it.
  • Everyone forgets that at least once in every book so far, there have been both MAJOR and minor points made that Adults Are Useless. And everyone seems to forget that Harry's abusive upbringing is a major sticking point with everything. Up until now, he's had to do everything HIMSELF. He's already broken down and used his last resort for help, and it APPEARED that no help was given. This is clearly a "screw you all, I'll do it myself" moment, especially seeing that's happened in all the previous books. Book 1, McGonagall didn't believe him, and the Trio went on their own. Book 2, Lockhart was useless and in fact would have got them all killed.
  • It makes sense why Harry would believe his vision of Sirius to be real. Just a few months ago, he had a nearly identical experience in seeing Mr. Weasley get bitten by an enormous snake. That sentence in itself sounds so absurd, the only reason Harry's claims were taken seriously was that Dumbledore and the Order happened to know of Mr. Weasley's current position. Every other one of Harry's visions that followed proved to be real, too. Harry says it himself: "Why d'you think they want me to stop seeing these things? Because they're real, Hermione!" Harry had also spent an entire semester being told by almost everybody that he was a liar, that he was mad, that what was happening to him was bullcrap. These facts alone would be plenty sufficient in fueling Harry's likelihood of believing that Sirius was in danger. This all, of course, isn't to say that what Harry did wasn't extremely foolhardy and rash. But it does make his decision that much more understandable and less of a "Screw reason, my friend's in trouble".
  • Exactly. You can't call someone an idiot for not acting on information they didn't have. In this case, the information that its actually possible to fake a vision like that. If Dumbledore had simply had anyone in the Order actually mention this possibility to Harry, Harry would almost certainly not have fallen for Voldemort's deception. This is a good chunk of what Dumbledore meant when he confessed at the end of book 5 'You know, if I'd actually just told you ANYTHING about what was going on, I could have avoided this whole mess.' And looked at in this light, Harry actually deserves mad props for going as far as he did to try and double-check on Sirius' whereabouts, instead of just immediately leaping on a thestral and heading south.
    • Wasn't the point of Harry's Occulmency lessons was that it was possible for Voldemort to manipulate their connection? And didn't Hermione suggest that it could be a trick? Harry must be aware of the possibility.
  • It's shocking how rude and insulting Harry was toward his friends in his blatant attempt to prevent them from going to the Ministry with him. Obviously Harry didn't want to endanger them, especially Neville, Ginny, and Luna. Unlike Ron and Hermione, they haven't been in the dangerous and injury-inducing situations with Harry that give him faith in the trio's abilities, but they are determined. Luna even offers the one way to get to the Ministry that they end up using, because Harry, Hermione, and Ron don't manage to think of anything else plausible to use (Thestrals). So, Harry does try to keep them from being in danger, but they are determined to help him. Also, after a year in the DA, they might not have a natural gift with DADA, but they know Harry's most highly regarded defense spells. And Harry does try hard to keep them from getting involved. After how he spoke to them, the fact that they ended up going can only be attributed to their determination to go, because he was dickish enough that they wouldn't have ended up there for any other reason.
  • "Harry's eyes met with Ron's. He knew Ron was thinking exactly what he was: If he could have chosen any members of the DA in addition to himself, Ron, and Hermione to join him... he would not have picked Ginny, Neville, or Luna." Seriously Harry, seriously?
  • There are multiple ways to interpret this. He could be saying that there were better members such as those older and more experienced than those three would be who he'd pick. Another would be that he wouldn't want to put them in harm's way. Lastly, he probably doesn't believe they're all that good in a real firefight, as besides Ron and Hermione, he's never seen anyone hold their own under pressure.
  • To be fair, Neville has a tendency to fail at magic (i.e. his family thought he was a Squib for the longest time), Luna has a tendency to wander off towards shiny things, and Ginny possibly had a flare-up of Big Brother Instinct directed at her, as he does consider the Weasley's to be like family to him.
  • When is all said and done the two members of the DA who stand heads over the rest are the Weasley Twins - they are confident, physically able, have a good grasp of magic and are creative. In a battle situation they would destroy any benefits Neville (who had only minutely taken steps toward that level in badass we see in book 7) and Loony Lovegood might bring to the party. The likes of Lee Jordan and Katie Bell would also be excellent fall backs for similar reasons.
  • Another consideration is that, out of the whole of Dumbledore's Army, those three are people that Harry genuinely CHERISHES. Luna is someone that he immediately takes a shine to and clearly wants to protect, Neville is, besides Ron and Hermione, one of Harry's closest confidants and friends, and Ginny is someone he's felt a strong bond with ever since his second year. If it was other members, he'd be less concerned for them, but those three? He's going to be fretting over them HEAVILY.
  • Harry and Snape cannot be simply said to be two people who happen to not like each other, no, they are two persons who actively hate and despise each other. In a situation of extreme stress where you have trouble thinking rationally and prone to take decisions based on instinct and emotions, there is almost no way that harry would have ever thought of Snape (someone whom he hates almost more than even Voldemort) as the one guy that can save Sirius (the person that he loves the most).
• Sirius' death seemed so meaningless. Harry ended up getting himself in an even more life-threatening situation than before. It would have felt more satisfiing had Harry learned something from the experience, like, don't run headlong into battle? Listen to adults every once in a while? However much Dumbledore's alienation contributed to Harry's mental state, no one can deny that Harry shares a good deal of the blame for recklessly running in to a hopeless battle with a bunch of fifth years for back-up.
• There are several times Harry has seen Snape flatly refuse to help. When Hermione's teeth were enlarged past her chin, Snape refused to fix them, despite having just fixed a similar problem for a Slytherin student. When Harry found Crouch Sr, and came looking for Dumbledore to help, Snape was deliberately obstructive, delaying Harry and possibly giving Crouch Jr enough time to kill his father and hide the body. Despite both of them being told that Harry learning Occlumency was of vital importance, Snape had thrown Harry out of his class and refused to have anything to do with him except try to destroy his Potions grades. And first but strongest, when Harry and company found out that Sirius was a good guy and Pettigrew was still alive, Snape absolutely refused to listen to any explanations or even consider the possibility of Sirius being innocent, even though testing their story would have been fairly easy; he was ready to let Sirius's soul be destroyed rather than let his story be heard, out of personal hatred for Sirius and Lupin. Given how much Snape hated Sirius, and had let that hatred influence his actions in the past, it isn't hard to see why Harry might think Snape would spitefully ignore the situation if Sirius were in danger.
• And why would Harry have reason to believe that Kreacher was lying? He didn't know about house elf magic and its different rules from wizard magic - so he had no reason to believe that Kreacher was secretly seeing Narcissa and Bellatrix to pass information. Kreacher offers up the line about the Department of Mysteries which confirms Harry's suspicions - so how would he know that if Sirius hadn't gone there in Harry's mind? For what it's worth, Harry is pulled out of the fire by Umbridge right after this. So in the chaos that followed, he just didn't have a moment where he could consider that Kreacher lied.

Phoenix May Cry

• When Arthur Weasley is bitten by Nagini, he is sent to St. Mungo's and Fawkes is sent off to tell Mrs. Weasley. Instead of using Fawkes as a glorified owl, wouldn't it have made more sense to send him to Arthur directly? It was proven in book 2 that Fawkes can cure poisonous snake bites, so wouldn't that have saved the Weasleys, not to mention St. Mungo's healers, a lot of trouble?
  • Maybe Voldemort knows a way to counter phoenix tears and Dumbledore knew about that. Although that still doesn't make sense, as you'd think a basilisk would have more potent venom than any other snake.
  • The problem might only partly be the poison from the snake bite, the antidote for which St. Mungo's probably has in droves, and also being bitten by a huge snake. This now concerns me; would St. Mungo's, the best wizarding hospital, have a wing solely devoted to forcing Phoenixes to cry to cure poisons? Considering what we've seen of the Wizarding World and their concern for anything that isn't straight up human, all signs point to yes.
  • From what can be gathered, Phoenixes aren't all that common and catching one and forcing it to cry sounds incredibly stupid. Not only can they flame travel out of Hogwarts, but they can lift great weights and sing to startle their enemies. Now, having Phoenix tears in bottles from willing donations, like apparently Fawkes did to Ollivander, is much more likely.
  • Aren't you missing the point here? The question is not about the prospects of Phoenix utilization in medicine - it's about one particular Phoenix curing, or rather not curing, one particular man.
  • Maybe Voldemort learned from the Basilisk and learned to counter it? Or maybe being a Horcrux gives you special powers?
  • Maybe they knew Arthur was going to be found anyway, and the Weasleys were having to play down links to Dumbledore due to Ministry persecution (it is said much earlier in the book that friends of Dumbledore were having a hard time of it). Having Dumbledore's phoenix would not only show a massive connection to Dumbledore, but also cast a lot of doubt onto his reasons for being there in the first place, and could have got him fired or thrown into Azkaban (cf Sturgis Podmore).
  • Fawkes could have healed Arthur on the spot and they could have sent him home to rest without raising an alarm. Nobody would ever know he had been there.
  • Phoenix tears are only shown to be a cure to Basilisk venom in the story, though they also mention that they work on other types of poison as well. There's no evidence that it's a cure-all for every type of poison, though, and Dumbledore would have tried phoenix tears if they would have been effective.
  • The Basilisk is the King of Snakes. It would be ridiculous if the tears could cure its venom but not that of lesser snakes. And no "if it was a good idea, DD would've thought of it" is not a valid excuse - there still must be a reason why he didn't.
  • Seeming as Fawkes' tears have been proven to cure Acumantula venom and Basilisk venom, two powerful toxins that don't seem to have other cures, there is no reason why it could not cure a venom that doesn't seem to be anywhere near as fatal. Short answer: the author wanted to make an excuse for Harry to end up at Saint Mungo's and learn about Neville's parents.
  • Phoenix's tears are powerful healing items, however, Nagini was the closest being to Voldemort, and it makes a lot of sense that he managed to create a venom that cannot be destroyed that easily by a simple remade which Voldemort knows firsthand that Dumbledore have in his possession. That would be inconsistent with Voldy's personality.
  • Except that he didn't know about Fawkes (the diary Horcrux knew, and it's been shown that Voldemort did not get the memories from that diary), Nagini's venom was eventually cured in an ordinary wizard hospital, which suggests it's nowhere near as fatal as Basilisk venom, and it is entirely within Voldemort's character to have made such a mistake. This is the guy who hid his Horcruxes in shiny, easily-recognized objects in places connected to his past, instead of doing the smart thing and dropping them in the Marinas Trench or something.
  • Maybe the poison wasn't the issue? They could have got the antidote to him on time, the probably was the gapping wounds, which couldn't seem to stay close, and subsequent blood loss. It's possible they tried Phoenix tears only it didn't work on more than the poison. But by the time Harry and other's see Arthur, the poison doesn't seem to be an issue anymore.
  • What might happened first was that they needed Everard from the painting to check that Arthur was there after Harry said he had the dream. Everard couldn't travel past a certain point (no paintings to travel through) so he had to yell to get guards to check if Arthur was there. They didn't know if Arthur was there at all. Everard just tells them he heard noises, on the off-chance that Arthur would be there. At that point, using Fawkes's tears might have linked him to Dumbledore. In fact, all the faffing around that happened in the wee hours of the morning could have been the Order trying to do damage control - and come up with a back-up plan since they couldn't use Fawkes. And presumably if Arthur's condition was worse, they might have used him. But the healers had him saved within a couple of hours so there was no need.
  • It could also be that Fawkes can only be summoned by a person demonstrating extreme loyalty to Dumbledore. We know Arthur's loyal to him, but he hadn't done anything particularly summon-worthy at the moment (Fawkes only went to Harry when he said that Dumbledore was not truly gone from the school, for example), so Fawkes wouldn't have gone to him on his own.
  • Book 2 made clear the Fawkes’ tears have to be given willingly by him, and he only cries for someone special, someone who he thinks is extremely loyal to DD, so is not a Plot Hole nor bad writing, it was clear. Fawkes simply does not know Arthur and/or does not think he deserves the tears.

I HATE YOU! I! HATE! YOU!

• Why would Dumbledore looking at Harry's eyes would anger Voldemort?
  • Voldemort had figured out the link between his mind and Harry's, so he could sometimes see through Harry's eyes. When Voldy sees Dumbledore through Harry's eyes, it infuriated him and Harry felt that rage.
  • Snape says that eye contact is essential for Legilimency. So if Voldemort is possessing Harry, he can perform Legilimency on Dumbledore if they make eye contact.

Reason behind the connection

• If Voldemort figured out that there was a connection with him and Harry's minds, then how did he not know that the reason for this is because Harry is an accidental Horcrux ? Voldemort's powers of analysis seem to be sharp enough that he deduced what he heard of the prophecy.
  • How many times in history has a human Horcrux been made? With the world not having enough knowledge of the matter, Voldemort could not have known right off the bat that that was the reason. Maybe he just believed he was that good at Legilimency, or that the result of the night in Godric's Hollow was a special mental connection, nothing more.
  • Exactly. Voldemort doesn't have a mental link to his other Horcruxes.
  • Except for Nagini.
  • Also, Word of God is that Horcrux prep needs more than just murder. And Voldemort didn't even fragment his soul with murder in this case, he fragmented it with his own killing curse. So part of Voldemort's soul ended up in Harry, but Harry is not, technically, a 'Horcrux', as the soul fragment ended up in him without going through the 'proper' Horcrux method, and without any prep. (Rather like if part of a pie slides out of the pie pan and and falls on the floor, it's is not technically a 'piece of pie'.) It's behaving different because it is different. V would have no reason to even suspect that was possible, as it had never before happened in history.
  • Just a small point: Voldemort had just fragmented his soul with murder: James's and Lily's. The rebounding Killing Curse was just the thing that made those fragmented pieces "take flight (from death)". Pun sorta intended.

More "Needs to Know" Nuttiness

• Before the "Nagini bites Arthur" incident, Dumbledore suspected that there might be a mental connection between Harry and Voldemort, which is the reason why Harry was kept in the dark during the summer, and why Dumbledore avoided Harry. So why not tell Harry about the suspicion, so he'll know why things are happening? Because it would upset Harry? Would "Voldemort might have a mental connection to me" have upset Harry more than "everyone is keeping me in the dark and my mentor is shunning me"? The only other reason to not tell Harry would be that they didn't want Voldemort to find out that they suspected a mental connection, but keeping that secret would only be useful if they intended to use the mental connection to feed false information to Voldemort.
  • As Dumbledore admitted himself at the end, he screwed up everything because he thought Harry was too young to learn the truth.
  • Actually, it makes sense to conceal some things to Harry. We learn the full truth only in book 7, and it's obvious that Dumbledore couldn't tell it all. So Dumbledore has no idea how to tell Harry just the part of the truth he needs to know to act as needed.
  • "When you escaped V, you humiliated him in front of his cronies. He will try to rectify it. He can read minds and project illusions, and since you two are connected, he might do it to you remotely. You need to learn mind protection." Done.
  • Additionally is it a good idea to tell a 15-year-old that the most evil dark wizard of all time can read his mind at any time? Especially before they have all the facts.
  • Beats keeping him clueless and vulnerable. After all, will not warning him of the danger make his mind any safer?
  • Clearly you missed the sequence where immediately after Christmas break, Dumbledore gets Snape to teach Harry occlumency. He realized that keeping Harry 100% in the dark was a bad idea and started having him trained to defend his mind against Voldemort.
  • Yes, but what good is keeping Harry in the dark completely? "Harry, I can't talk to you for a whole year, don't take it personally, Voldemort might read your mind and this would endanger us all" vs. 'Hmm, I will tell Potter nothing and count on him not being an unguided missile from all the frustration and ignorance he gets from me.' As was said... Informing Harry that they couldn't talk to him too much for obvious reasons would beat ignoring Harry completely, any time. The worst they risk had they told him the truth? Voldemort finds out they're onto him when he reads Harry's memory of them telling him. Big deal... like he wouldn't know anyway when Harry was told to be taught Occlumency. There are slight or no risks of telling him in contrast to big risks of NOT telling him.

Really? Now Hermione's got the Idiot Ball too?

• "He could not believe he had been so stupid [...]. There was still a member of the Order of the Phoenix at Hogwarts - Snape." Of course Harry was so stupid. What is less believable is that Hermione didn't think about this.
  • She had a hard enough time trying to convince Harry that it wasn't likely that Sirius was caught, much less convincing him to go to Snape when she knows Harry will just blow up at her for mentioning it.
  • But she could have gone to Snape herself. Mind you, that would make the title of the book Hermione Granger and the Emotional Minefield...
  • To be fair to Hermione, the Umbridge-office plan was supposed to be a quick-and-dirty attempt to reassure Harry that Sirius was safe. She didn't understand how dangerous Umbridge was until the torture and confessions of attempted murder came out. And then, the next time she could suggest a plan, they were deep in the Forbidden Forest, with a bunch of pissed-off Slytherins in Umbridge's office keeping them from returning, and an easy way to get to London by flying.
  • Although then she picks up the idiot ball again by not having them fly to Grimmauld Place, which is basically the same distance, and having them look for reinforcements there before flueing to the Ministry of Magic.
  • They thought nobody was at Grimmauld Place. Harry had just checked and Kreacher appeared to be the only person there. And from their perspective it was a time-sensitive issue. They believe Sirius is held captive and in torture. They want to get there as soon as possible to save him. But then again they're also only fifteen - and therefore not prone to thinking 100% logically.
  • And given that at least an hour had passed between Harry finding Kreacher and the business with Umbridge, they thought that flying around trying to contact Order members was just going to give Voldemort even more time to torture Sirius. And they thought Snape hadn't believed them, so they were out of options. So their plan is find their way back up to the castle, track down Snape and argue with him to force him to believe the issue, which in their mind has no guarantee of working, or else go and help Sirius themselves. In stressful situations like that, the proactive option always seems more appealing. They wanted to do something.

Bye Bye Butt

• Moody's comment about how sticking a wand in your back pocket could cause you to lose your buttocks. So where else do you keep your wand, if apparently it's prone to catching fire or blowing up?
  • Your front pocket? Fanon likes to fill this by having wand holsters. Other than that, either in long sleeves as part of the robes wizards usually wear or in the robe pockets.
  • A wand in the front pocket at the level of the belt?
  • The real question is if wands work when in skin contact in places other than your hand. If they do, wizards should keep them that way, via arm holsters or whatever. Obviously you can't cast some spells, but you could apparate or cast a shield charm or a patronus or lumos or anything else that doesn't require a specific gesture. (This seems like the sort of thing real Moody would have taught, but either fake Moody didn't or the narrator just didn't recount it.)
  • And if you don't have a holster, you could, for example, keep it behind your ear, angled upward. That way it's not pointed anyone and yet is in skin contact. This raises an interesting Alternative Character Interpretation about Luna Lovegood.
  • A scene in Fantastic Beasts shows that Newt has a holster on his belt where he carries his wand when he's not using it.

Just attacked by Dementors? Grow some backbone, twerp.

• Harry brings Dudley home after saving him from the dementors. At no point does he tell Vernon or Petunia "Get him some chocolate, he'll feel better."
  • Stress of the moment. And besides, they were all yelling at him for trying to save Dudley's life.
  • And besides, it's just wizarding chocolate that had that effect. Mars bars aren't building in a 'Dementor-revivor' to their products. The Dursleys are hardly the type to have magical chocolate around.
  • Isn't it just chocolate's chemical properties?
  • It makes more sense to say chocolate makes you happy and staves off despair.
  • Eh, he was out of danger and had just had an antagonistic confrontation with Harry. Harry may care enough about his cousin to not want him to get his soul sucked out, but he wouldn't care that much about a little mental torment that he will get over eventually.
  • It's Dudley. His parents would end up giving him lots of chocolate whether Harry suggested it or not.
  • Not after they spent the whole previous year dieting, they wouldn't. They may not have had any chocolate in the house, and for all Harry knew, the dementors might be lurking nearby, ready to jump anyone who left the house to buy some. So even if he'd had a moment to think of it, it wouldn't have helped much.
  • Come off it. You try making the Dursley believe Harry when he talks about a mundane solution to a not-so-mundane problem.
  • Why did the Dementors affected Dudley as strongly as they did? Harry himself wonders "what horrible things pampered, spoiled Dudley would be forced to relive." Dudley's been spoiled all his life, does he have any bad memories?
  • IIRC the Dementors twisted around all his "good" memories for the purpose of showing him what a petty, spoiled SOB he was, rather than summoning up any "bad" memories.
  • That puts a new spin on Dudley being nice to Harry during the 6th and 7th book.
  • Well, there's the day he had to start sharing everything with some penniless orphaned relative; the day that he and his best friend were chased by a giant carnivorous constrictor; the week when his father went mad and insisted that the whole family leave everything behind and go driving randomly around Britain, culminating in that incident in the fishing shack where a dangerous giant put a curse on him; the night when he learned that wizards were entirely capable of sneaking into the house via a flying car as he slept, and barring the windows wouldn't stop them. The day that he learned the fireplace can't be trusted either, which was also the day that his tongue grew to eight feet length and his mother tried to yank it out.
  • That was only in the movies. But in the books, Dudley and his family well Asleep in the book when Ron and his twin brothers, George and Fred were in the house/outside Harry's bedroom. Its only the owl which woke Vernon up. Oh and ever since Summer before Harry first year of Hogwarts, that fireplace was blocked up.
  • Add here the day his aunt was turned into a balloon and he learned that wizards can and will erase your memories at a whim. It's amusing, actually, how it doesn't even begin to dawn on Harry, that he is the fuel for his cousin's nightmares. Our compassionate hero, ladies and gentlemen. A pity, really. It might've lead to some interesting realizations about the reasons for his mistreatment and abuse. Technically all Dudley learned was wizards can't be trusted.
  • Well, given that Harry has been mistreated by his guardians and Dudley, there's no logical reason for him to feel guilty about using magic in self-defense. Also, it's not obvious Harry lacks empathy, since the books made it clear that it was what made him stand out against Voldemort.
  • It's not that he should have felt guilty, it's that he doesn't even begin to recognize at all how much anguish and harm he and his world are bringing his guardians, and how utterly terrified they are of everything magical and that they have good reasons for that. The idea that Scarhead lacks empathy comes from these and numerous other episodes where he fails to comprehend the feelings and motives of people around him.
  • Well, Harry is not a seer and not always in the mood to understand the feelings of everyone around him. To be empathic doesn't mean "know exactly what's the matter with everybody, everytime". And about him not understanding the Dursley's feelings, that because they have never acted as reasonable, adult people. They have mistreated him during 10 years, never have tried to talk to him as a person. They only blame him for everything going wrong and refuse to listen to him when he tries to explain something. Remember, they punished him for doing magic, never explaining anything about it or why that bothered them so much. So, even if their fears are legitimate, it's difficult for Harry put himself in their shoes, because he is busy dealing with their abuse and general assholery.
  • Well, no, they hadn't. Because they were terrified of him. Because they had no idea what to expect, or how to explain it to him or to anyone else. And nobody says that putting yourself in other people's shoes, especially if those people are unpleasant, is easy. The point is that he never makes a slightest attempt to do so.
  • The Dursleys were not terrified of him at any point, they hated him and they consider him a disgrace for their family and an heavy obstacle to drag around and they make sure he knew that, but fear? Not at all. Even after he starts going to Hogwarts is clear that they feel more despise than anything, except maybe for Duddley. About "they had no idea what to expect", false too. Petunia is Lily's sister, she saw her going to Hogwarts, Lily's parents were not against magic, they probably were as enthusiastic as Hermione's parents and encourage magic (as that would explain Petunia's jealousy), that means that Petunia at least saw Lily practicing her homework in the summer if not even went alongside the rest of the family to Diagon Ally to buy stuffs and to say good bye to her in the train station. Petunia knows enough about magic to explain to Harry, if she doesn't do it is just out of spite and criminal negligence. And now that we stop trying to justify child abuse and request a teen-ager to act more mature than two adults, should be notice that despite all of the abuse and bullying, Harry did risk his life to save Duddley instead of just running away and they do became somewhat friends when they became adults. So he does put, to some degree, in Duddley's shoes, just not at 14, but when he was an adult, as most people do.
  • A part of it was just shock from seeing the dementors again, along with Harry being too busy wondering to himself why Dudley would actually need any chocolate - isn't there a point where he's asking why the dementors would've affected him as much as they did? Along with that, he may've been afraid of how the Dursleys might react to such a suggestion. "Your kid's just arrived home looking like a traumatized wreck? Oh, just give him some chocolate, he'll be fine!" They likely would've either burst out laughing or brushed him off as being nonsensically unhelpful.
  • Well, if he worded it that callously, then sure. If he gave it a two-second thought and said something like: "I've seen cases like this. Hell, I've been one. Believe it or not, chocolate helps.", they might've listened. Or not, it's their choice. It's all about intent. Do what you must, come what may. He had none whatsoever, so it doesn't matter how they would've reacted. Mind you, it's not like he expected V to take his advise to repent to heart, but he felt obligated to try. But those untermenshen? Meh, buck them, amirite?
  • You're taking the chocolate thing too literal. Lupin gave Harry chocolate but not because it was a magically remedy against Dementors' attack, just because it's a source of sugar, something that you actually do in real life with people that are under a shock or fading. It wasn't the "magical cure for Dementor attack" or "Dementor cryptonite", it was just a source of energy as much as a piece of candy. That said, Vernon and Petunia are two adults, they know, or should know, any person with those symptoms should be given sugar or any other energetic source and/or been taken to a doctor. As they did because they do took Duddley immediately to a doctor (not caring for Harry's health, btw) and Harry hear them, so he has no need to tell anything about chocolate, whatever the medic is going to give Duddley will be more effective.
• It's highly likely the good memories are what Dudley experienced first, although not necessarily his best memories. Dementors feed on misery. To make people miserable, they start by removing pleasurable thoughts. It's quite possible that Dudley actually relived fleeting glimpses of pleasure, for the most part, because none of his bad memories were traumatic enough to quickly render him unconscious. But it could also be that, in trying to fight off the forced depression, that the good things that came to mind suddenly didn't feel so good anymore. He was just being mocked for beating up a child several years his junior and then punched his cousin in fright, only to see that neither striking him nor getting away from him was helping, coming to the realization his cousin may not have been playing a trick on him but may have been earnest in spite of their antipathy. In a pinch, and this is something discussed in this very book series, most people tend to think of things closely related to recent stimuli. Not expecting forced depression attacks, Dudley isn't likely to think "my first bicycle/compute game" but "I used to be obese but now I'm a good boxer, I beat up little kids, I punch my cousin...that's not much to be proud of... what do I have to be proud of?" which leads to nothing, nothing and nothing, thanks to the dementors, who are also just made the warm summer day cold and dark, possibly sending his muggle body into shock.
  • Word of God is that when Dudley was attacked "I think he saw himself as he really was" - so after Harry banishes the Dementors, Dudley is actually having a Heel Realization about just how awful he is.
  • Thing is though, in the books at least, when Harry mentions Dementors, Petunia gets scared, she mentions she heard Lily and James talking about them, whatever they said must have made an impression if someone so ardently against magic knows to be horrified of them.

