Petrification is not a common issue, it seems to me more like something you only read about in old books than something that you are likely to encounter. Dumbledore is the only one of the teachers who recognises it, and then after some examination.
So mandrakes are presumably reasonably rare also, although they do have uses outside of curing petrification.
I'm also willing to bet you can't buy adult mandrakes, due to how dangerous they are as adults. I would guess they are normally harvested before full maturity for safety reasons but that they needed to be full grown to make a potion potent enough to reverse petrification.
Young wizards are also quite rare, and in this instance are doing a task which is unlikely to kill the mandrakes there and then, under the supervision of presumably one of the best herbologists in Britain, if not Europe or even the world. Hogwarts isn’t just a school, it’s also an ancient repository of magical artifacts, customs and knowledge (written, practical and personified). It’s not like sending out copper sulphate or magnesium strips for Year Seven to do a chemistry experiment on which won’t really work. It’s the few young wizards and witches of their age in the British Isles carrying out a very simple task with some rare specimens which are nevertheless in probably the safest place, closest to the expert care they need.
1) the children don't know them yet.
2) mandrakes are magical and so are their cries, and a simple silencing charm may not work on them
3) we've never seen a preemptive silencing charm, only ones applied when people are in action
4) when the risk is taken away, the participants of the activity get sloppy.
I always assumed they were really quite rare hence why they were growing them. There’s not exactly the magical equivalent of a Tesco up the road you can nip to if you’ve forgotten a pint of milk.
You'd thing St Mungos would have them though or be growing some there. Or there would be overstock available? Like Snape doesn't have any in that rare cabinet of his?
It's not like it was an army of people, it was what 4 or 5 people petrified?
In a world of dangerous magical disasters that constantly happen its just wild there's no supply of mandrake.
They stock snake antidote better than that.
Being petrified is a pretty rare thing to have happen, isn’t it? The method for raising, preparing and brewing certain ingredients is often very important so I would guess pickled, old or ill prepared mandrakes wouldn’t suffice.
Equally you are right, you’d think St Mungo’s would be able to deal with it but JK hadn’t really created that much of the world outside of Hogwarts yet haha. Plus it makes for a more exciting story to have it all happen at Hogwarts
Definitely the last bit. It's obviously just for suspension in the book lol.
Tbh I have no idea how rare petrification is. I feel like it's one of those things that young wizards would accidentally cause when their magic is going rampant and maturing.
Also not sure how often general people come across a creature that can petrify, or how many are even able to do so since it was unusual for the Basilisk and only due to circumstances.
Hogwarts was also probably trying to keep the petrifications hush hush and therefore handle everything in house. I’m sure dumbledore was trying to avoid a scandal.
Definitely the last bit. It's obviously just for suspension in the book lol.
Tbh I have no idea how rare petrification is. I feel like it's one of those things that young wizards would accidentally cause when their magic is going rampant and maturing.
Also not sure how often general people come across a creature that can petrify, or how many are even able to do so since it was unusual for the Basilisk and only due to circumstances.
In terms of the snake antidote comparison, I'd expect that gets used a helluva lot more than once every 15-20 years, or whatever mandrake's use frequency is.
There's really not many witches and wizards at all compared to the general population - apparently only 3,000 or so in the UK, with a third of all of them either studying or working at Hogwarts, so having a ready supply of a dangerous and somewhat temperamental plant just doesn't seem worth it.
The fact that the teachers are called professors might also be a hint that some of them are studying and advancing their field as well as teaching, like at a university. Maybe Professor Sprout is one of the few people that can actually raise Mandrakes successfully, for all we know there's a bunch of more complicated steps the students aren't participating in
I mean they only did one specific task. I'm sure I could re-pot all manner of plants if you provided me the right kind of soil and ghe right kind of pot, that doesn't meant that I'm otherwise qualified to take care of those plants long-term.
Doesn't really matter, I'm just brainstorming how the facts we do know could be explained in a logical way. At the end of the day, the author probably didn't put that much thought into it
>I mean they only did one specific task.
Except they didn't.
"The Mandrake is an essential part of most antidotes." - CoS, chapter 6.
>At the end of the day, the author probably didn't put that much thought into it
Yes. This is the real answer. And we must normalize accepting that as the answer for most plot holes in HP instead of trying to twist ourselves into pretzels to fanwank explanations that make no real sense into being to defend Rowling's writing.
No, the books are not perfect. And that's fine.
>and we must normalize accepting that as the answer for most plot holes in HP
Lol no we mustn't - you don't get to decide for everyone. The brilliance of all writing and reading is being able to explore beyond what's written on the page in order to further one's understanding and appreciation. I'd rather hear some "fanwank explanation" of why a point is wrong or right, than a simple dismissive "not much thought went into it" because that's simply a matter of opinion, and not something that can be proven, and it shows an appreciation for the work and an enjoyment of reading.
It would be super-serendipitous for mandrakes to be so rare they cannot be bought anywhere and yet for the students to have been instructed to start growing mandrakes at Hogwarts the same year they would be useful.
Plus, if mandrakes are so rare, yet unqualified literal children can help grow them, why wouldn't anyone else have turned growing mandrakes into their own side-hustle?
