Harry Potter's Biggest Plot Holes 

Am I crazy or does the Basilisk just not make any sense..

Imagine going to school but then being told you can't practice Spanish because your family doesn't speak Spanish and we have a way of telling if you do. You then practice Spanish outside of school and get threatened with expulsion

I can’t get enough of these Harry Potter iceberg videos keep up the great work

About the trace. Hermione (and even Harry in book 1 before he knows what he is doing) uses magic without consequence. I always figured it was because they hadn't been to school yet. Some charm or hex or whatever latches on underage magical folk when they are sorted or even walk into the school.

In the books the names on the map are really tiny and hard to read, so I like to think that Peter Pettigrew's dot & name is even smaller than everyone else's since he's the size of a rat, and therefore it's illegibly small and really easy to miss

59:39 I think it was more teaching Ginny and/or Ron some independence or trying to make them remember things. Instead of “ok now we go to platform 9 and 3/4” it’s more like “ok (mostly to Ron and Ginny), which platform is it I need to go to?” So that they can feel like they helped etc. or to prepare them in case she can’t be there next year etc.

SuperCarlinBrothers has a really great series called Dumbledore’s Big Plan that addresses the Molly forgetting where 9 3/4 is as well as why the puzzles hiding the stone were child-friendly. Basically, Dumbledore had been guiding and testing Harry in really detailed ways for the entire series and these two points were deliberate actions taken by Dumbledore. I recommend those videos bc they’re amazing.

Snakes aren’t slimy. They are smooth, like cool silk. Except maybe vipers, but I’ve never stroked one of them.

i think lycanthropy functions like basic werewolf lore where you transform during the date of the full moon but JKR wanted a nice cinematic visual of lupin being bathed in moonlight before he turned

I think you missed one, but i’m not sure If it’s a plot hole…. What IS the function of Rubber Duck? 🤔

Absolutely criminal how few views these videos have

I'm so glad you mentioned Snape's failure to see Pettigrew's name on the map when delivering lupin's Wolfsbane. However, it's another Snape action which I think is a huge plothole and it has to do with memories, the pensieve and storage. Why on earth did Snape, deliberately and in front of Harry, store his private memories in a pensieve - a vessel for viewing memories only? If he had removed these memories prior to every occlumency lesson and stored them in a flask which he then kept on his person, Harry would never have been the wiser. Putting his private memories in front of Harry and then leaving them there while he leaves his office is stupidity on the level of writing your password on a post-it note and sticking it to your computer monitor - and Snape, although many things, was not stupid. Of course, Harry need not have looked, but that's my point. If JKR hadn't had Snape so blatantly display that he had memories he wished to conceal … On thestrals, Harry didn't actually 'see' Cedric die; his scar was hurting him so much that he was forced to close his eyes against the pain and only heard the thud and guessed what was happening. "A blast of green light blazed through Harry's eyelids, and he heard something heavy fall to the ground beside him; the pain in his scar reached such a pitch that he retched, and then it diminished; terrified of what he was about to see, he opened his stinging eyes." (Goblet of Fire, ch32) Oh, and I have a somewhat controversial question. Why on earth, during a war, don't the kids fight to kill? It's a war; these people are your enemies; if you kill them they can't continue to fight you. This may be a symbolic thing but to me it doesn't make sense. I've never understood why anyone has an issue with Molly asking the name of the platform. Parents teach their children and the older boys would understand that she is teaching Ron and Ginny. I don't see this as unusual at all. In fact, I can well picture the older boys roling their eyes but wisely choosing to say nothing On horcruxes, it may be that Voldemort's soul is now so unstable, having made far too many horcruxes, that I can easily perceive how a fragment ended up inside Harry. I'd known about most of these but not all. Thanks for yet another great video.

