Harry Potter Vs. Twilight Article: Harry potter questions and possible plot holes.

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Harry potter questions and possible plot holes.

posted by goodtimes

I made a list of combined and possible plot holes about Harry Potter. Some of them I came up with myself, and some of them I got from different places online. If you can give explanation answering the questions ,do it please.
I purposely put in a few really really picky question because there are a lot of articles about Twilight like this, so I want to see how Harry Potter fans respond to the ridiculously picks questions. I'm not going to tell you which ones they are, but they should be easy to pick out.

1.    Why do the founders of Hogwarts have surnames? Family names weren’t used in Western Civilization until the 19th century, but Hogwarts was founded in the 990s, 10th century. But each of the four founders, Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin, all had normal first and last names. Society didn’t even use nicknames or occupational names back then. They only used first names.

2.    In The Goblet of Fire, Dudley has a Playstation, but the first Playstation wasn’t released until December of 1994, and only in Japan. Dudly was playing with his Playstation earlier in the year.

3.    In the game of quidditch, if the Snitch flies at the speed of light, how can Harry catch one in his mouth without it shooting through the back of his throat or at least breaking his teeth?

4.    Why was there no mention of witch burning? They studies wizard history, but they didn’t mention it at all. The Salem Witch Trials happened in America, but there were also a lot of famous European witch hunts in the 15-18th century (That’s where Carlisle Cullen’s back story comes from). It was all about witchcraft and magic, why wasn’t it significant enough to teach? Hogwarts is supposed to be a school of WITCHCRAFT and wizardry.

5.    JK Rowling said once "magic is a dominant and resilient gene" in a magazine interview. If magic was dominant, there wouldn’t be any muggle-borns or squibs. If magic is a dominant gene, you can’t inherit it from someone who doesn’t have it. If they had the gene at all, they parent would have the ability to do magic. It would make more sense if she said magic was a recessive gene. If the gene was recessive, then two parents, each with a recessive gene, would be able to have a magical baby without being magical themselves. Also, squibs wouldn’t be possible. If two parents with dominant magic genes have a baby, then the baby would have a dominant magic gene. Especially in pure blood families because they would have two dominant magic genes so they would have no choice but to pass down a dominant gene.

6.    In Order of the Phoenix, Harry takes his O.W.L test in June. He was taking his astronomy exam outside and he was asked to chart the constellation, Orion, but Orion isn’t visible on any latitude in June.

7.    He also had to locate Venus, but Venus only goes as far as 47 degrees from the sun, but he was taking the test at midnight. Venus would have been on the opposite side of the planet.

8.    On the cover of link there’s an illustration of a link, but it should be a link

9.    In the first book, a snake winks at Harry. Snakes don’t have eyelids. It wasn’t a magic snake, it was a normal snake. Did the eyelid magically appear when Harry casted a spell on it?

10.    The basilisk was known for chewing and tearing its prey apart, but real snakes swallow their food whole. Did magic give the basilisk more teeth and a different kind of jaw that allows for chewing?

11.    Hedwig was a Snowy Owl. Snowy Owls aren’t nocturnal like most other owl breeds. They sleep at night and fly during the day. They’re also very quiet, in comparison to other owls, but Hedwig would shriek in her cage all night long when normally, she would hardly make any noise at all and she would be asleep at night.

12.    Harry tried to feed Hedwig vegetables once, but owls don’t eat vegetables so she wouldn’t eat them. Why didn’t Harry just use the vegetables as bait to catch mice or bugs to feed her? He’s seen them all over his house, so he knows they’re there.

13.    In Quidditch Through the Ages, it says that the first ever World Cup was in 1473, with a match being held every four years. Yet the World Cup in Goblet of Fire, set in 1994, is number 422. There can't be 422 world cups in 521 years with a four-year gap in between

14.    When you look really closely at all the dates and birthdays in the books, you can conclude that Andromeda Tonks was 20 years old, or possibly younger, when Nymphadora was born. But that would mean that Andromeda and Bellatrix are the same age, which would make them Twins. Was there any explanation of this?

