Why the fuck did Snape tell them that Harry would be moved when he was? Got Hedwig killed, the absolute dickhead. Also Mad-Eye but he was useless anyway.

Yaxley is actually pretty competent, huh.

What a putdown.

Rowling had to know this line would make everyone reading it snigger.

I had to look up if snakes actually have necks. Turns out they do! Fascinating.

[insert Cursed Child joke here]

ha, gaaay

Goddamnit, Doge.

They don't mind that he's black, then?

Goodbye and thanks for all the fish?

Yeah, about that.

How would she know? She wasn't the one who drank it.

Harsh.

;_;

Ram it into him, Hagrid!

This is about where the "Snape was just pretending to be a huge twat!" theory falls apart.

To Mad-Eye, a man whose accomplishments in this series are, in order, getting surprised, stuffed into a trunk, and impersonated by someone who'd spent the last X years living in house arrest under an invisibility cloak; getting his shit kicked in during the Ministry debacle; finally, choosing the worst possible partner he could've and getting his shit kicked in again, this time fatally.

Oh fuck off, Lupin. Least he didn't leave his wife and unborn child because he was being a sorry sack of shit about himself.

Wonder if the spell is actually diluted or just keeping a secret becomes harder. Or both.

Wow. I forgot that's where she got it.

Jesus christ, Hermione!

Ron "having spattergroit" is a brilliant callback to two books ago.

Hm.

Clever.

And it actually works.

Yeah, about that.

hnngh

For all he knows he's talking to just another Weasley he's never met before, Krum's a pretty fun guy.

If Harry's mood wasn't thoroughly dead that surely would've ruined it.

 

I'm pretty sure that the "Snape uses Sectumsempra on George" bit is revealed in the Prince's Tale bit to have been aimed at a Death Eater.

One thing that I noticed when I started reading this book, is the lack of excitement. Whenever I open, or opened, one of the first four books, I always feel a sort of excitement to return to the setting and immerse myself in the magical world. Not with the last three books though. They just don't have the same feel to them, and in retrospect, they are a huge disappointment. Oh well, let's get on with it.

There are many dick jokes throughout this book, and they are all about as subtle as this one.

This takes an entirely new meaning after Rowling's latest abomination. Ew.

Yet whom we have never seen mentioned in the span of six books that took place in Hogwarts.

A. Yes he did learn how to repair wounds. He learned it last book. He used the Epiksey charm to heal Demelza Robins' lip. What's wrong with your memory, Rowling?
B. Why ask Hermione? She's never shown an affinity for healing spells. Why not ask Molly, or Lupin, or someone from the Order who actually has experience with that? But Rowling really went to town with her Hermione worship in this book.

I guess you can say that Dumbledore didn't tell Doge about Ariana in order not to spoil his vacation, but the weird inconsistency doesn't stop here – just wait to hear him completely change his story in chapter 8.

Well, Hestia, considering that the location Harry is heading to is top secret and even Voldemort doesn't know about it, I'd say that Vernon Dursley doesn't know, no.

Yes Moody, I have a question. Why not just take the Portkey while in the air outside Privet Drive? Why not get Harry into a car and drive a bit before you apparate, like Hestia and Dedalus did with the Dursleys? For that matter, why use Polyjuice to turn six people into Harry, when you can just use it to turn Harry into someone else, and just for the sake of it, put him under the Invisibility Cloak as well? Why make a big show of transporting him on brooms? And what was the point of Snape feeding Voldemort that information in the first place?
Well, I guess the answer is that Rowling needed her big flashy action scene where Voldemort flies like Superman and encounters Harry's Amazing Auto-Wand™ so he could seek the Elder Wand, no matter that it makes her characters look like complete idiots.

Don't let that deter you, fanfiction writers. We all know that Fleur is secretly a professional broom racer, right?

Just this chapter Moody said that they can't use apparition/portkey because that will let the Ministry persecute Harry for underage magic use. That's the sole reason they took this idiotic mission. But now Harry's flinging spells in the air, and what, no word from the Ministry? I'll say it again, The Trace is one of the stupidest things Rowling conceived of.

