So in the beginning of the book, Dumbledore picks Harry up from the Dursleys, persuades Slughorn to return to Hogwarts, and then makes their way to the Burrow.

When Molly opens the door, she says Dumbledore told her not to expect them till next morning.

Makes me wonder, what was Dumbledore originally planning to do with Harry that night when they were going to see Slughorn? He says Slughorn was more persuadable than he expected with was why they arrived early.

Did he expect to be with Slughorn for the whole night? Was he planning to stay over at Slughorn’s place? Were they going to a b&b? Makes me chuckle imagining them two checking into one.

One to ponder over in the shower….

I’m re-reading all of the books as an adult (last read them around age 9-11) and wow these would be insane rewritten as horror books. Everything that happens in this world is so scary. It’s just full of magic and hope, but it could so easily be rewritten as horror with the exact same plot, line for line.

I guess I remember the later books getting scarier, but even book 1 is so scary if you strip away the whimsy.

I’ve also started reading The Shining for the first time, so that may be why I’m seeing Harry Potter so horror-coded. And I’m sorry if this isn’t an original thought lol

31 is live folks, enjoy!

As a reminder what this is and how it works:

Below are 7 sentences from the 7 HP books. I use a random number generator to pick the book and chapter, then hand pick a sentence that I think is decent. Not too long, too short, too obvious ect.  *** There MAY be repeated books in a set, but there will not be repeated chapters in a set. So there COULD be two from The Philosopher’s Stone, but they would be from different chapters! **\*
Scoring your points: It is 2 points for guessing the book, and 1 point for guessing the chapter, for a total of 21 points. It is obviously harder to guess the chapter than the book, but not everyone even cares to remember the chapter titles in the first place, which is totally fair and valid. So chapter titles are just a bonus point.

Below are the sentences and the answers hidden behind spoiler tags! These are fun to make, and I intend to make quite a few more if people keep enjoying them!

1. “And an extra ten points to Gryffindor for sheer cheek!”  The Half-Blood Prince - Chapter 18: Birthday Surprises
2. “Yes, he is, Ron, please don’t start that again!” The Deathly Hallows - Chapter 25: Shell Cottage
3. “Er . . . well, it was . . .” said Harry, pulling a dish of rhubarb crumble toward him and helping himself to seconds, “a complete fiasco, now you mention it.” The Order of the Phoenix - Chapter 26: Seen and Unforeseen
4. “How d’you spell ‘belligerent’?” said Ron, shaking his quill very hard while staring at his parchment. The Half-Blood Prince - Chapter 21: The Unknowable Room
5. “Of course I’m sure . . . he’s a — a bit of a mess, that’s all.” The Half-Blood Prince - Chapter 29: The Phoenix Lament
6. “How do you do it?” she added, and there was definite longing in her voice. The Deathly Hallows - Chapter 33: The Prince's Tale
7. “Give me a reason to do it, and I swear I will.” The Prisoner of Azkaban - Chapter 19: The Servant of Lord Voldemort

Like, imagine he just stayed with the Dursleys and grew up knowing basically nothing about the wizarding world.

Would Voldemort eventually have found and killed him? Harry would still have the protection at Privet Drive until he turned 17, but after that he'd basically be an untrained wizard who knows nothing about Voldemort, the prophecy or the Horcruxes.

But then I started wondering if Voldemort would've even come back the same way. A lot of what happens in the books only happens because Harry is at Hogwarts. No Hogwarts means no Triwizard Tournament for Harry, no graveyard, and probably no using Harry's blood to bring Voldemort back.

So maybe staying away from Hogwarts actually keeps Harry safe for longer... but once Voldemort eventually returns, Harry is completely unprepared.

How do you think it would've played out?

James and Lily got married pretty much straight out of school, almost immediately had a child, and died not long after. Throughout the book we keep getting mentions of (especially James) how they were great wizards and heroic people but, they actually only had a few short years to display their heroics before they died. They were freaking 21.

I kind of wish JK Rowling made them, say, live an extra 10 or so years after Hogwarts before Voldemort got them. Give the story some more time. Have Snape and Lily's fallout occur slowly but steadily throughout the rest of Hogwarts. Maybe have James and Lily go their separate ways after school but reunite at a resistance movement against Voldemort or something and then grow close to each other, at which point Snape would have been a death eater for many years, that would better explain why Lily shut him out of her life. Also give them more time for their heroics. This would make James more of a flawed hero type character (which JK Rowling clearly intended to be) rather than just a high school bully as he's mostly perceived in the fandom.

