I would call myself a so-so Harry Potter freak. I couldn’t recite the names of everyone on the Slytherin Quidditch team from a random Slytherin vs. Ravenclaw match on page 217 in book three (trust me, SOME KIDS CAN), but I can tell you the wizard who thought the world was ready for a cheese cauldron (Humphrey Belcher), the general gist of Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration (you can’t turn poop into food), and the best kiss Ron ever had (Auntie Muriel). In other words, I could not beat your niece at a Harry Potter trivia pub quiz, but I could maybe beat you. Relative to other Harry Potter people, I’m in it medium.
As it is for, I assume, plenty of other adults with emotional problems, Harry Potter is a reliable security blanket for me—during challenging periods in my life, listening to the (Jim Dale) audiobooks has been the only thing that gets me to sleep. It’s low-stakes and goofy, but also high-stakes and I care about the characters, plus there’s magic. Those are all of my needs. However, the best thing about Harry Potter, the thing that keeps me hooked year after year, is that the internal logic barely hangs together. None of it makes any sense! The best thing about Harry Potter is that I hate it!!!
My best friend and I have a decade-long text thread where we send each other new Harry Potter plot holes we discover (or forget and then remember again) and then become magnificent with rage over each one. And we discover new ones literally every day! If you could run a light bulb on Harry Potter plot holes, we could solve the climate crisis because Harry Potter plot holes are AN INEXHAUSTIBLE RESOURCE.
For starters, because it’s at the start of this movie, can we talk about the Deluminator? Both the book and movie versions of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone open with Dumbledore clicking his “put-outer” and sucking up all the streetlights on Privet Drive so Hagrid can land his flying motorcycle. First of all, how useful is this? How often do you specifically need to put out ten to twelve Muggle streetlights? Often enough that you needed to make a dedicated invention for it? A magic wand isn’t enough? And who fabricated the Deluminator? House elf slave labor? Or was Dumbledore up in his office—right in the middle of Voldemort’s rise to power—hunched over a soldering iron(?) fashioning a tiny hinge for his magic cigarette lighter that sucks up Muggle light-balls? Mightn’t his time have been better spent making, I don’t know, A GUN? Also, if Dumbledore forgets to put the light-balls back in the lamps, how do the Muggles get the lights back on? Does it work to just change the bulbs? Is he stealing the electricity? Or the concept of light itself?
(Then, in book seven, suddenly the Deluminator is also…a radio? That tells you when your friends are talking shit about you and kind of leads you to them anywhere in England? So, it sucks up balls of light and also helps you find your friends’ tent. HOW IS THAT AN INVENTION???? That’s like if I went on Shark Tank with a shoe that was also a dialysis machine, but I didn’t tell Mark Cuban about the dialysis thing until we’d already been in the shoe business for like twenty years. Why????????? People’s kidneys are failing, man!!!!!)
Anyway, Dumbledore walks past a cat sitting on the curb, just a regular cat like you might see in a neighborhood. WRONG! IT’S AN OLD HUMAN WOMAN.
Why is it that at no point in this entire book and/or film series does Professor McGonagall use her turn-into-a-cat power for anything helpful? She never uses it to sneak into the Ministry of Magic and eavesdrop, she never uses it to see Voldemort naked, she never uses it to give Lucius Malfoy cat scratch fever of the dick. They say it’s excruciatingly difficult to become an animagus and takes years and years of study (except that even flushable wipe Peter Pettigrew figured it out in, like, one year as a teenager, but okay1), yet McGonagall uses it literally exclusively to blow kids’ minds on the first day of Transfiguration class. Ma’am, you are engaged in guerilla warfare against a shadow army of fascists that can do magic. Turn into a cat one time?
It’s cute that they try to make pointy wizard hats a workable fashion choice in this first movie and then by number two they’re like, “Yeah, this is fucking stupid, no one would wear this, it’s so tall, I can’t get through a door.” The pointy hats are the most implausible thing in the whole series, and that includes someone whose last name is Lupin coincidentally getting bit by a werewolf.