15.    It was said that Hogwart’s students were close to evenly distributed between the four houses, and during Harry’s sorting ceremory, there were only 5 Gryffindor boys and 5 Slytherin boys. That means there is about 40 people in Harry’s year all together. That means there are an estimated 280 students in all of Hogwarts. During one of the Quidditch matches, it says that there are about 200 Slytherin students alone. Why was Harry’s year so low on students? Why weren’t there more kids born the same year as Harry? And there are 14 subjects taught at Hogwarts, and only one teacher for each subject, and Harry said each class has about 20 students in it. The math doesn’t match up at all. If there are 200 Slytherins, that means there are about 800 students in Hogwarts?

16.    The hogwart’s schedule is really weird too. Each class is an hour long and they start at 9:00 am. They have two classes, a break (which seems like it’s about 30 minutes to an hour long when you think about all the things they do during their break) then another class. Then they have lunch. So that means they have lunch at 12:30 or 1:00. And then they have another break right after lunch, then two more hour long classes. Does this mean that the school day ends at 5:00 pm? That’s kind of late for a school day. And what time to they eat dinner? They seem to have a lot of free time before they have to go eat dinner.

17.    There are also population problems. It says there are about 3,000 wizards in Great Britain. If there really are 800 students in Hogwarts, why are there so many children? Why is 25% of the wizard population between the ages 11-18? Also, with a population that small, how do they manage to support so many Quidditch teams? It’s implied that each team has a very large fanbase, but there aren’t even enough wizards for the teams to have many fans. And how does the economy work with such a small population? The government is larger than needed for a small population. This would only work if the Ministry never gets paid.

cassie-1-2-3 and VampiresRevenge like this

cassie-1-2-3 For 9 and 10, I'd just chalk it up to magic. 16. I don't think that schedule's so strange. Their school day's actually pretty short with all those breaks in between. In my high school, class started at 8:45 am and ended at 4:00 pm. When I had an orchestra schedule, I started at 7:00 am and ended at 2:23 pm. Some people with really special schedules started class at 7:00 am and ended at 5:37 pm. The only break we got was 52 minutes for lunch. As for the rest, I have no idea.

TriaRose 1.) Maybe wizards used last names; maybe it’s a plot hole. We don’t know. 3.) Snitches don’t fly at the speed of light. If they didn’t you wouldn’t be able to catch or see them. 4.) There was. In POA, Harry is trying to do a History of Magic essay on Medieval Witch-Burnings (they used a Flame-Freezing Charm). 5.) Muggle-borns come from when Squibs marry into Muggle families. The gene is subdued for many generations until it can come back into play, creating a Muggle-born. Squibs probably come from the Muggle genes mixed in the family. I’m pretty sure JKR has explained this somewhere, I just can’t remember where. 10.) Basilisks are fictional creatures, and they have poisonous fangs. If it had fangs, it would chew and tear its prey, unlike normal snakes. 11.) When did Hedwig shriek in her cage? As far as I can remember, she was a fairly quite owl, apart from the occasional hoot. And you have to remember, these are enchanted, magical owls. At least, I assume they are, seeing as they understand where to carry mail to. 12.) Again, when did he try to feed Hedwig vegetables? The only instance I can remember of her eating human food is eating Neville’s cornflakes. 14.) A possible plot hole, but they could be “Irish twins,” which are babies born within a year of each other. My dad and aunt are the same age for a few weeks out of the year, and they’re not twins. 15.) There has been a lot of dispute over this, because we only know about ten Gryffindor students in Harry’s year, which makes us think this is the average, making the Hogwarts population 280. However, JKR said there are about 1000 students in Hogwarts at a time. She’s the boss, so we’ll listen to her, but it doesn’t really add up. 16.) No, if they start at 9, ending at 5 doesn’t seem so bad. Especially with two half hour breaks. My school starts at 8 and ends at 3:15. That’s about seven hours. If they have an 8 hour day with an hour break, then that’s a seven hour day too. They just give them daytime free time versus evening free time. But thank you for posting this! I completely agree that there are plot holes in HP (even being as big a fan as I am) and sometimes I think that Potter fans forget that their own series isn’t perfect while they bash Twilight. I just noticed that some of these could be disproved/explained.

