Why would Quirrel go through all the trouble of getting Hagrid drunk before questioning him and then act on said answers if it was as easy as AK-ing the thing?

 

Firstly, if Dumbledore wanted a task that nobody could bypass, he could just smash the Stone and be done with it. Surely the tasks HAVE to be beatable or they're pointless? Derp?

So then you might ask, what's the point in the tasks? Dumbledore has to know that if someone is determined/skilled enough to break into Gringotts, they're going to eventually bypass any protections he or his staff can offer, whether legitimately, or by just blowing shit to pieces. I assume even the mirror, given sufficient time is beatable by Voldemort.

So considering the staff had weeks and weeks to prepare their magic and Voldemort had a couple of hours max, the defences would be difficult enough to tamper with to ensure that he was slowed down enough to give Dumbledore enough time to turn up and kick the shit into him. Which they did a pretty good job of until Harry decided to fuck everything up by chasing him and giving Voldemort exactly what he needed (a key to the mirror puzzle).

Because if you want to make it blatantly obvious that you've been checking out some of the defences killing the first guardian sounds like a pretty awesome idea.

 

Yes, because a harp is so much better at being subtle.

 

Well you can take the harp away but you can't bring the dog back to life?

 

/sits down to watch the most one-sided argument imaginable.
/looks around for the popcorn.
/hurries off to make it back before the next round.

 

Yes, that's true. I wasn't thinking in the long term way, the point with the harp was that if someone checked while you were in there, you got screwed.

 

To be honest, the more I think about it, the more fucking epic this duel of minds between Dumbledore and Voldemort seems.

Shame JKR didn't write this shit.

EDIT: Derp.

 

Old Nicholas would've been miffed. There Can Be Only One.

Anyway, canon:

PS, page 215

Here you have Dumbledore riding around on a broom. THIS, namely JKRs lack of long range plotting, is the reason for the problems we are discussing here. You know that.

And Hagrid (!!!) and Dumbledore calculated with this necessity for the intruder to hide his recon activities, right? Even if that was plausible, why would Quirrelmort use a harp instead of an AK in his second attempt?

 

To gain time? It could work if there wasn't any spell to alert Dumbledore when the stone was taken out of the mirror. It would be a matter of time before anyone realises.

 

Any less than if he protected it with tasks that nobody can beat?

Nobody said that JKR has anything but awful plotting, but if you're going to try and out-think the author, you've got to do it logically and not as badly as she did.

 

There is a difference between using a password/backdoor and brute forcing, ya know.

I don't see the logic in assuming that the chess set has actually more protections than explicitly stated in the novel. If your argument is valid it seems very strange that the other tasks weren't upgraded to a level unsolvable by first year students.

 

They don't have more protections. Both Dumbledore and Voldemort acted like complete morons in the first book. Dumbledore's actions can be viewed as dumb or manipulative if you're into those theories but Voldemort taking almost a year to pass those obstacles is just laughable.

 

The first book was more like a fairy tale. It was a "insignificant little boy whose life is shit finds magic, solve puzzles with his newfound friends and saves the world". JKR did not think much about logic or contradictions, not like she could. To an extent this shit followed on to the next few books, like in the seventh; making sure Harry doesn't "kill" anyone.

I loved reading the first 4 books for the first time, the rest 3 just plain sucked. Prisoner of Azkaban remains one of my favorites till today. But the fact remains that if I start looking for them the books will have more plotholes and facepalm moments than words.

But I don't.

To keep the "magic" intact.

 

Portus, pass the popcorn.

Chess set is linked via magic to only open the door when it has been defeated. Quirlemort, after a quick examination of the door, realises it would be quicker to win a game then try and break the enchantments. Remember, he was in a hurry.

This does bring up the most important question to ever face the fandom though: Who is the better Chess player? Ron "Don't call me weasel" Weasley or Tom "Anagrams are cool now" Riddle

Whoever it was that brought it up originally had a point about Fluffy thou. Quirlemort already knew how to beat all the traps except for Hagrids and Dumbledores. Considering that he could have easily just killed Fuffy and moved on past all the other traps since, in his mind, he wouldn't need to be subtle coming back out and Dumbledore (the biggest threat) was gone from the castle.

 

Well, if we want to think up some reasons, it's possible killing Fluffy would have set some other defenses in motion. I mean, he didn't even try to kill the troll. Sure, this is probably because Rowling didn't want to go around killing relatively innocent beings right of the bat, but it can serve as an explanation if you really want one. Or maybe big ass magical beings are simply a little more magical resistant against curses like that. I'm pretty sure most people would agree using the Killing Curse on a dragon might not work, so maybe these things have some kind of magical protection as well.

But if you want to know why Rowling really did it, than yeah, Castiel probably got it right. It wouldn't be much of a challenge if all the obstacles had been cleared already.

 

It's a children's book. Why don't you just go find all the plot holes you possibly can in Peter the Fucking Rabbit. It would amount to the same waste of time.

 

Is everyone forgetting that Voldemort was a parasitic leech on the back of Quirrell's skull and not the big bad dark lord we know him as?

Hell, in the final room Quirrell told Voldemort he hadn't the strength to talk to Harry but Voldemort said, "I have strength enough for this."

You can take the view that Quirrell was an extremely advanced and underestimated wizard or you can take the view I prefer to use. Voldemort had no real power at all and instead had to coach Quirrell through this shit. Who knows if Quirrell had ever performed a killing curse?

From Voldemort's POV, it'd be much easier to coach Quirrell through the chess set than to have him try to overpower McGonagall's magic.

Oh and the fact that it's a kid's book.

 

Well, Hagrid did say in later books that Dumbledore prefers taking Thestral's to travel, rather than apparating. So, I would assume that Dumbledore would travel like that instead on a broom.

 

I always assumed that Dumbledore was using a figure of speech, as his words seem almost contradictory. Crossing Hedwig in mid air, but realising he should have been at Hogwarts only after arriving at the Ministry?

You can cross analyse all you want, but that's just a quick way to ruin the immersion. If every little inconsistency in the series is going to be dissected and examined for logical reasoning...well, we're gonna be here a while.