I think the point she was making when she said that it's now illegal to connect the floo up to Privet Drive was that the Order had previously relied on someone in the Floo department to do the connecting, which they now wouldn't do because they don't want to go to Azkaban. That's pure conjecture though and your idea is much better than the canon one.

 

As a devil's advocate re: imprisonable offences.

Firstly, this is prior to the fall of the ministry when, as you said, Scrimgeour was doing what he could to stop the bad 'uns while dealing with a leaky sieve ministry and a compromised DMLE. It's reasonable that various order people as such were reliant on some veneer of respectability for means of resisting Voldemort within the ministry which they might lose by committing a flagrant offence. Harry's plan and the Hogwarts environment to come weren't widely anticipated by the order at large at this point, I believe.

Secondly, I always took it to mean that as a place of high interest, again with a compromised DMLE, that Harry's rough whereabouts were under heavy surveillance and blockade. In the same way that there are plenty of private roads that the public 'can't' walk down but might anyway without consequences or real challenges, trying to do so at Downing Street is going to prove a much greater problem. I don't think it required significant mental gymnastics from being told it was an offence to magically travel from Privet Drive to the idea that they were monitoring attempts to travel to and from Privet Drive and enforcing this.

That said, I prefer your fix anyway because it's got that back and forth of A problem, A solution but causes B problem, B solution but causes C problem etc. Which would have only helped build the tone of Deathly Hallows and the fraught, tense guerrilla war.

 

Kind of disappointed you didn't make 7 points.

The Portkey issue can be explained by the fact that the only person we've seen make a Portkey is Dumbledore and that there is simply no one else who is capable of making them. Either they lack the knowledge, the skill or the "power". Any other portkey making method may require Ministry aid for some reason.

Apparition could have been explained by saying that due to the nature of the protection on Harry, no one could apparate in OR out of Little Whinging. I don't think anyone's ever done it anyway in the books?

Of course, there is the simple matter that they could have just used a taxi to get to The Burrow.

 

1. Harry leaves with the Dursleys earlier in the day

2. Have Lupin magically dig a tunnel to Figg's place on Magnolia Crescent- ohey, there's a thought- use an existing Floo connection

3. So Pius Thicknesse has prohibited anyone from disapparating/portkeying from there? Maybe they should just... Break The Law. It's not like Harry wouldn't ruin his barely-clean record the moment he had to cast... any spell whatsoever

4. Harry leaves on his own under his Invisibility Cloak

5. Tonks visits as local muggle Piers Polkiss, then swaps for Harry using Polyjuice to leave as him. Tonks later leaves as Petunia.

...and as an aside- they Polyjuice six other people to look like Harry but the girl who can look like Harry ALL FUCKING DAY IF SHE WANTS TO isn't even disguised as anyone. Guess your cover as a loyal Auror is pretty much blown forever, Nymphie

6. Hedwig leaves days earlier to stay at the Burrow- I mean, what the fuck was with the stuffed owls in cages- all they had to do to identify Harry is watch to see which cage was being treated as if it actually had a bird in it

7. Put Harry on his Firebolt- you know the one- the FASTEST BROOM IN THE WORLD
... aside number 2: Fleur, who was chosen by a magical artifact to be the Triwizard champion of Beauxbatons, a school three times the size of Hogwarts, is scared to fly a broom? What's the real story there, Bill? You subjugated her, I bet. She's your bimbette on a strict diet of lobotomy potions

8. If you're not going to have Harry fly his broom, at least have him keep it shrunk and handy in case something predictable happened with Hagrid driving the bulky and loud flying motorcycle with the so-very-detachable sidecar

9. You know, I bet those Vanishing Cabinets still work just fine. Bring the one at Hogwarts to the Dursley's. Borgin will never know what hit him

10. Swear to God, if they'd called out for Fawkes to help him escape, the phoenix might have come

11. {Confundus] "Uncle Vernon, you're going to teach Harry how to drive today. You've always wanted to abandon him in a park somewhere- here's your chance."

12. With two months to waste, training to be an animagus might be a productive use of Harry's time (ignoring Pottermore process here]

13. Challenge the twins to come up with a plan- better yet, ask Ginny. She probably has a boatload of 'kidnap Harry' scenarios in her head

14. Party at the Dursleys! Oh no- Harry's been arrested by the muggles!

15. Take any other scenario (except #5, obviously), then put Tonks in Harry's place- it was a decoy move, and Harry skipped away by hopping a bus to Leatherhead before meeting Lupin to Apparate him to the Burrow

16. Lastly... how about not letting Harry return to the Dursleys in the first place?! Why go back and thereby get trapped in a cul-de-sac? Anyone with access to Wizengamot records knows where Harry lives and a few weeks' protection won't mean shit if he gets nothing out of it but nasty looks from his relatives.

