The Harry Potter Universe is a Confusing Hellscape
Wizarding World? More like Whack World
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is unquestionably one of the greatest fantasy series ever written. Over the course of seven books, Rowling masterfully details a world of magic, monsters, and more, along with a lovable cast of characters who, we love, or at least love to hate. Harry Potter has even transcended its original medium with movies, games, stage plays, and a spin-off series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
While the popularity of the Harry Potter series is undeniable, it is far from perfect. Like any work of fiction, and especially one of this scale, there are a plethora of plot holes, inconsistencies, and logical mishaps. I love Harry Potter, don’t get me wrong, but there are only a few things I love more than picking apart books, movies, and TV shows like a nerdy surgeon. So, here are 5 reasons why the Harry Potter universe is a confusing hellscape.
1. Date Rape is Totally Okay
The above statement is obviously not true in our world. However, in the Wizarding World, date rape is easy, cheap, and available. Even a kid could do it. Hell, for all we know, they do. The thing that makes this so easy is the existence of love potions. As their name suggests, love potions can make their victim fall wildly in love with their poisoner. How the liquid can identify who the victim is supposed to fall in love with is a mystery in itself, but for simplicity, we’ll just chalk it up to magic. In the books, love potions are mostly used as comic relief; Ron Weasley falls head over heels for a girl he had never before been interested in after eating laced chocolates, for instance. Their malicious uses can be seen in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, however, in which we learn via Pensieve that Voldemort was conceived after his mother dosed Tom Riddle Sr. with a love potion, forcing him to fall for her and later (since we’re now all old enough to know how babies are made), impregnate her. The only reason Mr. Riddle snaps out of it is because Mama Voldemort feels too guilty to keep dosing him. This is a pretty important scene in the books, but its ramifications are even more terrifying. Any wizard or witch could buy a love potion, drug someone’s butterbeer, and then rape them without the victim knowing anything is amiss until it is far too late. Oh, and they’re also completely unregulated. Remember Fred and George Weasley’s joke shop? Yep, they sold love potions. The most powerful date rape drug on the planet can be fabricated and sold by children with no government oversight at all. Also, no one ever gets prosecuted by the Ministry of Magic for using them. There is literally no legal recourse to their use. If someone was dosed with a love potion and then raped during its effects, the wizarding justice system can do all of jack shit. Yeah, that joke shop scene in the 6thbook isn’t so funny now, is it?
2. The Government is Beyond Incompetent
Where do I even start on this one? The Ministry of Magic is the only form of centralized government that we see in the main series, not counting spinoffs. And they are horrible at governing. It would be funny if it weren’t so damn dangerous. Firstly, the Ministry is far more authoritarian than anyone cares to mention. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the Ministry vehemently denies that Voldemort has returned, which is reflected by articles calling Harry completely batshit in The Daily Prophet. And the kicker is, there are no alternate points of view coming from The Daily Prophet. There’s no way every journalist believes Cornelius Fudge over the kid who killed Magic Hitler. This implies that the Prophetedits out opposing viewpoints. The wizarding world’s main source of news is heavily influenced by the government at the very least, and at worst, the Prophetis subsidized by the Ministry. The only alternate news source is the Quibbler, whose publisher has been deemed a madman (he is kind of insane, but in a quirky way), solely because he does not subscribe to the Ministry’s ideas.
Beyond the news, the justice system is complete bullshit. As we see in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, wizarding trials mostly consist of being paraded in front of a bunch of the time’s most powerful/popular witches and wizards, and then either being congratulated on your recent Quidditch wins or spat on by everyone in the room. Is any evidence used? Nope. Do they ever think to use truth serum or some kind of spell to compel the accused to tell the truth? Nope. One guy just kind of yells for a little bit and then the dementors take you away. Think about the difference between Ludo Bagman’s trial and Harry’s hearing books four and five respectively. Ludo is on trial for giving information to Death Eaters, but is easily let off because of his prowess as a Quidditch player. It’s like if Mike Trout traded information to the Taliban, then was acquitted of all charges because the Angels won a game. Harry, on the other hand, is sneered at and glowered upon by fully grown adults all because he used magic outside of school in self-defense. And this is a hearing, by the way; he isn’t actually on trial for anything. The Wizengamot is a kangaroo court designed to keep the powerful in power and crush dissenters. Justice is not even in the question.
3. The Problem with the Dementors
They’re ugly, they’re scary, and they’ll suck out your soul. Dementors are the sole guards of the infamous Azkaban prison, and are able to police the most dangerous witches and wizards in the world because of their abilities to expose and amplify a person’s worst fears. Oh yeah, and they can suck out your soul through you mouth. Everyone in the wizarding world knows how awful this is, but the fact that this is even a punishment is beyond messed up. Remember, an afterlife is pretty much confirmed to exist in the Harry Potteruniverse. The existence of souls themselves is enough to suggest this, but the Resurrection Stone, Harry’s talk with Dumbledore in “King’s Cross” in book seven, and Voldemort’s fear of dying as a result of the mortal sins he’s committed help back this up. So to pull out someone’s soul is to eliminate the possibility of an afterlife for them. It is difficult to describe how awful this is. The Dementors make it so even death is a prison. Not even dying can allow you to escape. Instead of repentance or paradise, all you get is nothing. They are also predisposed to be on Voldemort’s side. Should this go in the previous section? I don’t know, but it’s here now. Dementors are evil. We don’t learn a lot about them, but in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore tells Fudge that the Dementors will go back to Voldemort as soon as they are asked, cracking open Azkaban on their way out. Voldemort’s most loyal followers are being held by Voldemort’s most loyal followers. Why is this a good idea? Oh yeah, it’s not.