Just speak up already, Ginny!

• Did it bother anyone else that Ginny, during the days that Harry thought he was in danger of being possessed, didn't just knock on the door and say "Hey. I've been possessed, and can tell you what it feels like. Give me a shout if you want to talk."? Yes, Harry is acting like a pill, Yes, he shouldn't have forgotten, Yes, she's not his mother, but for God's sake, the kid saved her life and the life of her father, and now he thinks he's being possessed. Furthermore, it's been two and a half traumatic years since then, and Ginny has spoken to him for all of what, six minutes in those years? Letting him wallow until Hermione shows up seems like unnecessarily cruel; you can berate the kid for insensitivity after you've made sure he's okay.
  • Ginny did attempt to talk to him, but Harry, being Harry, bottled up his emotions, thought about it that night, and avoided everyone until Hermione came by the next day and forced him to explain what was bothering him.
  • She and Ron thought Harry needed to be left alone, that he wanted to be on his own. He thought they were avoiding him. It's only when Hermione forces them all into the same room that she realises their mistake.
  • Also, her father was just attacked by a snake. The whole family is pretty rattled (pun not intended) by it and Ginny didn't exactly know Harry all that well by that point. They're also all teenagers, and more importantly all different people whose ideas of what is the obvious course of action in a situation drastically shaped by their life up until that point. Half of the headscratchers here can be solved by remembering that just because a solution is obvious to you doesn't mean it is obvious to everyone. You might have a unique insight that makes something that nobody else would think of painfully obvious to you, due to any number of factors.

Too wimpy to commit torture?

• How the hell was Harry not able to cast a proper Cruciatus Curse on Bellatrix after she just killed his only remaining family member, but he had no problem doing it when a random Death Eater just spat on McGonnagall? So he didn't "mean it" the first time, but seeing a mere insult launched him into Unstoppable Rage?
  • Two possibilities. Bellatrix may have a higher pain tolerance and bluffed to Harry about how much it hurt, or Harry's righteous anger against her wasn't enough to make it effective, so when he used it in Deathly Hallows, he used a different sort of anger (knowing he has to mean it) and made it much more effective.
  • Bellatrix tells Harry as much after he zaps her. "Righteous anger won't do it, you have to mean it" (or something similar to that).
  • It's about proportionate retribution. Bellatrix killed Sirius, so Harry wanted her dead, not in pain. Carrow had been tormenting children for the whole year and was about to frame them up to Voldemort, but, as far as Harry was aware, didn't kill anybody, thus Harry hated him enough to wish to hurt, but not enough to wish to kill.
  • Harry was in rage-mode when he Crucio'd Bellatrix, but he was cold and cruel when he did the same to Carrow. Only in the latter situation is he concentrating on, "I want this person to suffer."
  • He didn't perform a true, full-on Crucio either time. The first time he wasn't old enough to have the magic oomph to normally do more than stun; rage let him send Bellatrix flying. The second time, as a stronger wizard with a more cynical and hating nature, he was again able to send an enemy flying into a bookcase in pain ("... won't hurt me FOR LONG) rather than just drop them to the ground in agony, which would make him evil rather than good but angry.
  • Maybe Harry was still overwhelmed with shock of seeing Sirius die?
  • One possible theory is that Crucio, as one of the Unforgivable Curses, requires someone filled with so much hatred/evil that they want their target to suffer immensely, and for as long as possible, instead of the sweet release that is death.
  • This. Also, it's possible that the Cruciatus Curse requires malice, not righteous anger. Cruciatus Curse might only work for someone who wants suffering for its own sake. In other words, maybe only a sociopath can perform it. Have we ever seen a non-sociopathic wizard or witch performing it successfully?
  • Harry's simply not evil enough to want to cause that much pain and torture.
  • It's just meant to speak as to the strength of the relationships between the two of them. Yes, Harry loves and has a strong bond with Sirius, but he actually knows little about the man, and a lot of the loyalty and admiration he has for Sirius and vice versa is due to the fact that Sirius was best friends with Harry's father. Also, Harry has also been shown to put Sirius on a pedestal at times, even when he knows deep down that he shouldn't, like when he blames Snape for goading Sirius into leaving Grimmauld Place to rescue him at the Ministry, or whenever he refuses to acknowledge that Sirius's reprehensible treatment of Kreacher was what drove him to betray him to the Malfoys. Compared to McGonnagall, who's done things like gotten Harry onto the Quidditch team, purchased him his first broom, and encouraged him to do what it took to become an Auror, and who only acts against Harry and his friends when it's for their own safety and protection, and it makes more sense that he would feel enraged at someone insulting her like that.
  • Also keep in mind that 17-year-old Harry has two more years' worth of traumatic experiences and brushes with evil than 15-year-old Harry, and is probably considerably more jaded. Don't underestimate the effect of simply being older on how much cruelty you can channel into a Cruciatus.
  • The point Bellatrix was making was not that Harry's rage was the wrong kind of emotion to fuel the Cruciatus. The ideal caster of the perfect Cruciatus curse would not be someone who had just watched a loved one killed and now had the killer at his mercy; rather, it would be the kind of person who gets off on skinning kittens alive.
  • It may also be a matter of personal hate. Harry vs Bellatrix, his thoughts were "She killed Sirius, she deserves to hurt". Against Carrow? It was "I WANT you to SUFFER". It's the difference between thinking of hurting someone as retribution versus wanting to hurt someone because you want to hurt them.

Everyone loves the scenic route

• Time that the Ministry Six depart from Hogwarts: sunset. (Explicitly mentioned in text). Time that Harry Potter is portkeyed back to Dumbledore's office after the DOM battle: dawn. (Again, explicit.) So, allowing 1-2 hours for creeping around the Ministry, being chased around the Ministry, being rescued at the Ministry, etc., that means that the kids must have been in the air all night and well into the dark of the next morning. So why did Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix not make it to the Ministry until around half an hour behind the children, given that Snape had the alert out right after they left? Does it take them all the way from mid-evening to circa 4 AM just to get up, have a staff meeting, and take the floo?
  • For that matter, why did Dumbledore not try contacting the kids en route, either by house elf or by Patronus messenger? "Harry, it's all right! I'm with Sirius and he's safe! You're being tricked by Voldemort! Come stop at Grimmauld Place before going to the Ministry; Molly has cookies!" He had hours.
  • Dumbledore needed the whole shenanigan to proceed in due course for a number of reasons: 1) to set up a face-off between V and Fudge, so that the latter would finally admit the obvious, dig his head out of the sand, and stop interfering with D's affairs, 2) to set up a showdown between V and Harry wherein V would attempt to possess Harry, get burned, and abandon that idea altogether, 3) to allow Potter's "outer circle" their "baptism by fire". Sirius's interference was, apparently, unexpected.
    • Maybe the gauntlet of manipulativeness at the end of book 1 could be a training exercise for Harry to defeat V. But the plan you just outlined above has way too many holes for it to be Chessmaster-worthy, i.e. The Death Eaters AK all the twerps the second they find the prophecy ball, and hightail it out of there in under a minute, cackling evilly as they go.
  • Even so, stupid. 'All right, here's the plan. We intercept the kids en route and keep them safe at Grimmauld Place.' 'But what about the Death Eaters? We have a perfect chance to-' 'And then a few hours later, at the time when the kids would have arrived at the Ministry, we make sure the Death Eaters see Harry going in alone to retrieve the Prophecy. They pounce, and we pounce immediately after they reveal themselves, not half an hour after.' 'You're sending Harry in there alone?' 'No, but Tonks shapeshifted into Harry works just as well.' Doesn't fulfill the 'deliberately expose Harry to Voldemort' objective, true, but that would have been a hideous jerk move anyway. Not to mention, there's easier ways to bait Tom into doing that; after all, Dumbledore specifically stated that was the reason he didn't want to give Harry Occlumency lessons himself.
  • The DE only revealed themselves after Harry grabbed the ball. Tonks couldn't do that for obvious reasons (wow, that didn't sound right). Even if they did show up, nailing them immediately would scare away V. As for the jerk move, it's true, but then again, nearly everything D had been doing from the end of "Prisoner of Azkaban" onwards was stupid, insane, or criminally irresponsible, and only worked because absolutely everything V had been doing was even more so, therefore this plan at least falls into the general pattern.
  • Have her step up to the shelf, pretend to pick up a glowy ball that she actually had up her sleeve, pretend to listen to it, and then say 'ohhh THAT's what the prophecy is!' out loud. Then pretend to put the ball back on the shelf. If the DEs haven't revealed themselves already, they sure will now. Capturing 'Harry' and making 'him' talk is now their only option left for finding out.
  • The real prophecy ball will just obligingly disappear from the shelf to maintain the ruse. The Death Eaters were already there, standing around the shelf, invisible. Not to mention, that who says you can actually playback the prophecy without anyone around you seeing and/or hearing the process?
  • "The Death Eaters were already there, standing around the shelf, invisible." Yes, and the #1 and #2 biggest badasses in the Order (Dumbledore and Moody) can both see through invisibility cloaks.
  • To explain the timeline, we have to understand the narration doesn't say what happened, Dumbledore says what happens, but there is no way for Dumbledore to actually know what happened. Hence, he is an Unreliable Narrator. So here we go with the events:
    
    About seven or so, Snape is told by Harry 'He’s got Padfoot at the place where it’s hidden!'. Snape walks out of the room, baffled by pronouns 'he' and 'it', but goes to check on where Sirius is.
    
    Shortly after, Snape returns to Umbridge's office to see what's going on. The Inquistion Squad are there, tied up. Upon questioning Draco, Snape learns that Harry and Hermione and others have apparently been hiding some sort of secret weapon for DD in the forest, and that's where everyone went. And, importantly, Snape assumes this hidden weapon place Hermione is talking about is the place where it is hidden that Harry was talking about.
    
    A few hours later, Snape gets worried they haven't returned from the forest. Which is where they must be, as they can't apparate and they didn't fly as Hogwarts doesn't let students leave without permission. He tells the Order they didn't come back, and goes and searches the forbidden forest in the dark. (This is actually when the search mentioned happens.) Probably searches the castle also.
    
    He does _not_ consider the Department of Mystery, as a) That's in London and there's no way they could be in London, b) if they were going to London, surely they'd be going to Grimmauld Place where they know Sirius is, c) the Order has a guard stationed at the D of M who will surely notify someone if Harry showed up, c) the D of M has nothing to do with Sirius, and d) the D of M has nothing to do with a hidden weapon.
    
    Around three in the morning (Which makes it about an eight hour trip, which is a reasonable ~50 mph from Scotland), the kids arrive at the Ministry of Magic.
    
    At some point after Snape says 'I wonder if that idiot child was talking about the Prophesy when he said 'The place where it was hidden'? The Prophesy is not hidden, and is not a weapon, but Potter is a complete moron, so maybe...'. He contacts the Order, explains what's going on. They, unable to contact their (dead) Prophesy guard, run to the rescue.
    
    During the middle of the battle, elsewhere, DD finally finishes up the all-night Star Wars marathon at the local theater, and and checks his cell phone messages. He hurries to Grimmauld Place, where he is met by Kreacher. He then learns the events of the entire evening via Legimancy from a house elf who didn't even observe anything Snape did.
    
    DD joins the battle. Battle ends at 5:30, DD sends Harry to Hogwarts. He spends the next 30 minutes talking to Fudge, as he promised.
    
    There are two sources of information that could reach him during this conversation. Except he can't talk to Snape in front of everyone, and the Order members still standing can't approach DD to explain what happened during this, or can't give more than vague hints, because the Order is supposed to be secret. (Assuming that they even know what happened. For all we know, they were asleep all night until Moody grabbed them on the way out the door.)
    
    Thirty minutes later, at sunrise, DD excuses himself from Fudge, and immediately goes to Hogwarts to talk to Harry. He explains 'what happened' based entirely from what he forced from Kreacher's mind. That is his entire source of the night's events, as the text clearly says. DD having some parts of it wrong is not impossible.
    
    In fact, we know part of what DD said is wrong. It is impossible for Snape to have worried that Harry 'still believed Sirius to be a captive of Lord Voldemort's'. While Snape knows about the D of M vision of the hallway and doors, this was the first day that the vision included Voldemort in any way at all. So Snape can't know who 'he' refers to that is holding Sirius. (Sirius is a wanted criminal. Perhaps Harry thought Fudge captured him, and was about to have him Kissed.) DD learned the content of the vision from Kreacher, along with everything else that happened that night.
  • Sorry, doesn't work. First of all, the "weapon" is clearly bullshit and a ruse to escape from Umbridge. Severus could confirm this with DD. Second, "he" cannot be anyone other than Voldemort, because only his connection with Harry could've given the kid the idea that Sirius was captured and only he had any reasons to inform the kid about it. Third, since there's no "weapon", the "place where it's hidden" could only refer to the Prophecy and the Do M. Harry used it as a code, so he expected Severus to quickly understand it, and the Do M was the only hiding place they'd recently discussed. Also, even if Snape wasn't given the details of V's plan, he had to know that it would commence that night, because he was the only Death Eater in Hogwarts, so only he could've ensured that the kid would be able to leave the castle safely, and that was obviously his task.
  • Please give the slightest bit of justification how 'the place when it is hidden' obviously refers to the prophesy, which is, of course, not hidden in the slightest, but is sitting in plain sight where it's always been. And technically Harry is not actually talking about the prophesy there, he is talking about something that does not even exist (The weapon the Trio decided the Order was guarding.), and he does not know about the prophesy at all. So it's a little baffling how you think Harry and Snape could have discussed its hiding place. (And it's also a little baffling why you think the Trio having conversations in code about it can possibly help Snape locate them. Of course Hermione and Ron knew what Harry meant by 'the place where it's hidden'.)
  • Snape can't confirm anything with DD, because DD was incommunicado almost all the night, which we learned when DD recounted the night.
  • 'The weapon' is clearly bullshit and a ruse to escape Umbridge when we see it, but Snape did not see it. He would have learned of it from the Slytherins. And it doesn't matter whether he actually believed that or not. The students were, as far as he knew, still in the Forbidden Forest. Whether they were at a hypothetical weapon or just wandering around aimlessly didn't matter that much, except that had he seen something weapon-y he would have investigated.
  • And, on top of all that, assuming that Snape knew about V's plan, to up and assuming he knew this would be the night that they needed to learn, is completely unsupported by the text. If he knew this was the night, he would have told the Order, and they would have been in place much sooner, and DD wouldn't have been out of touch the entire night. To have Snape act the way he does, you basically have to assume that Snape is a triple agent that is actually loyal to V. That may be your fanon, but it's not clearly not how the story actually is. If Snape is a good guy, he couldn't have known about the plan much beyond 'V wants the prophesy'.
  • 1) There's no reason why DD would be unreachable 2) "place where it's hidden" can only mean the Department of Misteries, because Harry expects Snape to understand his code message, and DoM was the only place they'd recently discussed as a place where something is hidden. 3) "He" can only be Voldemort, because only Voldemort could've given Harry the message about Sirius or would've had any reasons to do so. Coincidentally, the only place Voldemort could be interested in Harry's attendance to was Do M. 3) The Order could not've acted on Severus information and arrive early because it would've blown his cover. Neither would they act, since the events that night transpired according to DD'd design. And again, it stands to reason that Severus was told about the plan, because only he could've ensured Harry's unobstructed departure from Hogwarts.
  • And an alternate explanation is that DD is just lying. Harry is trying to blame Snape for Sirius dying, so DD says that Snape immediately figured out what was going on and told everyone, when DD does know it took Snape hours to think of it. So DD lied to avoid the obvious 'I bet Snape figured it out immediately and delayed telling people on purpose!' idea that Harry was about to have. (Which makes no sense for Snape to do even if he was trying to kill Sirius, because it was Harry in danger, not Sirius, but Harry was not entirely rational at the time and probably would not believe that.)
  • Night time in northern Scotland in June is pretty darn short, if memory serves.
  • Sunset is around 9:30-10pm?!? Harry gets the phony vision of Sirius being tortured during his History of Magic OWL, in other words, middle of the afternoon. The text specifically states that the students are just starting dinner when Umbridge takes them into the Forbidden Forest. Even allowing for the time it takes to lose Umbridge and all, there is no way that this sequence works without someone just unaccountably sitting on his hands for a couple hours doing absolutely nothing. Great, now we've got two unaccounted time sinks in the same scene; between the initial vision and the sunset takeoff, and the one we've already been discussing! Bad at math indeed, Ms. Rowling.
  • Trying to have some tranquility to the debate, the simplest explanation is, well, the simplest; Snape thought the children were with Umbridge in the Forbidden Forest, he has no reason to believe they were in any immediate danger other than Umbridge’s tortures up until they find out Umbridge has taken too long in coming back. The only one in danger to his knowledge (assuming he did figure it out immediately) was Sirius; a man he hates and can’t care less.
  • Please bear in mind that Dumbledore quite possibly was incommunicado; he'd fled with Fawkes, remember? Unless he had a fireplace or one of those mirrors, an owl or Patronus would've taken a while to reach him.
  • So after leaving Umbridge's office, Snape has to go and contact the Order to check where Sirius is. We don't know how long this takes or who he's contacting, but clearly long enough that he has no idea where Harry and friends are. He has to check Umbridge's office and question the remaining students, then possibly check the Gryffindor common room and other places Harry might be before he realizes that they've gone to London. His only clue was that they went into the forest with Umbridge, so he has to search there as well. Then he has to relay this information to the Order. So it did indeed take a lot of time. And the Order probably had to search the department as well - since none of them were in the Hall of Prophecy anymore.
• Even if we assume Snape understood Harry's message perfectly, he did not expect the kids to make it to the Department of Mysteries on their own. After all, Hogwarts is in Scotland and the Ministry is in London. The kids are too young to Apparate, presumably don't know how to make Portkeys (which are implied to be traceable anyway), and don't have broomsticks (with Harry's Firebolt having been confiscated). Additionally, the Floo is locked down (except in Umbridge's office). It simply wouldn't have occurred to Snape that the kids would take thestrals and fly to London from Scotland. (Consider that this was Luna's idea, and she is known for outside-the-box thinking that wouldn't occur to ordinary people. Additionally, flying to London on thestrals was an act of desperation; had Sirius been in danger, it is likely that he would have been killed while the kids were en route). Given that the kids were last spotted in the Forbidden Forest, that would be the most likely place for them to be. The Forest is implied to be rather sizeable, and it would have taken Snape some time to search it before determining that the kids weren't there. Then, it would be on to other places to look for the kids, such as on the school grounds, inside Hogwarts, etc.

Bloody Protection

• Where was that vaunted and much fussed over "Protection" Harry was supposed to have, when Harry was attacked by Dementors?
  • If you're referring to the protection from Aunt Petunia's blood, that only works when he's on Privet Drive or possibly even on the Dursleys' property. He was on Magnolia Crescent when the dementors attacked him.
  • Even if that is true, how could it possibly be effective in the first place? Harry obviously couldn't be expected to stay at home 24/7.
  • Dumbledore says something to back that idea. From chapter 37:

    Dumbledore: While you can still call home the place where your mother's blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge. You need return there only once a year, but as long as you can still call it home, whilst you are there he cannot hurt you.