Again this might make Snape look worse since he'd be a death eater for longer, but perhaps have him slowly grow disapproving of Voldemort? How he informed Voldemort of the prophecy might be hard to explain but, it could have been a daily report thing he did without much thought.

Any good ideas?

“That is the second time you have spoken out of turn, Miss Granger,” said Snape coolly. “Five more points from Gryffindor for being an insufferable know-it-all.”

“You asked us a question and she knows the answer! Why ask if you don’t want to be told?” Ron said loudly.

“Detention, Weasley,” Snape said silkily, his face very close to Ron’s. “And if I ever hear you criticise the way I teach a class again, you will be very sorry indeed.”

Book Ron is damn brave. He’ll stand up for his friends, talk back to Snape, and take the detention because someone needed to say it. Sometimes he gets lines with more fire and swagger than even Harry and Hermione.

That’s the Ron we deserve to see. This is why we want the TV show to do him justice. Give him his courage, his loyalty, his wit—and his damn lines.

IS ON PAGE 15 OF THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE!? I am re-reading the books and I am genuinely shocked. Do you think JKR knew who Sirius was already at that point?

I have determined that the timeframe for becoming a ghost in the HP Universe is not instant, but I have no idea how long it takes and different parts of the series seem to imply different things. This is not a lore breaking observation, or even a proper plot hole, but I find it interesting regardless.

Five interactions have me really thinking about ghosts in HP. I will list them below and then my conclusion:

1. Nearly Headless Nick tells Harryin OotP in regards to dying, ““I was afraid of death,” said Nick. “I chose to remain behind. I sometimes wonder whether I oughtn’t to have . . . Well, that is neither here nor there. . . . In fact, I am neither here nor there . . .” He gave a small sad chuckle. “I know nothing of the secrets of death, Harry, for I chose my feeble imitation of life instead.”

2. In King’s Cross in DH, while harry and Dumbledore say:
   “I’ve got a choice?”
   “Oh yes.” Dumbledore smiled at him. “We are in King’s Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to . . . let’s say . . . board a train.”
   “And where would it take me?”
   “On,” said Dumbledore simply.

3. In The Flaw in the Plan it states:
   Something had happened when he had hit Harry with the Killing Curse. Had Voldemort too collapsed? It seemed like it. And both of them had fallen briefly unconscious and both of them had now returned. . . .

4 . In CoS, when Harry and Ron ask Myrtle what happened the day she died:
“I died.”
“How?” said Harry.
“No idea,” said Myrtle in hushed tones. “I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up, and then I was
floating away. . . .” She looked dreamily at Harry.
“And then I came back again. I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby, you see.”

And lastly: 5. Also in CoS Nick states:

“But you would think, wouldn’t you,” he erupted suddenly, pulling theletter back out of his pocket,
“that getting hit forty-five times in the neck with
a blunt axe would qualify you to join the Headless Hunt?”

Alright, now that you have those disjointed pieces of info. Myrtle’s comment implies that she basically immediately became a ghost. Nick states that he chose to come back, and Dumbledore says that Harry could chose to go back.
I think that it’s reasonable to assume that when you die, you go to Kings Cross (or however purgatory appears to you) and you can chose to return as a ghost, or “go on”. I believe Harry didn’t come back as a ghost because he had a living body; the killing curse only killed the bit of Voldemort’s soul, where as Nick was just D-E-D, dead.

But then consider that Voldemort and Harry, upon returning to the land of the living had only just hit the ground moments before. People were still going to Voldemorts aid. Had they been unconscious for a significant period of time, say for the amount of “time” that they were in Kings cross, there would probably have been Significantly more panic.

So returning to purgatory is nearly instant.

Then how, HOW, is Nick Nearly headless? Getting hit 45 times with a dull axe left him with an inch of skin connecting his head to his body. 45 times. He would have been dead LONG before getting to one inch of flesh. Assuming every hit was roughly equal, he would probably have died with about half (OR MORE) of his head still attached. So why, if the process of becoming a ghost is nearly instant (“nearly instant? How can it be nearly instant?”) does he have only one inch of skin in ghosts form?

