Debunked Harry Potter plot holes decaffeinated fans thought they discovered

Various sites like to draw your attention with provoking titles like “things you didn’t know” or “plot holes that may ruin this and that”.

But word to the wise young witches and wizards, they are only drawing your attention and baiting you to click and disagree with them.

And, yes, here’s me disagreeing with them. Not only did I click on every such title, but I also actually want to make a study and prove my point on why I disagree, so here goes.

Debunked Plot Holes

Oh, yes…spoilers ahead on the off chance anyone hasn’t read the books or seen the movies, but then again you wouldn’t be here. Or, if you haven’t, you came to the right place, just don’t spoil it.

The Chamber of Secrets

As you probably already know, it turns out towards the end of the story that Harry Potter himself was a horcrux Voldemort never intended to create, as Dumbledore explains. So, if this is true, and the story already establishes that horcruxes are destroyed by basilisk venom, then Harry should have exploded in the second book/movie when his hand is impaled on the basilisk’s tooth.

Well, if things are not thoroughly explained to us, why does everybody immediately assume it is a plot hole? There could be any number of reasons Harry didn’t die then, like:

Maybe human horcruxes work differently and we didn’t know this?

Maybe the enchantments placed over him by his parents and Dumbledore protect him from various things? Dumbledore did know about Harry being a horcrux before he died, so…

Harry is actually an offspring of Salazar Slytherin and maybe basilisk venom doesn’t affect him so?

Maybe human horcruxes do get destroyed by basilisk venom, just not instantly and maybe Harry would have died eventually if not for phoenix tears?

Thestrals

Harry should have seen the thestrals pulling his carriage at the end of book 4 “Goblet of Fire” because he had just seen Cedric Diggory die.

This one was answered by the writer, J.K. Rowling, herself long ago. In fact, she gave this same answer to both this question and to why Harry didn’t see the thestrals earlier because he was his parents die as a baby…

According to the author herself, the death needs to “sink in” for the person to then open his or her eyes in a way that they can see thestrals.

Now, many of the fans then indicated that a month passed between the death of Cedric and harry leaving Hogwarts at the end of term, so why not see them then. But the truth is, even a month is perhaps too short for a fourteen-year-old to understand truly the death they witnessed.

Portraits

People also pointed out that, according to the books and the author herself, the magical portraits in the story are merely imprints of the person they portray. This means that they cannot produce real feelings, complex thought processes, and similar things, unlike ghosts, who are more “fully realized” entities let’s say.

The complaints were then targeted at multiple occasions on which these portraits acted differently. They advise living characters in the story, they express emotions, and they behave in all sorts of ways that, according to this rule, surpasses their limitations as simple imprints.

However, what people are forgetting is that this is a magic world with wizards and witches.

Perhaps some portraits are enchanted differently?

Perhaps Dumbledore used some spell to get more out of his portraits?

There are numerous ways in which this can be debunked.