Aha! So you can easily regrow teeth with magic. Yet neither Morfin nor Tom the Bartender ever bothered to. I guess they just like it that way.

It's kind of weird that a muggleborn would refer to it like that.

What's that, Ted? You're calling your protections "protective charms", instead of the oppressive sounding "wards"? how canon of you.

What? How would Lupin know that? Was Snape going around in school slashing people with dark curses? (and I still don't believe that he created the spell, since unlike any of his other spells, this one didn't have any revisions of it in the book, and Harry believed that the Prince just copied it there. Lupin's words seem to support my argument, since he actually knows the spell.)

zOMG Ron love-charmed Hermione!

Wait, what the fuck? When did Harry become so fond of firewhisky that drinking it is the highest pleasure he can imagine? Didn't he only drink it first a couple of days before? Wouldn't butterbeer, at least, be a better example? Does Rowling actually think before she writes something?

Harry had a great many burns during the series, but this one is undoubtedly the greatest.

You dodgy liar, you, Doge! You just wrote in your obituary that you went abroad after Dumbledore's mom died, and that you only heard about Ariana's death when you returned a year later, which was a long time after the funeral. No wonder Rita Skeeter calls you gaga.
(I know, I know. The blame for this is really on Rowling's inability to keep her stories consistent. Yet, remember that old conspiracy theory, that Rowling had died in a car crush sometime after GoF was published, and that the next books were written by a group of ghost writers? I'm starting to believe it.)

 

Chapter 1: The Dark Lord Ascending

When was Yaxley first mentioned? I have absolutely no memory of him in any previous book, and I've looked at the most likely places for him to have been mentioned - all in GoF, the conversation with Sirius, Karkaroff's trial, Crouch's trial, and the graveyard - and he's not mentioned in any of them that I can see. Which wouldn't matter, but the Yaxley family are very prominent in the Sacrifices Arc, which concluded six months prior to the release of Deathly Hallows.

That doesn't quite seem to match Hermione's Confunding of Cormac in HBP, although I suppose you could attribute that to more practice with the spell (and yes, I realise that Dawlish probably hasn't been Confunded, in reality, but in order for Snape to pull this off his claim must have some basis in accuracy, surely).

Chapter 2: In Memoriam

I'd forgotten it was mentioned that early. That said though, if it's well known enough for one of Dumbledore's closest friends, who is mostly appalled by the mere insinuation that Dumbledore might have any skeletons in his closet, to acknowledge it, then it seems like the sort of thing that might have been brought up when the Ministry was trying to discredit him.

Nice little parallel with Ron, there, which is ironic given the fan theory that Dumbledore was a time travelling Ron (IIRC).

Yeah right.

Chapter 3: The Dursleys Departing

So...they'll kill them instantly and, as far as we know, painlessly, with no torture?

Awkward.

Chapter 4: The Seven Potters

That seems to imply some observation of physics with magic, which I don't recall anywhere else in the series so far.

Chapter 5: Fallen Warrior

Way to reclaim the slur, Ted.

People using incantations in conversation, really carelessly in this instance.

But....who checked Kingsley?

Chapter 6: The Ghoul in Pyjamas

Good job they don't. They wouldn't have understood the clues to the Hallows at that stage.

This is honestly the biggest bit of bullshit in the entire book. At least the stuff with the Elder Wand is an expansion of previously existing wandlore, but this is just...gah.

Oh.

I'll come back to this bit when I get to Ron leaving...but either Rowling contradicts herself within the same book, or people have been giving Ron a pass based on something incorrect. Although I can think of at least one way around it that doesn't contradict anything and offers a justification for him.

Chapter 7: The Will of Albus Dumbledore

OK, at what point was that relevant in any of her lessons? Or are we really suggesting that she reads books on what is probably pretty obscure magical law for fun and giggles.

How do Harry and Ron not know this? Or rather, why has Hermione picked something up about the mechanics of a sport she doesn't play, when those two haven't? If Rowling had gone on to suggest that they just didn't know the technical term for it, but knew what it was, then that'd be fair enough, but this is just a little irritating.