  • So it's confirmed then, that the "Protection" was absolutely useless. And by DD, no less. Delightful.
  • The blood protection was against Voldemort and his minions specifically. The dementors were sent by Umbridge, not LV, so they may have been able to ignore it entirely.
  • Handwave doesn't even begin to describe it. How the heck would the protection tell one from another? Did the Dementors show their credentials? What is even the point in such "filter"? An enemy is still an enemy, no matter his origins, especially if it's the darkest and foulest of all beings and natural allies to Voldemort. So what, Harry is safe from V's minions who are mostly dead or in Azkaban, but if another aspiring Dark Lord decides to make himself a name by killing the Boy Who Lived, the boy's screwed?
  • For the last freaking time: Magic.
  • For as many times as it would take to sink in: it's stupid! It is a lazy excuse at the best of times, and it flat out fails in a world where magic is subject to natural laws and restrictions.
  • No, it's not subject to natural laws! You can jump up and down on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, magic itself seems to have intelligence, information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light. Sweet Jesus, there's hardly a law of physics that isn't broken. Magic does not care how you think it should work, it works how it wants to, which happens to be that it is able to tell whether a threat is sent by Voldemort or not. You can whine about that all you like, it's just how magic works.
  • There is the fifth-exclusion-from-whatever that prohibits conjuring up food; animagi can only morph into a single animal; when V needs to root out the opposition, he cannot just wish to find all people who hate him - he has to set up a definite trigger (his name spoken aloud); time travel operates on Stable Time Loop; Quirrel burns on Harry, because he shares a body with V, but other Death Eaters can touch him without any harm etc. What magic does has to make sense. With that in mind, what exactly constitutes "a threat sent by Voldemort". What is the trigger? Caused by V himself? He'll have others do it. The Dark Mark? He'll send people without it. Knowingly taking command from him? He'll hire assassins anonymously. He's not some demon, he cannot "taint" people merely by communicating with them. How obscure should the connection between V and the threat itself be, before the protection stops reacting to it? Heck, Umbridge sent the Dementors to silence Harry, because he was trumpeting V's return, which he did because of V. So in a matter, that threat was also caused by V, but the protection didn't work. Does this mean that if he manipulates people into wanting to kill Harry, like, say, by taking their relatives hostage, the protection won't work? And that is only what concerns living, or at least sentient, threats. What about inanimate ones? Let's say a jet explodes in the sky above the Dursley's house, and a turbine is falling right at it. Will the protection care if the jet exploded by itself or if it was blown up by V (or his cronies, or a hired terrorist, or a brainwashed random person, you get the idea)?
    • We can also speculate what happens if a T-Rex makes a rampage in Private Drive. It doesn't matter how much overthinking is done over the issue, the rules are clear and the results indeed fit the events depicted in the works, a + b = c, the rest is just nitpicking pure and simple.
  • Moreover, why exactly was it supposed to only last until Harry's 17th birthday? Seriously, is there ANY explanation at all?
  • The protection only lasted until Harry became a wizard of age. Presumably he wasn't going to keep living at Privet Drive once he was old enough to perform magic legally.
  • Moreover, each book at some point in the summer Harry is removed from Dursley's home and spends the rest of it elsewhere. How does that fit in with the whole protection theme? Are we are to assume that DD can protect Harry from harm by other means at those times? Then the blood protection is redundant and Harry's incarceration with Dursleys was needlessly cruel to both him and them. Or that Harry only needs to spend some time at Dursleys to "recharge" the protection for the rest of summer? In that case he could've stayed with a wizard foster family and only visit Dursleys for the required period.
  • It makes more sense to say Harry needs to actually live with Petunia. She has to accept him as part of her family (much hated, but still) and thus, offer him a home where he will live outside of school. He has to have a home there, not just a place he visits for two weeks or so, but a fixed place to live at.
  • But it's not a fixed place to live anymore, and Harry keeps spending a large part of the summer elsewhere. Or what, it's ok that he leaves, as long as the leave is unexpected and he expected to spend the whole summer there, or at least Petunia expected that he would? It wouldn't be enough if she offered him a place to stay anytime he wanted and that wouldn't count as "having a home"? How more contrived and ridiculously vague could this "ultimate protection" possibly get?
  • Dumbledore was obviously not happy about how the Dursleys treated Harry. BUT, in line with the "he needs to have his home there" rule, he couldn't just remove Harry. But how then was it ok for Harry to leave in Book 2 and 5? In 4 we know Dumbles was ok with it (I guess? Can't remember), probably because it was close to September anyways ("Let's allow young Harry to have something nice from summer, what could happen?") and in 3 he was to stay at Diagon Alley, where enough adult wizards were... but 2 and 5? Dumbles had the choice between a powerful wizard foster family where Harry would surely grow up with his own legend (he frowned upon this, remember?) and a muggle upbringing with magic protection. He chose the latter (could not forsee HOW bad it would turn out). And then had to stick to it for one reason or another.
  • Yes, we remember, and it's Barely Sensible. Even if that dichotomy wasn't false as all hell, it would still be a morally atrocious decision, for no amount of potential spoilering could possibly justify submitting a child to 12 years of abuse (and, you know, submitting Dursleys to 12 years of living in constant fear, but buck those untermenshen). But it is false as all hell! There was no reason why Harry would have to "live with his own legend" and be spoiled, because his legend is false as well, and DD knew that. All he had to do was tell Harry's foster parents the truth. Why couldn't he tell the whole world the truth? Praising Harry was an insult to the memory of his mother - the true heroine, whose sacrifice actually destroyed Voldemort.
  • Ok, headcanon time. The BP works on all people who consider 4 Privet Drive a "home", for a given definition of "home". It extends to outside the property, because if one goes from their "home" to the store, they would still think they are "living at home". The Dementors bypassed this because the BP works off of Lilly sacrificing herself to protect Harry from Voldemort. Dumbledore was able to stretch the definition to "Lilly died to protect all of her living relatives from anyone seeking to harm them in Voldemort's name", and Umbridge does not fit that definition.
  • That still doesn't explain why Harry was forced to live there any more than necessary which was clearly less than the whole summer. Also "anyone seeking to harm them in Voldemort's name" does not, in all common sense, include an assassin hired by an anonymous party. Also, if that was the trigger, but Umbridge's desire to silence the kid, steaming, ultimately, from V's return, didn't qualify, it means the protection had a huge whole, easily exploitable by indirectly influencing people, such as, say, kidnapping their relatives.
  • Yes, that’s the point. The protection is limited and can be overpass. Harry is not indestructible, is not like anyone can’t harm him. He can’t be harm by a specific group of people with a specific group of motivations, but he can still be hit by a bus, that’s why he’s in danger in every single book. Yes, is not much, but is something and it does provide a big relief from been the target of the second most powerful and the most cruel wizard in the world, otherwise he’ll be dead long ago. And about why he spend time in Private Drive, well actually the books does shows him spending every time less and less, in Goblet he spent a lot of time with the Weasleys and in Order he spent a lot of time in Sirius’ house, but he still has to have the Dursley’s house as his primary residence.
  • "He can’t be harmed by a specific group". Exactly. There's nothing to indicate that even that specific group cannot overcome the protection, so he's not safe at all. "in Goblet he spent a lot of time with the Weasleys" And before that he'd been spending all the time with them for eleven years why?
  • " There's nothing to indicate that even that specific group cannot overcome the protection, so he's not safe at all." Except that he was not harmed in any way by Death Eaters in all the years of his childhood nor even after he enters Hogwarts, nor even an attempt on his life happened. So as far as we can tell, yes the blood protection did work perfectly.
  • This is a fiction book. Things happen in it the way the author wills it. You cannot appeal to simple fact of some eventuality taking place in fiction as a justification of it being sensible. Because plot holes exist. Which is what this is, unless proven otherwise.
  • A plothole is a situation when the author says "A" and happens "B" with no clear explanation. This is a situation in which the author said "A" and "A" happened, so there's no plothole at all.
  • This whole debate is a mess of overthinking. If Harry considers Privet Drive (one of) his home(s), then being at Privet Drive protects him. It's not something you can psychologically rules-lawyer out of: either he thinks of it as being where he lives or he doesn't. It's tied to genuine emotion, so he does have to at least try to consciously accept Privet Drive as his home (accept, mind, not like), which he obviously isn't doing if he's actively looking for loopholes. Is he protected when he's not at Privet Drive? No. But there are limits to how far Dumbledore can control Harry's life, especially given his self-imposed limitations.
  • But that's the thing, there's no need for overthinking, the rules are clear. There's no mention anywhere that his feelings matter, that he in "his heart" need to feel Private Drive as his home or having any emotional bond to the place, he just have to have Private Drive as his official, legal, residence. That's it. Everything else is what people add for melodramatic reasons like "You need to love the place you call home", which is never mentioned in-universe. Whether the protection works only when he is inside the place or not, that's another matter although in practice nor Voldemort nor anyone in his name was ever capable of killing Harry directly outside Private Drive thus as far as we know, it did.
    • There's no reason the protection magic cares about the official, legal definition of "home." It's love, i.e. emotional magic, so of course it's primarily going to respond to the emotional, social, psychological sense of "Harry's home." This is explicit in Dumbledore's explanation; he directly says that whether or not Harry calls it home is what matters, not what the Muggle government or the Ministry or anyone else says. It's a matter of what Harry feels and intends and how Petunia feels and intends (important, because whether or not Petunia likes or even cares about Harry, she obviously intended to keep him protected from Voldemort.) Anyway, the original Headscratcher was about why the protection didn't work on the Dementors, so of course the question of whether or not the protection holds outside the house is important.
    • Whether is emotional or legal the definition of home, it has to be Private Drive in order for the blood protection to work. Now, about the Dementors attack, it didn't work, the Dementors did not killed Harry. Is never said that the protection is like a force field around him, it could mean that something would always happen in a way he escapes alive (which would explain a lot in retrospective).
  • Isn't the protection just against Voldemort? Since he was the one who killed Lily, it should only affect him.
  • Putting aside the possibility that the Blood Protection works constantly to tilt the odds in Harry's favor to keep him alive, all the time, and going into some speculation on how this all works and account for what has been said: Dumbledore places the protection on Harry, which works to directly prevent either Voldemort and those affiliated with him (likely in a semantics sort of "All who are tied to Voldemort and are acting, knowingly or not, under his direction" way) from physically finding/appearing at Privet Drive (like the Fidelus Charm but without the Secret Keeper flaw) or they could actually get there, but can't do harm to Harry in some form or another, as long as he is living at, and being allowed to live at, however unwillingly on the part of his Aunt Petunia or himself, the same place as his only living maternal relative, and likely this protection extends or shifts position depending on how far away Harry and Petunia are from each other, as a possible caveat to why traveling away from home like they did in the first book is never a problem. Now, as said above, it isn't foolproof, but that does make it so Harry is not going to be hunted down and killed like his parents were, either by Voldemort later on, or by his followers before that. It also seems that along with not explaining any of this, Rowling unfortunately didn't specify whether it protects Harry outside of that specific area or not, it likely does protect him past that, just that the distance it starts to weaken is broad, ranging to essentially the point that Harry is safe within any reasonable walking distance from Privet Drive/his Aunt, and possibly still safe even after that. However, going a full stretch of the country away he is not or it isn't strong enough to trust. As to Harry not staying there every summer the whole time, take note that before Voldemort came back Harry was, in the 2nd book, taken without Dumbledore's apparent consent or knowledge until after the fact, but cut Harry slack because things weren't too bad yet, the school year was starting soon, and the Dursleys had been particularly awful that year, which it's doubtful went unaddressed and was something Dumbledore discussed with the Dursleys, hence them agreeing to take him back at all. 3rd year was a total mess, and Harry left on his own on the spur of the moment due to the situation with Marge, and after that the situation was handled by the Ministry. 4th year, the Weasleys most likely talked with Dumbledore about it on whether Harry could go, along with the Ministry, if only to set up the Floo Network connection with the latter party, and measures were taken to insure that at least no agents of Voldemort were snooping around, and notably none of the Death Eaters knew Harry was there or at least didn't care enough, so the risk was validated there. After that, it's doubtful the 5th year needs explaining, since they were already guarding Harry actively in case he was attacked but Mundungus screwed that up, and they then remove him to Grimmauld Place, and then 6th year Dumbledore comes himself, and 7th year was the end of that protection anyway. As to the times in 2nd and 4th year with Harry being at the Burrow and whether it was safe there or not, it's likely none of the Death Eaters or their allies knew where the Burrow was, at least at the time, and as stated, the threat was there, but manageable and not for long when it came up. All that in mind, the Blood Protection isn't there to protect Harry from everything and anything, all the time more just to make sure Harry literally doesn't need a bodyguard squad from potential Death Eaters that are loyal like the Lestranges, Sirius Black (supposedly), or Barty Crouch Jr. his entire life for when he's not in school, which he hasn't except when it started to get bad and directly was wanted dead by Voldemort, who had gotten his body and followers back, and then it was just a solid amount of protection for most situations, but guards were there just in case of other emergencies and only failed the one time when it was needed most.

Positive thinking... Hermione, WTF?

• So, we all know that Hermione is a smart girl. That much is clear. And also we know, that the House-elves get free, if their master gives them a piece of clothes. So, why did the smart girl think that her leaving the clothes in Gryffindor room would free someone? She isn't their master, it's Dumbledore. And leaving clothes in Main Room isn't giving. So, is Hermione too stupid to understand that or is she trying to convince herself?
  • Hermione wasn't even listening when she was told House Elves like their jobs and getting clothes equals being fired in disgrace. Her intentions were good but her brain was sadly absent for much of her SPEW work.
  • It's not about the fact that she should know they liked the work. That's different matter. But she knew only the clothes their master gave them would free them, and she was clearly not their master, which she also knew. So, WTF?
  • Apparently, stupidity is contagious. You can't abide around Harry and Ron for five years and not catch some. Although, seeing how the elves were so appalled by those hats they stopped cleaning the Gryff common room, perhaps they could've been used to free them (or maybe they were just that hideous, lol); maybe there was some loophole in that the elves were loyal to Hogwarts and all its denizen in general (like the whole Malfoy family were considered Dobby's masters, not just Lucius) and as such could be freed by any of them.
  • Maybe it was because Hermione was a prefect? Maybe she considered that enough "authority" to free the elves? Obviously people would accidentally leave hats, gloves, scarves, etc in the common room all the time, but the Elves didn't freak out over it.
  • That's only half the stupidity. The other problem is that House Elves, being servants, surely can pick up even their master's clothing without becoming free. Or are we assuming that Lucius Malfoy washes his own clothes? There's a fun question of whether they're generally freed by just being handed clothing, or if Dobby used a somewhat dubious interpretation of the rules to escape his situation. But picking up clothing owned by someone else can't possibly count as being 'given' clothing, especially when their entire premise is as a magical servant. Dobby proves it, if he could have picked up a random spare sock off the floor, he would freed himself years ago!
    • Quoting The Dom: “Oh House Elves! It’s always tricky to ask them to do laundry”.
  • The House Elves seemed insulted that someone was deliberately leaving clothes around with the intention of freeing them, not that they would be freed if they picked up said clothes. They probably realised what Hermione was doing the moment that the common room was littered with hats and gloves, and while they were in no danger of being freed it they picked said items up, they were horrified that someone was trying to 'free' them, which is a big insult to House Elves.
  • Also, even if not freed in of itself, a house elf wearing clothes is still sends an obvious message to a man who she already has no problem with free elves or paying elves.

Draco the Prefect

• Why is Draco Malfoy made a Prefect? He doesn't seem remotely qualified for the position and he blatantly abuses it. He's never implied to be more than an average student, either. Dumbledore surely is a better judge of character than that!
  • What's Draco's competition? Crabbe and Goyle? Someone has to be the fifth-year male Slytherin prefect.
  • "Dumbledore surely is a better judge of character than that" *five minutes of uncontrollable insane laughter*. Ok, seriously though, it makes perfect sense. Snape needed to gain Draco's trust and what's a better way to do it than by (ostensibly) pushing his appointment as a prefect through.
  • For the sake of plot? Actually Blaise Zabini seems more worthy of being a Prefect, but Rowling didn't give any details about him until the next book. Likewise Pansy Parkinson isn't exactly Prefect material, but it fits seeing as how she's the Slytherin equivalent of Hermione.
  • Forget Blaise Zabini! What about Theodore Nott? From what we know he's extremely clever and isn't known to bully anyone like Malfoy does. Why wasn't he made prefect?
  • Possibly Draco took Nott or Blaise aside and explained to them why turning down the job of prefect, should it be offered to them, would be a substantial contribution to their personal health fund.
  • Consider this: Dumbledore doesn't appoint the prefects; the Heads of the Houses choose their own prefects (they are, or at least should be, the ones who know their own students best, after all). Dumbledore, of course, has the final say, and the power to veto the Heads' decisions. However, he hardly ever does, partly because he trusts his employees judgment and possibly because he is so afraid of abusing his position of power that often he fails to wield the power he does possess even when he should. He intervenes for Harry, because Harry is a special case, but for the other prefects he doesn't get involved. Which means that Snape was the one who approved Draco Malfoy as prefect, and we know Snape plays favorites.
  • Remember how DD tells Harry that he didn't make him a prefect because Harry had a lot of other, more important responsibilities re Voldemort? Fridge Brilliance is that he made Malfoy a prefect precisely so that the latter would have less opportunities for developing such responsibilities.

Oh Look, a Pensieve! Gee, That's Not Private

• Why on earth would Harry look into Snape's Pensieve? Sure, he hates the guy's guts, but that's still no reason to do something as invasive as looking at someone else's private memories. Snape didn't get mad when Harry managed to use Occlumency correctly and therefore see a few snippets of the memories that he chose to retain during the lessons (kid Snape cowering; teen Snape sitting isolated and shooting flies off the wall.) He's already willing, maybe not happy, but willing to risk letting Harry see these less-intense memories compared to SWM; he specifically chose to retain his more personal memories in the Pensieve. So why the heck would Harry violate that? Does he have so little self-control?
  • Why would he know better? It's not like he'd ever gotten any comeuppance for doing the similar thing in the past, like peeking into Filch's mail or into the Pensieve itself.
  • However much we may sympathize with Harry as a protagonist, Snape is right on target when he comments, "Potter has been crossing lines ever since he arrived at this school." The only time he was appropriately punished was way back in his first year (Professor M. docked him 50 points and a detention for sneaking around after hours): since then, he's been able to skate out of punishment one way or another. Harry was simply in the wrong here, the nosy little snoop.
  • Harry's got his share of punishment at the Dursleys (locking him in his cupboard for DAYS because of accidental magic), which more than makes up for the lack of punishment here and there. And plus, IIRC, they were helping Hagrid that night, so it wasn't like they were fooling around.
  • Punishment doesn't work proactively, so whatever DD allowed Dursleys to do to him only hurt, not helped.
  • That might be inaccurate. Harry's been punished for rule-breaking the entire series. The problem is, most of his rule-breaking coincides with whatever plot was going on this year. Snape kind of missed the point with that comment.
  • He'd almost never been punished in a way it stung, and even when he had been, like with the massive point deduction in the first book or Lupin telling him off in the third for sneaking out, it was all negated later.
  • Remember, he wasn't after Snape's personal secrets. He wanted to know if Snape was hiding any Order information from him, namely about Mysterious dark hallway with a door.
  • Also, Snape is telepathically rummaging through Harry's most painful childhood memories every week, and then being a dick to Harry about them. At this point, its not surprising that Harry's respect for Snape's privacy or dignity would be nonexistent; from Harry's point of view, Snape is showing zero respect for Harry's privacy or dignity.
  • He'd been a dick about it once, and even then it amounted to *gasp* smirking and asking whose dog it was that chased Harry up a tree. He never mentioned his memories again, and it makes sense why. He also had his painful memories exposed to the kid, and then he left the kid alone with the Pensieve. Of course, some people are just blind to the signs of tentative trust and respect, whadyougonnadoaboutit. You would argue that Sev was being a dick generally during the lessons, but that was mentioned earlier. V would inevitable learn about the lessons through his link with Harry. Moreover, if he did, but Severus had kept silent, it would've given him away, so most likely Sev had to just tell V about the lessons. After that Sev was without doubt ordered to sabotage the lessons. He couldn't bullshit his way around, since V could personally monitor the progress, or rather the lack thereof, and his position within V's ranks was crucial to the cause, so he did the only thing he could - teach the kid while being a dick about it, hoping that the kid would pick up on his ruse and cooperate. Naturally, his hope was crushed.
  • Snape had exactly one non-dickish interaction with Harry Potter in his entire life, that being the day he died! Snape has no right to complain that Harry Potter doesn't like, respect, or trust him and acts accordingly; Snape has deliberately gone way out of his way for years to guarantee that Harry has the worst opinion of him possible.
  • You make an interesting point about Snape's seeming inability to recognize and empathize with the fact that both Harry and Snape had traumatic childhoods. Still, there's no evidence that Snape told Voldemort about the lessons. Voldemort found out on his own. The simple truth is that Dumbledore should have been teaching Harry. Snape's too much of a Sadist Teacher/Stern Teacher and Harry can be overemotional sometimes. Combined with their personal history together, it was a recipe for disaster.
  • Maybe his lip curled in disgust, not amusement, maybe because he, albeit grudgingly, felt empathy towards Harry. He did complement Harry after: "Well, for a first attempt that was not as poor as it might have been.." Dumbledore probably asked Snape to give updates on how the lessons were going, and Snape told Dumbledore more about Harry's abusive relatives. As a result, the Order went to King's Cross to threaten Uncle Vernon.
  • It just seems logical that he'd have to tell, otherwise... "Severus, it turns out Dumbledore ordered you to give Potter Occlumency lessons. And you were going to tell me about it... when, exactly?" Not that it matter much. The rest is sound, but Sev did recognize and emphasize with that fact in his own manner, but Harry failed to see it.
  • It may seem logical, but in the book, Voldemort found out through the bond. Nobody told him. Out of the two. Harry was the one who recognized and emphasized how alike he and Snape were. He floos Lupin and Sirius the next chance he gets, extremely upset about what he saw. Later in the seventh book, he mentally refers to Snape, Voldemort and himself as lost boys who made their home at Hogwarts. It's a bit of a plot point.
  • Harry only ran off to call Sirius and Lupin, because his father was involved. Broken Pedestal and all that. Earlier he'd already seen the glimpses of Sev's horrible childhood, but it didn't change his attitude at all. He still showed no appreciation for what Snape was doing for him, and never bothered to understand, why Snape was acting the way he did, although the answer was right there. And even after the Worst Memory incident he didn't feel guilty for what he did and never tried to reconcile with Snape. Hell, he blamed him for Sirius' death! And those contemplations in the seventh book, what did matter? He still hated Snape right up to the moment when he was told, that *gasp* Sev was a good guy. And even then he didn't stop to ponder, that hadn't he been so biased and dim-witted, Snape might've survived. Snape, on the other hand, acted on his revelations, as much as his constricting situation allowed him. He stopped teasing Harry and then left him alone in his sanctum.
  • To be fair, there were other, more pressing matters capturing Harry's attention immediately following the final Snape-related revelation. The epilogue shows that he gave it some thought a bit later on.
  • Why do people even find it a problem that Harry 'violated Snape's privacy' under the circumstances? Remember the discussion Harry had with Hermione about how Harry wasn't sure if Snape was actually teaching him Occlumency or just opening up his mind further for Voldemort? Harry had a legitimate suspicion at that time that Snape was a double agent for the Death Eaters. Sure, we know where Snape's ultimate loyalties lay (although we might want to stop a second and remember that the fandom didn't have any firm knowledge of exactly which side Snape was a double agent for until book 7), but Harry didn't. So the entire 'no respect for privacy!' thing is irrelevant. Harry wasn't snooping in Snape's stuff because he wanted to prank Snape, Harry was snooping in Snape's stuff looking for evidence about a possible threat from Voldemort with at least some kind of probable cause to actually suspect Snape of being that threat. That might not be 100% legal (although since when does 'legal' apply to anything the Harry Potter cast ever did?), but it is ethically justified under the circumstances.
  • Chalk it up to a character flaw on Harry's part. Harry's a curious guy who doesn't understand the terms "off limits" or "private." Not trying OK his actions, but at least there's a reason.
  • Harry thought that Snape had Dumbledore's pensive and didn't think that it belonged to Snape.
    • He saw Snape put his memories in it at the start of each lesson. And even if they were Dumbledore's memories, it would still have been a huge violation of privacy.