A better plan for getting Wormtail back to the castle would have been to leave Lupin in the shack and make a pit stop at Hagrids first and have them hold up in his hut while Hagrid goes to fetch Dumbledore himself

Great vid. 😂 It's always funny to poke fun at HP plot holes. I think the theory about fake Moody is a bit too generous, though. It's simply a plot hole 🙂😅 And you missed the one that kills me the most: Dumbledore, allegedly a genius, hired 1.a dark agent (and Fred & George already know quirell, although everyone only holds the position for a year, so he should be a new teacher, but that's another rabbit hole) 2.a fraud 3.a ware wolf 4. dark agent 2.0 And hogwarts is allegedly the safest place ever 😅

Peter shows up on the map. Its how Lupin finally figured out what was going on. He explains this in the big exposition chapters in the shrieking shack.

Phenomenal video 😍 Would you consider doing a part 2? There are a lot more plot holes that come to mind: 1. Why do wizards celebrate Christmas? Does it indirectly mean Jesus was a wizard? 2. How did they learn math? Or to read and write? Science? I know magic can bend reality and physics, but to bend it I would assume you would have to learn about it? 3. The entire magic system and wizard economics don’t make sense. I could write an essay about this. And bonus points for time turners. Introducing time travel is not necessarily a plot hole, but she immediately regretted introducing such powerful magic that could have serious consequences on the story so she had Neville just accidentally destroy all the Time turners that ever existed in book 5? The fuq? 😂

Them showing the snake shed skin obviously tells us that the snake has been growing..We dont know how big or small it was when it was using the pipes. For all we know it was the size of a regular snake before

I don't imagine you have any control over the frequency of ads, but all your videos I watch prompt an ad every 3 mins. Other than that love the videos man, keeps me entertained at work

Great video, awesome content. I listen to several channels on YT about the HP series, and one i think you and others should give a listen to as well is the Super Carlin Brothers, and specifically their video series about Dumbledore's big plan. It makes a lot of sense and actually solves many of the plot holes discissed here and others ive heard over the years. Keep up all the hard work, looking forward to seeing this channel grow and thrive 👍

The biggest plot hole of this entire series is that JK Rowling said she had planned this story out all along when she obviously hadn't. I'm a writer but not published and sometimes you gotta admit that things just happen (I could be wrong but when writing characters they just tend to take life on a life of their own and it ends up contractdicting things that happened before just like in n real life). Real life has stuff just happen

Fred and George would suspect something if Scabbers with Ron would show up Peter Pettigrew with Ron Weasley.

commenting as i listen along to the video but the theory of peter pettigrew being so deep into his animagus form that the map didn't register him is incorrect - the very reason Lupin followed the trio to the shack was because he saw both Sirius and Peter's name on the map and realised Peter was still alive. “Everyone thought Sirius killed Peter,” said Lupin, nodding. “I believed it myself - until I saw the map tonight. Because the Marauder’s map never lies . . . Peter’s alive. Ron’s holding him, Harry.”

Fred and George would definitely never miss the opportunity to make fun of ron for sleeping with a mysterious bloke named Peter. I like the more rat than man theory, but it's us fans trying to cover up for Jo. Again.

Aren't Harry's eyes closed when Cedric died? He didn't SEE death. The first person he SAW die, was his godfather.

I'm also confused about how the houses work, presumably there would never be an equal number of students in each house because each of them has their own attributes that the hat will sort them by, and there's no way it's going to magically be an equal amount of students for each house, but that is what seems to happen in the series so how does THAT make any sense? Especially considering things such as only pure bloods can get into slytherin, and with so few actual pure blood families left and the few who do exist will still also end up in other houses then Slytherin would have like 2 kids while a house like Hufflepuff who takes everyone would have hundreds? MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!

These long videos have gotten me through hours of lying in a dark room with a cluster headache thank you so much 😫🙏🏻

The trace exists for pureblood teen wizards who live with muggles, otherwise the spell is inert.

I never understood why they don't just kick people out the second the sorting hat puts them in Slytherin! There aint a witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin so it seems like it would solve all the problems.

