When talking about Harry Potter, most people can agree that it’s a good story. In her universe, J. K. Rowling has gathered thousands of people and united us in the battle against Voldemort and his followers. But when you look deeper into story past the charming characters and bewitching magic (pun very much intended), her success is largely based on her storytelling skills. A big part of being Potterhead is connecting to the characters and relating to them. They have very normal relatable problems: there’s everything from broken hearts, fiddling with love potion, losing someone you love and the fight for freedom. However, there is a relatively broad agreement between Potterheads that there are a lot of flaws in Rowling’s world-building and this is what this blog post explains. In addition to that, this entry can be used as a guide for beginners who want to know more about the Wizarding World.
World-building in the Harry Potter books
The first mistake discovered in the books actually starts in the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone. Whether it really is an error has yet to be determined. It is mentioned on Harry Potter’s Wikia page that the day Harry is handed over to his relatives is a “dull, gray Tuesday”. If you look at the calendar, however, you will find that it takes place on a Wednesday in the real world. This happens twice in the Harry Potter series. Whether this is an attempt from Rowling’s side to show that the Harry Potter world takes place in another dimension or if it’s just a mistake is not known. However, an argument for Harry living in another dimension is that several errors have been corrected in newer editions of the series but not this specific kind of error. It is up to Rowling dispel(l) this rumor.
The magical world of Harry Potter is a microcosm. Witches and wizards hide in small communities and villages away from muggles. For non-muggles, these places are easy to find. Muggles can simply not see them because of Muggle-Repelling Charm. To get to these places, there are specific entries that muggles do not have access to like the entrance to Diagon Alley from the muggle world. When Harry goes shopping for his school supplies for the first time Hagrid takes him to Diagon Alley, which has an entrance at The Leaky Cauldron on a muggle street. The Leaky Cauldron is charmed so muggles can’t see it. In fact, if I remember correctly, Harry could not even see it the first time. This shows that while the magical people hide magic away from muggles, they are not completely separated from the muggles. Their banks, schools, and stores are hidden away but they do live amongst muggle. Even 12 Grimmauld Place (the house of Sirius Black) is located in a muggle area. However, there is a paradox in this. All magical people in the Harry Potter books usually wear either robes and cloaks in their own primary world, however, according to Rowling on Pottermore, the law states that the magical people must blend in when in presence of muggles by wearing muggle clothes. However, Rowling describes two wizards as a donning: “Both were dressed as Muggles, though very inexpertly: The man with the watch wore a tweed suit with thigh-length galoshes; his colleague, a kilt and a poncho” (Harry Potter and Goblet Fire ch. 7). This in itself is very strange as many wizards do not live isolated from humans but amongst them and should know what to wear in order to blend in. Especially when it comes to people working for the ministry where it is often required to know a little more about the muggles.
World-building through other works
It is often difficult to keep track of the different things across multiple platforms and media. Rowling shows this through the fact that she not only makes mistakes in the books with world-building but also when she builds the world through Pottermore, The Cursed Child (the manuscript for the theater play), the film adaptations, and the expanding books and movies (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Quidditch Through the Times, etc.). Especially The Cursed Child has attracted fierce criticism in the fan world, because even though it is approved by Rowling, many fans will decry it (including one of the authors of this post). It just does not reflect the characters and the magic in the same way as the original books. The author of The Cursed Child takes a lot of liberties. SPOILER ALERT: Bellatrix has apparently conceived a daughter named Delphini of whom Voldemort is the father. However, it is argued that this seems rather unlikely as some Bellatrix should then have been pregnant with Delphi in the timeframe of the last battle between Harry and Voldemort at Hogwarts. She most likely was not pregnant as she had no signs of being pregnant at the time, though Delphi distinctly says: “I was born in Malfoy Manor before the Battle of Hogwarts” (The Cursed Child, act four, scene eleven, p. 307). In addition to that, in the book the author chooses to bring back time turners, even though they were all destroyed by the Ministry of Magic years before the plot took place. However, this argument completely depends on which year Delphi was born as some believe she was born the same year as the final battle and others believe she could have been born at the same time as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince took place, as Bellatrix wasn’t present when (SPOILER ALERT) Dumbledore was killed.
Rowling has not sold all the licensing rights to Warner Bros. and therefore has a freedom most authors do not have: she (somewhat) has a say in what is published, so everything published by Warner Bros. can technically be considered canon. Besides that, a fan has through the past few years written a manuscript and produced a movie which presents Voldemort’s past and his climb up the power ladder. The movie has not been released yet. Whether ”Voldemort: Origins of the Heir” is canon or not is up for discussion. Please, do leave a comment with your thoughts on what you consider canon in the HP fandom.
Harry Potter within Media 