bri-marie 1. I actually did not know this. That's really interesting. 2. Another good point. Someone didn't do her research. 4. There was. They actually mention a witch who purposefully repeatedly got caught, because she would enjoyed the tickling sensation the freezing charm brought on. 5. This never made much sense to me. I mean, I've never done the punnet squares to see what all happens, but two dominant genes shouldn't produce something without that gene. 8. 0.o my covers don't look like that. But, you are right, that it's not the right kind of owl. 10. I don't remember them saying it tears apart it's prey (and I can't find it on the wiki...). But, it is a fictional creature. 'Normal' snakes don't come from chicken eggs either. And, if you go by the movie, the basilisk [i]does[/i] have more teeth anyway. 12. I don't remember him feeding Hedwig vegetables, either... 14. I don't see why you would conclude Bellatrix is the same age as Andromeda. Bellatrix was born in '51, and Narcissa was born in '55. Andromeda was blasted off the tapestry so her info is missing, but one could assume she was born in '52/53/54, since she's the middle sister. And that would still place her in her twenties when she had Tonks in '73, but still younger than Bellatrix. 15&17. It is a plot-hole/error. J.K. has admitted that she's bad at math, and that her numbers don't add up. (The actual quote is on AccioQuotes, but the site is down for the moment, so I can't link it.) 16. They're in a boarding school. They're schedule isn't going to co-align with a non-boarding school. And in book five, Hermione says that they have more 'study-hall' breaks as they get older, because of their OWLs and NEWTs, and because their classes become so much more difficult and specialized. They eat dinner after their last class of the day.

goodtimes 12. It happened in Chamber of Secrets, before Ron broke him out to go to Hogwarts. all he had to eat was some cold vegetable soup and he tried to feed it to Hedwig.

TriaRose Here's a possible squib explanation: Say the magical gene is M and the Muggle gene is m. M is dominant, m is recessive. A pure blood marries a Muggle. All of their children are Mm. So one of their Mm children marries another half-blood, another Mm. If they have four children and the children follow a punnet square exactly, they have MM, Mm, Mm, and mm. Therefore, a Squib. Now, JKR describes the gene as 'resilient.' Let's take this to mean that magic doesn't want mm children, so it might give them MM, MM, Mm, Mm. However, the laws of genetics will eventually kick in, creating an mm child, a Squib. This Squib marries into a Muggle family, and the magical gene's resiliency kicks in (maybe it mutates back into M), creating a Muggle-born. Or perhaps an m gene experiences a mutation without any family history and becomes an M. This is all complete guesswork, don't take this as JKR-certified or approved by anyone in any way. And I'm not a geneticist, so if you are more knowledgeable than me on this subject, please let me know if I made any mistakes.

slytheringirl7 JK Rowling said once "magic is a dominant and resilient gene" in a magazine interview. If magic was dominant, there wouldn’t be any muggle-borns or squibs. If magic is a dominant gene, you can’t inherit it from someone who doesn’t have it. If they had the gene at all, they parent would have the ability to do magic. It would make more sense if she said magic was a recessive gene. If the gene was recessive, then two parents, each with a recessive gene, would be able to have a magical baby without being magical themselves. Also, squibs wouldn’t be possible. If two parents with dominant magic genes have a baby, then the baby would have a dominant magic gene. Especially in pure blood families because they would have two dominant magic genes so they would have no choice but to pass down a dominant gene. from what I know about genes. It is a random selection. Dominant genes aren't always dominant. My family including me don't have freckles and my sister does. Everybody has both genes, except one is more prominent in the person. The Dominant part just means that it is more common in the natural population.

TriaRose 12.) Well, if the vegetable soup was all he had, of course he would try to feed it to her. How was he supposed to catch mice with it? He couldn't let Hedwig out, and he couldn't let her starve.

goodtimes But the vegetables on the ground and wait for vermin. It's not wrong that he tried to feed her vegetables.

bri-marie 12) Actually, I just looked this up. Snowy Owls are [url="http://a-z-animals.com/animals/snowy-owl/']omnivores[/url] so she could and would eat the vegetables from the soup. Also, he couldn't have used the soup to lure rodents for her. He was locked in his room on the second floor (with bars on his window), and there weren't any rodents in the house. And Snowy owls are far too big to be able to survive off any insects that he could have caught.

cunha27 1) Surely this can't be right. I mean king Henry the viii had wives with surnames (Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymore, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr) and they lived around the 1500s then there's William Shakespeare. I tried a quick serch for other famous historical figures with surnames and found Thomas Becket the archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in 1170 3) Snitches don't travel at the speed of light. They are spelled to travel as fast as the golden snidget bird, a very fragile bird. 4) Squibs are different to Muggles. They're magical people who can't do magic. That's how come Filtch was still able to see Hogwarts and therefore work there. So that would mean that it's more of a genetic disorder. One that is present only in a particular wizarding family, so that if interbreeding within wizards occurs, that gene is most likely to pop up. As to the explanation for Muggleborns, it could be anything from a muggle having had a 1 night stand with a wizard, a witch/wizard living who have given up their magic and married muggles and never told their spouses, spme wizarding ancestory, or it could simply be a genetic mutation of sorts ( in this case it happens to be a beneficial one)

cassie-1-2-3 Last names became mandatory in Europe sometime around 1100. Before that, they were optional. Some had them for organizational purposes. Wanting to keep track of their extended family. Or for vocational purposes, wanting others to know what field they practice.

