The Occlumency/Legilimency is definitively one of my pet peeves, but it is sadly always abused so it's one of those things I just have to deal with.

WRT canon, I always had the impression that the only people (at least in all of Britain, perhaps in the world) that knew about that magic was Dumbledore, Voldemort, and the people they decided to clue in (Snape, Bellatrix). That's it. No one else.

 

It's like you people don't understand that all Pureblood children need to learn occlumency to guard their family secrets smh.

 

This comes immediately after every school childrean knwoing what a time turner is. One would think that such a dangerous, powerful item would be rather secret but no, everyone should know, because what could possible go wrong?

 

Time Turners were just a mistake for Rowling to include in the first place, really. Just raises too many questions about how/why Voldemort was unable/unwilling to monkey around with something that a teenage girl was able to get a hold of, official channels or not.

 

It seems like time-turners, at least before CC, were rather useless. Everything proceeded as it would, it wasn't like they could change the past.

 

But having a time turner in their possession changed how everything proceeded in the first place. That's probably even better than just changing the past - if you die you can't change the past anyway, but with how time turners seemed to work in PoA you could be saved by your future self, thus allowing you to travel back in time to save your life.

 

Occlumency is mentioned in a W.O.M.B.A.T. question and those are supposed to be reflection of in-universe tests.

 

Though I don't think it's plausible for important people (that have something to hide) like Malfoy, Nott, etc to NOT know it.
Would be like searching "How to build a bomb" with Google several times a day.

EDIT: In general, Occlmency/Legilimency always seemed like a thinly veiled plot device to me that was only invented to get Harry and Snape to meet more often.

 

The deeper we get into the re-read, the more I hate all those things, big and small, FanFics always take for granted. Ron being a shitty friend, Hermione is absolutely perfect in every way, wards are fact, and so on. All things the Books easily disprove, often quite explicitly. I know FanFics are all about re-writing the story in some way. But when the FanFiction community believes they are completely Canon, it just tells me they haven't actually read the Books in a long time, if ever.

It leaves me half-tempted to make a checklist of things Fandom seems to believe that can be proven wrong either with a direct quote from the Books or by its absence from the Books.

 

Meh, I like the idea of wards. It makes magical defences more interesting. Just don't pretend it's canon.

 

This. I love wards, I don't like how they can be both really high end stuff and at the same time easily broken by a library text book in some fics but I like the idea.

Basically wards have occlumency syndrome.

 

Others have felt similarly.

 

That one is neither complete nor up to date though (for example Wizengamot was confirmed to play role of parliament) and lacks sources disproving given fanon creation.

I agree with Rhaegar I here, we could use some "sins of the fanon" doc (thought about creating one once, but I'm too lazy).

 

I'm starting to get annoyed by all the fics that have Harry say or do something incredibly trivial and Dumbledore is then said to have aged all of his one hundred and fifteen years or he suddenly seems very tired. Usually this is followed by a Dumbledore bash or some other BS where Dumbledore needs to be taken down a peg or two.

As an example I just read a fic where Harry defends his girlfriend because Malfoy attacked her. Of course Snape bitches about it to Dumbledore so he comes down from his throne to tel Harry off. After a really stupid speech from Harry about defending his girlfriend from harm the author then goes into a long diatribe about how Dumbledore seemed to age before Harry's eyes. The author then has Dumbledore leave to go cry in his office about how he failed Harry.

 

The problem is that to the extent that they existed, they weren't handled consistently. So apparently the Ministry has the ability to lay down protections on certain places such that Voldemort himself can't penetrate them, but as soon as he subverts the Ministry, said defenses fall about as quickly as Kingsley can send his warning. Does this mean that the Death Eaters were right on the heels of his Patronus with the ability to take down these defenses in two seconds flat? Or were they controlled remotely from the Ministry itself, and the job may have taken a little longer? Who knows.

 

The use of rituals and/or potions to completly change Harry/MC into the writer "perfect" ideal of beauty. Because some writers think that every protagonist need to be a six feet tall Adonis before the story can continue.

 

Don't forget the long shiny hair to make him look more feminine than a Malfoy.

 

Now that raises the question: what do they do for haircuts at Hogwarts?

 

Magic perhaps?

 

Right, but who does it? If the students did it themselves, I think they'd screw up a lot.