Harry Potter, especially in the first few books, is really not hard fiction at all. Rowling’s worldbuilding is only there to make for a nice, somewhat magical backdrop for a children’s story. Close to none of the in-universe rules she sets up really work if you look at them hard enough.
It starts with Wingardium Leviosa (and many other spells) blatantly breaking the laws of thermodynamics, thus allowing for infinite energy generation and thus infinite matter generation, but this continues not only throughout the magic system but also throughout every other system she sets up. Because most of it is nothing but a whimsical caricature of real things.
The money system is a caricature of the old British pre-decimal £sd money system.
Quidditch is a caricature of football (thousands of ways to perform a foul), rugby (brutal tackling and violence on the pitch) and cricket (a game can last for months) rolled into one.
The house system and house cup are only slightly embellished versions of what exists in real-life British boarding schools.
Just a few examples. The books are specifically not written in a rational-logical way. Attacking that is so easy that it’s just boring. It’s like proving that raindeer noses don’t glow bright or that gingerbread lacks the static properties to be used to build life-sized houses for witches.
Harry Potter, especially in the first few books, is really not hard fiction at all. Rowling’s worldbuilding is only there to make for a nice, somewhat magical backdrop for a children’s story. Close to none of the in-universe rules she sets up really work if you look at them hard enough.
It starts with Wingardium Leviosa (and many other spells) blatantly breaking the laws of thermodynamics, thus allowing for infinite energy generation and thus infinite matter generation, but this continues not only throughout the magic system but also throughout every other system she sets up. Because most of it is nothing but a whimsical caricature of real things.
The money system is a caricature of the old British pre-decimal £sd money system.
Quidditch is a caricature of football (thousands of ways to perform a foul), rugby (brutal tackling and violence on the pitch) and cricket (a game can last for months) rolled into one.
The house system and house cup are only slightly embellished versions of what exists in real-life British boarding schools.
Just a few examples. The books are specifically not written in a rational-logical way. Attacking that is so easy that it’s just boring. It’s like proving that raindeer noses don’t glow bright or that gingerbread lacks the static properties to be used to build life-sized houses for witches.