SNEAK, the book, not movie

• Neville tries to tell on Harry and the others, and he's rewarded for his attempts. Hermione gets Harry's firebolt confiscated, and while she's shunned, she's rewarded as well. Marietta isn't given her side of the story, but from what Cho says, it's implied Marietta turned on the DA either in an attempt to help her mother or out of fear for the consequences that could befall her mother. Everyone, it seems, besides Cho, is okay with this, including the professors who are either incompetent if they can't remove a hex placed by a fifteen/sixteen-yr-old or malicious in their refusal to help a student. JK Rowling thinks the fact that a person who was in an oppressive environment, had a mother who might have been in striking distance of Umbridge, was a teenager, meaning she likely wouldn't have realised how badly her telling would be for them, deserved to be permanently scarred. Marietta wasn't, from what was shown, a hardcore Voldemort supporter. She wasn't a 'traitor'. She was a teenage girl who tattled. And permanently disfiguring even actual traitors is a moral travesty, never mind an underage tattle-tale.
  • Neville tried to stop them, not tell on them, and, as it turns out, he was absolutely right. Hermione wasn't rewarded even a single point for what she did, and, again, she was entirely justified in her worries. As for Marietta, calling her a traitor is not that big of stretch, because even if it wasn't an actual combat situation, it was as close to it as it could get in that environment, with DA as the resistance group and Umbridge as the enemy. Games were over, the real war was looming outside, and the kids had to grow up fast to have a chance to survive. After all, the whole idea behind the DA was to learn real fighting instead of its emasculated, Ministery-approved version, well, it is only fitting that they get the taste of responsibility as well, to be more prepared for the adult world, where they, indeed, do not disfigure traitors, but execute them. It is actually refreshing to see the staff trying to bring the seriousness of the situation home to the students for a change, instead of beating around the bush, like they did with Potter all the time.
  • Hermione was still clearly presented as the heroine of the stories; she wasn't rewarded, too. Neville was going to tell if he couldn't stop them; he said as much himself. Marietta was a teenager who seemed to have some doubts that Voldemort was back. She likely didn't grasp how important everything was. Or she grasped it all too well and made the choice to put her mother in front of the DA. And professors shouldn't be allowed to pick sides. If a student disfigures another student, even if they agree with the one who did the disfiguring and don't like the victim, they still have an obligation to help the one who has been disfigured. They have just as much obligation to protect the children of death eaters as they do muggle-borns, and the same principle applies to members of an underground club. Whether they approve of the club or not, whether they agreed with Marietta's choice or not, she was still their student, and she was attacked by another student. They chose not to punish Hermione, and they chose not to help a girl Hermione disfigured. If they wanted to impart the seriousness, they could have punished Marietta in some way that didn't permanently alter her body. Although, how no one at St. Mungo's or any other wizarding hospital couldn't have helped Marietta is anyone's guess, but the moral statement presented that a teenage tattle-tale deserves to have his or her body violated and permanently disfigured.
  • The common fanon theory is that when everyone in the DA signed the list that says they were part of the DA it formed a part of a magical contract. As part of the contract it made an irreversible betrayal clause which makes it so that anyone trying to repair the damage wouldn't be able to. This is similar to the fanon theory that anyone backing out of the magical contract for the Goblet of Fire would lose their magic or life. Now it's all fanon and whether that's moral or not is up to your interpretation of Hermione's character or not. If that's true, she should have been more open to them about what it was they were signing or at least told them after they signed. Most of the teachers probablt assumed that it was break in a contract that she signed willingly and decided not to help or punish as it was out of their hands.
  • "They could have punished Marietta in some way " - oh, like what, make her write lines? Take away House points? Send a letter to her mother? Make her clean the latrine? Get real. And it wasn't permanent - she got away with some scars, probably not worse than those you get from real acne - Hermie was not a sadist. And again, they were in the middle of a war. You can always make a lot of excuses for a traitor - they were afraid, they were confused, they were Just Following Orders - it doesn't change the fact that traitors are not tolerated at war. Or wargames for that matter.
  • Scars are permanent; they may fade, but they never completely disappear. Harry could have gotten scars on his hands from playing Quidditch, but no one has ever used that to say Umbridge wasn't sadistic in forcing him to use the blood quill. Defecting soldiers, adult spies, etc., are held to a rigid standard. However, there shouldn't be child soldiers, and a scared child in an oppressive environment should not have permanent damage done to her body for making an ill-thought out choice. As for punishments, the professors could have thought of a way to punish her that didn't involve physical harm if they felt she deserved it.
  • She isn't permanently scarred. It's stated in the next book that most of the pimples have gone away, with only a few left. Hermione wouldn't want someone scarred for life.
  • JK Rowling specifically said that, though the pimples faded, Marietta was left with scars on her face. She did want that character scarred for life as evidenced by her 'loathing a traitor' (paraphrase) comment. Since Hermione is her also her character and no other characters of hers besides Cho, who was presented somewhat unsympathetically, ever called her out on, and there were no scenes or dialogue that even implied Hermione might feel guilty, Hermione did want Marietta scarred for life or, at least, felt no guilt towards the fact she was.
  • Here's a couple of points to consider. We don't know if Mariette ever asked any of the adults for help. And to ask the people you've betrayed to help remove a sign of your betrayal (not a life threat, mind you, just an inconvenience), that requires some nerve. And as for why they didn't punish Hermie, well, they have no proof it was her doing.
  • She was a hurt child. If a non-abusive parent or teacher sees a child is hurt, they, at least, ask if the child would like some help. Often, they don't even bother to ask and automatically grab the medicine/first aid kit/telephone while telling the kid to sit down/stay still/etc. In this instance, the proper response, once they realised what had happened would be to take her to Madam Pomfrey as soon as possible, and if she couldn't help, make arrangements to transport her to St. Mungo's. Again, whatever their personal opinions, she was a hurt student under their care, and they had no right to shirk their duties.
  • First, she was not a child. She was fifteen, and in the wiz world this is closer to maturity than in ours. Hell, Riddle started taking over the world at that age! Second, and more importantly, she was not "hurt" - she had a bad case of acne, that's it. Ton of kids have it, and somehow parents or teachers don't rush to put them into hospital. Again, wizards are much more tolerant to injuries, both because they suffer them more frequently and can withstand more than us. So could you please stop pulling the pity card? She betrayed her comrades and endangered the whole anti-Voldemort movement. Yes, she probably didn't mean to or didn't think of the ramifications, so what? Simplicity is worse than robbery, they say. The teachers can be excused if they were willing to let her be inconvenienced by the consequences of her actions, and not fussing over her as if she was a baby. As you duly noted, Harry was also scarred, but nobody dragged him to Madam Pomfry.
  • Actually, there's a subtle but not unimportant distinction between what she's doing and what Hermione and Neville did. In the latter two cases, the "betrayal" was done for the good and well-being of the group/friends. In Marietta's case, justified as she was, she betrayed the DA for her mother, a decidedly not-DA person, effectively betraying her friends she swore (by contract), knowing that the outcome would be bad for them, rather than thinking it'd be for their good as well. Whether she should be punished for that is another matter, but it is a different situation from Hermione and Neville's.
  • Actually, many parents do take their children to the doctor for bad cases of acne. Marietta had a spell on her that altered her body; it altered her body in a way that caused emotional distress to her. If a student threw acid or permanent ink on another student's face and a teacher failed to help the latter student, that is still foul, even if that student had tattle-tailed on the other student. No, nobody took Harry to Madam Pomfrey, nor did he go to her himself. A person's mistakes not should haunt them for the rest of their lives, especially when the mistakes are made when they're young, scared, and confused, and a person doing something wrong doesn't give another person the right to physically hurt them.
  • Yes, but that would be parents of our world, that generally shares your opinion about children being fragile and vulnerable and in need of protection. This is not our world. This is a society stuck back in the 18th century at best and with very different morals, bordering on Blue and Orange. This is a place where children play sports that involves flinging metal bone-breaking balls at each other. A place where a school neighbors a forest full of horrors, and the only thing done to keep children from venturing there is calling it "forbidden". These people keep (probably brainwashed) slaves, casually practice Mind Rape on innocent people, and their state prison is a hand-made pocket of Hell. This whole shenanigan with Marietta kind of pales in comparison and is no way out of character for any of them, so your moral considerations, even if valid, are simply inapplicable. As for practical, again, they are at war, Hermie is an invaluable asset, Marietta is a traitor. They are not going out of their way antagonizing a potential ally just to help a stupid girl in her inconvenience.
  • Where was it said that the acne gave her physical pain? It always read more as identification but not tortur. Treason is the arch-crime for a reason, and considering Marietta was handing over her fellows to Umbridge, who clearly has no compunctions about physically harming, expelling, or even using Unforgivable curses on those who don't fall in line, Marietta got off easy. Besides which, there's scarring and then there's scarring. It's probable that, although there would be lasting marks, they'd be all but invisible except in the right light.
  • One of the main themes of the series is that our choices are what define us. Marietta chose to betray the entire DA to Umbridge. She had other options, but she chose to physically go to Umbridge and tell on them. Remember that one of her best friends was at the meeting? Some friend. If she actually cared a damn about Cho then wouldn't she have at least warned her not to go that night? Cho clearly thinks highly of her and Marietta didn't want to go to the DA but seemed to go anyway because of her friendship with Cho. There's obviously some strong friendship there. It's not exactly a secret what Umbridge puts students through in detention. Surely she had to have known all the students would be punished severely for the DA. She can't have been in denial about that. She chose to betray each and every one of them. She had other options; if she was feeling conflicted, didn't she consider asking Harry if she could leave? If she was afraid of his reaction, couldn't she have talked to Cho about it considering she was his girlfriend? Marietta made her choice and she had to live with the consequences. And after the whole ordeal was over, she never considered simply apologizing and asking Hermione to remove the spots?
    • Choices. Hah! Choose your own path, sure, while we put you in a house where you're expected to make one arbitrary trait your life path, and while we let vague, unhelpful prophecies define when we are born and die, and where your government is run by bureaucrats and elitists, progress is frowned upon, and comfort zones are the only zones.
    • And don't forget that considering Cho was supposed to be her best friend, doesn't necessarily mean it is true. You know, there are a lot of Bitch in Sheep's Clothing in the real world, don't tell me you haven't met someone like that even once in your life. She may say they are BFF, while not giving a rat's ass about her. When it was obvious that Marietta felt she was in danger by continuing what she had been doing, she might have simply thought "I'll snitch on them and at least I'll be okay". Sure, there are implications that her mother's job was at stake, but that might have also been just a case of the end justifying the means. She had an option to stop attending DA classes and tell everybody she was quitting out of fear. Not a single one of the members of DA could have told anything bad to her address and just agree and let her quit. But she chose to proactively betray them. And then felt bad. But not because she knew she had done something wrong, but because she was punished by the acne. Again like in real life, people like that regret something when they're being punished (ie regret getting caught), not regret that they've done something bad. She had a choice to leave, but she chose to betray.
  • She was a teenager. When put in highly stressful environments, many people react badly, especially children and teenagers. She gave information to Umbridge, and Umbridge made the choice to use it to hurt others. For all anyone knows, Umbridge manipulated her into thinking giving the information was the best way to avoid harm to everyone. Hermione inflicted bodily harm on Marietta; as many people do, she avoided her attacker afterwards.
  • The point is that she had other options available yet chose to betray them to Umbridge. By all accounts, it's her that went to Umbridge's office of her own free will. She was not an innocent child, she was at least sixteen or seventeen - with some sense of right and wrong. Maybe not realizing the full extent of her actions but she still made a bad choice. And thus she had to live with the consequences of what she did. There is a big difference between being tortured into confessing and actively seeking out someone to betray information.
  • By all accounts, no one knows whether she went into the office without provocation or if Umbridge called her in. Marietta was never given a POV scene or even one line of dialogue. She might have hated Harry and decided to go into Umbridge's office, she might have been manipulated into believing telling Umbridge was the right thing, or there might have been something else no one has suggested. Children are encouraged to tell adults when other children are doing something against the rules. Usually, them telling is a good thing; on rare occasions, it's a bad thing. Often, children are conflicted about which side their action would fall on but end up going with telling. Whatever Marietta's motivations, she's guilty of giving information to someone who had significantly more power than she and who choose to use it badly. Hermione is guilty of inflicting permanent bodily harm.
  • During the scene where Fudge and Umbridge are confronting Dumbledore in his office Umbridge says that Marietta came to her office unsolicited, not that Umbridge called her in.
  Umbridge: Well, Minister, Miss Edgecombe here came to my office shortly after dinner this evening and told me she had something she wanted to tell me.
  • Umbridge isn't a trustworthy source. There were plenty of witnesses in that room, including Dumbledore, McGonagall, and a few Ministry Officials. If she admitted to blackmailing Marietta in front of them, someone might expose her. Plus, it wouldn't be out of character for her to lie so that Fudge could have some plausible deniability.
  • Hell, for that matter we don't even know if Umbridge was threatening Marietta's mom. It could just be an excuse she told Cho, or something Cho made up to cover her friend's ass. For all we know the 'concern about her mother's job' was just an excuse. Marietta clearly didn't support the cause from the start and was only there because Cho forced her too. And for all the 'She's a scared kid' she's a 'scared kid' who fucked up royal and caused things to go to Hell. Being young or scared isn't a 'get out of jail free card'.
  • It seems that this situation perfectly illustrates wizard culture. Loyalty is incredibly important in the wizarding world, evidenced by such things as Fidelius charms and secret keepers, the importance of magical contracts, Voldemort's demands of loyalty from his Death Eaters, the distinct lack of espionage in what was supposed to be a tactical war, heck, even Slytherins stick together! This can carry over into protagonist-centered morality; several times throughout the series, Harry, Hermione, and Ron's actions are painted in either a positive or negative light depending on whether they were helping each other's goals. The reason Marietta gets such a harsh punishment is because she has snitched on them, for uncertain reasons, and while for us muggles it may seem like a petty thing to disfigure someone's face over, and certainly deserves at least an explanation, to wizards, it's a far more serious offense.
  • As to this, it's worth noting the intentional parallels that were made between Voldemort and the Death Eaters with the Third Reich. Y'know the war that ended with the French Government shaving the heads of any they deemed to be "collaborators". In the time just after WWII, a lot of blame was passed around for being any part of why the Nazis got into power and stayed in power. If it could be suggested that you were anything but an active resistor in WWII, you were part of the problem, a mentality that is taken in our day and age with regards to racism. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. It makes sense why JK included it, and even why she took the stance she did. It's up to the beholder to determine if her stance was justified.
  • Neville tried to stop the trio from losing more points for Gryffindor, and his reward was more of a loophole that Dumbledore was exploiting so that Gryffindor could win the House Cup. Hermione was looking out for Harry's best interests when she reported the Firebolt - she was genuinely worried that Sirius had sent him a cursed broomstick, a possibility Harry hadn't even bothered to consider. Marietta betrayed the DA for no good reason, which led to Dumbledore having to leave the school and Umbridge and the Ministry taking over. You could even go as far as to say that she was responsible for Sirius's death, more than anyone else was! Had she not snitched, Dumbledore would've remained at school, and Voldemort wouldn't have been able to trick Harry with a false vision to lure him to the Ministry. We're told that she was worried about her mother's job, but that's some weak reasoning since the two aren't connected. Had she truly worried her involvement could've affected her mother's career, she could've just left the DA and not said anything. The other members were doing nothing more than practicing defensive magic during a time when their education wouldn't allow them to; there was nothing morally wrong about that.
    • Though Marietta was in the wrong, it's important to consider that her name was on the list she signed. Had she simply left the DA, if someone else ended up ratting them out, then the list would prove her involvement and she wouldn't be able to escape punishment. Ratting the DA out directly, on the other hand, absolves her of being blamed by Umbridge for knowing about it and saying nothing.
    • Yes. And as stated above, that is arguably even worse, as she's selfishly caring for herself only, and her mother losing a job is just an excuse. She is not a prisoner to the DA. Every member of the DA joined voluntarily. And the assumption is they can leave of their own free will. Just ask Hermione, talk to Harry or heck, everyone in there, that you're afraid of Umbridge and ask to quit, ask for your name to be deleted from the list and make a vow of silence (not necessarily an unbreakable but a variation; even though Unbreakable vow implies that if you break it you die, so it would guarantee her silence, but then again, Umbridge might torture her for info and NOBODY wants Marietta to die) not to tell on them. And everybody wins. DA are not Death Eater sadists lead by cruel Voldemort who punishes those who try to leave him. But no, what measure is just a quick jog to Umbridge and spilling all on DA, saving your own ass and screwing everybody... The acne was a fitting punishment, if nothing else.
  • For all the defences of her being worried about her mother, she knows that betraying the DA to Umbridge will result in about forty students being punished (and it's not exactly a secret what happens in Umbridge's detentions). At best, they'll be carving their own hands open for several nights. At worst, they'll be expelled. Marietta is choosing to condemn forty people for the sake of one who's not in any danger.

Underestimating Floo Powder

• So, Harry is desperate to get to London to save Sirius, although he has no idea how to get there. So, Hermi persuades him to sneak into Umbridge's office first to use the Flowing Floo so that they could call the Grimmauld Place and check if Sirius is there. Why don't they go through the fireplace straight to Grimmauld Place? The fireplace is not supposed to be monitored (how in the world could they buy such a primitive ruse is another thing, but lets ignore minor plot holes in favor of big ones).
  • Harry's plan in here was just to do a fast check on Sirius, like he had done before when he asked Sirius and Remus about Snape's memory. He is on a tight schedule, due to (a) having seen Sirius being tortured, and (b) Umbridge could be back at any moment. Sure, Harry could have gone to Grimmauld Place, but then how does he get back? Umbridge would have known that Harry had gotten inside, but had not come out, so it would be easy for her to understand that he could have gone somewhere, and once Harry goes back to Hogwarts, he's toast. Harry didn't expect that Umbridge could have placed warning charms on the door.
  • Why would he need to get back? He needed to get to London to save Sirius, right? Grim. Place is in London.
  • Yes, but what if Sirius didn't need to be rescued (which was actually the case)? Then Harry would be stuck and in big trouble.
  • It seemed that at that particular moment, "trouble" was the last thing Harry could care about. Besides, by that point, Hogwarts royally sucked, with all Harry's allies among the teachers gone and Umbridge fully in charge. He wouldn't miss it much. Finally and most importantly, the school year was over, it's not like he was going to miss any classes, and it seems like the students were left to their own devices after exams. Perhaps, that's why V chose that exact time for his little game. In case of a false alarm, he'd just ask somebody from the Order to give him a lift back.
  • Point's moot, anyway. Wouldn't Kreacher have had to let Harry come through the fireplace? Imagine how likely he'd be willing to do that without a direct order.
  • Nothing in the books indicates that there was such condition, Harry was already disclosed the location of the house, Kreacher wasn't the owner of the house, and in CoS Harry accidentally Flooed into Borgin & Burkes without any permission from the owners, so no, that isn't the case. And, as usual, it's not about whether or not would it work - it's about not trying an obvious solution (and it was obvious because when Sirius was talking to them through the fireplace, Umbridge tried to grab him, meaning that he was physically there, therefore "talking" and "walking" via Floo is the same thing).
  • Harry never says how he's going to get to the Department of Mysteries, and it's entirely possible he was planning on using the flue after hanging up after Grim. Place. He was planning on getting there some other way, probably the Knight Bus, before the flue was suggested.
  • Luna is the only one who asks how he was going to get to the Department of Mysteries after the floo mention, perhaps it was obvious to everyone else. Perhaps Luna was just asking because she, being conspiracy-minded, knows you can't just floo into the Department of Mysteries, or floo into the Ministry and walk there. Except you can when all the security is disabled, like it was. (She does seem rather astonished when they just walk in, although the Narrator seems to think she's inexplicably awed at an empty hallway.)

Sneaking into Hogwarts

• Why was Sirius able to reach Hogwarts so easily? Where's the security? Does this mean that anybody else could do the same thing and peek/teleport into the school? On the other hand, if Hogwarts was indeed accessible from the outside via Floo Network, why the heck didn't all the kids go there that way instead of by the train? Everybody would be saving a lot of time, nerves and resources.
  • Grimmauld Place could be miles from the Ministry and still be within the greater London metropolitan area, but that doesn't cover the Knight Bus. Whisk your rescue team through to Grimmauld Place, get outside the Fidelius boundary and take the Knight Bus the rest of the way. Would've shaved valuable time off messing with broomsticks or thestrals. Of course, if that thought had occurred to Harry, he'd have gone there immediately and alone, which would have ended badly for him.
  • It gets worse. The Knight Bus is capable of being chartered for a run between London and Hogwarts; that's how Harry and Ron get back to Hogwarts from Grimmauld Place after Christmas break, in the same book.
  • It's likely that the Knight Bus won't pick up underaged students from Hogwarts or Hogsmeade during the school year without Professor permission, to keep students from running away, which at least explains why they can't take it from Hogwarts. However, yes, there's nothing that stops them from taking the bus from right outside Grimmauld Place.

Boggart's true face

• Lupin states that no one knows the true form of a boggart, the form it has when no one's near for him to take his form. So how could Moody know it was a Boggart in the cupboard when he saw it? It would have its true form at that point, no one was near it. And if you count that they were near enough, it was stated in 3rd book that Boggart had no form until it came out of the cupboard and took the form of Neville's (nearest person's) greatest fear. In that case, he would have to be in his natural form.
  • Maybe Boggart simply knows whenever somebody is looking at it, whether by a normal eye or a magical one.
  • Maybe Moody has seen through a closet or whatever that had a Boggart in it, then saw it come out and do Boggart-type things, so now he knows what Boggarts look like in their true form. He's just never bothered sharing the information or anything.
  • He's never bothered to share that information because him learning it was deliberately engineered by a conspiracy of boggarts, and sharing that information is certainly what they wanted him to do. *dramatic chord* CONSTANT VIGILANCE!
  • Perhaps Moody, with the help of his magical eye, has seen Boggarts hiding in various places and hence knows their true, untransformed form.
  • There's two possibilities. Either the boggart was just a formless spirit, meaning that what Lupin had originally said was wrong, or the boggart changed into Moody's worst fear, which was something that couldn't have possibly been in the desk drawer.

Oh, no! Voldemort might realize... what he should've always known anyway.

• So, DD's excuse for not teaching Harry Occlumency personally was that "if Voldemort realized that we were connected more closely than just a teacher and a student, he would've tried to use you to spy on me" or "possess you to tempt me to try and kill him by killing you".
  • Ok, first: how the heck could V possibly NOT know that Harry was special to DD, when he obviously knew that DD had heard the prophecy, in full at that?! Besides, the personal uber-protection set around the kid's house should've also given him a clue, shouldn't it? Also, what exactly was DD afraid V would spy on? "Monday: DD is teaching Harry Occlumency. Tuesday: DD is teaching Harry Occlumency. Wednesday: Harry has mastered Occlumency, and I cannot pick up anything anymore."
  • Looking in from the outside, that only proves Harry is a valuable chess piece to Dumbledore, not that Harry is in Dumbledore's confidence.
  • Ri-i-i-i-i-ight. "That brat is destined to be the one capable of killing me, and DD knows it, but he will most definitely NOT divulge any important information about me to him or teach him any important skills, that might help him in his mission, because that Muggle-lover is too dumb for that, that's why! No reason to try and spy on him through him at all!" Self-delusion: Advanced Classes. Monday-Wednesday, 50% discount to Dark Lords.
  • Welcome, class. Today we shall discuss the concept of "strawman argument". Here is today's example:

    Original argument: Voldemort has no reason to think Harry is in Dumbledore's confidence.

