The Harry Potter series contains a huge, fundamental error that affects just about every aspect of every one of the seven books in the series.
If you haven't read the Harry Potter books, you'll have no interest in this post, and you'll just think I'm an enormous geek (although surely you should have come to that conclusion long ago). And if you haven't read all seven of them, but do intend to read them, it will be a total spoiler. So -- unless you've read all seven books, stop reading this post right now and go do something productive for a change, why don't you.
In case you're still here, I'm going to babble on for a bit before I get to the spoiler so you'll have a chance to repent and go away. Those of you who don't want to hear me babble can skim right on down till you get to the bold italized line a few paragraphs down, and read from there.
Before going into the spoiler and telling you about the huge error, I want to say that I'm a huge fan of the Harry Potter series. I'm probably the most annoying, stuffy, snotty, book snob you know, and until I started reading the HP series, I admit I was one of those people who said "why would an adult waste her time reading a children's book about wizards?" And then I got caught for hours at an airport, ran out of reading material, and bought the first Harry Potter book. Before I left the airport, I'd finished the first book in the series and bought the second. As for the rest, I didn't go standing in line at midnight to buy them the first day they came out, but I did in fact buy and read each one very soon after each was released. Go ahead and kick me out of the Book Snob club. I think the HP books are delightful and imaginative, and I am really looking forward to introducing my little nieces to the books. OK. That's out of the way.
One of my annoying former English Lit major habits, which I absolutely cannot shake and do not even bother trying to stop me, is to pick holes in books, finding anachronisms and inconsistencies. It's not so much that I look for them as that, after long habit of reading fiction critically in college, they pop right out at me. I'll bet you literature majors out there know what I mean. Lots of great books have them, particularly the longer and more imaginative ones. It doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of the book, if I liked it. So what if Hector Hulot is 72 years old on this page, and 63 years old on the next? We're too interested in what's happening with Madame Marneffe to care.
Anyway, the Harry Potter books are loaded with inconsistencies, but that's pretty much what you'd expect out of a series of seven books about an imaginary world. I could fill this blog discussing HP inconsistencies, but why? If you like that kind of thing, I understand there are dozens of Harry Potter fan sites out there, no doubt with millions of Harry Potter fans happily discussing J.K. Rowling's bloopers. Go find them and have a party.
But -- there is one huge overarching problem I spotted in the books that I've never heard anyone discuss. (That said, I don't troll the Harry Potter fan sites, so it may well be the main topic of discussion there for all I know. I do know that none of my friends and acquaintances with whom I've discussed this have noticed it.) Anyway, I cannot think of any way to reconcile it.
Have I babbled enough to bore away all of the people who don't really want to hear about it? Good. Here it is.
* Lily, Harry's mother, should be alive. *
As all good Harry Potter fans know, Harry is protected from Voldemort in the first few books by an ancient piece of fundamental magic: his mother sacrificed herself for him. Voldemort told her to stand aside so he could kill Harry. Instead, wandless, she blocked Harry's crib with her body, a gesture she had to know was futile. Voldemort therefore killed her, and then moved on to try to kill Harry. However, his mother's feeble attempt to block his crib and her resulting death had cast a spell of protection over Harry with regard to Voldemort. As a result, Voldemort could not kill Harry until he found a way of getting Harry's blood into his own body and thus overcoming the protection. But blah blah blah, you know all that.
OK. Then we get to the end of book 7. Harry goes to Voldemort and allows Voldemort to kill him (or at least thinks that's what will happen). Harry does that to protect all of his friends who are fighting valiantly for him in the castle -- to prevent Voldemort from slaughtering them. Harry's intended sacrifice then protects all of his friends. Voldemort tries to shoot deadly spells at them, and they just bounce off. He puts the flaming sorting hat on Neville's head, but Neville is able to cast it aside. None of Voldemort's spells stick. Harry says (p. 738 of the hardcover version):
"You won't be hurting anyone else tonight. You won't be able to kill any of them ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people -- "
"But you did not!" [interjects Voldemort]
"--I meant to, and that's what did it. I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can't torture them. You can't touch them. You don't learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?"
