Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - plot hole?

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Spoiler alert, just in case anyone needs it.

I'm a bit late to the party but have read the Harry Potter books and now working my way through the films.

In Goblet of Fire, why does Crouch jnr go to the effort of putting Harry through the Tri-wizard tournament and helping him win (which was not even guaranteed to succeed)? He could have made anything into a portkey and got Harry to touch it with so much less effort. Or am I missing something???

The population of the wizarding world as a whole doesn't really stack up. The Griffindors share their lessons with another house so assuming a class size of about 30, there are only around 60 kids per year. That's the size of a smallish primary school which might serve a small market town. There is no mention of another wizarding school in the whole of the UK, and quite a lot in the books which implies Hogwarts is the only one. So even allowing for some kids being educated at home or at schools abroad, you're looking at a wizarding population of not much more than around 10,000 people. That's not taking into account muggle-born students whose existence implies a smaller adult wizarding population.

Possibly wizards live longer because, well, magic, which would mean a larger adult population for the number of children. It still seems questionable that you could sustain a ministry, a hospital, the number of wizard-only businesses, a sports league, a bank, a newspaper, a school, a radio station, a few magazines, a publishing industry, a transport network etc on that kind of population, only about half of whom seem to be working. House Elves and Goblins may help provide some of the workforce for many of these of course which might be the answer. Most places seem to be staffed by human wizards in the books though.

But it they are just fun books, aimed at kids and it doesn't really matter how many plot holes and similar there are.

I went through all the books imagining Dumbledore to look like the master from Dungeons & Dragons😁 so I couldn't take to Michael Gambon either!

And also, why do the twins never mention the fact that Peter Pettigrew has been sharing Ron's bed for years,as seen on the Marauder's Map?

OMG good point!

And why have "school brooms" if no one else ever uses them?

I don’t see why they aren’t made to use the school brooms for school quidditch matches?

There’s clearly differences in the quality of brooms available. Why are they letting students use their own brooms instead of a standard school broom for quidditch matches?

Letting students use their own brooms gives an advantage to the students from richer families who can afford the best, fastest, most manoeuvrable brooms. Seems rather unfair given that it’s a school environment and an internal school sports league.

Kokapetl My best friend and I had a very long (very drunk) discussion about this about 20 years ago, and came to the conclusion that Harry's year group and the ones either side were much smaller than usual. They were born during the first wizarding war with Voldemort so people would have been more reluctant to have a baby. There are lots of empty/unused classrooms at Hogwarts that imply that there are usually more students than we see during Harry's time there. Presumably, once things had settled down again, the pupil numbers went back up again and those empty classrooms were put back into use. That was our theory anyway!

Well now my brain is overthinking Harry Potter things instead of sleeping ( midnight in Australia) so was Moody always going to be a teacher at Hogwarts that year or was Crouch Jnr impersonating Moody long before and then Crouch/Moody decided to join Hogwarts?

Moody was always going to be the DADA teacher that year. He was attacked by Crouch Jr and Wormtail (I think) the night before he was due to go to Hogwarts.

I don't think it is really, any fantasy book/series has to have an internal logic to work.

Yeah surely snape could have used his mind reading powers or whatever it was he had to figure that out.

In fairness, it does have internal logic, and it does work. All the HP books work, or they wouldn't have sold zillions. But they get way more picky apart scrutiny than most children's books do.

There are lots of things that have big plot holes but still work. We mostly suspend disbelief and go along with it. Like the Indiana Jones issue in which Indy makes zero difference to the course if events - if he had stayed put at his university the Nazis still would have found Tannis, dug up the Arc, gone to the island, and got their faces melted. Indy's whole contribution was to bring the Arc back to be confiscated by the US gov to stick in a warehouse and ignore. Doesn't stop it being a great film!

In TGOF, Voldemort's plan is that Harry's death is meant to be an accident, something that is believable as an underage wizard taking part in the Triwizard tournament. Participants have died in the past. The security restrictions around Hogwarts means that it would be impossible to magically transport Harry away from Hogwarts except at the end of the maze, with the temporary allowance for a portkey. The portkey is tampered with to take Harry to the graveyard instead of out of the maze and back to the judges. If Voldemort had successfully killed Harry, he would be returned to a body and power but without anyone knowing, allowing him to initiate a stealth takeover of the wizard world as noone would be aware he was back.