Dumbledore and McGonagall arrive at the Dursleys’ house where they’re about to dump Harry, an infant, for eleven years. McGonagall is like, “Where’s the baby?” and Dumbledore is like, “Hagrid is bringing him,” and she’s like, “Uh, excuse me?” and he’s like, “I would trust Hagrid with my life.” R U sure? He is the most bumbling person you’ve ever met!
They leave the baby on the porch in the dark and go back…home? Where do Hogwarts teachers live? Do they have to, like, live in their offices? Are they allowed to get married and have children? Let the teachers live in Hogsmeade, at least! That way the students wouldn’t constantly have to see McGonagall in her tartan dressing gown, and the teachers could achieve some work-life balance. Can someone please start unionizing at Hogwarts? I nominate Madam Hooch—she’s not busy (how is “occasional referee” a full-time job??????).
Flash-forward eleven years: Harry is now a severely traumatized tween who is forced to live in an airless cupboard and do unpaid domestic labor for his abusive (and worse, FAT) family because Dumbledore, “the only wizard you-know-who was ever afraid of,” who lives in a castle, thought it was “safer” for Harry there, even though as far as everyone knew at the time Voldemort had exploded. And yeah, I’m aware of the freaking magic power of a mother’s love, but couldn’t Harry just put the Dursleys’ as his registered address and then go “on vacation” to Hogwarts all year? He lives there most of the year anyway! And as far as I can tell, magic is all semantics! It doesn’t seem to be a problem when he leaves Privet Drive early to go to the Burrow for the last month of summer holiday every year. And anyway, what about Harry’s emotional safety?
AAAAAAAAALSOOOOOOOO WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO ALL FOUR OF HARRY’S GRANDPARENTS? DID YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU DO THE MATH, LILY AND JAMES POTTER WERE ONLY TWENTY-ONE WHEN THEY DIED???? ALL FOUR OF THEIR PARENTS WERE ALREADY DEAD!?!?!? DO YOU KNOW ANYONE LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE WHO DIDN’T LIVE THROUGH A WAR OR PLAGUE?
JUSTICE
FOR
NANA
AND
GRAMPO
EVANS
AND
MUNGA
AND
POP
POP
POTTER2
You know, it’s like actually insane to make Harry sleep in the cupboard under the stairs when you have an entire extra bedroom. And don’t you need the storage? I would NEVER give up my linen closet no matter how much I hated my shitty nephew! Take the master, Grayson! I expected better logic out of Aunt Petunia, being the only non-fat in the family.
Harry’s cousin Dudley has his parents totally cucked. He screams at them that he didn’t get enough birthday presents, and instead of giving him the present of a ride to the orphanage, his dad starts crying and takes him to the zoo. They’re in the reptile house when Harry just starts talking to a snake, and his only vibe is like, “Huh, I’ve never talked to a snake before.” Dude, you’re essentially a Muggle right now! It’s not like you live in the wizarding world where a cat is a person and sometimes a book will slice your jugular. This chill is psychopathic.
Harry and the snake bond over their shared traumas. The snake tells Harry he was bred in captivity, and Harry goes, “That’s me too. I never knew my parents either.” Which had to have bugged the shit out of the snake because that’s not what “bred in captivity” means at all. That’s like when you tell someone your dad died and they nod and say they understand how you feel because they really miss their cat when they’re at work. Like, sorry your parents got murdered by a magician, but “bred in captivity” involves the kidnapping, imprisonment, forced insemination, and slavery of your entire family, sweetie! Look it up!
Harry uses his secret wizard emotions to make the glass disappear, so the snake is like, “Bye, I’m going to slither to Burma.” Okay, good luck with all of Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. I’m sure you’ll make it, though!
Now it’s Harry’s birthday, and for the first time in his life, he gets a letter in the mail. Mesmerized, this dumbass brings the letter into the dining room like he’s never met his own family before. Uncle Vernon of course confiscates it, fatly, but the letters keep coming! Thousands and thousands of them! Uncle Vernon has no choice but to Airbnb a shack on a crag in the middle of the ocean and drag his weeping family there because no wizard could possibly check his browser history and figure out where they went. (Actually, that is true. Wizards are constantly roasting “Muggle technology,” meanwhile their best method of long-distance communication is sticking your face in a fire and hoping your friend happens to be in the kitchen at the time. But yeah, fellytones are stupid!)