KateKicksAss For 16, I'm not really getting your math.....so if school starts at 9, then they have 3 classes and a 30 minute break (that does seem like a pretty long break to me), so that would mean Lunch at 12:30. I'd assume Lunch would be around an hour, and I don't think there'd be a break after lunch.....I mean, that would just be part of lunch, and it seems weird to give people a lunch break, then another break. So if Lunch is about an hour, then then it's over at 1:30. Then after two more classes it would be 3:30, not 5:00. And 3:30 seems like a perfectly normal ending time. Even if lunch was an hour and a half, school still wouldn't be over anywhere near 5:00..... so your numbers just aren't adding up here. And it seems a little odd that they're only doing 5 classes a day, then have such a long break. So lets say the break was only 20 minutes or less, and they added in one more class.......school would still be over much earlier than 5:00 is classes were only an hour. I mean, at my school, we start at 8:40, we get only one 10 minute break in the morning, a 35 minute lunch, and 5 minutes between classes, and we end at 2:55.

ThePrincesTale Others have already addressed the questions, so I won't, for the most part... What I have a problem with, though, is trying to fit literary texts into exact time frames, as in 2 and 16. Must a book contain that sort of logic? I really don't think it has to, at all, and that it's wrong to analyse it in that way- times simply aren't canon. They are a lot of assumptions. They are not plot holes at all.

cassie-1-2-3 Haha, I wouldn't say it's "wrong", just nitpicks. People do it to Twilight all the time. If I'm having to constantly explain that Stephenie Meyer doesn't have to tell us about every time Charlie signs a document, which is why Bella did blood typing in class "without a permission slip", or that there was only a 50% chance that Rosalie's father worked at a bank that failed in the Great Depression, or how Bella managed to get to Port Angelas and back in a day (because Washington is apparently double the size of Texas and it's an eight hour drive) then I'm not too upset about people being asked to match up minor dates and times in Harry Potter.

ThePrincesTale ^I don't mind other nitpicks- you know, the other things on this list- but time frames just seem so [i]low[/i]. And I mean, that doesn't just apply to the book series that I like- Those things you've mentioned in Twilight seem so trivial and uncanon (by that I mean, based on assumptions etc) that it would be illogical to call them plot holes at all.

missdada15 1. It's a fiction,also things were different in the wizzard world. 3.This is false. They fly as fast as the snitch. 4.False again,there was. 7.Again..it's fiction. 9.Fiction my dear. 10.*sighs* IT'S A CREATURE FROM FICTION. 11. Oh god...FICTION! 12. That NEVER happaned.

bri-marie 12) Yes it did. The very end of chapter two in CoS.

cassie-1-2-3 I wish "it's fiction" was a good enough explanation when it comes to Twilight.

yemi_hikari Family names weren't used in Western civilization until the 19th century. That statement is false. To quote http://www.babynames.org.uk/surnames.htm ”The oldest surname recorded anywhere in Europe can be found in Irish historical records dating back to the year 916.” This is not a plot hole and instead indicates what kind of standing all four of these people had in order to have a surname during this time period.

tsmith120 A lot of these aren't plot holes, just factual inaccuracies. Others are just wrong. However, I concede there are flaws in Harry Potter. It's not perfect by any means. Hating on a series for plot holes, including Twilight, is kind of petty and stupid. Nothing wrong with acknowledging they exist, and at times they are legitimately funny, but you shouldn't say one is better than the other because it gets more facts right. If that were the case, you'd want to read an encyclopaedia over any of these books.

Quaila [i]3.) Snitches don’t fly at the speed of light. If they didn’t you wouldn’t be able to catch or see them.[/i] Not only that you wouldn't be able to see them, they'd wipe out a majority of the neighbourhood. http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/