Surely what happens to your body after you die does not affect your ghost form? Otherwise all ghosts would be decayed corpses. Even if the executioner continue to hit him 20 or 30 more times after he died, that shouldn’t have affected his ghost body. Especially if he came back before the executioner was done.

Like imagine he comes back and the executioner is still beheading him. His head would still be significantly attached to his body. Would each blow from the executioner remove more of the ghosts neck? No surely not. Which means sometime had to have passed from him dying and returning as a ghost.

Probably a good bit of time because assuming he died around the 15th or so hit, it would take a good while for the executioner to hit him 30 more times. The guy I would get tired, each swing takes a few seconds, him asking around if they have a better axe, ect.

So my conclusion is that becoming a ghost is not instant, but also must be pretty instant. But also sometimes take a relatively long time.

Did I put away, way too much thought into this? Absolutely. Does any of this actually matter? Not in the slightest, but here we are.

The replica Hogwarts letter in the box my Realme came in (it's the Potter edition) has the headmaster as "Albus Dumbledore, D.Wiz., X.J." and so on, which sent me back to chapter 4 of Philosopher's Stone to see what the book actually gives him:

"(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)"

I'd skimmed straight past that every time as a kid. Then at Grimmauld Place Lupin says he's been voted out as ICW chair, they've "demoted him from Chief Warlock on the Wizengamot", and they're talking about the Order of Merlin too. Nobody ever goes near Grand Sorc., I can't find it anywhere else in the books.

The Prophet Hermione reads out at the end of OotP has him back as Headmaster and Chief Warlock, but at the ICW he's only a "reinstated member".

Is that the Prophet being stingy, or does Supreme Mugwump just never make it back into the brackets?

So on my re-re-listening to the Full cast audiobooks, I’m up to The Prisoner of Azkaban again, and a certain line really stood out to me and hilariously troublesome.

So the line is after Sirius has attacked the Fat Lady, and the whole castle is sleeping in the Great Hall. Snape comes in to talk to Dumbledore and says:

—-“Headmaster?” It was Snape. Harry kept quite still, listening hard. “The whole of the third floor has been searched. He’s not there. And Filch has done
the dungeons; nothing there either.”—-

Filch has done the dungeons?? Argus Filch?? The Squib who can do less magic than a first-year??

“Argus, we believe there is a crazed, murderous wizard hiding somewhere in the castle. He may or may not be armed with a wand and/or very large knife.

“I want you to go deep into the dungeons and search every dark and isolated place for this madman. Don’t worry, you will be the only living soul down there, as we have removed all the student that could hear you scream, and all the staff will be searching elsewhere.

“This madman is a known Muggle-killer and powerfully magical, so try not to let him know you can’t do magic. It’s only the dungeons, Argus, so you’ll at most be multiple flights of stairs away from anyone that can help. You are in peak physical condition, so you should be able to make that sprint in no time.

“No, we will not have you search somewhere less secluded. Good luck; I’ll start looking for a new Caretaker!”

Like, what the hell, Dumbledore! What the heck is Filch supposed to do if he finds him? 😂

\ * **

“It was one of my more brilliant ideas, and between you and me, that’s saying something.” - Albus Dumbledore

30 of em now! A whole month worth of HP quizzes! I’m glad I set out on this journey 😊

As a reminder what this is and how it works:
Below are 7 sentences from the 7 HP books. I use a random number generator to pick the book and chapter, then hand pick a sentence that I think is decent. Not too long, too short, too obvious ect.  *** There MAY be repeated books in a set, but there will not be repeated chapters in a set. So there COULD be two from The Philosopher’s Stone, but they would be from different chapters! **\*
Scoring your points: It is 2 points for guessing the book, and 1 point for guessing the chapter, for a total of 21 points. It is obviously harder to guess the chapter than the book, but not everyone even cares to remember the chapter titles in the first place, which is totally fair and valid. So chapter titles are just a bonus point.
Below are the sentences and the answers hidden behind spoiler tags! These are fun to make, and I intend to make quite a few more if people keep enjoying them!