4. The Battle of Hogwarts was Actually Kind of F*cked
How old were you when you read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? It was first released in 2007, so I was six, and probably didn’t actually read it until I was ten or eleven. The point is, when we all read it, dollars to doughnuts being seventeen and being twenty-nine were in the same ballpark. They’re definitely not, though. Moments before the Battle of Hogwarts breaks out at the end of the series, the staff decides that students who are in their fifth year or above can stay and fight. Students fifteen and above can stay and fight for their lives against trained killers and monsters of all shapes and sizes. That’s cool to hear about when you’re ten, but when you actually get a scope of age, you kind of realize how awful it really is. I don’t think anyone would say that they were their best versions of themselves when they were in their teens, but these teens were expected to fight an actual war. The Battle of Hogwarts wasn’t like a duel, or even a gang fight. It was a full on, balls-to-the-wall, life-or-death battle. Teenagers who mostly haven’t completed their basic educations were fighting for their lives in the walls of what used to be their school and home. Imagine coming out of Algebra 2 in your sophomore year and then having to defend your high school against Al Qaeda. Everything is exploding, Jerry from third period just got blown to hell, your best friend’s older brother is bleeding out in front of you, and the girl you like is getting chomped on by a spider the size of a dump truck. What the hell do you do? You’re supposed to start swinging. Instead you shit yourself, curl up into a ball, cry, and then go insane from the trauma. Does anyone care? Nope, because that kid who keeps yelling at your chemistry professor during class ended up killing Magic Osama bin Laden, so everything is fine now. None of the immediate cast had long-lasting damage, so it doesn’t really matter. Only everyone must have some sort of PTSD from the Battle of Hogwarts. The Ministry is still in shambles, so there’s definitely no way they set up any kind of support system. Everyone at Hogwarts probably focused on the rebuilding. There’s an entire generation of witches and wizards who are going to grow up with night terrors and get scared of fireworks, or loud noises without explanation because they fought in a war before they were old enough to vote and now they have irreversible trauma that no one cares enough to treat.
5. Why is the Curriculum at Hogwarts so Damn Dangerous?
Students attend Hogwarts from the ages of eleven to seventeen. In those years, they have to deal with an incredible number of life-threatening situations. There’s a tree on campus that takes pleasure in beating the shit out of anything it can get its branches on, the groundskeeper regularly breeds horrific monsters, and every person on campus is strapped with a magic murder stick. In class, students are thrown in front of metaphorical buses and then graded based on how flat they are afterwards. But why? Why is everything so dangerous? An easy explanation is that the Wizarding World has threats and situations that our muggle world doesn’t, and students need to be prepared for that. The thing is, though, that isn’t true at all. The vast majority of witches and wizards are not dealing with dragons, or Death Eaters in their day-to-day lives. They are store owners, and teachers, and bank tellers. Sure, sometimes they have to deal with curses, or trolls, but that’s just like how muggle workers occasionally have to watch out for falling debris or grizzly bears. Getting murdered by terrorists, or mauled by a pack of wolves, those are still very real threats in our world, but we don’t train our students in hand-to-hand combat. Danger is real, yes, and our youth have a right to know about any immediate threats to them. Awareness is important. Endangering children in order to “prepare,” them is irresponsible and reckless. The curriculum alone at Hogwarts is more dangerous than the actual Wizarding World itself. Most witches and wizards work office jobs. Mr. Weasley sits at his desk and fiddles with his toys from nine to five. Florean Fortescue owns an ice cream shop. Yes, I know Florean Fortescue got abducted by Death Eaters, but even then, did knowing the difference between a hinkypunk and a grindylow help him? No, not at all. Classes like Charms, Transfiguration, and Potions make sense as core curriculum. Defense Against the Dark Arts and Care of Magical Creatures should be graduate classes. People planning to become aurors should learn how to fight Death Eaters, not Neville Longbottom, who just wants to hang out with his plants. Even beyond classes, almost every aspect of life at Hogwarts is close to lethal. Half of the balls in a Quidditch game are designed to smash into the players, knocking them out of the air. Tensions run so high between the students that half of them are ready to blast the other half into dust at any moment. The Triwizard Tournament was banned because of how lethal it was. And they brought it back why? Because it’s cool to watch? These are children’s lives at stake. Drumming up publicity for Hogwarts was not worth Cedric Diggory’s life.
Thank you so much for making it to the end of my first blog post. I’ve got a bunch of other pop culture theories I’d love to post, but if you guys have any suggestions or any movies/books/TV shows/video games you’d like me to take a crack at, hit the “Contact,” tab and let me know!