Harry Potter Plot Holes: Why We Don't Care

If you’re a Harry Potter fan with an internet connection then the odds are good that you’ve heard of a few plot holes. Some of them are the natural consequence of reading seven books with a broad array of spells, characters, and locations. Some of these problems are a direct result of J.K. Rowling playing fast and loose with the rules. I’ll list a few examples for fun and then I’ll tell you why they don’t matter.

The biggest problems for me  are related to world building. There’s the inconsistency of the magic itself.

“Yet in the Potter books, the costs and limits are too often arbitrary. A patronus charm, for example, is awfully difficult - until Rowling wants a stirring scene in which Harry pulls together an intrepid band of students to Fight the Power, whereupon it becomes simple enough to be taught by an inexperienced fifteen year old.” (McArdle, "Harry Potter: the economics", 2007)

Then there’s the fact that the wizard economy should not work. Magic is pervasive and simple spells can be used for everything. Manual labor is completely unnecessary, the production of goods is limited to a few rare magical items. What do wizards contribute to their tiny economy? Do they really need money?

“The low opportunity cost attached to magic spills over into the thoroughly unbelievable wizard economy. Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it, or casting a spell, or, in a pinch, making objects like dinner, or a house, assemble themselves. Yet the Weasleys are poor not just by wizard standards, but by ours: they lack things like new clothes and textbooks that should be easily obtainable with a few magic words. Why?” (McArdle, "Harry Potter: the economics", 2007)

With little need for labor, the job options are largely in the service industry or government.

“The private sector is limited to a handful of merchants on Diagon Alley and in Hogsmeade Village, and most of them seem essentially to be government contractors who supply Hogwarts students...Harry himself aspires to become an Auror, a government agent, when he grows up. Do any witches and wizards earn their knuts, sickles and galleons by providing goods or services that add value?” (Cullen,  Harry Potter and the realm of big government, 2005)

For many people these big-picture problems don’t matter because they don’t directly influence the plot. Ok, instead let’s address how we have a “team sport” that is really just about two seekers each trying to catch a ball that’s worth 150 points while the rest of the team works their butts off for every 10 points.  The rule is so awful that the International Quidditch Association changed it so that catching the snitch wins only 30 points.

These guys have the right idea.

Or consider the plot hole that is the Marauder’s Map. It lets you see everyone in the whole school. It’s a plot hole that could’ve solved the mystery of “who’s attacking the school?” in book three.

Or we can discuss the bizarre education system.

“As an independent school, it does not have to follow the National Curriculum closely; however, it is disappointing to note that basic requirements such as English, Mathematics, and Religious Education are all lacking or entirely missing from the school's syllabus. This has had adverse effects on all students, many of whom have never even been taught basic KS1 or 2 literacy.” (Wharmby, "The Board of Education Finally Inspects Hogwarts", 2013)

Even stranger than the lack of reading, writing, and arithmetic is the disconnect from the muggle world. Wizards make up a minuscule percentage of Britain’s population (J.K. Rowling says 3,000 people, some fans insist that you’d need at least 15,000 to support all the details of the story.) So even if all 15,000 wizards lived together in a gated community they’d still be too small to justify their naivety about the outside world. They don’t know muggle history, they never reference muggle pop culture, they live in the UK and they don’t understand soccer. The amish are more connected that wizards are.

Alright, this is the last plot hole I’m going to bring up, but it’s one that could’ve solved everything: the Time-Turner.

How Harry Potter Should Have Ended. AKA Just use the time-turner.

Once you introduce time travel all bets are off. You have to constantly explain why you don’t just go back in time and kill the bad guy. You have to set up clear cut rules about when and how time travel works. J.K. Rowling made a smart move by having all the time turners destroyed in later books so that we couldn’t use that device over and over, but their existence presents an easy solution to every problem. “Why don’t we just create another time-turner and…” You get the idea.

The reason that we shouldn’t care about these plot holes is because it doesn’t interfere with reading experience. Most of us only notice these inconsistencies in retrospect. J.K. Rowling gives us small details like the smell of the potions and the grease on Snape’s hair until we can see the whole potions class. Details like that sell the entire story until the things Rowling never explained become far less important than the rich tapestry of detail she weaves for the reader.

If we find a plot hole in Minority Report, or Inception, or The Matrix, we rejoice because they spend a long time working on internal consistency. Finding plot holes in a film like that can actually ruin the whole story. The Harry Potter series doesn’t really try to convince you that there’s a solid economy, instead it dazzles you with the details of Diagon Alley:

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Readers don’t care that the students never learned basic math because we see that they’re doing homework just like us.

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And all of the little “we could’ve ended the series much earlier if Harry had just used X magic instead of doing Y”--that’s irrelevant. Because ultimately this is a story about characters, and those characters are intensely real. They grow over seven years, they make sense, you know them. As Stephen King said “Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity.” You’re different at the end of book seven. You found a character stronger than death. You’ve learned that the world isn’t split into good people and death eaters. You're better able to choose between what is right and what is easy. Thank you J.K. Rowling. It's been magical.

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