I love Harry Potter. It’s the book series that inspired me to become an author. That being said, the series isn’t without its plot holes. The worst example, in my opinion, are the Department of Mysteries chapters in “Order of the Phoenix.”
Any Harry Potter fan knows what happened. While Harry is taking his History of Magic exam at the end of the school year, he receives a dream message from Voldemort and believes that Sirius is being tortured. Harry, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Ron, and Ginny go to Umbridge’s office and Harry tries to use the Floo network to see if Sirius is still in Grimmauld Place. They are promptly captured by Umbridge. Harry and Hermione led her into the forest and Umbridge is carried off by the centaurs. At sundown, the six heroes ride thestrals to the Ministry of Magic, travel through the Department of Mysteries, and find the Death Eaters. There’s a fight, the Order of the Phoenix arrive, and Sirius is killed. Dumbledore and Voldemort have their duel and Harry is transported back to Hogwarts just as the sun rises.
On the surface, this sounds like a pretty straight-forward, action-packed plot. Normally, I would find this enjoyable and just accept it for what it is. The problem is the timing. In June, the sun goes down in northern Scotland at about 9:15pm and the sun rises at about 4:45am. This means from the time Harry and the others leave on the thestrals to when Harry appears in Dumbledore’s office, we have seven and a half hours in between.
Going back a bit, Harry starts his History of Magic test at 2:00pm. The book doesn’t say for sure, but I think the test lasted about two hours. Harry has the dream vision right before the test ends, so our starting point is 4:00pm. Harry talks to Hermione and Ron and explains the vision, while they try and convince him it was all a dream. Then, Harry has to race upstairs to get the invisibility cloak and enter Umbridge’s office. He talks to Kreacher, who lies and says that Sirius is gone. Umbridge then catches Harry in her office. Hermione convinces her to follow her and Harry into the Forbidden Forest. I can’t see any of this taking too long. It should be about 4:30pm by this point.
Harry, Hermione, and Umbridge enter the forest and wander around for a while. The book says that they walked for a long time, but Umbridge isn’t too patient. So, while it may have seemed like a long time to Harry (who is worried about Sirius, so of course it feels like a long time), it probably wasn’t any more than thirty minutes. Their confrontation with the centaurs couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. We’re now at about 5:15pm.
Luna, Neville, Ron, and Ginny catch up to Harry and Hermione almost immediately after Umbridge is dragged off. They then have a short argument about who’s going to save Sirius and who’s staying behind. During this time, quite a few thestrals show up. Luna helps Hermione, Ginny, and Ron onto their thestrals. This can’t have taken long. It’s now about 5:30pm.
Now, we come to our first problem. By my calculations, it should have only been about an hour and a half since Harry had his dream vision. If that was the case, though, Harry’s team would have left Hogwarts roughly four hours before sundown. The only way for them to leave at 9:15-9:30pm would be for Harry to have his dream vision at about 8:00pm. But that would have been a six hour History of Magic test.
Assuming that Harry leaves at sundown, however, now we have another problem with time. Harry says that he had never moved so fast. That would make sense. The Hogwarts Express leaves at 11:00am and presumably gets to the school at about 7:00pm. That would be an eight hour trip. If we’re at about 9:15pm, we still have seven and a half hours to go.
Harry and the others get to the Ministry and race to the Department of Mysteries. They then spend some time going through the brain room, the Veil of Death room, are stopped by the room where the Unspeakables study love, and finally make it to the Hall of Prophecies. Honestly, they don’t seem to spend much time in any of these rooms, so I’m saying it’s been thirty minutes since they entered the Ministry.
They have their confrontation with the Death Eaters (fifteen minutes), followed by a battle, where they get split up into two groups and reunite in the Veil of Death room (forty-five minutes). That adds another hour.
Only now do the Order of the Phoenix show up. It’s been about a hour and a half since they entered the Ministry. There’s another short battle, where Sirius sadly dies at the end and Harry chases after Bellatrix (fifteen minutes). Dumbledore and Voldemort have their duel. It is impressive, but again, I don’t think it took too long (fifteen minutes). Two hours after Harry arrives at the Ministry, Fudge enters and sees Voldemort. Harry is then sent back to Hogwarts at 4:45am, just in time for sunrise.
If the Department of Mysteries battle really took about two hours, then Harry would have reached the Ministry at 2:45am. That is five and a half hours on his thestral. So, yeah, it does work. Harry still travels faster on a thestral than on the Hogwarts Express. He can still make it back to Hogwarts on time. The problem is: why was Harry so slow?
Harry believes that Sirius is being tortured by Voldemort. He doesn’t find out he’s been tricked until at least half-an-hour after he enters the Ministry. That’s about 3:15am. If the vision happened at 4:00pm the previous day, that’s over eleven hours. Why would Voldemort still be torturing Sirius eleven hours later? Wouldn’t he have gotten bored and simply killed Sirius long before Harry made it to the Hall of Prophecies?
For that matter, what took the Order of the Phoenix so long to get there? They don’t show up until about 4:15am. Dumbledore said Snape warned the Order that Harry was gone and they left immediately. I don’t think it would take Snape too long to search the Forbidden Forest for Harry and Hermione. So, either Snape told the Order and they took their sweet time getting there or, more likely, Snape delayed as long as possible and only told the Order at the last minute.
Any way you look at this, there are problems with the timing. There are just too many things that could have gone wrong. The biggest is that Voldemort could have killed Sirius at any point during that five-and-a-half hour flight. Why didn’t Harry simply ask his thestral to fly him back to the castle or Hogsmede? He could have Flooed directly to the Ministry. If Harry was as worried about Sirius as we know he is, why wouldn’t he go for the fastest option?
I love Harry Potter, despite my criticisms. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have gone through all these calculations. I just wish the author had thought this sequence through a bit more. If she had sent Harry directly to the Ministry through the Floo network, it would have kept the readers’ adrenaline up, ready for an action scene. Instead, the tour through the Department of Mysteries, while interesting, ruined the pacing for me.
Still, you can’t deny J.K. Rowling is an amazing author. People are still talking about Harry Potter, even after all these years. Thanks for all your hard work, J.K. Rowling. I will always love your books.