Discussion: Harry Potter Plot Holes and "Plot Holes"

Before I begin, let me just say: trans men are men. Trans women are women. Nonbinary people are valid. JKR talks out of her a$$ when she speaks about them.

Ok, so…

Knowing how much I love Harry Potter and how much it’s influenced my life, I thought it would be a nice way to ease back into the Forums.

Can you think of any plot holes that exist in the Harry Potter universe? Either in the books or the films? Maybe it’s the extended universe because of a certain play or film? Or perhaps it’s a plot hole from the films that was created because they omitted a seemingly small detail, that turned out to be a huge plot point later on? List them here!

If you know any information about a plot hole that fills it up so that it’s not a plot hole anymore, please feel free to comment!

Plot holes are an important thing to think about as a writer, and so I’d love to discuss them with a well-known piece of writing so that we can move forward!

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In the movie Order of the Phoenix when they’re riding the Thestrals they never explain/show how the people who hadn’t seen death were able to get onto them :thinking: this is shown in the book though, I guess they left it out of the film because they didn’t find it necessary and admittedly I’m being a little nit picky now :joy:

Also moved to writing discussion and added tags

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Ok, my first plot hole is that very specific kind that I spoke about here:

Basically, the mirror. Not the Mirror of Erised. No. The mirror that Sirius gave Harry in the books.

You see, in the books, Sirius gives Harry a mirror that James used to have. Sirius had one, too, and they could use them to talk to each other. It would have been given to Harry when Sirius presented him with the picture of the original Order of the Phoenix in the film of the same name. Harry completely forgot about the existence of this mirror and it ends up broken some way along the road. However, at the end of the book, Harry finds it and remembers Sirius’s words about using it whenever Harry needed him.

Then there’s this really heartbreaking moment where Harry tries desperately to speak to Sirius after he died. It’s made even more tragic by the fact that Harry literally had the ability to check up on Sirius right there with him and didn’t need Umbridge’s fireplace to confirm that Sirius hadn’t gone to the Ministry. Plus, the thought of Sirius waiting all year for Harry to use the mirror really breaks my heart.

They removed that completely from the film for… reasons? Then, they realise in the Deathly Hallows that they actually need the mirror to make the story work. Harry has a shard of the mirror’s glass in his possession when he’s captured by the death eaters and it turns out that Mundungus has sold Sirius’s one to Aberforth, Dumbledore’s brother, who sends Dobby.

Because they couldn’t think of another way to make Aberforth know they were in trouble, they just had Harry speaking to some random piece of glass we’d never heard about before. For someone who’d read the books before seeing the films (and before being in the final film, cough cough), I just filled in the gaps myself. Recently, though, I realised that people who didn’t read them would have no clue what that shard of glass was about and why Harry thought that anyone would be able to help him by saying “halp” into it.

The creators of the films wrote themselves into a corner and then just busted their way through the wall to escape it XD

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I just feel like they could have added a small piece of dialogue like “thanks for helping me get onto the thing I can’t see, I preesh :sunglasses:

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They went for comedy so much in the later films. Could you imagine the comedy gold that would have come from Ron’s face, pale as death, as he clutches desperately onto this creature he can’t see? XD

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Everytime we watch the movies as a family my Dad
Always
Says “where’d he get that from?” :joy:

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Yes! It would have been so rad :joy:

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Ok ok so this one is more of a theory than a “plot hole” so hear me out.

Some people wonder why the Philosopher’s (YES PHILOSOPHER, NOT SORCERER. SORCERER’S STONE IS A DUMB NAME) Stone was so poorly protected. They say that if Harry, Ron and Hermione were able to get through it, then anyone could and it was basically as unprotected as at Gringotts.

I don’t think the point of the protection was to actually guard the stone. I think that it was to lure out the traitor and buy enough time for Dumbledore to catch them red-handed.

Why do I think this? Well, anyone who wants to use the stone can’t simply lie to themselves to say “I’m not gonna use it” just to break through the Mirror of Erised. You can lie to yourself and others all you want, but it’s not so easy to change your heart’s desire. So, someone intended to use it would always be stuck there. No matter what they did, the Mirror would always keep the stone safe from them in particular.

However, if the mirror had stayed where Harry had found it with the stone inside, Quirrell could have tried his luck at the mirror every night with no repercussions or anyone catching him. By the time it would have taken Dumbledore to discover that there was someone there and go to the room with the mirror, he could have escaped. He did have Voldemort on his side, after all. Voldemort was almost as powerful as Dumbledore, so it makes sense. Dumbledore can’t just sit there in front of it invisible all night long with the hope that the traitor would come.

So, he fashioned this really long wild goose chase and then “left the school” one night, fully intending to return once the trap had been set. Then, he just waited for the traitor to take the bait.

That’s why Dumbledore and Flammel were so quick to decide to destroy it. They had already planned that! But they also wanted to root out the Voldemort sympathiser at the same time and put an end to the Dark Lord completely.

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I wouldn’t put it past Dumbledore to do that tbh :joy:

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It makes sense why when Harry is like “I thought you were gone somewhere” he just shrugs and says that he realised he needed to return.

He’s not stupid. He knew that Quirrell would try to steal it as soon as he left xD

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Of courseeee :joy: Dumbledore be like:
time to take me leave and let the real fun begin
Oml imagine some kind of wizard cctv system and he just watches the whole thing transpire

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Ok ok another “Plot Hole” that I’m going to clear up:

“How didn’t Fred and George see Ron hanging around with a man called Peter Pettigrew on the Marauders’ Map for the first two years?”

Well, they say that they had already memorised the map by that point. They passed it onto Harry because they didn’t need it anymore. Plus, the castle is HUGE. It’s actually a lot bigger than in the films. Why would they be using it to stalk one of their 40000 siblings? On the rare chance that they might use it to find out if the coast was clear, they’d be looking for a teacher, not their brother.

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Bear in mind that they’re two years older than Harry, Ron and Hermione. They got the map in their first year and used it constantly since then. They had over a year to learn every location they could possibly need before Ron even arrived

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For some reason I thought that it was because if you’re in animagus form then you don’t turn up on the map :joy: also Ron’s rat wasn’t with him at all times anyway :thinking: but yeah you’re right, even if they did see someone called Peter Pettigrew with Ron I don’t think they’d think much on it.

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HEHEHEHEHEHEHE! 40,000 siblings. This made me laugh.

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I thought that too! But then I remembered the part where Harry goes looking for Peter Pettigrew on the map and Peter walks right past him because he’s in rat form! Plus, Lupin rushes down to the Shrieking Shack after he sees Sirius Black dragging Ron through the Whomping Willow as a dog!

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Ahh yeahhhh that makes sense!

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Ok genuine plot hole, though:

In the books, Quirrell is one of the teachers who protects the Philosopher’s Stone. He protects it with… guess what? A TROLL.

So why weren’t more people suspicious of Quirrell when he runs into the Great Hall screaming “TROLL”?! He clearly knows them well enough to capture one and put it in the protections. Let’s forget for a minute how huge of a coincidence it would be that Quirrell stumbled across the exact same creature that he used in the protection of the stone… on his own in the castle. Surely he wouldn’t need help to get rid of it? He could do exactly what he did on the other troll?

Also, didn’t Harry start to suspect Quirrell when he got to the troll?

It kinda lends more to my theory that Dumbledore suspected Quirrell all along

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Hmm almost as though
Dumbledore wanted Quirrel to be caught but
At the right time :eyes: and he wanted Harry to be the one to do it

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Wait, I’m an idiot! Dumbledore literally asked Snape to keep an eye on Quirrell! We see it in Snape’s memories!

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