    Strawman version: Voldemort has no reason to think Dumbledore would teach Harry anything ever, even indirectly through a subordinate.
    Thank you, class. Any questions?

  • Yes, teacher, as a matter of fact we do. 1) How the heck do you go from "receiving personal lessons in mind protection" directly to "being in confidence and, hence, worth spying on"? Is it such an outlandish occasion for the school Headmaster to teach students? If they need some extra plausibility, fine, put on a little show, like have Sirius (whom Harry'd been writing about his dreams and scar pains) explain the situation to him and how he must learn Occlumency, and how lucky he is that his Headmaster is one heck of an Occlumens, and sure, he's a busy man, but they gonna gang up with Remus and Arthur and whatnot and ask him nicely, and whaddyouknow, he agreed! There, no reason for V to suspect anything. 2) What the heck does it matter whether Harry is seen as being in DD's confidence or not? He's first and foremost THE Harry Potter! V's (perceived) arch-nemesis! The one he's obliged, yet is inexplicably unable to kill! Why wouldn't he grab at the opportunity to spy on him by whatever means available? He spends an entire year seeking for something that might give him insight on the kid, yet he could possibly ignore a dedicated line to his mind? 3) What the heck does it matter if V does try to spy on DD through Harry? What is he supposed to learn from their Occlumency lessons? The techniques? Well so would he from Snape's lessons as well, except in that case he would rather learn that the teacher absolutely sucks at teaching, meaning it is safe to use mind tricks on the kid. Speaking of which... 4) Even if for some reason DD just couldn't teach Harry, how in the heck does it excuse entrusting Snape with the duty, when it was an obvious recipe for disaster from the beginning? Even notwithstanding their mutual animosity, Snape responds to Voldemort. He couldn't teach the kid well, even if he wanted.
  • You may notice each following question negates the previous one. They are all stipulated to better demonstrate just on how many levels doesn't DD's excuse make any freaking sense.
  • Apparently, you missed the part where Dumbledore was worried that Voldemort would force Harry to duel him to the death.
  • First, how can you force a teenager to fight the most powerful sorcerer in world to the death, or rather how can you force said sorcerer to kill him rather than disarm and stun in about two seconds? Especially if said teenager is supposed to be his secret uber-weapon. Second, ok, let's say V does plans that. What does it matter then if DD gives Harry lessons or not? They do meet each other normally every day.
  • Second: what the heck did DD's unwillingness to communicate with Harry have to do with V's willingness to possess him? On the contrary, if Harry wasn't special, wouldn't it, from V's PoV, make it more admissible for DD to sacrifice him? And Harry and DD had been seeing each other anyway, in the Great Hall, for instance, so what exactly prevented V from taking over Harry there? Mind you, we're not talking about what V would or would not actually do, but about what DD would consider a valid excuse to expose Harry to danger.
  • Again, the whole point was for Voldemort to not realize that Harry is, at least partially, in Dumbledore's confidence. If Voldemort knows that, he can use him to spy on Dumbledore. So Harry sees Dumbledore in the Great Hall. Big whoop. Does Voldemort want to spy on Dumbledore giving a public speech? No, he wants to spy on Dumbledore going over his top secret anti-Voldemort plans. The issue is whether or not Harry has any access to that sort of thing. If he doesn't, there's no point in using him to spy on Dumbledore.
  • So don't go over top secret anti-Voldemort plans until the kid masters Occlumency, what's the problem? As for a convenient, non-being-in-confidence-indicative reason to do that, simple: "Harry, your escape from Riddle was a major affront to his overblown ego. He will certainly try to rectify his mistake. You're safe while in my custody, but he might try mind tricks to lure you out. To prevent that from happening, I'll teach you mental protection." Done.
  • Alternately, stage an argument in Harry's hearing where Sirius or Molly or someone else Voldemort already knows cares for Harry deeply on a personal level demands that Dumbledore teach Harry Occlumency, while Dumbledore makes it plain that he doesn't consider it worth his time because Harry is not important to him personally but okay, he owes a favor and he'll spend some time teaching the brat. On a more general level, this is a mild Idiot Ball because if you're afraid the enemy has someone bugged and will know everything you tell him, then what you should not be doing is 'tell this guy nothing!', what you should be doing is 'use this guy to feed the enemy all the disinformation I think I can get away with!'.
  • Except Dumbledore is worried not so much about the information leak as about the damage Harry would sustain if Voldemort tried to use him to spy/attack. Before Voldemort even found out Harry wasn't told anything, he would spend more time in Harry's mind than either Harry or Dumbledore would like. Just think about Harry's reaction to the Headmaster after the attack on Mr. Weasley; that was what Dumbledore was trying to avoid.
  • First, DD never gave this reason. Next, If it was only about mental damage, then it makes absolutely no difference if DD is talking to him or not - V's gonna do it anyway, and the best they could do was help the kid master Occlumency ASAP. Finally, there was no damage. Yes Harry had a fit of rage, what else is new? If DD deigned to explain to him what was happening, it would've only served as a much needed stimulant to learn the craft. V might have actually restrained from abusing the link too much so as not to encourage Harry to learn.
  • Another reason Dumbledore might not want to teach Harry is that by telepathically linking to Harry, he (by extension) is linking his mind to Voldemort. Which would be bad.
  • Why? He has the pensive. He could store any sensitive memories there, just like Snape did.

Headmistress and Teacher?

• When Umbridge declared herself the new Headmistress of the school, who was teaching DADA? Was she doing both jobs? Is that the reason the castle didn't accept her as the headmistress?
  • Before that, she didn't seem to have enough time to be both the DADA teacher and Hogwarts High Inquisitor. Perhaps she's using a Time-Turner. Or since she never did any actual teaching anyway, perhaps she got someone else (Filch, maybe?) to supervise her classes.
  • It's implied that she's somewhat in over her head. She likely thought she could handle the responsibilities. All she did in her DADA classes was get them to read the textbook. So all she needs to do is turn up for class and tell them what to read.

This all could have been avoided

• Okay, Snape knows that Harry has been seeing the Department of Mysteries. Snape knows about the prophesy, and is concerned that Voldemort is trying to get it. (It's possible Snape knows roughly about the plan from Voldemort, also.) DD obviously also knows about the prophesy, and Snape has informed him of Harry's dreams. So DD believes that Voldemort is trying to get the prophesy. We learn all this at the end of the book.
  
  So, DD then proceeds to inform Harry that this is a trap. Or, wait, he doesn't.
  
  We all understand that, for whatever reason, he doesn't want to tell Harry about the prophesy. Couldn't he have just mentioned that 'Harry, if Voldemort attempts to get you to the Ministry of Magic, specifically the Department of Mysteries, you know, that place right down the hall from your trial.), you, under no circumstances, should go. He needs your physical presence there for something.' (Harry: Is it the weapon the Order's been guarding? DD: Why, yes, it is a sort of weapon, but don't worry about that. We're sure that Voldemort's men can't take it. Harry: Like Bodes tried! DD: Yes. You've figured it all out. Now run along, and remember, stay away from the Department of Mysteries, no matter what.)
  • Sounds familiar, doesn't it? "It is none of your concern what that huge three-headed dog guards!", "The Stone is perfectly safe, Potter, and you shouldn't concern yourself with it!", "The Chamber of Secrets was allegedly built by Salazar Slytherin and contains something terrible, but it is all just legends, and you shouldn't bother looking for it!", "Harry, Sirius Black is very dangerous, you shouldn't try to confront him, if for some reason you might suddenly want to." We all know how well they worked. And "He needs your physical presence there for something" would be by far the worst of them and would raise tons of questions in Harry, like, what does he has to do with some weapon he never saw or heard about? What made V think he needs Harry? How come DD knows that he does, but not why? The correct deterrent would sound like this: "Harry, your escape from V on that cemetery was a massive affront to his overblown ego. I'm afraid he might try to rectify his mistake. You're safe at the Dursleys' and in Hogwarts, but he can use mind tricks to lure you out. I'll have Severus teach you Occlumency to prevent it, but regardless, if you have some strange visions, do not rush in, contact the nearest Order member or, lacking that, the nearest adult."
  • In fairness, Harry did try telling Snape-and then Snape kept up the charade and Harry thought he was on his own. Rather foolish? Yes. Out of character? Not really.

Isn't Honesty the Best Policy?

• Why, oh, why when Harry had his date with Cho couldn't he have told her the truth about why he needed to cut things short? It's not like the whole school didn't find out about the interview later, and even if advance knowledge of it was somehow sensitive, there were worse people he could have entrusted with it. Why couldn't Harry have been open and straightforward about it? Makes him look like a hypocrite when he complains about Dumbledore, that's for sure.
  • That sequence of events is twisted. Harry didn't know why he had to meet Hermione at the pub - remember how surprised he was to find her sitting with Rita Skeeter and Luna? Although he definitely could've invited Cho; after all, DA business was the most likely reason Hermione would want to meet outside Umbridge's view.
  • Is this a film thing? Because in the book, he does invite her to come along. He was just a bit tactless in his wording, which is one of the reasons she's annoyed with him and runs away. Hermione actually berates him that he should have been all "Oh, I don't really want to meet her but she practically forced me and I think it might be important but I'd really rather spend the time with you", rather than the way he actually worded it.
  • Yes, it's how he said it. He first says that he's meeting Hermione in the pub and that she asked him. That gives Cho mixed messages since he asked her out, yet has arrangements to meet some other girl. And then he asks Cho to come along as well. That might have offended her in another way, thinking Harry only considered this a friendly get-together while she considered it a date. Harry didn't think Cho would find anything suspicious in him meeting Hermione because he doesn't think of her in that way at all.

Why is there Venom in my wound?

• Mr. Weasley tries to treat his snake bite with stitches, but they get dissolved by venom. Wait, why the hell is there still venom in the wound? Isn't removing or neutralizing it the first thing to do in such cases? And if he had venom in his blood, how the hell could he still be alive and well?
  • A wizard literally did it.
  • Maybe not so much a venom, per se, but more of an anticoagulant.
  • Batroxobin, an anticoagulant drug in commercial use today, is actually made from snake venom.

Worst defensive stance ever.

• When Harry and Seamus are about to fight at each other in their dormitory on the first night at Hogwarts, it points out that Harry is kneeling on his bed as he points his wand at Seamus. For a guy who spent his childhood being beaten on by and fighting back against Dudley, this is a strange defensive position to stay in.
  • Perhaps it's a case of Sheathe Your Sword: If Harry steps into a better defensive position, Seamus will take it as Harry wanting to fight and oblige him. Or Harry's just being stupid.

Anyone can read minds?

• Voldemort was supposed to be one of the best Legilimens (mind reader) and Occlumens (mind reader blocker) and yet, Dumbledore assumes Harry can block Voldemort with Occlumency. Even worse is that Dumbledore has an idea why Harry can read Voldemort's mind and doesn't try to learn how that connection works.
  • Perhaps even if he can't block Voldemort's Legilimency directly, a more advanced Occlumens would be able to at least sense a mental intrusion.
  • In the next book, Draco is able to block out Snape's mind-reading attempts because he's apparently been taking Occlumency lessons from Bellatrix. With that in mind, Harry should at least be able to become halfway decent at Occlumency by taking lessons from the person who made a living out of shielding his mind against Voldemort.
  • Voldy had no idea that Harry could read his mind for a while. And even after that, he was unable to prevent Harry from reading his thoughts. Voldy was a powerful Occlumens so Harry would have had no chance at blocking Voldy's intrusions. Dumbledore might have known that Harry was a horcrux for Voldy was the reason for it, but had no knowledge of how to block the intrusions into Harry's mind. Occlumens was the only thing he could think of.
  • Occlumency wasn't going to work as it wasn't normal Legillimency at work. Harry did ultimately learn how to block out Voldy from his mind, it just took three deaths before he actually figured it out that it was grief, or rather, love. Voldy never did figure out how to block Harry.

With friends like these who needs Marauders!

• According to Sirius in the previous book, Snape was part of a group of future Death Eaters that included Bellatrix and her husband Rodolphus, as well Evan Rosier, Wilkes, and Avery. Yet when Snape was shown to be ambushed by James and Sirius, other than Lily nobody came to his defense. You'd think that being a fellow Slytherin, as well as a member of their group they would be there to provide back-up. Yet Snape is shown to be a stereotypical loner in this scene. Where were his friends other than Lily?
  • Being part of a group of future Death Eaters does not equal having friends. Just look at Wormtail's example after he rejoins Voldemort; how many friends does he have there?
  • Yeah but Snape's comments in Deathly Hallows made it seem he had some form of intimacy with Mulciber and Avery at least. Maybe they weren't on the same level as Harry and Ron or James and Sirius, but he seemed defensive about them, especially when you consider who he was talking to about them.
  • It’s possible that he was alone in that particular moment with no other Slytherine near to help him. It is a school with hundreds of students and it happens when he was reading alone under a tree.
  • He was defensive of them to Lily, but that doesn't meant they felt much connection to him. Is there any indication that they had a mutual admiration for each other and not just Snape looking up to them and getting defensive when his "friends" are put down upon? Note: There's no evidence to substantiate this particular version of events, the point is that there are reasons he may be defensive of them without them actually giving a crap about him.
  • Were they in the same year? The memory Harry drops in on is an exam that only fifth years would be doing. The whole incident happens in the few minutes after that, so if Snape's future Death Eater friends weren't in his year, they might be off somewhere else.
  • It's not that he had no friends at all, but rather that he had Slytherin friends, not Gryffindor ones. And Slytherin friends almost by default won't stick their neck out in front of probably the most powerful clique of the school at the time just because "friendship".

No One Can Know Unless Dumbledore Tells Them Personally. Or Impersonally

• When describing the protections placed on Grimmauld Place, Sirius mentions that Dumbledore is Secret Keeper for the entire order. He specifically says, "No one can know the place is here unless Dumbledore tells them personally. That note you read last night was from him." Stop just a second and think about what Sirius just said. Harry read a note on which only the address of the house was written. The note was not personally addressed to Harry, and it seemed like Moody used the note to bring everyone into the house. Presumably, if the note had been lost or stolen, anyone who read it could have gained access to the house. That's the definition of impersonal communication, if it will bypass the charm for anyone who gets their eyeballs on the paper. So what is Sirius talking about?
  • Maybe it's the intention behind the note that makes it personal. Dumbledore meant for the building to be revealed to Harry, so it is revealed to Harry only. Someone else would just see the address. Alternately, he could have charmed the note in some way that means that anybody else who reads it sees different words.
  • In this case, "personally" means that it has to be Dumbledore who creates the message. Dumbledore's words, Dumbledore's writing, Dumbledore's sign language, whatever it is it as to be from Dumbledore. It can't be a message he dictated and someone else wrote or repeated. That's why "personal".

Sirius Wants to Leave the Order of the Phoenix Headquarters. Magical Disguises Exist. What's the Problem?

• There's invisibility cloaks, disillusionment charms, polyjuice potions, and magical plastic surgery (remember Hermione's buck teeth being fixed magically?). Why not use some or all of these to go about on Order business and missions?
  • Because Sirius is lying. He's kept locked in because he's proven himself to be a reckless idiot, whom no sane person (or even DD) would trust with anything important. But, of course, he cannot admit that to himself or to Harry, so it's the fault of Pettegrew, Voldemort, Ministry, Snape, God, Devil, anyone but him.
  • Only it's not Sirius that's the one saying he's going stir-crazy in Grimmauld Place with nothing to do. It's everyone talking about Sirius that says it. Molly and Arthur Weasely, Hermione, Lupin, Snape, Harry, and Dumbledore too.
  • Well, all of them are either in the Order or affiliated with it. Just like Sirius (who does talk about it and blames Pettegrew and the Ministry), they know the real reason, but they aren't going to tell it to Harry. And Harry, as said many times before, is an idiot.
  • And yet later, half of the bloody order is apparently OK going with Sirius to the Ministry. If he's supposed to be kept locked in so he doesn't run off like a "reckless idiot," then why is it that the Order is there with him? Not just younger or hotheaded members like Tonks, but Moody and Shacklebolt as well.
  • Because they needed to rescue his godson, not to mention half a dozen children trapped with him. They expected a fight and needed all the available firepower. Besides, it's his only living relative. Of course they weren't going to keep him away from that. Also, it's a straightforward enough mission, Sirius can handle it.
  • So if it's a straightforward and/or urgent mission, Sirius can handle it. This directly contradicts an earlier statement that, "no sane person would ever trust him with anything important." Again, why not slap some disguise or another on Sirius and give him something to do beyond hanging out at Grimmauld Place?
  • There's a big difference between an emergency, when seven kids, including his godson, are in immediate and mortal peril, and routine operations of the Order. He was going to Harry's rescue, no matter what, because despite his flaws, he was still a decent human being (mostly). And no-one tried to deny him that, because they were not assholes (except for Snape). When it's not an emergency, and an operation requires actual planning, discretion and good judgement, then yes, Sirius is politely shoved aside because of his less than stellar record with displaying those traits. Alternatively, the whole Order are idiots for not doing as you suggested and using Polyjuice or plastic surgery.
  • Dumbledore reveals that, after they got the news, one from the order told Sirius to stay at headquarters because Dumbledore was about to arrive there, and he could've told him all that happened. But Sirius, deciding to be the reckless idiot with his heart in the right place, left to go save his godson and friends and left Kreacher behind to inform Dumbledore of the latest events.
  • Whether he was told to stay at HQ or not, showing up to help fight off the same Death Eaters he's been accused of busting out of Azkaban is exactly the thing that will help clear Sirius's name. And that's exactly what happens in the aftermath - it's just that Sirius had already died in the battle, so it didn't amount to much.

You Have To Tell Dumbledore! Or Not.

• At least a half dozen times in the book, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, or someone else tells Harry that he has to tell Dumbledore about his visions of Voldemort getting closer to getting the thing he wants from the Ministry. Harry refuses to do so. OK, fine. But if it's that important and Dumbledore needs to know, what's stopping Hermione, Ron, Ginny, or whomever from going to Dumbledore and telling him themselves?
  • Friends don't go over their friends' heads in matters like that. And Harry was more than a friend, he was kind of the leader of their group.
  • Not going over your friend's head to tell the Headmaster that Umbridge is torturing and humiliating Harry is one thing. Not going over his head to tell Dumbledore that Wizard Hitler has just figured out how to get his superweapon is another.
  • There was only one such talk, and Harry responds to the sound that DD already knows. Also, his visions never depicting V actually getting closer to the storage or having some new plans how to steal the thing - just him being obsessed with it. So, no useful information to relay.
  • After the breakout of Azkaban, Harry has dream in which Voldemort interrogates Rookwood. Rookwood tells Voldemort all the flaws with his plans to retrieve The Thing thus far, and outlines exactly how to go about getting it. That's the big one.
  • Well, we don't actually know if they didn't tell DD. If it wasn't in his plans to prevent the confrontation between Harry and V, then it wouldn't matter much.

Flight Time

• It took the DA several hours to fly to London. Why didn't Snape 'n' pals get there earlier?
  • It took longer. Harry's takeoff time is at sunset; when Dumbledore portkeys Harry back to his office, dawn is breaking. The kids must have been in the air all night and well into the early AM.
  • Harry and co were riding on the Thestrals - who have an amazing sense of direction. It took some time for Snape to find out that Harry and Hermione had gone into the forest. He would have had to hunt them down, probably question a few centaurs and contact all the Order members, including Dumbledore. That's probably an extra hour for Harry and co at least. And they probably had to run around the Ministry for a good bit before they found everyone. Remember they probably went to the Hall of Prophecy first and had to run around looking for the right room.
  • He wouldn't need to hunt them down - he could've just asked DD to send his Patronus after them. However, you have to remember Snape is a double agent. He receives orders from both DD and V and, from V's point of view, has to keep an appearance of being DD's man. Obviously that night he was ordered to ensure Harry's safe departure (this would explain Grawp's "accidental" arrival to their rescue - he was led there), and to delay the Order's response as much as he could without it looking suspicious.
  • The Lexicon says exams are held the first week of June. In northern Scotland on June 7, civil twilight lasts from about 10:20pm to 11:40pm. It never actually gets to be full dark, or even astronomical twilight, at all. Morning twilight starts by 2:45am, and finishes about 4am. So, it gets dark around 11:30pm, they ride the Thestrals for an hour to an hour and a half (12:30 to 1am) Finding the phone booth, getting in, finding their way, the fighting and hiding, Dumbledore's Big Damn Heroes moment, all the events at the Ministry take a couple of hours. Dumbledore gives Fudge half an hour, plus a little bit of travel time and speaking to the Order members, and Harry watches the morning twilight growing brighter from 2:50 to 3:30am.
  • Snape doesn't see what we see, and doesn't automatically know that the kids have gone to the Ministry. After all, Hogwarts is in Scotland, with the Ministry in London. The kids can't Apparate or create Portkeys, they don't have brooms (with Harry's Firebold having been confiscated), and the Floos are locked down (except in Umbridge's office). It would not necessarily occur to Snape that the kids flew to the Ministry via thestral. As far as he knew, the kids were last seen in the Forbidden Forest with Umbridge, and he would be inclined to look there first (which would probably take some time).

Snape's Worst Memory Spell

• During Snape's worst memory, two spells are used. The more memorable one was Snape being levitated by his ankle, which we learn in Book 6 is the non-verbal spell Levicorpus. There's also the spell that Snape used on James just before he was levitated: "[...] Snape had directed his wand at James; there was a flash of light and a gash appeared on the side of James's face, splattering his robes with blood." That sounds a lot like Sectumsempra which Harry eventually uses on Malfoy in a moment of panic; it's also the spell that causes George to lose his ear in Book 7! Given the repercussions that spell can have (Snape at one point mentions that, even with help, the spell can leave scars), does this mean James had a scar on the side of his face? If so, why was it never mentioned?
  • Either it wasn't Sempra, or it was and teachers made Snape repair the damage like he did for Malfoy or dittany's healing properties against magical wounds are well-known by Herbologists and medics.
  • Words like 'might', 'probably', 'may', 'can', they all leave the possibility of something not happening. The face is relatively more resistant to scaring that other areas of the human body.
  • Snape gives James a single gash, and given James' lack of reaction to it in that scene it probably wasn't a large wound. Harry was waving his wand-hand all over the place when he cursed Draco and cut his chest open multiple times. It may well be that, like with normal cuts, small wounds heal better than large ones.
  • The face is more resistant to scaring than many other parts of the body, including the chest. That's not to say the face won't get damaged as easily as anything else, but the human body, for whatever reason, prioritizes certain regions when it comes to regrowing tissue than others. Also, The Marauders might have known the counter curse, given Remus Lupin knows all about sectum sempra despite not knowing it and levicorpus were invented by Snape. They seemed to be quite prodigal. Thus they may have treated it sooner than Snape treated Draco Malfoy.

Seeing Death

• Is one of the requirements for seeing Thestrals that you must've seen a human death? It's strange to suggest that everyone at Hogwarts besides Harry and Luna have gone through their entire life without so much as squashing a bug, killing a plant, or something, if any of those count. Not to mention, in the fourth film, everyone in Moody's class technically sees death when he demonstrates the Killing Curse on a spider. Was that in the book, as well?
  • Seeing as it's revealed that people don't see thestrals until they've had some time to think over and ponder the death, it's definitely a requirement. An animal's death, particularly that of a pet, might make one sad but it's usually still quite the emotional effects of seeing a human death.
  • Possibly it is the death of your own species, or something close to it, considering magic can stretch the muggle definitions of species.

