On the whole "just shoot him" thing, do people not realise that the story takes place in the UK? Gun control is very strict over here, and I think handguns are outright banned (I don't know anyone here who isn't a police officer of part of the military who has actually seen a gun with their own eyes). I know they have magic and everything, so they could just summon a gun, but the good guys are law-abiding (to an extent), and the bad guys hate muggle things, so I don't think anyone would just grab a gun, even if it was just there on the ground.

 

To be fair, I'm pretty sure the blanket ban on firearms didn't come into effect until 1998, which would be sometime towards the end of Deathly Hallows.

 

Semi-automatic handguns are banned due to a school shooting, but you can still buy bolt action rifles and flintlock pistols, as well as shotguns, I live on a farm so I use own a shotgun for pest control. The licence is expensive, as is the gun locker, but they're not impossible to get.

But considering Protego has enough force to throw two full grown people a good few metres away when it's cast betweem them...not many bullets are going to get through that.

 

Only Wizards being prejudiced and muggles not being prejudiced. >_>

 

Even worse with tolerant and understanding Goblins who'd just want to hug everyone if not for the pesky purebloods.

 

Tolerant, understanding, omnipotent and oppressed goblins are even worse. It is ridiculous how often combination of the two last appears.

 

B-but, if you said the magic words (listen carefully here):

"May your pointy ears forever hear the resonance of gold"

or a variant of it, Goblins get superpowers! And a predisposition to help you!

 

It's just so fucking weird. The fanfic authors see that entitled wizards are mean to the poor goblins, so they make it where anyone remotely polite to them gets perks.

Some author needs to have a goblin respond, "what? you want special treatment because you treated me with common courtesy? fucking wizards."

 

Personally, I favour goblins screwing over all wizards just because they can or maybe because they view non-goblins as being inferior.

 

Someone pointed out that they are the only beings that Hagrid thinks Harry should be careful of.

Hagrid thinks dragons are cute, Hippogriffs are the best introduction for 13 year olds dealing with magical creatures, Acromantulas are misunderstood, and most of all that something capable of and willing to hunt down and kill unicorns is something that 11 year olds should be searching the Forbidden forest at night for.

But he thinks goblins are dangerous.

Seriously, listen to the half-giant. Stay the fuck away from those lying, cheating, goblins.

 

Not true he also pointed Slytherins as such. Wizards are magical creatures after all.

 

Pretty much all the bad guys are slytherins in Harry Potter. I mean, sure, there are a couple of exceptions, but they're pretty much all either Death eaters or supporters of the same.

 

Harry's time cooking for the Dursleys making him a Michelin chef. This is fucking irritating.

 

This shit is the worst, I tell you.

 

Tangentially related, the meme that "potions is just like cooking" which is often used to explain why Harry would be good at it since he cooked for the Dursleys. Yes there are some related skills (chopping things, measuring) but the discipline should be sufficiently magical to make it near unrecognizable from "cooking."

 

WHAT!? No it is the opposite, something as magical as cooking cannot possibly be compared to something as mundane as making 'potions'.

 

I can see why inventing potions would be difficult, as it would require actually understanding what you'e doing to a potion and why, as well as possible effects of preparing ingredients different ways.

But making potions isn't something I see as particularly hard. Polyjuice requires some ingredients to be picked at a certain time, and others to have long-term preparation (picked at a full moon, and stewed for tewnty-one days, respectively), and polyjuice is supposed to be hard to make.

The only real difficulties I can see in potion making would be getting exact amounts - if a potion calls for 17.2 grams of Shredded Boomslang Skin, rather than "15 scales of an adult Boomslang", then that could be hard, especially if there aren't specific spells for weighing/drawing out a certain weight. And I'm pretty sure the first year letter includes instructions to buy a set of brass scales, which wouldn't be useful unless weights were called for.
The other difficulty would be complex instructions - "add the ground up ashwinder eggs whilst stirring the potion seven times, tracing the shape of the Eihwaz rune with each stir. Add consistently throughout this stirring period". This would make potion making hard because you have to concetrate properly on two or more things at once.

But as it seems a large part of potion making is chopping things up in specific ways and then stirring it clockwise or anti-clockwise, I see no reason why being a competent cook wouldn't help - you'd be used to handling a knife and mildly hard to hold ingredients.

 

Potions, in canon, seems to be an entirely physical process. All that requires for proficiency is practice. If you aren't given strict instructions, that's a different matter...

 

The whole part "Stir ten times clockwise, then ten counter clockwise" is complete bullshit.

Who the fuck would experiment with X clockwise and/or counter clockwise stirs in their potions?

 

Any potions researcher in the Harry Potter universe?