So I did the math and if there is 1,000 students at Hogwarts and assuming that all of the magical kids are at Hogwarts then there should be roughly 3,642 adults making for a total of 4,642 Witches and Wizards in the United Kingdom. If there is 40 student per year then there are 280 students at Hogwarts and roughly there should be 1,020 adults and a total of 1,300 Witches and Wizards in the United Kingdom. And just in case you were wondering in 1991 there was 57,420,000 people in the United Kingdom, so if there are 4,642 magical people you have a 0.000081% chance of being magical, 0.000023% chance if there are 1,300

youv forgotten that harry sees peters name in the book walking around him

46:20 I can explain this one, it's soccer rules, You have hundreds of 16-18 year olds going pro. Messi famously went pro at 16 and was allowed to play for the national team at 18, when he should have been playing in the sub 21 league

I can't remember where or when but I heard a theory that Mrs Norrice was a person who got stuck in her Animagus form (I do know this was before Fantastic Beasts came out though) and was possibly Filch's girlfriend or wife. I don't get the wife bit though other wise she'd be called Mrs Filch, unless he called her Norris as it was her maiden name and didn't want people to know what happened to her

For the Platform 9 3/4 one, it could be Molly encouraging her kids to pay attention to these things for themselves. Like parents will often ask their kids questions that they already know the answer to, to make sure that they know what they're doing. More likely though, JK probably just hadn't decided that it would always be the same platform at the point she wrote that line haha.

the paintings all talk to you, the stairs all move to the specific hallways you need fireplaces transport you to a differentplace, all this magical stuff and you cant believe a big ass snake can shrink and regrow or even the pipes could do the same thing? haha

And for the world cup, of course, people from around the entire world show up.

A date plot hole that I’ve been trying to figure out since 2009: Hagrid meets Harry on his birthday, takes him to the Diagon Alley same day and he is departing to hogwarts same day! August 1st??? Where has Harry been entire months? 22:06

My theory on Peter Pettigrew is that Ron rat Scabbers was originally a real rat, and when Peter started coming back around he killed the real rat scabbers and took his place in disguise to be closer to Ron’s family and Harry so he could spy

Really good and complete video.

If F&G compared Perter P. to Rowena, (a shy ghost who preferred to haunt a certain area,) Peter could’ve been his real name, though students/staff called him something else. Al la Rowena being called The Grey Lady? So in F&G’s eyes, Peter mightn’t have been sleeping in the same bed as Ron, simply hovering above/near it? That was just the way my childhood brain helped me make sense of the situation, though I could be way off.

If Fred and George tell anyone about Peter they have to tell about the map 😂 that’s why

The student size was explained in a way that there were weak years because of the wizard war.

27:20 Lupin wasn't an auror

37:36 I figured sewer pipes due to school size, or Tardis pipes lol

NEW ICEBERG VID LETSGOOO

Not finished yet, but I have to say something about the Thestrals: Do you consider "Hogwarts Legacy" as cannon? In the intro sequence our protagonist is sitting in a Thestral pulled carriage. He/she cannot see them at first. However, during the flight one of the companions is killed by a dragon. During this sequence the Thestrals become visible for the protagonist at once. No nightmares required. When I first read book 4 and eventually book 5, I asked myself why the heck can't Harry see the Thestrals at the end of book 4. My own conclusion was, that the author hadn't made them up yet and I accepted it.

I was born October 31st 1983 which means Harry would be at least 42 today

Why did voldemort refer to Peter as worm tail in the 6th or 7th book when he's talking to his death eaters at the table

With the Lupin plot hole, he went out that day because he found out Peter Pettigrew was still alive and couldn't risk him leaving. Nothing else mattered in that moment. He could not let Peter escape. That's why he even forgot his potion. Tunnel vision like a mothafucker.

Terrible book ?

First

51:12 technically they could,since in the world cup scene in the books the reader is told that there are witches and wizards from all over the world,not only from the UK. Your whole math point on why the magical society in the UK is unsustainable is undoubtably right,but that was just a bad example