Umbridge Forgetting Her Most Effective Weapon

• Why didn't Umbridge simply expel Harry? She, along with upper echelons of the Ministry, clearly wanted him gone or discredited. Fudge rubber-stamps every rule Umbridge wants passed at Hogwarts. While the Ministry was unable to expel Harry the summer before that school year, the Ministry quickly gives itself absolute power over Hogwarts and allows its agent Umbridge to essentially do whatever she likes while teaching there. And yet, despite giving an interview to a widely published magazine about Voldemort's return, running a clandestine DADA group (while Dumbledore took the blame, Harry's name was still at the top of that list), and communicating with Sirius Black (which Umbridge knew about!), Harry is not removed from the school. It could be possible that the Ministry didn't want to make Harry a martyr at these times, but they had no problem doing the same after the Dementor incident (and since the Ministry essentially owned the wizard media, they could cover all of this up).
  • Whatever the ministry wants is by the by, Umbridge personally wants Harry's defiant attitude broken and acknowledging her authority. She can't break his spirit if he isn't in Hogwarts. Once she has worked out that neither the threat of expulsion or even actual expulsion will break his spirit, she resorts to escalating harsher methods.
  • What's the point in expelling him? All it will do is provide him ample free time to undermine the Ministry (they don't control the entire media, evidenced by the interview).
  • If Harry's expelled from Hogwarts, that gives the Ministry ample cause to snap his wand and ban him from the wizard world. Then again, maybe they're doing everything short of expelling him so he can fix their problems in case it turns out Voldemort has returned.
  • Consider that once Umbridge became headmistress, she ended up way in over her head. The entire school turned against her, and she was trying to run it while also teaching classes and acting as High Inquisitor. She's basically so swamped with everything that she hasn't been able to trump up the charges necessary to expel him. She does use what she thinks is Veritaserum to question him about Sirius, and that doesn't yield any results. Once she becomes headmistress, she's suddenly dealing with an entire school full of troublemakers that she can't keep track of. If she tried to just expel Harry for no good reason, there would be several teachers opposing her (I could imagine some like McGonagall, Hagrid and Flitwick resigning in protest as well). She might have just waited for him to act out so she could throw the book at him properly (and legally).

Mrs. Figg

• So in all the years Mrs. Figg had Harry over at her house while the Dursleys were away, she had to take up the guise of a Crazy Cat Lady because if Vernon and Petunia knew that Harry actually enjoyed it at her house, they wouldn't have let him come anymore. But if she would just tell Harry to pretend that he despised it there and lie to his aunt and uncle about the monotonous things she put him through, then they wouldn't have known any better, would they? Isn't the information they get from Harry and her all that they have regarding what happens there when they're gone?
  • That would make sense for a kid with common sense, which Harry lacks. Remember when he finally got his hands on a Hogwarts letter in the first book and the first thing he did was bring it in front of the Dursleys and open it there? Kid doesn't know how to keep secrets.
  • Lack of common sense doesn't equal lack of cleverness or intelligence, something Harry has actually shown multiple times. Hasn't he ever slyly hidden stuff from and lied to adults?
  • To be fair, the letter was a different story, in that Harry didn't think the Dursleys had anything to keep from him. If Mrs. Figg were to just tell him to act miserable about going to her house, he would understand it as a Good Samaritan trying to grant him at least some escape from the Dursleys.
  • Being forced to sneak out of his cupboard for the purpose of stealing enough food to eat had the side effect of making sneaking around where he isn't supposed to be a habit, to the point even when Harry isn't hungry he'll still watch TV, which he apparently isn't allowed to do, and sneak is his cousin's room to play not the computer, which he definitely isn't allowed to do. His sneaking habit persists even in Hogwarts, where he is much happier and better treated, and only half of it is for necessary or charitable reasons, the rest of the time he's just amusing himself or letting curiosity get the best of him. Harry might have been miserable for nine years, but is a few hours every other week of enjoyment worth it if he becomes a compulsive liar? His persistence to be where he shouldn't is bad enough. At least this way Harry only lies when he thinks he has a good reason to, rather than by reflex.
  • The bigger question about Mrs. Figg is why she apparently didn't tell Dumbledore or anyone else about the Dursleys' treatment of Harry. Remember how shocked Hagrid was in the first book upon learning that Harry didn't know he was a wizard.
  • It's entirely likely Mrs. Figg updated Dumbledore about Harry in the roughly ten years Harry was with the Dursleys, but Dumbledore had no reason to share this news with anyone else. And remember, it was either make Harry not particualry enjoy his stays with Mrs. Figg so she can keep up her ability to keep an eye on him as well as have the Dursleys trust her or risk a young boy will not successfully show his displeasure (which is entirely possible) at Mrs. Figg and lose that trust as well as her access to Harry.

Unreadable to outsiders

• So Hermione bewitched the sign-up sheet for Dumbledore's Army so that anyone who spilled the secret would get a horrible disfigurement across the face, but didn't think to make it unreadable to people who hadn't signed it? Seems like a pretty fallible, especially since they do this in the same book with Harry's interview from The Quibbler.
  • Hermione is clever, but she is capable of failing. Rule breaking, sneaking, stealth, secrecy, these things are not her areas of expertise, which Sirius actually brings up.
  • Let's see. Stealing clothes of people you're about to impersonate. Preparing drugged up cupcakes to put them out of commission. Using time travel to attend double classes for an entire year with no one being the wiser. Founding an illegal organization. Devising a clandestine method of communication for said organization. Hiding your parents by brainwashing them. Nope, not her areas at all. Sirius "Flashing my wanted ass to the entire city" Black testifies.
  • "Stealing clothes of people you're about to impersonate." [The uniforms belong to Hogwarts, as such there's no stealing.] "Preparing drugged up cupcakes to put them out of commission." [To investigate and stop a serial killer.] "Using time travel to attend double classes for an entire year with no one being the wiser." [That's not cheating, the time turner was given to her by the school staff for her to do that thanks to her good grade.] "Founding an illegal organization." [Making a group to have extra studies, even a secret one, because the academic curriculum is deficient on a life or death needed expertise is hardly "an illegal organization", but if it is it's still justified as much as the French Resistance was an illegal organization in Vichy France]. "Devising a clandestine method of communication for said organization." [Idem]. "Hiding your parents by brainwashing them." Obliviate spell is not brainwashing, it just make people forgetting one specific data of information, does not change their general motivations, ideas, principles or personalities as is the definition of brainwashing. And, put in context again, was the safest choice to keep them secure as two non-magical individuals totally vulnerable to the Wizard version of Hitler. Place in context all the times that Hermione "break the rules" have a different dynamic that, said, the Westley Twins or the Mareuders. Thus it makes sense that certain elements of rule breaking and sneaking are, indeed, not her area of expertise.
• This is just illustrating how Hermie was well versed in all things sneaky, even daresay much better than Harry, and that it being "not her area of expertise" is therefore not a valid justification for such a blatant blunder.
  • Still, it does require a certain type of mindset to be paranoid, which she's not yet there. It is possible that the idea behind the curse was a "just in case" as no one expected that someone would be such an idiot as to go confess with the psychopath headmistress.
  • Well, that's the point. Hermie did think of a measure in case someone betrays them. So no, you cannot say she wasn't smart/thoughtful/paranoid enough for that. The problem is that instead of the most obvious, "every last person on the planet would instantly think of it" measure, i.e. alert her and prevent people from reading it, she goes for an uncharacteristically vicious, undoubtfully more complex, and what's worse, completely ineffectual one. It'd be like if you began to rig an alarm for your house, but then suddenly decided to replace the alarm part with a skunk spray. Hell, it's the same bloody thing as V's stupid cave defenses next book, but at least he's supposed to be crazy. What's Hermie's excuse?
  • She's a 14 year-old teen age girl. As in other cases, the books should be put in context. They are children's fantasy book about a magical high school, directed toward young, mostly underage, readers. Readers that most likely will find funnier this outcome. Yes, probably Hermione could place all sorts of magical protection and disguise methods to hide the content of the paper, but what would the readers prefer if not to see the traitor bitch that rat them having the face scarred? And yes a lot of other options were available but the thing is Hermione didn't think of them, and even if she did non of them are 100% bulletproof as for every spell there's a counter spell that any competent magician can use.
  • It wasnt "completely ineffectual" as as soon as Maretta saw what had happened she clammed up and didnt say anything else, leaving Umbridge without full names and details. Further it wasnt designed to stop people from telling about it, it was designed to make it clear that someone had told about it. Cant deny it was you if you have SNEAK scarred across your face afterall.
• It's not her area of expertise because the book flat out states it when Sirius points out how she Hermione Granger could have done better. No, she's not horrible, she flat out thought of subterfuge methods Harry Potter, the habitual sneaky sneak of the group had not thought of when she had the proper motivation too, but all the same she needs the motivation to. Hermione doesn't extensively think of, fantasize, eagerly await chances to or jump at the chances to make mischief on principal. The twins do, though they don't get her school marks. The marauders did, on top of being getting good school marks.

The Quidditch Final

• How did the Gryffindor Quidditch team turn around so fast for the last match of the season? Every practice seems to be a complete nightmare, and Ron allowed hundreds of points in the previous match. And yet he becomes some kind of Quidditch hero in time for the last match? Something doesn't track.
  • At least there IS an explanation for Ron. During the book, they commented on him being good, but having stage fright, so him being good during the last game. Hell, next book he proved to be good at the first match, when Harry gave him a confidence boost. Of course, the champions part could be blamed on Rowling not being able to do math to save her life.
  • Also if Ron thought they were already totally screwed and his performance wouldn't matter in the last game then all the pressure is off and he can play at his best.
  • The hundreds of points don't matter if the other teams were losing by similar amounts.
  • It should also be noted that Gryffindor's seekers had caught the snitch in both previous matches and so Gryffindor had around 390 points from their first two matches with 280 points against. So say Gryffindor take heart from Ron's improvement and score 10 goals before catching the snitch, that gives them 640 points. (In addition, it's mentioned that Slytherin choked against Hufflepuff in their final game.)

Luna's Friendless Background

• Luna's friendless status came across poorly conveyed in the book. Yes, of course, it would make sense for such an oddball as herself to be ostracized by other people, but she never seemed as much of a friendless outsider. She's shown hanging out and conversing with the main trio and the secondary duo quite a few times and the way she mentions how "we in Ravenclaw" think of Hagrid as a bit of a joke would make it seem as though she's able to connect with them over something. Even for a Cloud Cuckoo Lander, she always struck more as the oddball that everyone knows is an oddball, but not in a way that makes anyone dislike her, really.
  • She's not disliked, no, but no one likes her, either. Everyone feels weird when she shows up, but no one makes any effort to get rid of her.
  • This makes sense, but it wasn't obvious at first because she is so extroverted, and isn't afraid in the slightest to voice what's on her mind. It's so easy to go without friends out of shyness that it can make you forget that even extroverts can be ostracized, too. In some ways, not being actively liked or disliked by people is somewhat worse than being bullied and picked on and such. In the latter case, there will always be someone, somewhere who will be willing to stand up for you, whereas if you're just friendless because everyone ignores you, the context of the problem does cancel out any hope of a solution.
  • You have to keep in mind that Luna genuinely doesn't care what anyone else thinks of her so she's not going to act shy or avoid conversations she feels she has something to add to.
  • Maybe it was Luna's tendency to not being delicate when she talks with someone what make people avoid her.
  • She also has lots of weird conspiracy theories and does strange things that others find off-putting. Even Harry and Neville prefer to avoid her at first. Maybe the Ravenclaws have a similar attitude to Hermione, who looks down on her because she believes in so many outrageous things.

Sirius on lockdown

• Why was there so much emphasis put on Sirius being stuck inside Grimmauld Place? He spent the entirety of the last book in hiding - if he wants to get out of his old family's home and doesn't contribute anything by being there, why doesn't he just do that again? The other members of the Order could keep in touch with him through their Patronuses (or any other form of communication, really), and Apparation is always an option if he needs to get back to Britain in a pinch.
  • The previous year he was in hiding, Voldemort wasn't back and rallying his forces again. Dumbledore wants to keep him safe not just from the Ministry, but from the Death Eaters, especially since someone like Lucius could use the resources of the Ministry to target him. As an almost-Secret Keeper and godfather of the Potters, Sirius is a prime target for Voldemort's followers to capture.
  • What does his status as a keeper of a long-expired secret matters or a godfather matters? V didn't even need him in the flesh to use him as a bait. On the other hand Sirius was a reckless idiot, whom no one in their right mind (or even DD) would entrust any important task. So he was tucked safely where he would do no damage.
  • Come to think of it, though, why did anyone have to be there as much as they were? Yes, it was used as HQ for the Order, but why? Why not just use somewhere like the Burrow or something? And why did Harry and his friends have to be there, too, especially if no one wanted him involved? He's there during Christmas, it's where he's brought to from the Dursleys. It all seems pointless.
  • As to the Sirius part of it: Perhaps Dumbledore wasn't keen on Sirius living out in caves and risking exposure/death, but he realized that Sirius was making "sightings" of himself far away from Hogwarts to keep pressure off of Hogwarts and Harry from needing so much protection. Now that the order is reformed, Kingsley can make up the sightings to do the same thing so there's no need to risk Sirius. As for Grimauld Place vs The Burrow, DD didn't want the Order headquarters inside the house of a Ministry official that needs to stay in the Ministry. And as for Harry, if Grimauld place is HQ for the order, odd are that it's the safest place to put Harry except for perhaps Hogwarts itself.

Dumbledore's intentions

• How did Dumbledore keeping his distance from Harry throughout the year help keep Voldemort out of the loop with regards to the link between them? When Harry looked into Dumbledore's eyes, Voldemort would see them, too, and his anger and hatred would in turn be felt by Harry. But if Voldemort didn't know at first about the link, as he didn't find out until Harry saw Nagini attacking Mr. Weasley, then why not tell him at the beginning of the year so he could better learn to defend against it, before Voldemort was even aware that there might be a connection?
  • Someone else would say is because Dumbledore is evil, senile, criminally incompetent, negligent or the like, but the simplest answer is simple; telling a kid that he has a mental link with a dangerous sociopath doesn’t sound like something easy to do, and it might cause extra worries for a kid that already have a lot of traumas to deal with. What would you prefer to think? That the Headmaster is busy or upset with you or that you have a mental link with your parents' murderer and your universe equivalent to Hitler?

Luna and Hagrid

• Isn't it a bit hypocritical of Luna to express a particular dislike of Hagrid? Considering he's interested in exotic, albeit oftentimes somewhat dangerous animals, and she's always going on about exotic magical creatures that others think don't exist, many of which would also seem somewhat dangerous, by her descriptions of them. Or maybe that was what was intended to be drawn from it? The similarities between them are even more prominent after watching the film, in which Luna takes Hagrid's place as the one who tells Harry about the Thestrals in the forest.
  • Hagrid is an incompetent teacher and a general idiot, most of the school thinks he's a bad teacher (though he is getting better over time). Perfectly valid reasons for Luna not to like him. Even Harry, Ron and Hermione acknowledge these flaws on occasion but ignore them because he's their friend.
  • Hagrid has actually a broad knowledge of magical creatures so he is good teacher and his first lesson went well, Malfoy did screw it up on purpose (Harrys 4th year aside) but he can be reckless, but as said, he becomes better. Luna was a bit of a hypocrite regarding this topic. Oh, and the previous Magical Creatures teacher was even worse in Terms of recklessness then Hagrid.
  • Luna isn't a hypocrite at all. She doesn't think Hagrid (who by the way is probably the only Care of Magical Creatures teacher she ever had, along with Grubbly-Plank, so she only has the latter to compare him with) is a bad teacher because of his eccentricity, but because he's shown to be reckless to make his classes interesting. The hippogriff class was good in practice (until Malfoy screwed it up), but judging by the kids' research on how many documented cases of hippogriff attacks exist (and they are obviously temperamental creatures), Hagrid was definitely being bold to the point of rupture when introducing them to thirteen year-olds in their first Magical Creatures class, and in his first class as a teacher. That's not even getting to the worms and the Blast-Ended Skrewts, the latter which aren't even asked about in the O.W.Ls and yet the kids spend months on them. By that time, it also shows that the students aside from Harry and his gang, who are personal friends of Hagrid, don't trust their safety to him, which should be a given in this subject. Hagrid is a great person and knows a great deal about magical creatures but he's still got a long way to go as a teacher.
  • Besides, plenty of teachers in real life fall into the trap of trying to make their lessons 'fun' or 'interesting' at the expense of any actual learning happening. Sure, although Hagrid is knowledgeable about his creatures, he may not be equipping his students very well for their exams.

Hermione and the Thestrals

• Why wouldn't Hermione know anything about the Thestrals? She spent the first half of the first book and even parts of the second one talking about and reciting things she'd already read about in Hogwarts, A History. If the book is even half as detailed as she implies, shouldn't it have at least a footnote pertaining to the necromantic, skeletal, horse-like creatures that pull the Hogwarts carriages?
  • Perhaps the book is outdated Hermione herself mentions it says nothing of the elves working in the kitchens, which one would expect to find in a detailed book. It actually supports that Hogwarts, A History is a rather biased source, since it bothers to mention the spell of the ceiling, but not the employees who do most of the heavy work. Thestrals are (or were, according to Hagrid) considered symbol of bad luck, so maybe A History abstained from mentioning them at all so that readers don't get weirded out.
• She knows something about them, just not that they're pulling the carriages, which for all she knows could be automated, and doesn't realize they're what's making the carrion disappear.
• And the Fantastic Beasts book doesn't elaborate on them that much - so it's possible she didn't put two and two together. Hermione just assumes the carriages pull themselves - because she has no reason not to. She's also quite narrow-minded and doesn't believe in anything she can't see or read for herself.
  • When Hagrid says the word 'Thestrals', doesn't Hermione have a realization? So she must know of them, but just didn't realise they pulled the carriages.

The Real One This Time

• Would Dumbledore and co. have been able to take advantage of Loophole Abuse for the curse on the DADA position by having Moody, the real one this time, come and teach? He technically never taught the position himself, and he was not the one to suffer from the effects of the curse (being locked in a trunk the whole year notwithstanding). Yes, Moody had responsibilities to the Order, but if it meant preventing the Ministry from exerting its power over Hogwarts, you'd think that would take precedence.
  • The curse was that no one would be able to hold the position for more than a year. It wouldn't have prevented Moody from taking it, but by the end of the year something would've happened to him that would've forced him to leave, and there was no way to tell what or how harmful it would've been. Of course, there's no guarantee that it would've made any difference, if Fudge had simply changed the rules and declared that the Ministry gets a definitive say in school staff appointment.
  • But then Dumbledore was clearly willing to risk the "something" on the real Moody (as he is with any DADA teachers he appoints) in the fourth book, and this indeed would have happened if not for Crouch's interference. So might as well risk it again this time, unless Fudge outright forbid it in favour of Umbridge.
  • Ah, but that was before V's return. Now that he's back, DD can't risk compromising or losing such a valuable asset.
  • We know of only seven (eight if you count Harry's DA lessons) DADA teachers and their fates. Of those, one died (Quirrell), one had his soul taken (Crouch Jr), one was rendered with amnesia (Lockhart), two left Hogwarts with no physical issues (Lupin and Umbridge), one was promoted to Headmaster (Snape), and one was arrested (Carrows). Voldemort hexed the class around twenty years after graduation, so Dumbledore had seen decades of teachers come and go. Why would he have thought Moody would have been in trouble? He was confident enough to entrust his number one spy to Voldemort with the position.
  • We don't know whether or not Dumbledore asked Moody or if Moody just denied. After the year he had, I would not doubt he would say no. What was incredible is that Dumbledore didn't have any teacher for the Defense class as of late August and the Ministry passed their Educational Decree 22 on Aug 30, three days (or what should be 5 days since Sept 1 was on Friday that year) before the classes started.

How was Dennis at Hosgmeade?

• Earlier in the books, it was established that students are allowed to visit Hogsmeade once they reach their third year at Hogwarts. So when the main trio hold the meeting to propose the DA thing, Colin Creevey and his little brother Dennis are among the many students that show up, with Dennis being the youngest among them all. But Dennis joined Hogwarts just the year before, which means he would be in his second year now, not his third. Were the age rules changed and just not mentioned or did Dennis somehow sneak out of Hogwarts?
  • Maybe first- and second-years are allowed to visit by tagging along with their third-year siblings, should they have them?
    • If that was the case, then why didn't the twins or Percy ever bring Ron along with them to Hogsmeade and why didn't Ron bring Ginny when she was a second year?
  • He might have sneaked out since he heard about the first ever DA meeting.

Occlumency lessons: horrible teacher choice

• What, in the name of God possessed Dumbledore to choose Snape as Harry's teacher? Yes, keeping Voldy out of his mind is important, and he may be rubbish at it, but having Snape basically assures that he won't even try and ends up being another instance of Snape expecting mastery at the first try and being a complete jackass to Harry, and him taking it and not even trying to do as he is told. They might as well hand him a pamphlet and hope he figures it out by himself, it would have stopped them from wasting so much time and causing their grudge to become even bigger.
  • There's a theory that Voldemort learnt about the planned Occlumency teaching from his link to Harry's mind. Due to not wanting Harry to learn Occlumency, he ordered Snape to "volunteer" for the job and then deliberately do a bad job of it. Dumbledore, who couldn't teach Harry himself due to the previously stated reasons, accepted the offer gladly.
  • All valid points. However, Severus was correct in telling Harry that he needed to practice his Occlumency more, because Harry never bothered doing it until the seventh book. Even Hermione called him out on this! Also, Dumbledore admits it was his folly in assuming Snape would be willing to put aside his grudge against James so easily.
  • Harry did bother practicing in book five, after his lessons with Snape started. Part of the problem was Harry's relaxed attitude, him not wanting to practice, him wanting to but forgetting, him wanting to but being too angry with Umbridge or confused about Chang to make any progress, but the other problem was that Harry wasn't good at it to begin with, so what practice he did lead to minimal improvement, though all the same he does make minimal improvement. Book seven, by contrast wasn't him practicing, it was simply him trying a lot harder in one instance out of desperation, and then finally figuring out a better way of making it work than "no feelings" when Harry realized he was been subconsciously blocking out Voldemort and had done something similar before without making a connection to Occulmency the previous time. Ideally, Harry would have done better with Sirius or Lupin as a teacher, because they'd probably believe him when he told them something "revealed" through legitimecy wasn't from the dream spying he wasn't supposed to be doing, probably wouldn't blast him while he was scared and then berate him for obviously performing even more poorly, complain about him using defensive measures he never said couldn't be used, would probably be better at motivating him to work harder and Harry could come to them with questions about Umbridge, Chang, Dumbledoore, McGonigal, Digory that he couldn't or wouldn't with Snape. But Umbridge is monitoring all exits out of the grounds, so those two are out and Dumbledoore's too scared to do himself. It's either Snape or pamphlet.
  • Snape says that Occlumency is an obscure branch of magic, not to mention a difficult one. That would mean that they are limited number of wizards who have mastered it, and since Dumbledore didn't want to do it himself, there probably isn't anyone else in his trusted circle who was competent enough in it (Snape did manage to fool Voldemort for years), not to mention whoever taught Harry would have to do it at a protected place where even Voldemort can't physically reach him and the only place that can be considered this is Hogwarts.
  • Damn, if only there was some long uninterrupted period of time, when Harry could've easily arranged meetings with whomever he wanted in secure locations, such as Private Drive or Grimmauld Place, or any other goddamn shack in the world they could put a Felicitus on. Like, some time during a summer school break. Too bad he was so inundated with studying the intricacies of parrot water skiing that he couldn't spare a single day to learn a skill that might save his life.
    • What "long uninterrupted period of time" are you referring to? The need for Occlumency started and ended during fifth year. Before Christmas, it wasn't deemed necessary; by June, it's no longer deemed necessary, because Voldemort's been scared off of trying to get inside Harry's mind. There was no summer break within that time.
    • The need for Occlumency started the moment the possibility of mind reading was recognized to be real and would only end when that art is irrevocably lost to the wizardkind, and that it became a burning necessity the moment DD entertained the possibility of pitching a child against the most powerful wizard (and, incidentally, the best Legiliment) in the word, which happened some fifteen years prior to the events in question.
    • You're missing a huge chunk of Dumbledore's characterization, here. He didn't want to be raising Harry for a war or a slaughter, even though he knew that that was ultimately what had to be done. This is why he took five years to tell Harry the prophecy, as was explained at the end of Book 5, and that explanation also covers the reason Harry didn't get any specialized training during his time at Hogwarts, not just as far as Occlumency goes but in general. Was it maybe not the smartest course of action? For sure, and Dumbledore acknowledges that he messed up in that. But Dumbledore has never been portrayed as a perfect leader or perfect person. Incredibly magically powerful, and brilliant with a wand, and with some learned expertise in politics and strategy, but he isn't perfect and like any of the other characters he lets emotion get in the way. Combined with the fact that, as mentioned by others, it wasn't until the events of the fifth book that Dumbledore had reason to believe that Voldemort's mental abilities could endanger Harry at long range, it is at least consistent with Dumbledore's style of "wait until it's urgent to tell Harry things" that Harry didn't get trained until late. Now, had Voldemort not tried to possess Harry at the end of the Department of Mysteries fight, or had he chosen to wait a while longer before luring Harry there, then the lessons probably would have continued into the summer, but that's not how it went down.

