7 Questions Harry Potter Left Me With

Despite it’s odd flaws and the controversies surrounding it, few debate that the world of Harry Potter is rich and generally well written. Despite that, more lore usually introduces more questions. Fantasy universes are endlessly complex, and Harry Potter introduces it’s own slew of fun questions. These don’t hamper the series in any way, but they offer food for thought.

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1) Metamorphagus VS Animagus

This is pure speculation, but if you’re someone who can change your appearance at will, how does that affect your animal form? People aren’t able to choose which animal they become; it’s inherent to who they are, seemingly apart of their biology. However, one’s human appearance is also supposed to be inherent to who you are. Even if you transfigure yourself or take a Polyjuice potion, you’ll always turn back.

If someone like Tonks could change her human appearance, could she also change aspects of her animal? Could she choose to be a tabby one day, and a ginger cat the next? Even if her particular animal was locked in, couldn’t she at least morph it’s markings? This is someone who can give herself a pig nose or purple hair. A purple haired cat streaking by with a squashy nose would make for quite the sight.

2) Gruesome Polyjuice Possibilities

Polyjuice Potion is only supposed to be used for human transformations. The ingestion of animal hairs leads to only a partial transformation, and one which takes a long time to cure. However, there are too many ways in which this potion could be experimented with, likely to disastrous result. What happens if the hairs of more than one person end up in the brew? What happens if a portion of your own skin slips into your cup?

Is it possible to morph into some mixture of two people? Or would something nasty happen, like growing two sets of organs, or otherwise imploding from the conflict?

What if someone has cancer? Is every cell copied exactly? What if you turn into a baby—how can a smaller brain accommodate your adult intelligence?

The potion shouldn’t be used for animal transformations, but what about other intelligent races? What happens if a human puts centaur hairs or house elf skin into their potion?

The nasty pictures the trio encounter within Most Potente Potions alludes to how such experiments would end: badly.

3) Animal Options

Patronuses, for most people, seem limited to non-magical animals, such as cats, dogs, rabbits, and horses. According to Pottermore, only exceptionally rare wizards can produce animals which are also magical in nature, but what are the options? Can some wizards produce Patronuses that are dragons? Can some create Grindylows? Wouldn’t it be great if someone could have a Niffler for a Patronus?

A similar question crops up for the Patronus form. Presumably, most become cats, dogs, and basically anything that’s non-magical. However, Animagus are incredibly rare, and so it’s difficult to know what all the possibilities are. Furthermore, Pottermore gives hints that the animal you become can be linked to your Patronus. James Potter produced a stag when he conjured his Patronus, but he also became one.

As your Patronus can change through a dramatic event, can your animal as well? Is your animal locked in after your first transformation? Or could someone who would have become a cat had they changed earlier end up being a wolf? It seems likely that your animal form wouldn’t change, but there have been no recorded instances where someone became an Animagus, and then had their Patronus form shift. As they are so uncommon, it’s hard to know.

It’s not clear, either, if someone’s Animagus form could be something rarer, such as a Phoenix, or a Unicorn. Even digging through Pottermore creates as many questions as it answers.

4) Magical Crime

The Imperius Curse is cited as something that causes problems when trying to charge someone with a crime, but what about the use of Polyjuice Potion? Unlike the Imperius Curse, the use of the potion isn’t illegal and is, despite it’s difficult ingredients list, not the hardest to procure. When dealing with something that common, but dramatic in it’s affects, how common is identity theft?

Mad Eye Moody is captured by the imposter, Barty Crouch Jr, and none, including Dumbledore, are the wiser. This is but one instant, but there must be more. Wouldn’t identity theft become a frequent problem? If a perpetrator escapes, how does a falsely accused victim prove that someone stole his hair and committed the crime in his place?

Transfiguration may also be used to morph your appearance, either so you look like another person or so you have the head of a shark. Such spells make the ol’ ski mask over the head trick look lame, and leaves one wondering why storefront robberies aren’t a more common occurrence.

A Metamorphagus could become the world’s greatest thief, turning into a new person with each heist with relatively little effort. The real world has criminals who resort to plastic surgery when on the lam, but for someone like Tonks it would require only a minute of pained squinting to disappear. An Animagus, too, has an easy time hiding out, as evidenced by Sirius’s escapade as a dog.

Furthermore, the above examples only cover those scenarios where you manipulate your own appearance, without exploring the implications of marrying someone secretly loaded on love potion or transfiguring someone into a beetle so you can quietly step on them.

5) Animal Transformation

Patronuses and Animagi present their own questions, but so does any magic which involves animal transfiguration. There are spells which allow wizards to turn objects into animals. No spells can reawaken the dead, but apparently they can create life from nothing. The biology of a dog would be fairly complicated, including it’s consciousness and DNA. Yet a seventeen year old can wave his wand, and a dog appears.

Lily creates a fish, Frances, for Professor Slughorn. The fish in question remains alive for years, not disappearing until Lily herself is killed. This would imply, then, that the life force of the animal is tied to whoever created it, granted it’s not destroyed before then.

Still, are these animals “real?” Do they think and feel as deeply as ordinary animals? Can they interact with other animals, and produce offspring? The question is enough to hurt your head.

There’s even the reverse question. Real animals may be turned into objects, such as water goblets. In the films, this includes Animagi, as Ron is able to turn Peter into a fur covered cup with a rat tail poking out. Yet what happens? Is it like a temporary death for the animal? Do they cease to be conscious…or are they alive the whole time, paralyzed and unable to help themselves? If an animal remains in an object state for a prolonged period, do they still age? Some are improperly turned, leading to hedgehog turned pin cushions shying away from needles; if they remain semi-conscious, fully aware that they are being filled with pins…well, the animal cruelty implications there aren’t great.

When you think about animal transfiguration enough, it can become downright gruesome.

6) Dragon Breeding

Dragons are divided into distinct species, such as the Hungarian Horntail or the Welsh Green, and yet they are considered members of the same species. They all hatch from eggs, which are usually heated by their mother’s fires, and the mother dragon will guard a whole clutch of them before they hatch. Across types, birth seems the same, which begs the question: what happens when different species meet? Is it legal to breed two different dragons together? Moreover, if such matings are possible, why are more hybrids not encountered? Are mixes that rare?

Other creatures may be illegally bred, including non-magic animals with magical. It’s not always clear how much of this is through biology, or magical manipulation, but if other, seemingly very different, creatures can mix, why not dragons?

It does seem like magic could bridge whatever divide there would be, and a short story following Hagrid and an attempted breeding session could be…illuminating.

7) Human Giant Crosses

Hagrid and Madame Maxime are great characters, but one wonders how they were actually created. The size discrepancy between a human and a giant is remarkable. Some giants make skyscrapers look tiny. Therefore, a union between a human and a giant should be impossible. Even the gentlest giant would be wont to step on her suitor (and most giants aren’t gentle). Her own child would be at risk of getting crushed the moment he was born, and one also wonders about the type of human or giant who would even be attracted to the other.

It’s possible Hogwarts has a sex ed class in which, between sniggers, students learn how this works…but that’s not likely to be addressed in a series of books for children. Perhaps giant biology works differently, but we will never know.

A world rife with transformation, mind manipulation, and sentient pin cushions is bound to raise it’s share of questions. All in all, these questions only increase the appeal of the series, spawning questions which in themselves could lead to others creating their own stories to answer them.

What questions has the wizarding world left you with? What stories would you make up to answer them?