The Dursleys are all asleep. Harry’s making himself a birthday cake out of dirt, which is also his bed. Just then, a giant wild man rips the door off its hinges and barges into the crag shack, which we’re expected to think is very cool! (IDK, I kind of feel like Muggles should have some rights, even if they’re dicks?) It’s Hagrid, and he’s brought Harry a real cake and an invitation to Hogwarts.
“Of course you know all about Hogwarts.”
“I’m sorry, no.”
If you thought Harry knew all about Hogwarts, then why did you hunt this family down and break into their house????
Even in the moment when his whole family is being terrorized by a giant, fatboy Dudley can’t stop himself from plunging his face directly into the cake and omph momph gromph skromph. As a fat woman, this moment of cultural representation moved me deeply. My uncle got straight up killed by a dog at his own wedding and I was still like, “So, uh, when we gonna slice into this baby?? Don’t keep Mama waiting!!!!!!”
Hagrid takes Harry back-to-school shopping in Diagon Alley, which is a top-secret wizards-only neighborhood in London. Here’s another thing I don’t get: If wizards live in London (and as we know, Hogsmeade is the only all-wizard village in England, so most wizards must live in Muggle settlements!), why don’t they understand anything about Muggle culture? They’re surrounded by millions of Muggles every day! You’re telling me they never need to use Muggle money to get a sandwich or take a bus? They can’t get a basic handle on Muggle clothes? Mr. Weasley walks through giant crowds of Muggles every day on his way to work and still thinks he needs to wear an umpire’s chest protector and teal yoga pants and a baby’s christening bonnet and a Hula-Hoop just to pick Harry up from the bus stop? What are all the kids wearing on the Hogwarts Express before they “change into their school robes”? I am going to die of this.
Harry buys a magic wand from John Hurt, considered by many to be the greatest actor of his generation, who really takes his twelve seconds of screen time talking nonsense to a child TO THE LIMIT. Hagrid buys Harry an owl as a present. They visit the bank, which is run by hook-nosed goblins with rubber hands (YIKES), so Hagrid can do some secret Hogwarts business. Harry admires the Nimbus 2000 in a shop window even though four seconds ago he didn’t know that flying brooms existed. He is taking all of this in stride to a degree that, again, is disturbing.
That trend continues when Hagrid casually tells Harry that his parents were murdered by an evil wizard named Voldemort, who also tried to murder Harry, and probably still wants to ASAP. Harry’s like, “Wow.” Then Hagrid takes him to the train station and dumps him there! Alone! With no information except for “platform 9 and ¾” and “the evilest wizard of all time wants you dead, bye.” Because he’s “gotta meet Dumbledore.” Oh, yeah, if only there was a train named after Dumbledore’s house that was going directly from where you’re standing to Dumbledore’s house!
So, does the Hogwarts Express run year-round? Who operates it? Hogwarts? The Ministry of Magic? Do the residents of Hogsmeade get to use it? Or is it just an entire steam train (WHO MINES THE COAL?) dedicated solely to taking one hundred children to and from Hogwarts twice a year? And if that’s the case, how the fuck does the witch who runs the snack trolley pay her bills? Do wizards have bills? If they don’t, then WHAT DOES IT MEAN THAT THE WEASLEYS ARE POOR?
Harry is wandering around looking for platform 9 and ¾, and if this were Lindy West and the Sorcerer’s Stone, I would have literally stood on that platform until the Hogwarts Express came back at the beginning of summer holiday because I hate asking people questions, especially train conductors. But Harry spies a weathered railwayman and marches right up to him carrying a live owl like, “Excuse me, guv’nah, where is platform 9 and ¾?” and I tell you I would DIE before doing that!!!!!!!! Luckily, just as this uniformed authority figure starts yelling at Harry for being a wise guy (CORPSIFY ME FIRST), the entire Weasley clan walks by talking about “Muggles” and “Hogwarts” and Harry runs off to bug them instead.
Fred’s and George’s haircuts are literally disgusting.
