5 Creepy Details in Harry Potter Only Adults Will Notice
When she wrote the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling created an incredible fictional universe. But the implications of that world can be a little… well, disturbing.
Here are five facts from Harry Potter that you didn't think about as a kid, but will get increasingly creepy the more you think about them.
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Mad-Eye Moody can see through clothes
Here's the bit from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:
'Nice socks, Potter,' Moody growled as he passed, his magical eye staring through Harry's robes.
This detail is sinister enough without the added fact that Moody works at a school full of children and teenagers. Oh yeah – and that's not really Mad-Eye Moody, it's a deranged Dark Wizard. It's hard to believe the only clothing he ever looked through was socks. **Shudder**
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Bigoted people have a lot of power
We know that many members of the magical community consider Muggles to be 'beneath' them. The same wizards who consider Muggles to be subhuman have the power to kill them (without ever being detected), abuse or assault them (then erase their memories), rob them (without being held accountable)... the list goes on and on.
History is full of people doing horrific things to people that they consider 'lesser' than themselves – and that's without magic to help them get away with it. Think about Lucius Malfoy having that kind of power and see if you don't get the shivers.
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Moaning Myrtle watched teenage boys in the bath
Ugh. Sorry you died so young Myrtle, but go find a nice boy ghost to play with. Stop hanging out in the boy's washroom and being a pervert.
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Transfiguration between living and inanimate things
Students at Hogwarts practice transfiguration by turning beetles into buttons and vice versa. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Professor McGonagall turns her desk into a pig and back again, to the amazement of the first-year students. Very funny, until you consider what that means.
Has McGonagall just created life? If so, is she essentially murdering the pig when she turns it back into a desk? Or if the pig was sentient – with feelings and thoughts and a soul – is it still alive, but now doomed to live as a desk forever? If the desk was chopped up, would it feel pain? And what about those poor beetles?
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Eleven year olds carrying concealed weapons
'Oh,' you may say, 'wands don't kill people. People with wands kill people.' A fat lot of good that will do you when a prepubescent child gets mad and accidentally slices your head off. Or when Neville Longbottom hits the wrong syllable in a complicated Latin word and you get blown to smithereens.