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Post by MWPP on Feb 25, 2009 23:00:27 GMT -5
I was re-reading Order of the Phoenix earlier today and began to wonder why, when Harry needed/wanted a fireplace to talk with Sirius, he didn't just go to the Room of Requirement. Wouldn't the Room have provided what he needed (an unwatched fireplace)? He already knew how to get the RoR to supply what was necessary, yet twice he goes to Umbridge''s office instead.
Or, why, in HBP, when Harry is on the ground, has dropped his wand, and Snape is trying to escape, does Harry not "Accio" his wand?
Or why, in Stone Duh, you're right birdg, it is supposed to be CoS, when Harry is walking past Ginny's room at the Burrow is there a green eye looking out through the crack of the door, but in later books it is said Ginny has brown eyes just like Molly's
.... well you get the idea.
It might be interesting to see what all of us are confunded about, what places tripped each of us up as we read along.
What are you wondering about?
What contradictions (Flints) have you found?
What was not explained enough in the books?
What did you find that the rest of us may not have put together?
What didn't get answered?
Inquiring minds want to know!
(Or, you know, busybodies and gossips want to know.)
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nundu
Second Year
Posts: 25
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Post by nundu on Feb 26, 2009 9:07:29 GMT -5
why, when Harry needed/wanted a fireplace to talk with Sirius, he didn't just go to the Room of Requirement. Because the author needed Harry to be dumb...and advance the plot!  when Harry is on the ground, has dropped his wand, and Snape is trying to escape, does Harry not 'Accio' his wand? Because Harry is not good at wandless magic. The only example we see of any wandless magic (other than spontaneous, prior to getting a wand), is when he yells 'lumos' after Dudley punches. Even he was surprised by that!  |
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Post by birdg on Feb 26, 2009 9:35:03 GMT -5
I don't think Harry was at the Burrow in PS/SS. Do you mean CoS? There is a scene like that (right at the end of 'The Burrow' chapter) but Ginny is mentioned as having brown eyes in my edition.
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Post by mo on Feb 26, 2009 14:11:47 GMT -5
I can explain away almost all of them, but this one bugs me the most:
DH, p. 96 "I've also modified my parent's memories....I think I've cast a good enough charm to keep them safe and happy." (Hermione)
DH, p. p. 167 "I've never done a Memory Charm." (Ron)
"Nor have I," said Hermione. "But, I know the theory."
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Post by pigwithhair on Feb 26, 2009 20:06:03 GMT -5
Two things for me really stuck out:
I really would have liked more on Hermione's family and what the dynamic was that she could so easily leave and yet seem rather close to them. I read in an interview that JKR originally had Hermione's parents split up but thought it too much of a diversion from the main plot. I think it would have added to the story overall and I'd like to have seen some of Hermoine's Muggle life and Ron and Harry's reactions to it.
Also: the Hallows didn't work for me. Fascinating concept, but they seemed to come out of nowhere since they'd hever been mentioned before the final book. And I have to say I didn't likek the very last thing I saw of Ron and Hermione at the end of the series was Ron salivating over the Elder wand. After everything they'd been through and his brother's death so fresh, I could have understood it if Ron had wanted the Resurrection Stone, but not the Elder wand.
And maybe this was answered in the books but I missed it: how did Dumbledore know what had happened at Godric's Hollow to send for Hagrid?
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Post by vegablack on Feb 26, 2009 20:54:56 GMT -5
I don't see as many plot holes in the story as other readers do. For instance I'm not surprised that Harry doesn't use wandless magic. In the context of the story it doesn't seem to be something the vast majority of wizards can do successfully. If they could why would it be such a horror for Muggleborns to lose their wands? (As a matter of fact we now have an answer to a question that vexed the quill. You can't apparratt without a wand. The fact that Sir Porpington lost his wand is given as the reason he was executed in the Beedle the bard book.)
I tend to think that Harry makes mistakes because he isn't a Mary Sue but a teen age boy who at times lets his emotions get away from him and doesn't always think of everything he needs to do. That it helps JKR move the story doesn't bother me. I think it would be worse if he never missed a good idea.
The outright contradiction of Hermione claiming to do a complex memmory spell in one chapter and barely knowing how to obliviate in another is a plot hole I agree, but many others that I've seen pointed out don't always seem to be plot holes to me, but an example of the fandom seeing magic or the characters differently than JKR. I think sometimes people forget the age of the characters or the fact that they haven't reread their own lives over and over again.
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Post by birdg on Feb 26, 2009 21:40:09 GMT -5
Made perfect sense to me, all the Resurrection Stone could do was bring back a poor facsimile of Fred. If Ron had the Elder Wand, he could protect his loved ones and make sure none of them met the same fate as Fred.
Could be a different spell. Actually, is it ever said in the text that Hermione used wiped their memories? Maybe she put them under Imperius.
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Post by mo on Feb 26, 2009 22:21:06 GMT -5
I typed my quotes with the book on my lap. She does say "I modifed their memories." and then says she used a charm. That seems to make it relatively clear that she didn't use Imperius, which is a curse, not a charm, and that she actually did tinker with their memories.
