Things That Make Absolutely No Sense About Harry Potter

When rereading the Harry Potter books or watching the movies, it's hard not to stumble onto little inconsistencies here and there. From limited career options to the logistics of Polyjuice Potion, these are just a few Harry Potter details that don't make sense.

After a young witch or wizard graduates from Hogwarts, they're expected to join the adult wizarding world, and part of that is figuring out which career works for them. During the fifth book in the series, Order of the Phoenix, Harry visits Professor McGonagall for a required career advice meeting, and they discuss which classes Harry should take to qualify for his desired post-grad job.

However, besides becoming an Auror — a "dark wizard catcher" — post-Hogwarts options seem pretty scarce, especially according to the adults in Harry's life. It's never revealed what Harry's parents, James and Lily, did for a living, but almost every adult he knows growing up either works for the wizarding government, the Ministry of Magic, or teaches at Hogwarts. Though there is a wizarding hospital, St. Mungo's, which is stocked with Healers, and some talented athletes might become Quidditch players, this means there are roughly four viable career paths in the wizarding world.

The stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which serves as a sort of sequel to the original series, seems to confirm the lack of career options — as adults, Harry, Ron and Hermione are all employed by the Ministry, with Hermione even serving a term as the Minister of Magic.

In Harry's third year at Hogwarts, he discovers the Marauder's Map, an enchanted, moving map of Hogwarts that details every secret passageway, contains every room, and shows the user where every single person within the castle is and whether or not they're on the move. A password-protected cheat sheet to the school, the map is immensely useful to Harry throughout his time at Hogwarts and beyond. And, as it turns out, it was his birthright all along; Harry's father, James, helped create the map during his own time there.

Harry is given the map by Ron's brothers Fred and George, the notoriously mischievous Weasley twins, who have been its custodians for years, but this seems a bit off, considering that the map apparently contained a huge, conspicuous secret the entire time they had it. Peter Pettigrew, one of the map's creators and the man who betrayed Harry's parents, spent 12 years posing as Ron's pet rat and sharing a dorm room with Ron and Harry, and apparently, Fred and George didn't pay much attention to the strange name hanging out with their brother for years. The twins may be troublemakers, but they're not stupid! It just doesn't add up.

#HarryPotter

Weirdly limited career options | 0:14
Marauder's Map inconsistencies | 1:18
Anything about the portraits | 2:22
Why do wizards wear glasses? | 3:46
Most things about Polyjuice Potion | 4:36