Cheering Charms

• The whole issue with Ron on the Quidditch team could have been solved fast with someone shooting him a Cheering charm before a practice, at least. Let him have one good day and from there he picks up momentum to do fine later. Surprised no one ever considered it, to be honest.
  • Because that runs the risk of him becoming dependent on them. Usually the best cure for stage fright or performance anxiety is to go out there and keep doing it until you're used to it. Giving him a magical aid or boost won't help him in the long run.

Other Order members

• Okay, so Harry assumes his only option is to rescue Sirius at the Ministry himself. This is because McGonnagall seeked treatment from an attack at St. Mungo's and he (rather foolishly) assumes that Snape doesn't care, and those are the only two members he can talk to at Hogwarts. But what about Lupin? Moody? Mr. and Mrs. Weasley? Tonks? Kingsley Shacklebolt, even? Did the book ever mention anything in dispute of this, or did Harry think that the other members of the Order wouldn't have noticed Sirius's disappearance, or that he shouldn't bother telling one of them before heading to the Ministry himself?
  • An even better question is why didn't Voldemort expect Harry to do just that?
  • Harry's excuse was that his means of communicating outside of the school were all being monitored and by the time they weren't he wanted to get to Sirius as quickly as possible, already having let more time pass than he wanted before they had to shake Umbridge. Now Voldemort, who can't actually read Harry's mind at this distance, only feel his emotions(if that) and send images, he has no excuse other than, well, he's not as bright as he thinks he is at anything other than killing people and causing discord. His record of screwing things up, especially where Harry is a factor, are half the plot of the books.
  • Even if he were worried and wanted to get to the Ministry as quickly as possible, it should've occurred to him to at least send a message to one of them, somehow, if not just take a little extra time to ensure that Sirius will actually have a chance at being saved.
  • How exactly was Harry suppose to message one of them? All lines of communication outside of Hogwarts was being monitored. He did his due diligence in using Umbridge's Floo Network to attempt contact with Sirius (which is more than he even wanted to attempt), and found that the only one who was there was Kreacher. What else did you want him to do? Send an owl that would have taken hours to arrive anywhere, and would have been read when it returned anyway? Furthermore, it's possible that there are times where Sirius is the only member of the Order who is at Grimmuald Place at any given time, considering the others can go out on missions, and Sirius, being an escaped convict, couldn't. Harry contacted Grimmuald Place, saw no one seemed to be there, and went from there. It was all he could have done.
  • Who was monitoring the communication out of Hogwarts, with Umbridge being taken captive by centaurs? Harry knows that the Order members know how to Apparate - why didn't he and the others just use the Floo network to go to the Burrow and tell the Weasleys what he saw in his vision and what Kreacher told him, then have them get the Order together and Apparate to the Ministry?

Hagrid's interesting lesson

• Minor issue, but why does Hagrid think it would be a good idea to focus one of his lessons on a creature that a majority of the students can't see? Not to mention, those who can see it are informed or reminded that their ability to see it is due to them having seen (and been heavily effected by, apparently) the death of another person. Isn't that kind of a personal thing to have revealed without your knowledge or consent in front of your entire class?
  • Who ever said that Hagrid has good judgment skills (especially when magical creatures are involved)?
  • He might not have a choice, it is possible that there's a mandatory list of magical creatures that have to be learn in the curriculum, in a similar way how a history teacher can't choose not to see the Holocaust even if the grandson of a Holocaust survivor is in the class.
  • For the death-part, that analogy works. (Though there would have to be some amount of fair warning involved, wouldn't there? It still seems unethical to force a student into something like that without them knowing to expect it.) For the first point. not so much. The subject of their lesson being invisible would seem more like a history teacher asking students to copy down notes that he wrote in invisible ink.
    • We are thought a lot of invisible stuffs when we are in high school, like gases.
  • Shortly before the Thestrals were introduced, Harry had got his broom confiscated. Meaning he'd be inconvenienced when the time to travel to London for his annual confrontation with V comes. Therefore DD ensured that he's aware of a replacement.
    • The annual confrontation with Voldemort that Dumbledore specifically didn't want Harry to go to?
  • The students can't see the creatures, but they can see the disappearing carrion. And if there is a large heard of these invisible creatures on the grounds, that only those have just suffered a specific form of trauma can see, and will suddenly start seeing regularly after this trauma while most of the student body remains clueless. Yeah, why aren't those things covered immediately in the second year, of course they're a good creature to learn about, and since they're also an irrationally stigmatized creature, Hagrid's going to want people to know about them all the more.

SNEAK, again

• Why didn't Hermione tell the DA the consequences of betrayal? It can't act as a deterrent unless they know about it; was she just hoping for an excuse to punish someone? And why choose that curse at all? Why not use Silencio or something so they can not tell anyone the secret?
  • Perhaps Hermione didn't realize the consequences of the charm, and only knew that it would keep people from snitching.
    • She knew what it would do; when Umbridge bans all unauthorized societies she tells Harry if anyone had talked they'd know who it was. (And Hermione casting a spell she didn't know the effect of?)
  • The SNEAK plot point entirely was mainly meant as a way for JK Rowling to project how she (very strongly) feels about traitors into the story. Jinxing the sign-up sheet and then not telling anyone about it was just a needless and trying test of loyalty. It seems like the Hermione we've known up to this point wouldn't have done something like that, especially considering she was once a strict abider of the rules herself.
    • Hermione breaks tons of rules, has demonstrated a vengeful side in the past and is aware that if you someone about a curse they're more likely to find a way to get around it. She's also fully aware that betrayal can come from the last person you expect and can frame someone else if you give them the chance.
  • It isn't because she wanted the members to be loyal to the D.A. out of honor, or because they supported the purpose of the organization, and not have people be loyal due to them being afraid of any jinxes or consequences of betraying the organization. She did say that this is something none of them should talk about, and confided to Harry and Ron that it was jinxed not long after they signed. A bit vindictive, the jinx, but it ensured that if someone was going to be a traitor, everyone in the D.A. would know exactly who is was. This was not a kids game, there had to be repercussions, and furthermore, a reasonable expectation of repercussions for betrayal. It's an issue that Cho peer pressured Marietta to sign when she clearly, clearly had no interest in the group.
  • "it ensured that if someone was going to be a traitor, everyone in the D.A. would know exactly who is was" Yes, after the fact. Which is already way too late. And you either trust people to be loyal, or you put explosive collars on them without them knowing - you cannot have both. If this still was Hermione, she would've done it her usual, i.e. smart, way - that is, made it so that she is notified when someone's betraying them (or even just going to, if possible), so that they'd have time to scramble.
    • There's no indication that Hermione knows how to use such spells. The curse was not just a way to identify the traitor but a punishment for doing so. Hermione IS a vengeful person, she made that clear back during book four with Rita Skeeter and the stakes were much higher now.
    • No, she wasn't and she didn't. All she did with Rita was specifically prevent her from blackmouthing people (including herself). Not her fault it was the only thing that woman knew how to do. Hell, even feeding Umbridge to the centaurs was secondary to freeing themselves. The sneak curse wasn't just cruel - it was nigh pointlessly so, because identifying the traitor isn't worth much when you're already caught and expelled.
    • Remember that the threat of expulsion wasn't apparent until after Hermione had already jinxed the form and gotten everyone to sign. It's entirely possible she figured that if they were caught, the consequences would be severe — severe enough to warrant the curse as punishment - but surely even Umbridge wouldn't be able to just expel 30-odd students out of hand, especially as that would likely get at least the wizarding families involved and that would be a PR nightmare for the Ministry. They would know who ratted them out in the aftermath and, should some future anti-Umbridge endeavor come up, they would know not to trust that person. Obviously a spell to just keep Marietta silent in the first place would have been better, but it stands to reason that if Hermione knew how to do magic like that, she would have. In that context, the SNEAK curse doesn't do much, but it's still better than nothing, and combined with Hermione's demonstrated occasional vicious streak, it's not a stretch.
  • Is there a spell that could prevent Marietta from telling? If there was one that stopped members from revealing their secret, wouldn't Hermione have used that instead? The point about expulsion is important too, as when they set the DA up, it's just a new school club where they would be practicing spells. Just a more advanced study group (Hermione even says she checked the rule book to make sure it's okay). So they didn't think they'd be getting expelled for taking part. And you're assuming that Hermione thought the events would play out like they did in the book - Umbridge finds out and the whole thing is shut down. What if when she was told, she had the sneak stay there as The Mole and keep passing information? The spell would both reveal that someone had told and which person it was. And if they wanted to continue it even after it had been revealed, they would still know who they could trust.
  • And the spell would also out the sneak hopefully before Umbridge could take action. Say Marietta or someone else had outed them on a day they didn't have a meeting, and Umbridge was waiting for them to have one so that she could properly catch them. With the spell activated, the traitor and the betrayal would be exposed and that would protect the others from persecution.
  • It also had the effect of distressing Marietta when she realized what was happening to her - and preventing her from revealing any more information. Because of that, Dumbledore was able to prevent things from getting any worse.
  • One of the reasons she didn't reveal any more information is because Kingsley Shacklebolt modified her memory.
    • Yes but before he was able to do that, Marietta was so freaked out by the spots that she didn't say anything else. The jinx had the effect of scaring her into thinking it might get worse if she said anything else. That may have been more down to luck than anything else, but if a person is about to pass information and they suddenly get a disfigurement, it's likely to keep them quiet.

Umbridge trusting Snape

• Why? Remember what happened at the end of GoF: Harry tells Fudge Voldemort is back and Fudge disbelieves him. Dumbledore backs him up and Fudge disbelieves him. Snape says, "I'm an ex-Death Eater, here's my Dark Mark, here's how it works, it's been coming back all this year and Voldemort tried to summon me a few hours ago," and Fudge disbelieves him. At the end of this book, Umbridge says something about how she expected cooperation from Snape based on how Lucius likes him, but didn't Fudge give her any kind of briefing? "You'll have to be on your guard, Dolores: Dumbledore's already got Snape coming up with rubbish about Voldemort being back and who knows how many other teachers he's brainwashed." Is Lucius just that persuasive or is Fudge just that incompetent that he - a politician good enough to become head of government - forgets to tell his agent who to distrust?
  • Fudge is incompetent, but not that incompetent. Dolores is a bit of a haughty idiot, and Cornelius is a bit of a bumbler. On subject of Snape their combined character flaws came together and let him into her good graces.
  • We're talking about a "politician" who brought a monster into a school to assassinate a witness, and an "agent" who was planning to murder two teenagers with a method that paints a huge neon arrow straight at the Ministry, instantly cracked at the first sign of provocation about said murder attempt, tortured a child in a way that leaves clear marks (something that even wifebeating drunkards and corrupt cops are too smart to do), and fell for a ruse hastily made up by yet another teenager. There proably wasn't even a briefing.

Grawp calling Hagrid "Hagger"

• Why does Grawp call his half-brother Rubeus "Hagger" and not "Roobus" (or however he'd pronounce Hagrid's first name)? Why would he be on a last-name basis with his half-sibling?
  • Maybe, being commonly called Hagrid by everybody else, barring DD, he began more accustomed to his last name himself?
  • A bit of a long shot, but maybe Grawp's understanding of human speech was picked up by seeing Hagrid engage in it with other people, rather than just being spoken to himself. (Considering he..."remembered" Hermione's name, it clearly left some impact on him.) And since Harry and Hermione commonly call Hagrid by his surname, that's just how he chose to refer to him as well.
  • Maybe he just went with Hagrid because it's two syllables and easier to say than Rubeus. He shortens Hermione to 'Hermy' for that reason.

Snape feared the wrong memory.

• During their Occlumency lessons, Snape stored the memories of being bullied by James in the Pensieve. Ok, he didn't want Harry to witness his humiliation, but isn't that small fry compared to some of the other memories he had? Such as being in love with Lily, being the one to betray Potters and then promising to look after Harry in penance? Did he also store those memories there, and Harry just "lucked" to see the relatively harmless one?
  • Possibly barring his love for Lily, the memories you've listed probably would've been presented to Harry after his "worst memory," if they were in there, so either Harry did luck out in Snape returning before he saw them, or Snape had been there all along, and wanted to give Harry a taste of the sort of bully his father had been like as a youth.
  • Seing how furious Severus was, that last one seems unlikely, but, as it tends to do with HP and thinking, this does raises another issue: if memories are indeed presented to the viewer chronologically (which is how Harry browses through them in "Hallows"), why did Harry zoom in to that particular one instead of starting with the teenage ones? Severus wouldn't be ok with him knowing he had a crush on his mom either. On the other hand, if there was some sort of subconscious choosing on Harry's part involved, like "I want to see what he's hiding the most", you'd think he'd seen the betrayal one first.
  • The fact that Severus was bullied by James is not what makes it the worst for Severus, it's what makes it awful for Harry. Severus sees it not as 'James was so mean' but 'that, right then, was when I turned Lilly against me for good, assuring she would end up with James'. Harry doesn't get the full context until much later.
  • If Harry could focus on certain memories over other ones, he may have seen his father as a teenager in this one and was curious to see that one more than the others. After all, Snape had constantly told Harry that James was terrible to him when they were in school and Harry would have wanted to see if it was true.

Why haven't the Death Eaters mailed Grimmauld Place a letter bomb?

• This book establishes that whatever the Fidelius charm does doesn't work on animals, specifically owls, who can be sent to secret-kept buildings, see them, and enter without any need to be informed, and that it doesn't even interfere with whatever magical treatment those owls get to be able to psychically locate the addressee without an address, and even when the subject is in hiding. So why didn't Voldemort just mail something explosive, poisonous, or otherwise lethal to Sirius Black or somebody else they knew would be residing in headquarters so that everyone present in the building would die when the owl arrived? It also doesn't make sense this special power these owls have is used for nothing other than delivering mail rather than tracking down criminals or missing persons.
• Forget Sirius - why in the Seven Hells did he never mail Harry either a bomb or a Portkey to his lair?! Some nutjob managed to mail Hermie, basically, an acid bomb, so we know they don't screen the incoming owls for dangerous items, and, incidentally, why the hell don't they?
  • Was it ever stated before the seventh book that Voldemort knew where Harry lived? The only time Harry sent a letter to someone without an address was by using an owl they had already sent to him, and the protective charms should still defend against something so predictable as a letter bomb.
  • Incorrect. Harry keeps sending letters to Sirius with new, random school owls in book 4. Owls clearly have the power to seek out addressees wherever they are, even when the sender doesn't know. And how the hell could Voldemort not know where Harry lives? He lives in a muggle neighborhood, there's absolutely nothing keeping his location a secret and absolutely no mention of anything in the series that would indicate otherwise.
    • Death Eaters looking through a muggle phone book or doing any sort of muggle sleuthing to track down Harry just seems silly.
    • Harry can't be harm directly or indirectly by Voldemort or anyone in his name as far as he lives with her aunt due to blood magic protection.
    • And, Voldemort only returned at the end of the fourth book. The fifth book had him working incognito as he attempted to get his hands on the prophecy, thereby leaving him too preoccupied to worry about Harry. By the sixth book, everyone knows Voldemort has returned, and as result the wizarding world is on high alert. Even if the wards didn't protect against something like this, it wouldn't make it past the security measures that were in place, and Voldemort doesn't seem to know the identities of the Dursleys, so looking them up in a phone book isn't feasible for him to do, even if he were to consider it.
  • Hermie received her bomb, right at the dinner table inside Hogwarts. Absolutely nothing was stopping V from doing the same to Harry, and he wasn't too preoccupied for that or had no one to delegate this task to.
  • Or maybe whatever magic allows the owl to do its magical homing thing just won't work if you try to abuse it and send something obviously lethal. The bubotuber pus was annoying and somewhat painful but ultimately it wasn't that big a deal, whereas if you tried to, say, mail Katie Bell that cursed necklace from Borgin and Burke's, the owl would either refuse to take it or just wouldn't be able to find her. Perhaps something nonmagical would work, or something magical but simple (like an untreated venom from a magical animal as opposed to a brewed malicious potion,) but non-magical solutions aren't in vogue. Look, if we can already accept that there's an all-purpose protective charm defeater and it's used for delivering mail, then we can also accept that sending mail is mostly all it's good for.
  • As an aside, Hedwig was included in the Fidelius Charm. She was with Harry and taken inside when he was. So she's been in Grimmauld Place and therefore would be able to return to it. Perhaps as Harry's 'property', she would be included in him knowing about the house. If the Death Eaters wanted to try that trick, they'd first need an animal that was shown where the house is.

Snape isn't in the loop?

• How does Snape not already know that the vision Harry saw was a fake? He's Voldemort's right hand, basically. Hell, Voldy even tells Snape his plan to kill Dumbledore just 2 months (roughly) later.
  • He probably did, but because Harry never went to Snape for help, he was never able to reveal the information. There are actually theories that Voldemort gave Snape instructions to "help" Harry along to the ministry of magic if he were to come to him about the vision.
  • Of course, it's not out of the realm of possibility that Snape didn't know. In this case, it's reasonable that: Snape might not have been able to make the last Death Eater meeting, and if the "fake vision" scheme was probably planned quickly; also, Snape was not necessarily as high up the Death Eater food chain as he would be by book 6, because at this point, Lucius Malfoy, etc. haven't been sent to Azkaban yet.
  • Maybe only the Death Eaters who were to be there were in on it. Snape knowing would create a conflict of interest; if he's supposed to preserving his cover with the Order, how can he know and pretend not to while still allowing the plan to go ahead?

No Boys Allowed

• About the charm that keeps boys out of the girls' dormitories. We know what happens to Gryffindor boys; what would happen to boys of the other houses?
  • Probably the same way with every house. If you take "boys shouldn't be trusted in girls' dorms" as a universal rule of Hogwarts, it makes sense that similar restrictions are in place in every house. It's possible it was decided by the individual founder of each house, but, based entirely on canon, it's more reasonable to assume the other houses are the same.
  • Why not have the same kind of charm on the boys' dorms as well? If the boys can't be trusted to go up to the girls' dorms, why should they be trusted to bring up a girl to their dorm? There were plenty of ways to illegally enchant girls, so why give the boys that opportunity if the issue was trustworthiness?
  • This type of restriction — minus the magic— is Truth in Television at traditional boarding schools and colleges that are coed. Generally, parietal restrictions (the proper term for rules involving boys and girls being in each others’ rooms), both as written and as enforced, are harsher regarding boys being in girls’ rooms than the reverse. This is based on the traditional rule that a proper gentleman is not to go into a lady’s bedroom.

The Dark Lord

• During Occlumency lessons, Harry remarks that he has only heard Death Eaters call Voldemort the Dark Lord. However, this is untrue, as (for example) he heard Trelawney say it during her other prophecy.
  • However, that wasn't Trelawney herself speaking the prophecy - it was more like the prophecy speaking itself through her. It just happened to be worded that way.
  • He's trying to stick it to Snape, and he's not going to let small things like facts get in the way.
  • Did the book ever say that he was trying to stick it to Snape at that point? Wasn't he just asking why Snape would use a means of addressing Voldemort that only his followers were known to use?

Transgfiguring into Voldemort

• If the Order was having such a hard time convincing people that Voldemort had returned, why didn't they just Transfigure someone to look like him and then have him show up somewhere, just long enough for people to notice him, then Apparate away? They all do this exact thing to Harry in Cursed Child, and Word of God is that Grindelwald used a similar technique to impersonate Percival Graves in Fantastic Beasts.
  • Because Voldemort doesn't have any hair!
    • Huh, come to think of it, with the PJP existing, you'd think depilation would've been all the rage with the wizards, at least those in the positions of power. Moody at least should be bald as cue ball.
  • That's for Polyjuice potion. You don't need a part of someone to Transfigure yourself into them.
    • Except "transfiguring" themselves to look like another person isn't a thing. That's what polyjuice potion is for. You can transfigure another person into an animal, or become an animagus. Maybe a metamorphmagus could do it, but Tonks doesn't ever change herself to look like a specific person.
    • As stated in the original post, it happened in Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
  • If people know that you can do that, then it's not going to convince anyone, especially if they're in denial to begin with. Of course, this means that anyone can be in disguise at any moment, so such things as witness testimonies should be completely useless, but that beside the point.
  • But when Voldemort did show up and then vanished right before everyone's eyes, not even Fudge himself tried to deny his return after that. True, it had the support of a huge crime scene with numerous incapacitated Death Eaters, but the Order could've at least tried to do something to replicate it.
  • Grindlewald is an uber wizard comparable to Albus Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort. Just because he is capable of such advanced human transfiguration does not mean everyone is, in fact if it was more common polyjuice wouldn't be a thing Voldemort's "most loyal death eater" would resort to. The only one capable of it should be Albus Dumbledore, what with being a transfiguration teacher on top of an uber wizard, but if he decides he doesn't want to, maybe believing the truth is best in this case for some reason, or that perhaps Voldemort's "several magical transformations" are too difficult to duplicate, well that's that.
  • Moreover, if anything goes wrong during this impersonation, the war is effectively lost since afterwards no one's ever gonna believe even the real thing until after it's too late. Unless, of course, Dumbledore's prepared to turn Fudge's paranoid suspicions about DA into Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

Snape's worst memory

• We find out in this book that Snape hates Harry because Harry reminds him so much of James, and that he hates James because, in his youth, James was an arrogant jock who disregarded the rules and bullied him at every opportunity. Which is fine, but considering Snape's history of being bullied, why does he blatantly favor students like Draco, who bullies people relentlessly and even throws around the magical equivalent of the N-word all the time? Harry may be a bit of a rule-breaker, but he's not arrogant or a bully.
  • He shows blatant favoritism to the Slytherins in general, because he's a crappy pedagogue and playing favors is the easiest way to win hearts. Also, the fathers of those bullies happen to be the Death Eaters whom he needs to engratiate himself with to succeed in his true mission as DD's spy. On a side note, Harry might not be a bully, but he is arrogant in his own, admittedly well-meaning, way. How many times does he dismiss each and every adult around him, because what do they know, right?
  • Because such a plan has the risk that the fakery could be exposed, which will discredit the cause even further. And there's the added bonus of Voldemort laying low to avoid the public knowing he's back - which reduces what he's able to do. Notice how in the next book, when his return is out in the open, he and the Death Eaters are far more aggressive and ruthless with what they do. So they did benefit from Voldemort keeping to himself, and it allowed them to gain more time to build their defenses.
  • There may be several explanations apart from the above. Either he simply transformed to bully, or forgot that he himself had used to oppose bullies, or he's expecting Harry to be mean to him by default, because he's mean to him because of what James did to Severus, spiraling this all over again. Don't forget, that abused children may grow up to become the same evil that hurt them. Molested children growing up to be child abductors, boys who grew up with abusive father may become abusive towards their own families, and so on... in Snape's case, he just might be teasing and bullying pupils who do not deserve it, because HE used to be bullied and didn't deserve it.
  • The above is right when it came to Snape being the child of a bullying and abusive father. Because of that, he became a bully as an adult because it was what he knew. He also was not averse to bullies. He hung around a group of bullies and the two spells he came up with were spells that either bullied or drew blood and had the intention to kill. James and Snape were just two who had the biggest feud with Snape and it was shared with equal hatred.