In the real world, JKR's structure was that each book starts in the summer holidays, and ends at the end of the summer term. That structure needed to be consistently maintained which means bending the plot to fit the structure.

I think Voldamont needs his death eaters to see him defeat Harry, to prove he is strong and secure their suport after 12 years absence. Defeating the tri-wizard champion is better PR spin then defeating a kidnapped school child.

What got when I re-read as an adult, is that the school is literally full of inadequate teachers. Like why does Snape need to be at hogarth? Surely he can still spy for Dumbledore and just aperate/floo in with his reports. They can't be that desperate for the teachers salary, until book 1 Dumbledore had a stone that literally made gold.

Likewise the divernation teacher, she's less overly unpleasant, but hundreds of pupils have been tricked into taking a subject that the other teachers all know is nonsense. They don't even do that many, so it's about 1/6 of their education and they can't change to a useful subject for newts they will have mist the owl work. Also predicting the death of a pupil every year is really mental damaging, considering at that stage they honestly think her prophecys are real, why wouldn't they believe her when so many other 'impossible' thing happen at hogwarts.

Why didn't more people use The Unbreakable Vow? It would have stopped all the spying/deceit/double agents. Why didn't Voldemort make the death eaters take the Vow to always be loyal to him?

Like why does Snape need to be at hogarth?

Because he's a sadistic arsehole who likes bullying children.

In TGOF, Voldemort's plan is that Harry's death is meant to be an accident, something that is believable as an underage wizard taking part in the Triwizard tournament. Participants have died in the past.

Yes, but that's exactly the problem, isn't it? Voldemort's plan involves putting Harry through a series of life and death situations that have killed more experienced wizards. What happens if Harry is killed by a dragon or a merperson or one of the creatures of the maze? Voldemort's stuffed then.

Harry was needed alive at the right time - it can't have been easy to smuggle him out of Hogwarts unseen and I should imagine that the schools' normal defences included disenchantments - otherwise, why would there have been a need for an underground tunnel to the Shrieking Shack?

What I'm more surprised about is Dumbledore's callousness with regards to the DADA teaching post. He admitted he KNEW it was cursed ever since he'd denied Riddle the job and Quirrell can't have been the only tragic death in that time. So why did he hate Remus and an actual Auror that much that he'd put them at risk? I can somewhat understand the other appointments, but those two?

He didn't hate them - he just didn't have any use for them. If you look at Dumbledore's motives through the books, you realise that he only cares about people he has a particular use for; once they're of no more use, he simply doesn't care. Look at how he treated Sirius after the Potters' death. He is a terrifying character in a lot of ways - largely because on the surface he looks like a good guy!

I'm not sure that's totally fair. There's a lot to criticise dumbledore for but James told him Sirius would be secret keeper and then multiple witnesses "saw" Sirius kill Pettigrew. I think it's reasonable he believed it was Sirius who betrayed the Potters. Even Lupin (one of Sirius' best friends) believed it.

The real question is why Hogwarts has any pupils at all considering the blatant disregard of safeguarding, boundary issues between staff and students, and under qualified teaching staff (dumbledore know trelawny and the famous book guy are both blagging their way through)

I think a plot hole is why did James and Lily need an outside secret keeper in the first place. Later on, Bill is the secret keeper of shell cottage, where he lives with Fleur. Why not have James or Lily as secret keeper of where they live?

Yes I was thinking this too.

They’re not allowed to take a broom in year 1.

in the book, wormtail says to Voldemort that he could just kidnap any enemy and Voldemort says that the magic will be stronger if there is a ceremony and a bond around the kidnap.

j think you need to read the books to appreciate the films.

I always understand that Trelawny was at Hogwarts to protect her, because she delivered the Prophecy. She would have been a target if not under the protection of Hogwarts/Dumbledore.

Crouch made sure he didn't die,
.

Because breaking that vow will kill you....

What if Voldy needed to break the bow for his own gain?

You'd be happy to enter perhaps multiple vows?