With the seventh Harry Potter movie coming, I decided it is time to point out a few of the plot holes and “huh? moments” from the Harry Potter franchise up until this point.

In the second Harry Potter movie, The Chamber of Secrets, it seems rather convenient that every single person that sees the Basilisk sees it through a reflection/camera/mirror etc.  Is the Basilisk just really horrible at being seen directly by people?  When it freezes someone, does it just think,” Darn!  Next time!”  And then slither away?   Why couldn’t it just eat them or mess them up after it froze them if it really wanted to kill so badly? Couldn’t it just slither through the hallway during passing period and wipe out basically everyone?  Also, only Harry can hear the basilisk, yet everyone else can hear him speaking parseltongue.  Shouldn’t all the other students hear random noisy hissy sounds coming from the walls?  Also, why would the basilisk swim around the pipes yelling “Kill!  Kill”?  Is it just really into talking to itself?  Does it just get so excited about how it is soon going to once again fail at making eye contact that it feels it must yell it’s plans out loud?  Shouldn’t an enormous snake trying to be undetected be a little more discreet?  I also like the way parseltongue sounds a lot like English but with a lot more of the” h” and “s” sounds.  Shouldn’t it just sound like that really really quiet noise snakes make when they hiss?

The kids are very good at conveniently learning every spell that will come in handy fifteen minutes later or at the end of the film.

Quidditch – love it, but so many confusing aspects.  You get 150 points for catching the snitch, awesome!  But doesn’t that mean that 99 percent of the time all of the hard work that players do is for nothing since the snitch is more or less instantly gives you the victory.  It’s like she made the team in the Quidditch World Cup who got the snitch lose just to show that it could happen.  Also, has anyone noticed that being hit by a bludger will simply kill you?  It is basically a magical cannonball that zooms along at 60 miles an hour trying to destroy.  The only thing they give beaters to hit it is a wooden bat? Good luck.  People also love to punch the ball with their fists; does this really give you any more accuracy or speed than simply throwing the ball as hard as you can?  Also, in the first Harry Potter movie, people love to jump off their broom and back on again and do a 360 spin to hit a ball with their broom handle into a two foot wide hole 60 feet away; I don’t even need to go into why this is impossible/ridiculous.

In The Prisoner of Azkaban, movie and book number three, has anyone noticed Harry falls off his broom about 300 feet?  I know Dumbledore yells that one spell that weakens his fall, but you also see him hit the ground at about 800 miles per hour.  Also, in that film rather than creating a stag, his wand creates a giant light explosion that has a mile wide radius.

In the fourth film, Harry escapes the dragon in the dragon on top of Hogwarts castle, it’s exciting, but the entire audience is just sitting there for those 15 minutes.  Suppose the dragon murdered Harry, how long would have they just sat there waiting for him to come back?  Nobody was speaking, why did everyone just awkwardly sit there waiting for everyone to come back?

It is a tragic and sad moment at the end of the fourth book when Cedric dies.  However, couldn’t every single task in the Triwizard tournament easily destroy these children competing?  Harry is almost eaten and almost falls to his death when facing the dragon, and is nearly drowned by those weird sea creatures, and he’s Harry Potter.  It seems with challenges this dangerous they would have figured at least someone was going to die, if not all of them.

Harry really trusted Mad Eye Moody, so why the need for the convoluted elaborate tournament?  Take a walk with Harry in the woods and hand him a pencil that will send him directly to Lord Voldemort.

Dumbledore is not one tenth as useful as he should be.  The most powerful wizard in the world, he can pretty easily face down Voldemort, and yet he leaves 98 percent of the dirty work to three snotty nosed eleven year olds, who know no spells that would be even slightly useful in battle.  He does a good job at randomly disappearing when things get rough and then later showing up to award house points and medals as needed.  Come on Dumbledore, stop leaving it up to three little kids to save Hogwarts, or, you know, the Universe.

Well friends, we nitpick, but in the most loving, nerdy way.