Mrs. Weasley teaches Harry how to get on the train, and then Ron teaches Harry about all the different kinds of wizard candy. I’m sorry for constantly digressing, but who invented chocolate? Wizards or Muggles? Are house elves down in Brazil harvesting, roasting, grinding, and exporting cacao beans? Or did Muggles figure all that out, and then wizards just buy Muggle chocolate from Muggle chocolate factories (with WHAT KIND OF MONEY?) and then bewitch it to jump around like a frog? Because wizards literally treat Muggles like dumb trash, but there’s no way they don’t benefit constantly from Muggle invention. Not to be a capitalist, but don’t tell me wizards had any incentive to invent trains when they can already teleport.
Harry gets a Dumbledore trading card with his chocolate frog and is confused when Dumbledore just walks out of the frame. Ron is like, “Well, you can’t expect him to hang around all day,” and I’m sure you know what I’m going to ask. Is there just ONE SIMULACRUM DUMBLEDORE FOR ALL PAINTINGS AND CARDS? The odds of ever catching him on your chocolate frog card would be basically zero, but this is the least fucked-up thing about the internal logic of the sentient portraits in Harry Potter, so I will back down.
Ron introduces Harry to his hand-me-down rat, Scabbers, who blows (and is secretly a man, and has definitely seen multiple Weasley brothers masturbate????), and then Ron announces he’s going to try out a new spell that Fred and George taught him. It goes like this:
“Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid fat rat yellow.”
Setting aside why anyone would possess the drive to turn a rat yellow, this is clearly not a real spell. We know this because a) the rat does not turn yellow, b) Hermione shows up and is like, “That’s not a real spell,” and c) Ron, your parents are wizards! You’re eleven years old! Haven’t you ever heard a real spell before? The spell for turning a rat yellow would be, like, “Rattonius yellowus” because let’s be honest, sometimes the writing in these books is bad.
BTW, Hermione should 100 percent be the protagonist of this whole shit and I cannot wait for this series to root deep enough into the public memory to produce a bona fide literary fiction retelling from Hermione’s POV and I’d like to put pre-dibs on the TV adaptation option for that property, please! Thx! I’m avail!
Thoughts on sorting:
First of all, reminder that Harry Potter presupposes that every witch and wizard in England went to the same high school except for a handful of full-KKK wizards who shipped their kids to Durmstrang. And there are only like fifty children in Harry’s year! Everyone in the country would know each other! There’s this part in book six where Harry holds Quidditch tryouts for Gryffindors only and is like, “Yeah, I don’t know any of these people.” HOW? There are 150 of you tops and you all live in a tower together and eat treacle tart family style every day! You’ve never met Cormac McLaggen before?
Second of all, the Sorting Hat. So it’s a sentient hat, and they stick the kids’ heads up its asshole so it can tell them whether they’re brave, smart, evil, or other (the four genders). What does the Sorting Hat do the rest of the year? Does it have to sit in a cupboard in the dark? That seems cruel and unusual for a living hat. Does it ever get to fuck a woman hat? Freedom for Sorting Hat.
Third of all, I’m sure this is a hacky thing to say in Harry Potter fandom and many of you are sharpening your quills to send me letters about what “cunning” means, but disband Slytherin! Why keep it? Do we need it? Why have one house that’s evil? Especially when your whole society is so scared of evil wizards they can’t even say one guy’s name out loud? Wizard hack: don’t send fully one-quarter of your children to Evil School, and maybe end up with 100 percent fewer evil wizards.
Harry gets sorted into Gryffindor and goes up to his dorm room where he sits in his window seat petting his owl. Does anyone else find it weird how no parents ever come visit Hogwarts? It’s weird, right? These kids don’t even have phones! It is weird to be ten and only talk to your parents once a year, sorry.
Now is the time for wizard school to start!
I know that “Dumbledore trusts him,” and I get the whole Harry’s parents’ backstory, but the way that Snape treats Harry throughout this series is absolutely off the rails and would be illegal in Muggle society (but yeah, wizards are “better”!). You’re telling me the students have absolutely no recourse if they’re being abused by staff? You’re telling me there aren’t any wizard helicopter parents (or as Mr. Weasley calls them, “smellyhopper” parents) who would complain? Harry is verbally and emotionally abused, not to mention held back academically, for six years, because Snape, an adult male authority figure, has such poor coping skills he can’t stop himself from vindictively projecting his resentments onto an innocent child! It’s truly a dystopian vision of an education system with no community oversight!