Voldemort's Blood Status

• Harry tells Bella that Voldemort's a half-blood and asks if Voldemort's been telling everyone he's a pure-blood. Wouldn't those who went to school with him, Lestrange Sr. Nott Sr., etc. knew him as "Tom Riddle" and should have known he wasn't a pure-blood. Hell, they probably thought he was a Muggle-born since he couldn't prove his ancestry. So why have they followed him despite his hypocrisy?
  • Reality Is Unrealistic. Voldemort is based on Real Life Hitler who preached racial purity and he himself couldn't proof it, as his father was a son out of wedlock of unknown father (and rumors of the time claim that his father's father was a Rothchild Jew who his grandmother worked as maid once), and Hitler's inner circle knew about that.
  • Also, remember that Riddle had his Parseltongue to prove himself as Slytherin's descendant. That, combined with his sheer power and talent, would have made it incredibly easy to convince the less-than-woke teen bigots he went to school with that he couldn't possibly have any significant amount of Muggle blood. Then, as time went on and the Death Eaters grew and rotated, fewer and fewer people would even have known his true name.
  • Whether or not they knew or believed this Tom Riddle boy was a half-blood, Voldemort was so powerful that there would be no way they would have talked about it, particularly to their children.
  • Tom was also born at an orphanage; we're even told in book 6 that it was the staff there who named him, albeit at Merope's request. He could've covered up his Muggle ancestry by claiming they made up the Riddle surname, alluding to the fact that they didn't know who he was or where he had come from.
  • Dumbledore and Harry only know so much about him because the former has done extensive research on his early life, and was also his teacher at Hogwarts. His school friends could have assumed he was pure blood, since he was in Slytherin, and back then half-bloods or Muggle borns in that house might lie about their blood status.

Obliviating Harry

• Harry and Dumbledore insist that Voldemort is back. The Ministry doesn't want to believe it due to the panic it would cause and so instigates a smear campaign against both of them which causes Harry to continue to act out. However, there was a way to keep Harry quiet which would've been to modify his memory into thinking that the Ministry's version of events was true mainly that Cedric Diggory died in a horrible accident that Harry witnessed, that and being attacked and possibly tortured by Barty Crouch Jr. led him to snap and believe that Voldemort was back but after weeks of deliberating on it realized it wasn't true. Afterwards, the Ministry could've have had Harry interviewed by the media saying he was wrong and that Voldemort was dead. While it wouldn't have stopped Dumbledore from trying to reach the public about Voldemort's resurgence, it would've weakened the anti-Voldemort movement if the Boy Who Lived and the main witness to Voldemort's return were to recant his testimony, not to mention making Dumbledore look worse by supposedly taking advantage of a young boy's death and another boy's trauma as part of a play against the Ministry. The Ministry had opportunities to do this during the summer Harry was away from Hogwarts (not knowing about the Order) and could've sent someone to modify his memory. Umbridge, herself could've modified Harry's memory during the times she was alone with him during detention. Hell, she could've gone further and even placed him under the Imperius Curse to further control him turning him into a puppet for the Ministry; if she's willing to have Harry's sucked by Dementors and/or torture him with an Unforgivable Curse, then mind control shouldn't be an issue. Instead, Umbridge decides to go with the half baked scheme of sending Dementors after Harry which if Harry had been Kissed, would've had sent some pointed fingers to the Ministry or at least been proof that Voldemort was back.
  • Neither the Imperius Curse nor the Memory Charm is foolproof. It's already public (or at least no particularly secret) knowledge that Harry can resist the Imperius Curse, so using that to make him change his story wouldn't work. Using a Memory Charm goes against Fudge's brand of self-delusion — remember, Fudge isn't intentionally abetting Voldemort, he's simply convinced himself that Harry is a crazy liar because that's easier to accept. To give the order to have someone Memory Charm Harry would require Fudge to admit both to himself and to whoever he told to do it that there is in fact an honest, accurate memory of V's return to cover up. Umbridge wouldn't care, but even if she doesn't mind the idea herself, there aren't any Aurors who would agree to do it and Umbridge would, let's face it, lose in a one-on-one fight with Harry and she probably knows it. Plus, even if they did manage to modify Harry's memory, Dumbledore (who would have already heard Harry's story by the time of the earliest opportunity anyone would have had to Obliviate him) would have easily put two and two together and realized that someone had tampered with Harry's mind, and would have worked on reversing the modification the way he did with Morfin. Then the Ministry would *really* be in trouble.
  • Umbridge wouldn't want to use a memory charm. Her thing was to try to break Harry. However, it would have been easy for someone like Hermione to use the Memory charm on Umbridge. The faculty wouldn't have cared much and likely would have backed up Hermione.

Back from the dead

• So we know that Kreacher told the Death Eaters about Harry’s love for Sirius, which is what allowed Voldemort to set a trap for him at the Ministry. (The book specifies Kreacher only leaked information directly to Narcissa Malfoy, but it also implies that Voldemort was made aware of his contribution and specifically that he was Sirius’s house elf.) However, in the seventh book, we learn that Kreacher was also the house-elf Voldemort requested from Regulus Black, to be used to test the defenses around one of his Horcruxes, after which he was left to be killed by the Inferi but managed to Apparate out of the cave on his own. So did Voldemort have no questions about how Kreacher had managed to escape the meant-to-be-inescapable cave? Did he not consider the security risk? Or does he just not know that Sirius and Regulus are brothers and that Kreacher was that same house elf?
  • More than likely, Bellatrix and Narcissa informed Voldemort of this information themselves, and either didn't bother to mention the elf's name and just said it was from a house-elf in Sirius's employ, or they did say his name, but Voldemort simply assumed that it was a replacement elf with the same name, since he never saw the elf himself, and has been shown to not care about them to begin with (hence using one to test the potion) and probably can't be bothered to remember the elf anyway.
    • Voldy probably didn't even call Kreacher by name back then during the whole Regulus thing.
  • Or a more mundane option. If Bellatrix or Narcissa ever used Kreacher's name, Voldemort assumed they were just saying "creature" and not using his name.

Floo-Powder and Single Body Parts

• So in Chapter 17, Sirius floo-powders his head from Number 12, Grimmauld Place to the Gryffindor fireplace to communicate with Harry, Ron and Hermione. Then Umbridge tries to capture Sirius by floo-powdering her hand from her office into the Gryffindor fireplace. What would have happened if Umbridge managed to grab Sirius' head and bring it to her office,? Would only his head travel? Would his whole body from 12 Grimmauld Place travel to Umbridge's office? Is it even possible that if only his head wound up not in its intended fireplace Sirius would be decapitated?
  • The Floo Network makes sense as a series of portals, so it's more than likely that Sirius would have simply been pulled from Grimmauld Place into Umbridge's office. But, knowing how sadistic Umbridge is, and how little she cares for anything but her own egomania, perhaps she was hoping it would result in Sirius being decapitated.

Why would ANYONE take her back?

• It's hard to argue with Harry's point of view when he bluntly tells Cho that Marietta sold her out, along with a good portion of the school, and that a "lovely person who made a mistake" wouldn't do that. Plus, if Cho had any sense, there is nothing defensible about what Marietta did since it led to Umbridge becoming headmistress, and she should have just kept her mouth shut and let Harry cool down. It'd have been one thing if Marietta had warned Cho not to go to the meeting that night, but she was perfectly willing to throw her so-called best friend under the bus to please her mother, if that was her excuse. Umbridge bluntly said she'd expel anyone who violated that decree, and she only favors Slytherins. Yes, Cho dated Michael Corner as her proper rebound guy because he was a prat but honorable at least. But why would you stay friends with someone who betrayed you when the chips were down? What is everyone's theory on this?
  • Maybe Marietta was the only one of Cho's friends who stayed by her side while the rest abandoned her after Cedric's death. So perhaps Cho felt like she owed it to Marietta.
  • Cho also might be feeling guilty that she pressured Marietta into coming along to the meetings in the first place.

What's in a name?

• Why call the underground DADA group "Dumbledore's Army"? Harry already knew that Fudge believed Dumbledore was raising an army to rebel against the Ministry, so why name their group something that, if exposed, would directly confirm what he believed, implicating Dumbledore who wasn't even involved?
  • It was supposed to be a crack at the Ministry's delusion that Dumbledore was training students to be his personal army.
  • Cho suggested the name "Defense Association", but Ginny, knowing about the above delusion of Fudge's chose Dumbledore's Army in keeping with the same initials.

Harry incognito

• Why did Harry need to hide from the Dursleys to listen to the news at the beginning of the book? Why didn’t he just wear his invisibility cloak?
  • Maybe he's worried of them finding out about it? Maybe there are only so many places he can feasibly sit/stand with the cloak on that won't arouse suspicion from Vernon and Petunia or put him in their way if they need to get up. Or maybe, because of how hot it is, being under the cloak would lead to him getting too hot, so he opted to listen in outside.
  • It's said that Vernon and Petunia get suspicious and annoyed when he tries to watch it with them in the living room, so he listens in from outside. It appears he feels he doesn't need the cloak or it would be too much hassle to put it on and stay hidden in the room.

What if Harry told someone about Umbridge using a Blood Quill?

• During Harry's detentions with Umbridge, she forces Harry to magically carve the words "I must not tell lies" into the back of his hand with a Blood Quill. Harry suffers silently, not wanting to give Umbridge the satisfaction of seeing him complain and not wanting to talk to Dumbledore due to being angry at him for keeping Harry in the dark, and lets her continue her reign unchallenged.
  But what would happen if he told a trusted adult about what Umbridge was doing, like Professor McGonagall and/or Dumbledore, and took one of them (or anybody else) with him under the Invisibility Cloak? Even with the jackass attitude the Ministry has towards Harry, even they wouldn't be able to protect their appointed professor from accusations of mutilating children, right?
  • Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to know what would have happened. The best scenario would be Umbridge is investigated, and at least one of the teachers at the school knows how much Harry is suffering in his detentions with her. Worst case would either be Umbridge convinces the Ministry that Harry and whoever he told is lying (considering how the Ministry views Harry already, it's not that far out of the question for them), or she fights and Oblivates the staff member who Harry tells.
  • The idealistic outcome is that eventually, Umbridge gets carted off to Azkaban and Fudge is forced to resign since he was the one who enabled Umbridge (As the person who appointed her and gave her power in Hogwarts, he's partially responsible for the Blood Quill incidents and her attempted use of an Unforgivable on a minor). But the more likely scenario is that Fudge removes Umbridge from Hogwarts, reassigns her to some sinecure position with no real influence, and replaces her with another teacher who isn't cruel like Umbridge, but is just as anti-Dumbledore and likely to continue Umbridge's curriculum due to Fudge's paranoia about Dumbledore raising an army against him. And worst case, Fudge and Umbridge have Harry committed to Saint Mungo's.
  • An alternate option would be to call Amelia Bones "as she isn't corrupt" somehow, and Umbridge gets investigated and arrested. Bones isn't suggested to be corrupt at all. Either Tonks or Lupin says this outright before Harry's hearing, where she does indeed act reasonably. And Umbridge provably torturing the most famous boy in the Wizarding world (even if he's unpopular at the time) would probably enough to throw her in a cell (and possibly Fudge too, since he enabled her to torture Harry for simply holding a dissenting political opinion, and him ending up on trial would probably lead to him being prosecuted for more counts of obstruction of due justice and undue imprisonment, whether that be sending Hagrid to Azkaban without trial, refusing to investigate allegations of Sirius's innocence before trying to have him summarily executed, and letting Barty Crouch Jr. get the Dementor's Kiss).
    • And if Bones wasn't available, Harry could just tip off Luna's dad and he writes about Umbridge's actions in the Quibbler. The book makes it a point that mere accusations are enough to seriously damage somebody's reputation. Even Fudge is protecting Umbridge, somebody publicly accusing her of abusing students (and providing evidence of said abuse) ought to be enough to get her in hot water. She's a political figure. This wouldn't be the first case of an enemy of hers looking for something to take her down, regardless of how much evidence there actually is.

Ignorant Gryffindors

• Why didn't someone besides Ron and Hermione notice what was going on with Harry and Umbridge? She was clearly out to get him and treated him worse than anyone else. Where were their parents and guardians? At some point over the course of the whole year, some students had to have written home to their parents and said, "Hey, mum, dad, I'm probably not gonna pass my Defence OWL/NEWT because this Ministry-appointed bitch Umbridge woman ain't teachin'," or "Hey mum, I had detention and Umbridge made me scratch the top of my hand until it was in bloody tatters."
  • General consensus seems to be that most parents have warned their children not to get on Umbridge's wrong side, since she's not just a new teacher but a Ministry appointed High Inquisitor. So she apparently has the authority to do such things - although the film adds a scene where Minerva confronts Umbridge seemingly about her detentions and how barbaric they are, and by the time we see her giving them to students besides Harry, she's headmistress and has the authority to do whatever she wants. And Umbridge's teaching method is strictly legal - she has a textbook she wishes to go by and prefers a theoretical approach - and her curriculum was Ministry-approved. It's likely those who joined the DA complained to parents and were told to just do what Umbridge says, but opted for the DA to get extra practice.
  • Harry explicitly kept it to himself. At that point of the year, everyone's avoiding him, so no one but Ron and Hermione can get close to him. He's shutting them out as well, not even letting them know about it until Hermione accidentally sees his hand.

There's no way Umbridge could away with the Blood Quills

• So, Umbridge is out to get Harry. She sends the Dementors after him, and goes out of her way to make him miserable all year. So when he talks out of turn and gets detention, she gives him her Blood Quill torture lines to scare him in a "What I can do to you, what the Ministry can do to you" sense, and intimidate him. Would Dumbledore put a stop to it if Harry told him? Yes (for a while, until the next educational decree, but still, Umbridge is better off so long as McGonagall or Dumbledore don't know.) So she plays on Harry's pride and stubbornness, knowing he won't run for help or try to fight back using conventional means.
  So why do the same thing to Lee Jordan? Yes, Lee Jordan rebelled alongside Fred and George, and Lee Jordan later hosted a radio show in Deathly Hallows dedicated to the resistance movement, which was very brave, very important and very dangerous.
  But this is more about subjecting the Blood Quills on any other student besides Harry. It wasn't specific to Harry, and that she was willing to do that for any and every student who crossed her. Because if you're talking about younger or weaker willed students (which is to say, most students at Hogwarts when compared to Harry), the likelihood that any Head of House or Dumbledore himself find out about what Umbridge is up to significantly increases.
  And yeah, Umbridge would be careful not to use Blood Quills on the children of big-time Ministry donors (Draco Malfoy) or those whose parents have actual clout at the Ministry (the Weasleys, Marietta Edgecombe, Susan Bones, etc.) but it's surprising that she did it to anyone other than Harry. We see in the next book that the Slug Club is full of seriously connected people, including a kid who personally knows Rufus Scrimegour, the head of the Auror office and the Minister of Magic who succeeds Fudge. Meaning, someone who got subject to the Blood Quill could ask this kid who knows Scrimgeour or a kid who knows Amelia Bones to write one of them an owl post to say "hey, Umbridge made my friend write lines with his own blood, is that legal?" and Scrimgeour or Bones could get Umbridge in trouble up to and including prosecution in front of the Wizenagamot. Umbridge is running some big risks here that Fudge might not necessarily be able to protect her from.
  • Umbridge is the kind of person who would probably be eventually undone by her own arrogance, because she chose to cross someone who was willing to stand up to her and say "what you're doing is morally not okay."
  • Umbridge only started using the Blood Quill on students besides Harry after she became headmistress, where she thought nobody could oppose her.

Who invited Hermione to stay at Grimmauld Place the entire summer and why?

• Before Harry gets there, the only kids staying there at Grimmauld Place are Hermione and the Weasleys. The Weasleys you can explain away by saying that it’s convenient, because their parents are in the Order (and maybe Molly was doing the cooking and cleaning for Grimmauld Place so she needed to be there for more than just meetings). But Hermione is a whole different question. Who invited her? It’s Sirius’s house, and Dumbledore’s headquarters, but there's no way either of them invited her. So then we must assume the Weasleys invited her. But why? They were staying at a secret headquarters, and none of the other kids got to invite friends. And it’s not like Hermione had always stayed the summer- the only other time she had stayed with them was for two weeks in Goblet of Fire prior to the Quidditch World Cup. To then jump to staying the entire summer with them seems weird when they are living at the headquarters of a secret society that’s not even their own house. And while it's possible Dumbledore thought Hermione needed to be kept safe because she could be used by Voldemort to trap Harry or something, they never so much as hint at that explanation in the books.
  • Ummm, why can't Sirius or Dumbledore have invited her, or that the Weasleys wouldn't want to invite her? Sure, the Death Eaters and Voldemort don't target her in particular, but Hermione has proven her mettle to be involved in this, she's been essential in stopping Voldemort by aiding Harry in the first two books by this point, and she's a Muggle-born, so even if she doesn't need protection, she's involved in this enough that it isn't unreasonable to have her be there. Also, Ron and Harry do better with her around, and things are much more serious now, so they need each other more than ever, and Dumbledore or the Weasleys would probably find that ample reason on its own. The reason for no explanation is likely the meta reason, "she's a protagonist so she's involved in things one way or another, and that's to be expected by this point", but in-universe it isn't much of a stretch, so Rowling probably just figured it wasn't necessary to explain what seems a minor detail considering the context of Hermione's position in all this. Dumbledore or the Weasleys likely talked with Hermione's parents and explained to them either the exact circumstances, or at least that Hermione and her friends had become a part of a serious matter, and it was recommended she come to Grimmauld Place to help however she could, if Mr. and Mrs. Granger were okay with it. Considering they do their best to be supportive of their daughter from what little we see of them, they likely said yes.

Harry's constant falsity regarding Cedric's death

• Every time Harry talks about Cedric’s death, he says that Voldemort killed him, but he didn’t. Voldemort merely gave the order for Wormtail to kill him. Why does Harry not tell it like it happened? Is he remembering the events wrong? Maybe it'd lead to a LOT of questions that Harry didn’t feel like having to answer—namely how Cedric was killed by someone that everyone thought to be dead.
  • Voldemort killed Cedric, and Wormtail was just the weapon. Voldemort ordered for Wormtail to kill and did so. Think of this analogy: if a dictator orders someone to be executed, do you blame the executioner who was just following the orders given to him, or the dictator who gave the order? For all intents and purposes, the one who gave the kill order can be considered the actual murderer, even if they delegated the act of killing to someone else. Even then, Wormtail still has his share of responsibility in the matter, since he did choose to follow Voldemort and go back to him after all.
  • More importantly, Wormtail used Voldemort's wand to do it, since he didn't have one himself on account of faking his own death. Wormtail only gets a wand in the sixth book after they kidnap Ollivander and he's forced to make him one. Voldemort surely didn't mind lending his wand to Wormtail to use for his own resurrection. And Voldemort didn't seem too attached to his wand, seeing as he doesn't mind replacing it as needed (Lucius's wand and the Elder Wand).
  • Of course, that raises the question of how Voldemort managed to have his own wand while living in that ghostly form for over a decade. Actually, how did all the Death Eaters, and Sirius, have their own wands after leaving Azkaban?
    • Sirius didn't have his own wand when he escaped, hence him using a knife during PoA, and either got a new one once he stopped living on the run or he had it brought back to him from wherever the Ministry kept it or from wherever they left it if they didn't keep it themselves, and the Death Eaters likely had them brought back after they escaped by Voldemort. Most likely they were stored somewhere that Voldemort broke into, or if the Ministry didn't do that, likely gave them back to family members who returned them after the Death Eaters were sprung, or even Gringotts might have held them in their owners' vaults per some ownership laws. As for Voldemort, it was said by Word of God that Pettigrew found the wand in the wreckage of the house before Sirius caught up with him and hid it away, likely as a bargaining tool when Voldemort returned, and retrieved it when he fled Hogwarts to rejoin his master. Voldemort, Sirius, and the Death Eaters never had their wands in their respective situations, or immediately got them back upon escape in the case of the latter two, they got them back due to the actions of others once they had support from those others.

Cedric's Death

• Cedric and Harry return to the maze and Cedric is dead. As even the fourth years have studied the Killing Curse, everyone would know that's how he died. As presumably no one thinks Harry did it, what on earth do they think happened? "Tragic accident" does not result in Avada Kedavra. Oh and seriously, parents don't pull their kids out of Hogwarts after that? Kids should leave in droves with everything happening since Harry arrived.
  • The Ministry tried their hardest to downplay the whole situation the following summer, from calling Harry a deluded attention-seeker and Dumbledore a senile old coot, to vehemently denying Voldemort is back and coming up with 'easier' solutions. In this case, Cedric's death is something that was covered up - most likely, by the Ministry stating that Barty Crouch Jr killed him (which they could claim to be true via his Veritaserum-induced confession on 'fixing' the Tournament in Harry's favour, and 'logically' deduced from it that he killed Cedric to stop him winning). As for parents not pulling students out, Seamus states he was close to not coming back because his mother didn't want him to. Most other students that do come back accept the Ministry's view that Crouch Jr killed Cedric (and is no longer a problem due to being Kissed), or agree with Harry and Dumbledore that Voldemort has come back.

Hagrid calling both Harry and Hermione away during Ron's finest hour?

• What I don't understand is why Hagrid has both Harry and Hermione accompany him to meet his half-brother during the final Quidditch. Harris and Ron are both their friends, so it makes sense that one of them should go with Hagrid and the other stay to support Ron. Sure, neither of them know that Ron is going to have a victory, but he's their friend, so it only makes sense that one of them should stay behind to support him. When Ron learns what happens, Harry tries to justify it by saying, "It's Hagrid, you know how he gets..." but I don't see Hagrid as someone who would have a hissy-fit just because one of them wants to stay to support Ron. It's such an obvious solution, I would think at least Hermione would have thought of it. Am I missing something here?
  • Well, Hagrid did want Harry and Hermione to meet Grawp so he'd know who they both were, and he couldn't take Ron because he was playing, and the game was a moment where no one would notice them leaving, and Harry and Hermione, and Ron, have difficulty saying "No" to Hagrid, simply because he has such a big heart and disappointing a friend like him is like pulling out your own teeth at times.
  • Hagrid says that he thinks everyone will be too busy watching the Quidditch match to notice he's taking Harry and/or Hermione off to the Forbidden Forest (which ultimately proves true, as no one realizes where they went until they directly tell Ron about it).

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