EDIT:
If I was editor for JKR at the time, I would have suggested she set up a reason why returning to Privet drive was necessary. Have Moody, Tonks and Lupin show up at his door a week early of a sudden and have them shuffle Harry and the Dursleys out, creating a running battle where Harry is pursued on a broom. Vernon protests too long and gets murdered despite Petunia urging him to go along, then the surviving two Dursleys get disapparated to a safe place.

All sorts of hijinks could ensue as Harry tries to find a quiet place to get a breath and escape to safety, knowing that any spell or attempt at apparation would be detected.

Hedwig would have died saving him from a killing curse as in the movie- because that's the right way to do it. Hedwig's death was the symbol of Harry's departure from childhood, but she deserved a better death than being treated like an action figure accessory.

 

With as much BS as the HP movie writers put on screen (including draining everything good out of Ron and handing it to Sue-per Hermione), even they knew it was utterly moronic leaving Hedwig in her cage for the escape.

Say what you will about the movies but they had Hedwig go out fighting, saving Harry in the process, while JKR had her go out like a chump, trapped in a cage. I won't argue for Hedwig to escape death entirely, since JKR probably had a quota of good guy deaths to meet and needed one for the beginning of the book.

Three knuts says it was between Hedwig and Gabrielle.

Still... it's easy to see where it could have been better. Obviously some people know how to give proper Hed', and some don't.

That 7 Potters fiasco was... rather dumb. One wonders how much of it was to manufacture an action scene, and how much of it was so Jo 'inappropriate charms on a goat' Rowling could leave readers asking themselves, "Wait, does that mean everyone got to see Harry's wedding tackle?"

Now if you'll excuse me, I must go, for nearly all the bubbles have gone.

 

I mean the most charitable possible explanation is that the reason they cared about imprisonable offenses is because most of the people who were going to help Harry escape didn't want to be on the run for the next few months, they wanted to be out in the open where they could do their jobs or something. At the time I would imagine they did not realize anyone would be on the run, that was sort of sprung on them, though the seeds were planted already. That doesn't preclude like eighty percent of these plans from being better than the seven potters plan, what occurred to me was throwing on the cloak about two weeks before his birthday, walking to Arabella Figg's house, and taking a portkey from there. It would have been legal and it's highly doubtful the Death Eaters would have seen them, even if they were watching the house.
The problem with any plan involving traveling great distances, not instantaneously, as well as any plan where Harry is on his own, is that Voldemort can zero in on him from anywhere because they're soul sisters. The problem with any plan involving cars or planes is that's OBviouSLY a MUggLE WAnk. All jokes aside, I'm pretty sure that the reason they kept moving around in the camping adventure is because of the mental connection Harry and Voldemort share; no one hiding place is better than the other, they just couldn't let anyone catch up to them.

 

As much as I disliked from DH, the Seven Potters wasn't one of them. I don't think its difficult to come up with explanations for why other modes of transport weren't available without stretching suspension of disbelief.

As for Hedwig, obviously they should've let her out, but it's easy to say that in hindsight. In the moment you don't think about, I get that. Hedwigs tragic unnecessary death is better than a purposeful one. Dobby dies protecting Harry, don't need to double up on that in the book.

 

I guess one thing relating to the escape that bothered me was that the Order knew immediately about Thicknesse's bewitchment, but seemingly did nothing about it even though the Minister was finally taking Death Eaters seriously. For them to not have warned Scrimgeour, or for that warning to have been ineffective, suggests either that the Minister was so thick-headed as to not believe their warnings even after Thicknesse went and imposed restrictions that stranded Harry in his home, or else Scrimgeour was powerless to do anything about it at that point, which makes the Ministry as a whole seem even more incompetent and non-functional. Fanon treats the Wizengamot as the Wizarding World's legislature and judiciary, but I never saw any indications of that in canon. The Minister seems like he can do whatever he wants except when he can't.

 

I just take it as one of the many things I hate about DH. Needing a big dumb action scene to start things off is fine except when there is absolutely no consistency like what we got.

We know you can apparate right down the street as both Dumbledore and Mundungus do this in books 5 & 6. If the protection of the Dursleys is true, then the Death Eaters shouldn't be able to place any sort of anti-apparition jinx to keep him trapped there. If the protection wouldn't work like that, then Dumbledore is a moron to demand that Harry go back there.

I've always thought it was stupid that Harry and company didn't all immediately go to work trying to stop Voldemort from taking over. Nope, let's send the kids back on the train, force Harry to just twiddle his thumbs at the Dursleys for more than a month, and have a wedding where pretty much all of the good guys will be-- it's not like that won't be an obvious target for the Death Eaters, right?

 

Within the bounds of strict canon, I agree with Sesc that the scheme doesn't make sense. However, I think it doesn't take too much to fix it - you just have to say that in addition to the Ministry making in unlawful for various transport modes to be used around Privet Drive, they also actually took steps to enforce those laws e.g. the erection of an Anti-Apparition Jinx over the area.