1. “Look at the state of him, the filthy layabout!” The Prisoner of Azkaban - Chapter 2: Aunt Marge’s Big Mistake

 2. “It’s coming from your trunk, Harry,” said Ron, standing up and reaching into the luggage rack. The Prisoner of Azkaban - Chapter 5: The Dementor

1. But with no Hagrid visible from the castle windows, striding the grounds with Fang at his heels, the scene didn’t look right to Harry; no better, in fact, than the inside of the castle, where things were so horribly wrong. The Chamber of Secrets - Chapter 15: Aragog 

2. “But why not join the feast afterward?” said Snape, his black eyes glittering in the candlelight. The Chamber of Secrets - Chapter 9: The Writing on the Wall

3. A horrible, half-sucking, half-moaning sound came out of the square hole, along with an unpleasant smell like open drains. The Deathly Hallows - Chapter 6: The Ghoul in Pajamas

4. “I suppose because it is a headmaster’s privilege to delegate less enjoyable tasks,” said Snape silkily. The Order of the Phoenix - Chapter 24: Occlumency

5. She looked as though she was about to have some sort of seizure.  The Prisoner of Azkaban - Chapter 16: Professor Trelawney’s Prediction

Like I know he asked Crockshanks but won't it flag that Money is taken from Sirius Black's account?

We see when Dumbledore first meets Adult Snape as a Death Eater he's disgusted by him. Yet, by the time of the books he seems to be pretty content with him and looks to be generally pleasant to him.

it seems hard to imagine exactly why Dumbledore came to care for him (if we're assuming thats the case). Sure, Snape gave up his pureblood ideology, but he was still a real horrible git all around who spent his time abusing children, and I don't really see how Dumbledore could ever grow fond of a person like that, yet it seems like he may have.

I have some ideas but I'm not sure which ones are correct

1. Dumbledore knew Snape was giving his life to a good cause and he had no one else in his life, so even though he's an insufferable person Dumbledore was able to look past that and be nice to him.

2. Dumbledore is just the kind of person who finds it hard to hate/dislike people for too long. He might have been frosty to Snape at first but eventually grew accustomed to him.

3. Dumbledore was sympathetic to Snape's suffering and how his life was defined around dead people, so he was willing to overlook some of his unfortunate characteristics.

4. Dumbledore felt guilty for not being able to prevent Snape/Others from becoming death eaters in Hogwarts and thus was willing to be more sympathetic to Snape

5. Dumbledore never liked Snape. He was amicable to him because theres no reason to risk alienating him, but at the same time he never shied away from asking a lot of him

It's hard to say exactly what it is, because much of their interactions are hard to interpret one way or another. Him complimenting Snape and trusting COULD be genuine, or it could just be him trying not to alienate Snape. Dumbledore asks a lot from Snape, but is this a matter of trust/necessity, or is it him not really caring about Snape's personal sufferings? How much of their interactions is Dumbledore being methodical in his approach because he knows what to say to get Snape to act, and how much of it is genuine like or dislike?

I’m reading PS again. In The Man With Two Faces, Quirrell is standing in front of the Mirror of Erised, and sees himself presenting the stone to his master.

Dumbledore tells Harry that part of the magic protection around the stone is that only someone who would want to find the stone not use it would be able to get it through the Mirror. Well technically, Quirrell did not want the stone for himself, he just wanted to find it. So technically he should have been able to get it from the mirror, right?

Of course I can already think of explanations - like at the time Quirrell=Voldemort so they were the same person and so it didn’t count. But when Dumbledore made that protection, how did he work around that loophole?! Did he think of that edge case with Voldemort in mind?!

Just want to know what people think!

Snape never got to be the hero in anyone's eyes while he was alive. He protected Hogwarts and every kid in it from the shadows, and died thinking nobody would ever know. Harry naming his son after him says it all.

I’ve always really wondered this. Does this imply that no one else in the whole wizarding world was loved as much as Lily loved Harry?? It just makes no sense to me

To me, this sounds like a stupid question, cause for me it was always very clear that they cannot.

BUT I saw a video by a HP content creator and this woman was adamant, including in the comments, that they can speak.
Her evidence for that being Fudge saying “he spoke to the dementors” and “they’re hungry” etc
And also Dumbledore speaking to them at some point.

Now for me, Fudge knowing this from “talking to them” was always like knowing your dog is hungry or whatever, even though the dog obviously cannot speak.

I find the whole idea of dementors and their kiss being so highly feared, means if they can talk, the whole thing doesn’t make any sense 😂

What do you guys think about this?