That said, Alan Rickman!!!!!!! The acting in this movie so vastly outstrips the script and direction it is frankly problematic and I’m telling cancel culture.
I hate how they sometimes crimp sections of Hermione’s hair like that’s part of her natural hair texture like we’ve never seen hair before.
The kids go outside for their first flying lesson. Neville immediately loses control of his broom and crunches to the ground, and Madam Hooch is like, “Oh, weird,” as though that’s a completely unexpected outcome when you give a child a flying machine and no instruction. “Oh dear, it’s a broken wrist.” Yeah, because you did a really bad job supervising them!
She takes Neville to the hospital wing, so Malfoy seizes the opportunity to be a dick. He steals Neville’s Remembrall (a ball filled with smoke that turns red when you’ve forgotten something, more a torture device than a convenience, really, worse than not having one, IMO!) and flies high up into the air with it, taunting Harry.
Harry takes the bait: “Give it here, Malfoy, or I’ll knock you off your broom!” Wow, you’ll KILL HIM???? For Neville’s Remembrall? What a psycho! #Maybe! #Snape! #Was! #Right!
Malfoy throws the Remembrall into the sky and Harry executes a flawless catch to save it and Professor McGonagall spies him out the window. You think he’s going to get in trouble for breaking the rules, but fortunately, the only thing McGonagall cares about more than rules is balls of yarn, and the only thing she cares about more than balls of yarn is laser pointers and the only thing she cares about more than laser pointers is tuna water and the only thing she cares about more than tuna water is SPORTS. She makes Harry the seeker on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Hermione informs Harry that his dad was the Gryffindor seeker in 1972 because this freak has already memorized every trophy in the castle.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione inadvertently wander into the forbidden corridor on the third floor, and when they’re nearly caught by Mrs. Norris (…a cat), they run deeper and deeper into the forbidden corridor where they’re nearly mangled and mutilated by Fluffy, a three-headed giant dog. See, this is what happens when children are given no foundation of safety and consistency—when they’re just as likely to be publicly humiliated by an adult goth as they are to be heard and believed if they’re caught in apparent misbehavior and tell the truth. Kids should be able to say, “The staircase moved so we accidentally went down the wrong hallway, sorry,” without Filch beating them with a chain!
Anyway, Ron is like, “What do they think they’re doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school?” and it does seem like a significant liability just to protect a rock that Dumbledore could easily keep in his underpants.
Oliver Wood teaches Harry the rules of Quidditch in his turtleneck. Is that what cool clothes and hair were like in 2001? Can I have all my crushes back?
They go to Charms class and we meet Professor Flitwick, the only professor who matters, who should be making a billion galleons a year but instead is only ever referred to as “tiny Professor Flitwick.” Charms is basically ALL SPELLS. Name one useful thing they learn in Transfiguration! Oh, finally, a solution to my teacup surplus / mouse shortage!
Hermione is (rightfully) condescending about “wingardium leviosa,” so Harry and Ron hurt her feelings and she goes to cry in the bathroom. Professor Quirrell comes running into the lunchroom screaming that there’s a troll in the dungeon, so Dumbledore sends all the kids to their dormitories to hide. Harry and Ron remember that Hermione doesn’t know about the troll because she’s boo-hooing in the shitter! They race to get her and discover that somehow in the maddening, thousand-room maze that is Hogwarts Castle, the troll has wandered into the random girls’ bathroom where Hermione is crying. Sure, okay!
Why does a troll wear a loincloth? It can’t talk, but it feels shame about its genitals?