I do think that some people see "plot holes" or contradictions when in reality there is nothing more there than a conflict between fanon and canon. However, some types of magic are not fleshed out in a cohesive way and beg contradicitons. The Fidelius Charm seems particularly hard to grasp in a way that has no conflicts, for example.
But, perhaps that is the nature of magic? It seems that it is not a logical, scientific force, and that "old" forces such as the power of love and the corrosiveness of evil are elements that can bend the powers of magic in ways that defy our explanations. At least, that's what I tell myself when I get frustrated with Elder Wands and Secret Keepers.
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Post by pigwithhair on Feb 26, 2009 22:29:22 GMT -5
Made perfect sense to me, all the Resurrection Stone could do was bring back a poor facsimile of Fred. If Ron had the Elder Wand, he could protect his loved ones and make sure none of them met the same fate as Fred. He'd have to defeat Harry, get the wand by force, in order to use it for himself, so no, didn't make sense to me. |
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Post by MWPP on Feb 27, 2009 0:00:30 GMT -5
Another oopsie :
In PoA, in the Shreiking Shack, Ron is on the floor, then on the bed, then on the floor again. *sigh* I wish I could've been JKR's beta reader....
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Post by birdg on Feb 27, 2009 9:49:30 GMT -5
I doubt very much Ron was thinking of it like that, he was probably thinking of which of the Hallows was actually useful.
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Post by vegablack on Feb 27, 2009 14:44:36 GMT -5
Ron is a prosaic person who tends to take the most practical down to earth view of things. Ron didn't want the wand for himself. He didn't understand why Harry having such a powerful and important weapon would want to give it up. To Ron it was if Harry had won the Lottery but had decided not to accept the money. A person who wonders why a friend doesn't accept a windfall doesn't seriously want to steal it from him, but wonders why he is acting so quixoticly.
Harry doesn't like the way the wand affects his friends because he sees its affect on even a loyal kind largely levelheaded friend like Ron and sees how dangerous it is.
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Post by pigwithhair on Feb 27, 2009 17:55:38 GMT -5
I knew there was a contradiction I couldn't remember. Thanks to Starsea's post in the movie section, I've remembered it:
In PofA Hermione slaps Malfoy, but in a later reference to this (I think it's in HBP)it's said she punched him.
Okay, a friend of mine found the exact reference in HBP, page 186:
"Malfoy looked rather as he had done the time Hermione had punched him in the face."
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Post by MWPP on Mar 1, 2009 1:58:47 GMT -5
When harry is getting his wand, Ollivander tells him that his wand and Voldie's have the same core. That the phoenix (Fawkes) gave "just two feathers". Yet in OotP (to verify the legitimacy of messages sent) a Fawkes tailfeather lands with the messages.
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Post by doriscrockford on Mar 1, 2009 6:43:33 GMT -5
If Fake!Moody turned an unapproved object into a portkey at the end of GoF to get Harry to Voldemort, why couldn't he have done that at the beginning of the year, with a book (or something) he was lending Harry?
Yes, yes, I know, the book would have been 12 pages long, but it's something that's always bothered me. ;P
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Post by starsea on Mar 1, 2009 15:31:50 GMT -5
Maybe it would have been too obvious it was linked to Voldemort if he disappeared at the beginning of the year? The advantage of having the Portkey in the maze was that nobody else would witness Harry being spirited away (which was Voldemort wanted Cedric dead). When Harry came back, it was only his word and Dumbledore's that Cedric's death was due to Voldemort.
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Post by Mirabelle on Mar 1, 2009 23:07:32 GMT -5
In the "Oh, JKR, you really are bad at the maths", Ginny says she's 9 3/4 at the beginning of SS. If the requirement is that you must be 11 by September 1, Ginny should already be ten (and we know she's newly ten because her birthday is August 11). Ginny being 9 3/4 would put her two year away from Hogwarts.
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Post by birdg on Mar 1, 2009 23:20:23 GMT -5
When does Ginny say that? The only thing I've found was Ginny telling Molly what the platform number was before whining that she wants to go to Hogwarts too.
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Post by Mirabelle on Mar 2, 2009 0:14:32 GMT -5
I remember where I read it now. The entry for Ginny Weasley at the HP Wiki has excerpts from the books and I just confused one of them as Ginny stating her age rather than the Platform. |
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Post by eirdescania on Mar 2, 2009 10:03:37 GMT -5
mwpp wrote: *sigh* I wish I could've been JKR's beta reader.... You know, a beta reader would have been great. As it was, Jo wrote her books without discussing them with anyone, not to mention letting anyone read the slightest excerpt, and then left it with the publishers who just hurried to get it into the shops as soon as possible. No wonder that there were a lot of things making the readers go  in the books. Just one example: When asked how Harry got the Map back when Snape had confiscated it, Jo said she thought it was obvious Harry had sneaked into Snape's office and grabbed it. It might be obvious for the author, who knows a lot more than she puts down on the page, but it's not obvious for the reader. A beta reader picks up on such things.
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