Fine. So from this we know that the protective power of this spell can extend to more than one person, and that person does not have to be in the immediate room with the person who sacrifices himself. It need not be a mother protecting her child. The only thing that matters, for the spell to work, is that the person sacrificing himself is willing to die to prevent someone (or many people) from being hurt. The sacrificed person need not even be killed -- he need only to be willing to die to protect someone else.
Great. But then why did Harry's mother die?
The night Voldemort invaded the Potter home, both Lily and James Potter were caught without their wands. How do we know this? See Book 7, page 343-344 of the hardcover version -- Harry is having one of those moments when he's inside Voldemort's head, and he relives Voldemort's memory of the attack on his parents, from Voldemort's perspective:
He [Voldemort] was over the threshold as James came sprinting into the hall. It was easy, too easy, he[James] had not even picked up his wand . . . .
'Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"
Hold him off, without a wand in his hand! He laughed before casting the curse."
Anyway, James could have sprinted off, running for his life or looking for his wand. That was the only way James was going to have a chance to survive. But James did not. Instead, James Potter told Lily to "Take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"
Of course, James would know that, without a wand, he stood no chance whatsoever of holding Voldemort off for more than a couple of seconds, much less fighting him, and he must have known that he himself would surely die as a result of his action. (Just as Lily must have known that she would die when blocking the crib with her body.) What was James going to do, arm wrestle the Dark Lord? James could not fight. He was just trying to "hold him off" -- that is, to buy a few precious seconds so that, just maybe, his wife and child would have a chance to escape while Voldemort was killing him.
By the way, James knew right where his wand was -- on the living room sofa. See Book 7, hardcover p. 343. He'd been using it only a few minutes earlier to blow smoke rings to entertain baby Harry, but when Lily took Harry up to bed, James "threw his wand down upon the sofa and stretched, yawning." When Voldemort blasted down the front door, James sprinted into the front hall and saw it was Voldemort. Lily had gone upstairs with the baby. The stairs led right out of the hallway. (How do we know? See p. 344: when Voldemort killed James, "the green light filled the cramped hallway, it lit the pram pushed against the wall, it made the banisters glare like lightning rods, and James Potter fell like a marionette whose strings were cut"). So James was faced with two choices: run back into the living room and get his wand, thus giving himself a chance of survival, but also leaving Voldemort a clear path up the stairs to Lily and the baby. Alternatively, he could stand in Voldemort's way, wandless, meaning that James would surely die, but Lily might have a slim chance to get away. James chose the latter.
So, in other words, James sacrificed himself to protect Lily and Harry, without a prayer of survival.
Right? What other interpretation could there possibly be? So -- why did Lily die? Why didn't James's sacrifice protect Lily? Voldemort's spell should have bounced off of her and killed Voldemort, leaving her with a zigzag scar, and Harry safe in the crib behind her.
Why does this matter so much? Well, of course, it doesn't matter at all in the real world where we've got Iraq and global warming and the Jolie-Pitt relationship to worry about. But in the Harry Potter world, it matters tremendously.
Harry would never have gone to the Dursleys. He would have lived with Lily, of course. More importantly, it wouldn't have been Harry that had to battle Voldemort. Actually, there wouldn't have been anything particularly special about Harry. Instead of being the Boy Who Lived, he just would have been the Baby Behind Lily. Actually, there isn't much about the plot of any of the seven books that would survive beyond the Quidditch matches. It would have been Lily fighting Voldemort while Harry struggled through Potions. It would have been Lily who had a little piece of Voldemort's soul imbedded within her. Lily, not Harry, would understand Parseltongue. Oh -- and she would not have been at Hogwarts when the Chamber of Secrets was opened. Harry would not have understood the basilisk, and he Ron and Hermione would not have been able to find the Chamber of Secrets and stop Voldemort. Voldemort would have returned at least two years earlier, and Ginny and many others would be dead. Hell, maybe Lily would have ended up marrying Snape and Snape would have been Harry's stepfather. The mind reels! (At least if it has nothing better to do.)