Harry and Ron defeat the troll by sticking Harry’s wand up its nose and into its brain, and then Ron wingardium leviosas the troll’s club so it knocks him out—yet another instance of Hermione saving everyone’s ass by being the only competent person in the building. Not only that, then she does them a huge solid. In the toilet!!!!!!! Just kidding, she does them a huge solid by taking the blame for hunting down the troll while being children. And McGonagall awards them points for it, yet another example of the completely destabilizing systemic inconsistency allowed to flourish at Hogwarts! (This is why Harry never goes to an authority figure about any of his many outrageous and deadly problems. What does authority even mean in such a context?)
It’s time for Harry’s first Quidditch match of the season. Snape approaches him. “Good luck today, Potter. Then again, now that you’ve proven yourself against a troll, a little Quidditch match should be no problem, even if it is against Slytherin.” Dude, you’re an ADULT. GO TO THERAPY.
Harry and the Gryffindors square off against Marcus Flint and his magnum dentures. If Quidditch were real, every single one of these Quidditch players would be dead. In the middle of the match, Harry’s broom—a.k.a. a stick that a child is riding in the sky—goes rogue and tries to throw him off. Hermione spies Snape (seemingly) muttering a curse in the stands, so she sets him on fire, the only recourse available to a student at a school where chaos is king! Then Harry catches the golden snitch in his mouth and wins.
Yeah, there are technically Black characters in Harry Potter, but tell me one thing about Dean Thomas.
The kids visit Hagrid and trick him into telling them the deal with Fluffy. “Bought him off an Irish fellow down the pub.” Wait, you believe in Ireland? Why would wizards care about Muggle borders? Hagrid, bumbling, says that Fluffy is there to guard something “between Dumbledore and Nicolas Flamel.” This is great news for Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who are always looking for some fucking beeswax that’s none of theirs!
Now it’s Christmas at Hogwarts! What the fuck is Christmas! If you’re a wizard! Wizards! Are! Christian! I! Guess!
Harry gets presents for the first time in his life, and now I want presents.
An anonymous gifter sends Harry his dad’s old invisibility cloak, which the kids quickly realize they can use to sneak into the restricted section of the library under cover of night to research Nicolas Flamel. OR, you could…ask Madam Pince, the literal full-time librarian? Did you ever think that maybe she’s a bitch because no one has ever engaged her help on a research project (i.e., respected her enough to let her do her job)?? Instead of doing that, Harry gets a lantern and the cloak and creeps over there himself.
Again, I know that magic is “better” than technology, but maybe the Wizengamot could revisit the no-computers thing? There’s no internet, so these kids can’t google Nicolas Flamel, and there’s apparently not even a library catalog? You just have to pull books off the shelves at random? And you don’t even have a fucking flashlight? You have to bring fire into the library?
Harry finds no information (OF COURSE) and nearly burns down the building. On the way back to bed, under the invisibility cloak, he encounters Snape threatening Professor Quirrell. “You don’t want me as your enemy, Quirrell.” Okay, so, what does Snape know here? Does he suspect that Quirrell is working with Voldemort at this point? HOW? And if so, don’t just wedgie him in the hallway, man—Floo powder 911!!! (I apologize for the bone-chilling granularity of this parenthetical, but the only explanation that makes any sense is that Snape just thinks Quirrell is trying to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone for non-Voldemort-related reasons, but then what about the part when Quirrell was trying to murder Harry during the Quidditch match? Who did Snape think was doing that? Also, why was there no formal investigation into that ATTEMPTED CHILD MURDER?? And why didn’t Snape just tell Dumbledore that Quirrell was after the stone, so they could have, just brainstorming here, fired him for being evil??????)
Harry ducks into a random classroom where he finds the Mirror of Erised, a magical artifact that shows you a reflection of the thing you most desire, which is erised backward, please kill me. If I looked into that mirror, I would see myself blissfully smiling in a universe where I’d never heard writing as bad as “Mirror of Erised”!!! (See also: “Death Eaters.” PLEASE, is this a scary story I wrote when I was nine?) In that universe I also have amazing jugs. :) Harry sees himself reunited with his dead parents. :(
They go visit Hagrid again, who is in the process of hatching an illegal baby dragon named Norbert. Norbert is only in this movie because fans would have been mad if he weren’t, which is not a good way to make a movie. Dumbledore ships Norbert off to Romania instantly with zero complications. Norbert story line concluded!
