# potterverse-wizards-are-morons

in the interest of my new year's resolution to not talk about Magic *the gathering* anymore... let's do a quick one about another formerly-beloved magical IP.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYUJ_ODfc8w] "i wished for more HP, and rowling wrote Fantastic Beasts"

this may be a hot take, but the entire harry potter universe has an elephant in the room about how its entire plot works:
wizards are dumb.
And I don't mean, the IP is bad and you shouldn't like it. That's left as an exercise for the reader.
I mean the wizarding world is, canonically, top to bottom, infested with fucking morons.

of course it would be: 
* think about how eagerly your brain will offload thought. quick, what's your friend's sister's boyfriend's birthday? fuck knows, you own a calendar. Give driving directions from your high school to your current favorite bar. Fuck knows, just pull up GPS. How many digits of Pi do you have memorized? In my case, I'm ashamed to say it's more than 3. So it follows that wizards have an attitude of "waving a stick and saying some words works reliably enough, who cares why".
* there is precisely one catch-all gen-ed class at hogwarts. Unrelated, here's a fun game: the next time someone says "they should teach (blank) in schools", ask them what they're going to get rid of in the schedule to make room. Students' schedules have been overfull forever.

Anyway, think about how many plot holes are filled in:

* why are wizards hiding? There's a lot of conflicting information in the books - there's one and only one killing curse, sometimes. Instant death, sometimes. The whole reason harry is a celebrity is that he survived an avada kedavra. So apparently every kid with a wand is walking around with instant death on a stick. how do wizards lose a war against muggles, especially in the past?
* because they don't have as much control of magic as they tell you they do. If a wand and the knowledge of avada kedavra is a handgun with infinite ammo, it still has to be aimed and it takes time to execute, so maybe its feasible for muggles to stab any given wizard by sending 2 townsfolk with pitchforks. 3 to be extra sure.
* why is liquid luck rare? I think it's described as "hard to make", and the obvious counter-argument is "well, some exists, so drink some, then make more". I assume one of 2 answers: that obvious solution never occurred to any wizards, or the adult handing out a bottle of performance enhancing drugs to a child doesn't feel like mentioning some significant downside. Perhaps it's addictive.
* why do wizards have to enslave house-elves to cook and clean when there's a clean-up-the-room spell? has there never been a wizard chef, "Microwavicus"? We do have canonical evidence that the wizarding world extends outside of the UK, after all.
* look at all the construction - the weasleys just magic'd up their house, and whatever building came out is as good as they're ever going to get. Hogwarts couldn't figure out a spiral staircase with regular landings, so they have this complex labyrinth with all kinds of moving parts. Wizards have tardis-camp-tents, and yet not every wizard rents a cheap storage locker to store a port key to their palatial mansion.
* Are spells invented or discovered? Snape apparently created sectum sempra - did he like, upload that to the leylines? or did he just go "wow, wave wand in this motion, say these words... conveniently, it works! i don't know why, but it'll work for you, too!" harry's too dumb to have ever invented a spell, surely, but hermione must have. We see zero evidence that any wizard has ever had an inkling of curiosity about the fundamental nature of magic itself.
* why do evil characters keep demonstrating how much they don't give a shit about their loyal subordinates, but going through trouble to bust them out of jail? because said subordinates are an unfathomably rare specimen of a coworker with some basic competency.
* hi i tore the very fabric of time and space to move this point to the back: they issued a time travel locket to a 3rd grader! to be honest none of the rest of these even matter

no wonder the feared dark lord who couldn't kill an infant got brought back to life and had it re-conquered in a few months.