Ask Lemmy

Ron didn’t need to wear Great Aunt Tessie’s dress garments. He could have magicked something snazzier. He wanted to wear Great Aunt Tessie’s wardrobe.

JK Rowling just kind of improvised vis a vis the price of things over the series. Ie. in one book a galleon is a fortune where you can afford the entire snack cart and Ron has never seen that kind of money before with his own eyes, but then the next book the school books cost 5 galleons.

There is zero reason for the wizarding world to have social classes. Allow me to explain.

Although food can't be created with magic, any graduate of Hogwarts can cast the Herbivicus Charm (I think it's called) or the Greenhouse Charm to grow plants in moments. There's also a spell that produces fresh, clean water. They have spells that make the insides of things larger than the outside. Spells that clean dishes. Spells that levitate objects and automatically perform rote tasks.

Every wizard or witch is maybe a month or two of moderate work (at the absolute outside) away from having a private pocket kingdom with crops, furniture, fireplace, teleport pad, beds, clothing, swimming pool, pets, cattle, enchanted kitchen, self cleaning floors, and fucking golf course if they want it.

If they can't create, craft, grow, or summon something, they can buy it with money taken from an entire world of gullible muggles. Sure, dollars and yen are worthless in Diagon Alley, but you can still buy food and an enormous range of physical comforts with it. And if you absolutely have to spend money in a magical store- muggles still have gold. Even at the extortionate exchange rates that I assume the goblins would charge, the process of turning essentially free cash (in exchange for magic tricks or conjured trinkets) into gold and then into goblin coin is basically nothing but profit. A lot of it.

Which brings me back to social stratification. Why are the Malfoys considered a powerful family? Why do people differ to government functionaries and Dumbledore? Why do witches and wizards run businesses or work at all? Social hierarchy is a result of power imbalances, and other than direct, physical force, there are no power imbalances in the wizarding world. They can take your job, but who cares? You don't actually need one. They can take your home, but who cares? You can make another in a few weeks (and this time the hot tub will go on the balcony instead of in the backyard).

A wizard does not need anything from society or from other wizards.

Dedicated magic government doesn't have a standing army or even an official police force branch to ensure public safety, and relies on essentially a band of mercenaries to take down Voldemort.

Twice

Also:

For me it’s always the unexplained power nerfing that authors do just to advance the plot.

Harry Potter in the first 3 books was fearless, he literally took on voldemort with his bare hands.

Then when the dumbass plan with the port key cup happens, he just stands there like an idiot as the rat dude kills Cedric and revives Voldemort as if both he and Cedric don’t have wands that allow them to cast spells.

I mean they could have maybe had like 20 wizards camping the graveyard to make escaping impossible, but nah they really tried to make the coward rat guy seem like he was now somehow more capable than all of voldemort’s previously defeated plans combined.

Biggest "plot hole" is that anyone still likes it. Especially now that Joanne is publicly a piece of shit. I was extremely surprised to see so many trans people and allies rush to give a person that hates them money at every opportunity.

Dumbledore is quite sure the Defense Against the Dark Arts job is cursed, at least by the time of HBP. Sooo... why didn't he figure out how to break the curse?

Being able to retain a skilled teacher would be pretty compelling. Is Dumbledore really so inferior to Voldemort in regard to curses that he couldn't remove it? Or, if not, couldn't he have created a new position with a new name, and new classes to go along with it? Call it Protection From the Dark Arts or Magical Defense or something.

Why are there socioeconomic classes on a society that can literally create or at least multiply any resources at will?

There's no fucking way that a kid raised from infancy like Harry was, in a abusive hateful household that treated him like dirt, would have enough strength of character to pull shit like the "Give it here, Malfoy" scene after having been out of the Dursley household for less than a couple weeks. Think about how the Dursleys would have reacted every time young Harry tried to stand up for himself. It would have been nonstop physical and mental abuse, all aimed at making him more subservient. It would take a miracle for a kid like that to be even vaguely functional as a person, and he certainly wouldn't have the ability to stand up for himself, let alone others.

The spell system is wack, which opens up all sorts of plot holes. Want Harry's invisibility cloak? Accio invisibility cloak! Boom, Harry's visible and you've got his cloak. I doubt that Rowling ever played D&D.

I always cringe with the 7th book, where the trio is hiding and searching for horkruxes, and for some weird reason they don't have enough food and are constantly hungry. From the reading perspective I understand, that the hunger is a device to generate conflict and make their time hard to endure, but it always baffles me.

• It is mentioned, that Hermione pulled out all her muggle savings, so why didn't she think about going to a supermarket and buying all the conserved food (cans and such) she can before they got on the run? She even mentions, that food can be multiplicated, just not created out of nothing.
• When they are hiding they sometimes get to a store or supermarket. But that only brings food for like a few days max. Why not more?
• And when there where too many dementors in an area to get more food, why not going really far away. We know Hermione was at least one time in France with her parents. Why not going there? Probably the war-like situation was not spread over the complete world that seriously. At least we are not hearing any of that in the books (JKR probably didn't even thing much about international things when writing this)

Irrational soft magic system - anything can happen for any reason, so the story doesn't matter at all.