The irony is, J.K. Rowling easily could have avoided this huge hole. All she had to do was have Voldemort blast James away as soon as he got into the house, before James knew what hit him. Then James would not have sacrificed himself -- only Lily would have done so, by standing in front of the crib.
Actually, I noticed this inconsistency much earlier in the series than the seventh book (I noticed it in Book 3, when the dementors caused Harry to hear Voldemort murdering his mother and father and wondered in a lazy way why James's sacrifice had not had the same effect as Lily's, but I assumed the spell only worked with a mother and her child, or had something to do with the prophecy, or could only protect one person at at time, or only worked when the protected person was in the same room, etc. I also assumed James was armed, and that perhaps the ability to fight Voldemort, with some hope of survival, made the difference. It was only at the end of the second book that it became clear than none of this was true.
Oh, and don't say it's because Voldemort would otherwise have spared Lily's life, but had planned to kill James regardless. Voldemort certainly did not plan on sparing Harry's life, yet Harry's sacrifice in Book 7 invoked the protective magic. Thus, it cannot be that Voldemort's intention to kill or not kill that makes the difference to the protective magic.
And don't say it's because James was fighting for his own life, but Harry and Lily were not. Of course James didn't fight for his own life, and was not and could not have been planning on fighting for his own life when he told Lily to flee. James didn't have a wand, so he would know that he couldn't possibly even try to fight Voldemort. All he could do was buy a second or two for his wife and child to get away, and only at the expense of his own life -- that second or two would be the second or two that Voldemort spent killing him. James was doing the opposite of fighting for his own life. He was surrendering to death --putting himself forward as a target in the hopes of saving his family. James must have known that without a wand, he was a dead man. Thus, it is could not be the sacrificee's intention to fight and survive that made the difference to the protective magic.
Oh, and don't say (as one person suggested in an email) that Harry and Lily made considered, thought-out sacrifices, knowing that they otherwise could live, but that James knew he would die anyway. Lily, like James, must have assumed that Voldemort planned to kill them all. Lily and James were both Voldemort's enemies and had both fought him. Lily had no reason to believe that Voldemort intended to spare her. Even assuming that Lily would have taken Voldemort's word on it, please note that Voldemort never told Lily that he would spare her -- all he told her was to step away from the crib -- and remember that she didn't know about Snape's request that she be spared. Not knowing of Snape's request, it would be far more in keeping with Voldemort's character to kill the baby first, making Lily watch, and then kill Lily too, than it would be for him to allow Lily to live. Since when did he let his enemies live? Wouldn't Lily assume that Voldemort was going to kill her right after the baby? And actually, that's almost certainly exactly what he would have done, regardless of what Lily did. Killing Lily was completely unnecessary. She was unarmed. Voldemort could easily have knocked her aside, or stunned her or petrified her without killing her, and then gone for the baby, and thus have kept his promise to Snape. But he decided it made more sense to kill her instead (Book 7, p. 344): "He could have forced her away from the crib, but it seemed more prudent to finish them all." Why wouldn't Voldemort come to that same conclusion, even if Lily had stepped away from the crib? More importantly, why wouldn't Lily assume that's what he'd do? Why would she assume that Voldemort would be coming for the baby, but then say "Oh, you'd prefer I didn't kill the baby? You'd rather die in his place? Pardon me, I had no idea! OK, I won't kill your baby, I'll kill you instead"? He's the freaking Dark Lord, for Pete's sake, and the operating assumption would be that he's going to kill both of them. Thus, the difference cannot be that Lily thought she'd live and instead chose to die. Like James, she was certainly willing to barter her life for Harry's, but she must have assumed she was going to die.
And in any case, while perhaps Lily could have tried to step aside to try to save her own life, it is equally true that James could have tried to run away to save his. Since Voldemort actually was after Harry rather than James that night, and since James's wand was not far away, James might have been able to save himself.
(Hmmm . . . I just did a little Google search, and from what I can tell, it does not seem like anyone else has written about this error. I might just have to write J.K. Rowling about it. )
Anyhoo, speaking of lives, it's time for me to get a life. I'm turning off the computer and going outside. But yes, if you were wondering, I do know that I'm a huge geek.
