The Harry Potter series has been the king of fantasy franchises for years now, but it’s far from perfect. Fans are prone to re-read and re-watch this story again and again, and in the process, they often pick up details the author and editors may have missed. The series has some plot holes and inconsistencies, and while they won’t derail a first-time viewer, they become pretty glaring once you see them. They range from minor details to foundational worldbuilding elements, and die-hard fans love to catalog them and debate their possible solutions. Read on for three of the series’ biggest plot holes and the best possible answers we have for them.
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Keep in mind that the “rules” governing the Harry Potter world are pretty malleable. The series is a primarily world fantasy where the magic generally hides itself from Muggles, and it employs a “soft magic system,” meaning we aren’t always told the limitations and parameters of magical power. In many cases, perceived plot holes in Harry Potter could be explained with more details on the magic — and many have been. The ones below, however, still leave many fans unsatisfied.
Harry and the Thestrals
Harry first sees the magical creatures called Thestrals in the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. They’re large, winged, skeletal horses, which can only be seen by a witch or wizard who has witnessed someone die in front of them. Luna Lovegood can see them because she saw her mother die when she was a child, and Harry can now see them because he saw Cedric Diggory die at the end of the fourth book.
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Naturally, this setup confused a lot of fans because we know Harry saw his parents die when he was a baby. Harry may not have had eyes on his father when the killing curse hit him, but based on his memories of his mother’s dying screams, it seems safe to say he was up close and personal for her death, at least. This is an easy issue to raise because it compares directly with Luna’s experience.
Even if you accept that Harry’s infantile memories weren’t enough to unlock Thestrals for him, there’s the issue of Professor Quirrell. Harry essentially killed the defense against the dark arts teacher himself at the end of the first book — Quirrell couldn’t touch Harry because of the powerful spell left by his mother’s sacrifice, so Harry grabbed Quirrell’s face and held it as he burned to death. If that’s not enough to see a Thestral, what is?
While the Thestrals clearly give us some issues here, it’s worth acknowledging that they still do their job well as a plot device. The creatures serve to set Harry apart from his classmates in the fifth book, embodying his sense of isolation and foreboding. They also turn out to be a very useful form of transportation as the story goes on.
Snape’s Memories
For seven long books, we toiled under the “mystery” of Severus Snape’s true allegiance, and in the end he answered all our questions with a couple fluid ounces of liquid exposition siphoned straight out of his brain. In his dying moments, Snape bottled up some of his most important memories and handed them off to Harry, who took a break from the Battle of Hogwarts to watch them in the pensieve and finally make up his mind about Hogwarts’ potions master.
These memories weren’t just for trying to hastily re-characterize the Wizarding World’s biggest creep, however. They were important to the plot. Thanks to Snape’s memories, Harry finally learned that he was a living Horcrux for Voldemort himself, and only with that information was he able to effectively take on the Dark Lord once and for all.
So, if Harry hadn’t happened to be spying when Voldemort killed Snape, what was the plan for him to get that vital information? Neither Snape nor Dumbledore seemed to have anymore tricks in place to hand that intelligence off, and without it, Voldemort would not have been killed. There are a lot of issues and mysteries around Horcruxes in general, but this one stands out for being high stakes and completely inscrutable.
Felix Felicis & Time Turners
Finally, if you start reading up on Harry Potter plot holes on fan forums, you’ll find that many of them revolve around time turners and the potion Felix Felicis — a.k.a. liquid luck. Both of these powers were simply too great for this series, which is clear because both were taken off the table shortly after their one use. However, in a world where these two things exist, this story should not have been able to happen.
The time turner is the device that allows Hermione to travel back in time so that she can take a full slate of classes in her third year at Hogwarts. This is pretty unnecessary, as we learn later that you can choose to continue your education past seven years. If Hermione really wanted, she could have stayed at Hogwarts long enough to take every single class they offered without messing up her circadian rhythm.
There are incalculable ways that the time turners could have been used to solve the big problems of the series — and ways that they should have been used in the past to prevent those problems altogether. In the present, this issue is explained away because all the time turners were destroyed when the Death Eaters raided the Ministry of Magic. However, looking back there’s no excuse for the ministry not to have used time turners to catch Voldemort on his way into the Potter house, or any other number of times.
Meanwhile, Felix Felicis presents us with many similar issues, and not as clear of a solution. The potion magically enhances the drinker’s luck, guaranteeing them a perfect day where everything simply goes right for them. Harry gets his hand on a vial and uses about half of it to coax Professor Slughorn into giving him his memory of talking to Voldemort about Horcruxes. He then gives the rest to his friends before Death Eaters attack the castle, and with it they’re all able to narrowly avoid dying in the battle.
Slughorn explains that Felix Felicis is extremely difficult to brew and extremely dangerous if brewed wrong, which is the best explanation we get in the books for why it was’t used more frequently. However, Professor Slughorn brewed this batch himself and offered it up as a prize for a single day’s classroom challenge, which has clearly given many readers the impression that it’s a challenge worth repeating. After all, the other best-known “difficult potion” in the series is polyjuice potion, and we see that brewed and used often throughout the story.
Much of the information we get on Felix Felicis and its limitations comes from sources outside the books or movies, including video games and Pottermore entries. There, we’re told that the potion is extremely toxic in high quantities, and should not be consumed too often. It also could not be stored for too long, as it would turn foetid and its effects could be reversed.
Whether you count those explanations as satisfying or not, they should have been included in the primary text to be taken seriously. Adding to the frustration, fans point out how little Slughorn’s memory really mattered when the story was finished.
Harry Potter is not perfect, but for many fans, its plot holes, inconsistencies, and contrivances are an integral part of it. The film series is streaming now on Max, while the novels are available in print, digital, and audiobook formats. A new adaptation of the series is expected next year on HBO and Max.