While they’re meeting Norbert, Malfoy spies them out of bed after hours and tattles to McGonagall, who gives them all (including Malfoy, haha) detention with Hagrid. Hagrid takes them into the Dark Forest in the middle of the night to investigate what kind of eldritch horror is killing unicorns and drinking their blood. HAGRID, ARE YOU SURE THE CHILDREN SHOULD BE ON THIS TRIP?
He sends Harry and Malfoy off by themselves (SURE!), so of course they run into Lord Voldemort sucking a unicorn dry. Okay, what IS Voldemort at this point? I truly don’t know. Because he walks toward Harry like a dude, but then he flies away like a tiny ghost. And also I thought his whole deal was that he didn’t have a body?
Anyways, they’re saved by a centaur. Centaurs are irritating. It seems like if they’re really half-man/half-horse they should either have no arms or they should have to balance on two horse legs. This is a half-man/two-thirds-horse. Disrespectful.
FINALLY they go try and tell Dumbledore that someone’s trying to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone, but McGonagall tells them he’s not home, so they decide that the ONLY WAY is to go get the stone themselves. (WHYYYYYYYYYY?) Neville stands up to them because they are breathtakingly selfish and he’s sick of getting in trouble for it, and Hermione petrifies him! Petrificus totalus! Such a brutal spell to use on a person who is ostensibly your friend, and then she just LEAVES THIS CHILD PARALYZED ON THE COLD FLOOR ALL NIGHT. I’m a Hermione loyalist, but this move is insane. Way worse than stealing his Remembrall!
They head to the forbidden corridor on the third floor only to discover that somebody got there before them (presumably Snape). Now would be a great time to go back to McGonagall and be like, “SERIOUSLY,” but instead they just squeak past Fluffy and jump down into a trapdoor. The Sorcerer’s Stone is guarded by a series of trials, each designed by a different teacher at the school. They have to escape from an evil plant. They have to catch a little flying key. They have to figure out which potion to drink. It goes without saying that Harry and Ron would have been instantaneously deceased without Hermione, but as usual, Harry’s the fucking hero.
The second-to-last trial is a game of giant wizard chess, where they each have to ride around on a giant chess piece while they beat the shit out of each other. Fortunately, just as Harry’s singular talent is flying and Hermione’s singular talent is literally everything else, Ron’s singular talent is chess. Convenient! Hermione is injured, and Ron sacrifices himself to win the game, so Harry has to carry on alone.
“You’ll be okay, Harry!” cries Hermione. “You’re a great wizard.” Um, he’s had one semester of wizard elementary school.
Harry gets to the final trial and finds not Professor Snape but Professor Quirrell trying to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone! Wow! What an upset! He’s staring at the Mirror of Erised and stomping his little foot. Why won’t the stone come out of the mirror?? A creepy voice tells Quirrell to make Harry get the stone. Who is that creepy voice? Oh, it’s only VOLDEMORT HIDING UNDER QUIRRELL’S HAT! Quirrell’s got male pattern VOLDNESS.
Voldemort explains to Harry that he needs the stone so he can get his body back and return to being evil full time, okay?? Harry uses his pure heart to erised the stone out of the mirror and then Quirrell jumps on him. But it turns out that Voldemort can’t touch Harry’s skin because it’s infused with the power of a mother’s love! Quirrell catches on fire! Then Voldemort turns into smoke and flies straight through Harry’s chest, which I guess is no problem.
Harry wakes up in the hospital wing. Dumbledore awards each of them a ton of points for being blisteringly stupid and reckless. No one is punished for the torture of Neville Longbottom. They all live to see another six years of being absolutely maddening impulsive narcissists! Cheers!
RATING: 6/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
1 OHOHOHO, but he had the help of two other teenagers!!!!!!! Truly incredible counterargument, Casey Novak.
2 I know this information is almost certainly available on like Weasleys-Wizard-Wiki-dot-toadspot-dot-cauldron because J. K. scrambled for an answer in a Pottermore interview once or something, but, paradoxically, the word of J. K. “Wizards Used to Shit in Their Robes and Then Vanish the Diarrhea” Rowling is actually not canon! Sorry!