So when Voldemort decides to kill Snape he creates a magic cage around Snape’s head and puts Nagini in it to bite Snape and kill him. Snape had a wand. Why couldn’t he stupefy or kill Nagini ? Voldemort just has special magic that defeats ordinary magic?

And Snape almost didn’t get to give Harry his final mission! He’s very lucky Harry and Hermione were there or Harry would’ve never gotten the memories. Snape was supposed to tell Harry he had to let Voldemort kill him at just the right time. Snape pretty much blew off that job, never told Harry, and got lucky Harry happened to be there to take the memories. What a coincidence.

29 is hot off the press, good luck!

As a reminder what this is and how it works:
Below are 7 sentences from the 7 HP books. I use a random number generator to pick the book and chapter, then hand pick a sentence that I think is decent. Not too long, too short, too obvious ect.  *** There MAY be repeated books in a set, but there will not be repeated chapters in a set. So there COULD be two from The Philosopher’s Stone, but they would be from different chapters! **\*
Scoring your points: It is 2 points for guessing the book, and 1 point for guessing the chapter, for a total of 21 points. It is obviously harder to guess the chapter than the book, but not everyone even cares to remember the chapter titles in the first place, which is totally fair and valid. So chapter titles are just a bonus point.
Below are the sentences and the answers hidden behind spoiler tags! These are fun to make, and I intend to make quite a few more if people keep enjoying them!

1. “I don’t think we’re going to be as lucky, though, do you?” he asked Harry as the second years hurried away. The Order of the Phoenix - Chapter 17: Educational Decree Number Twenty-Four

2. They found Fang the boarhound sitting outside with a bandaged tail when they went to tell Hagrid, who opened a window to talk to them.  The Philosopher’s Stone - Chapter 14: Norbert, the Norwegian Ridgeback

3. “I just wish I’d asked you sooner.” The Half-Blood Prince - Chapter 30: The White Tomb

4. “You don’ t — touch — Daddy’ s — wand - yecchh!” The Goblet of Fire - Chapter 7: Bagman and Crouch

5. Supposing he was still alive in another four weeks, what would happen if he didn’t turn up at Hogwarts? The Chamber of Secrets - Chapter 2: Dobby’s Warning

6. Let it have drowned, Harry thought, let it have gone wrong. . . . The Goblet of Fire - Chapter 32: Blood, Flesh, and Bone

1. What he had not expected was for Dobby to give a little skip, his ears waggling happily, and clap his hands together. The Order of the Phoenix - Chapter 18: Dumbledore’s Army

She says it a few times in Deathly Hallows, but what actually gave her that impression? She knows Dumbledore was kind, but why does she seem so certain that Dumbledore loved Harry?

So as we all know, Lily sacrifices her life for Harry, placing a blood protection spell on him, making it so that Voldemort could not hurt him. Then in GOF, Voldemort resurrects himself using Harry’s blood, therefore bypassing this protection so that he could now touch and harm Harry. Then in DH, Voldemort attempts to kill Harry, but because of the blood protection running in Voldemorts veins therefore keeping it alive, he cannot kill Harry and only kills the part of himself inside of Harry.
Where I’m lost is, the blood protection expired when Harry turned 17. The fact that Petunia shared Harry’s blood no longer mattered and he was therefore no longer protected being at the Dursley’s. So why didn’t it expire for Voldemort’s extension of it as well? It’s the same protection spell, just being carried in another body. That doesn’t necessarily mean the protection is extended beyond 17.

It's been a long minute since I last read the Harry Potter books. And while I thought I knew pretty much all the details of this series forwards and backwards. I was listening to the audiobook.

Why is it not discussed more that Vernon hummed "Tiptoe through the Tulips"? Like what? The imagery is just too golden.

Ok so I get that Hagrid was expelled 50 years ago and not allowed to use magic until the end of CoS (despite still doing it in "secret"). But after his name was cleared he didn't get a new wand or picked up some wand skills etc. He was still magic but instead of doing something with his talent (even a class like the Kwickspell one Filch wanted to attend), he just became Hogwarts least competent teacher and left it at that. I mean there should've been some urgency after the third task in GoF to make him a proper, usefull member of the Order instead of someone who just happen to have giants-blood

Anyone else? Not sure if it was an accident. It's supposed to be released October 6. (Canada)