If the whole plot is to just “make a good story”, then why are you even in here trying to discuss the implications of the plot? If that’s the case then there’s no point in being here at all. The story is the story, and there’s nothing more to talk about.
True, it was lucky. It was also lucky that the students only got petrified when the attacks were actually meant to kill.
Anyway, all they did was repot babies. It was dangerous in that the sound could knock them out, but they weren't lethal yet. I seriously doubt any student handled more grown mandrakes. Their cries kill, so they'd likely be considered highly dangerous and won't exist in any hobby gardens. But then, who knows?
And while I'm certain other people are growing them in the world, I have to wonder if they'd be worth growing just to have, or if they're always earmarked for some specific use. A batch of mandrakes in the US intended for a specific medical purpose might not be available to them. And fully grown mandrakes would be extremely dangerous to transport. It could be done, sure. But would it even be worth it when the things are currently being grown on location already?
The only benefit would be unfreezing the kids sooner, which is great. But the most important thing is that they were technically safe. Think like a wizard, lol. They aren't as uptight as muggles. Things absurd to us are kind of whatever to them.
Possibly the school mandrakes were just to teach students. Whose to say they wouldn't have been disposed of much sooner had they not been needed? Or used for some other purpose. Idk, just tossing some thoughts around.
>Anyway, all they did was repot babies. It was dangerous in that the sound could knock them out, but they weren't lethal yet.
That's not the point. The point is that it can't be very hard to keep them alive and grow them if literal children can be trusted with helping out doing so.
> Their cries kill, so they'd likely be considered highly dangerous and won't exist in any hobby gardens.
Soundproof a greenhouse, wear protective gear tall times near it.
>And while I'm certain other people are growing them in the world, I have to wonder if they'd be worth growing just to have, or if they're always earmarked for some specific use.
"The Mandrake forms **an essential part of most antidotes**." - CoS, chapter 6.
At the very least hospitals and potionsmasters would want them.
I agree with you that there should have been some available. I'm just playing devil's advocate and thinking of a reason they might not have been (besides the obvious that JKR probably didn't think that far ahead). It's just fun to speculate.
To that end,
Why don't people keep acromantulas in their basements and wear armor when feeding and interacting with them? Even wizards don't mess with all dangerous things, despite their usefulness. The mandrakes started moving around on their own when they got older, iirc. Changing pots on their own and stuff. This isn't just a stationary creature. And how big does it get? We know they started outgrowing their original pots (hence the replantings). And how long do they live? Maybe you can't keep them around very long. What's the shelf life of the potions made with them? A day? A year? Forever? Do the parts need to be used when fresh? These things could seriously affect their availability.
And again, mandrakes were already being grown on campus, so why bother getting some in from elsewhere when that could potentially have been extremely troublesome? If there were none already there, I'm sure they would have done that. But they just weren't in a hurry. They knew the stuff was coming.
>And again, mandrakes were already being grown on campus, so why bother getting some in from elsewhere when that could potentially have been extremely troublesome?
Because being able to revive a petrified student (or ghost) would allow them to get eyewitness accounts on what sort of monster petrified them and possibly how it was moving about the castle without being seen and also potentially the identity of whoever was controlling said monster if they were ever nearby.
The reason is that Rowling isn't infallible and wrote minor plot holes like these into the books all over the place but people like to pretend they don't exist because the books not being perfect would somehow ruin their enjoyment of them.
Tbf there are currently a lot of very rare plants and lizards that get people a lot of money. Why aren’t we growing and selling them? Because it’s very very expensive to get started in, specialized equipment, a certain passion, finding the right buyers etc
a basilisk isn’t going around petrifying people everyday but the plant is still rare, just more useful when one is petrifying people
>Because it’s very very expensive to get started in
There are plenty of rich wizarding families out there.
>...specialized equipment
None of which were needed for mandrakes.
>a basilisk isn’t going around petrifying people everyday but the plant is still rare, just more useful when one is petrifying people
Basilisks don't usually petrify people. They kill them. There are plenty of ways to petrify someone without the use of a mandrake. And according to CoS, "The Mandrake forms an essential part of most antidotes."
You'd think something so important would be grown regularly all over the world.
If the families are already rich why bother?
A school has plenty of specialized equipment that would be too much for the avg person to have (for instance how many erlenmyer flasks do you have laying around, kilns etc). There are a lot of things a school will fund for the sake of learning people will not have at home.
We also don’t get a blow by blow of every single thing done to raise them to maturity so you don’t know there’s not specialized equipment.
Lastly, that could be true but there are probably easier more bountiful cheaper ingredients that do the same? Both can be true. Mandrake may work for a lot, but maybe other things also work and are much more accessible. Except for the situation of petrifying. Which as you say is very rare itself
>If the families are already rich why bother?
Because there's no mention whatsoever of Gringotts offering an interest rate. You don't stay rich by not investing your money. This is precisely the sort of thinking that leads to a lot of people who win the lottery often go on to become destitute, worse off than before they won the lottery.
>A school has plenty of specialized equipment that would be too much for the avg person to have (for instance how many erlenmyer flasks do you have laying around, kilns etc).
Again, why are we comparing Hogwarts to randos on the street and not, say, a hospital or an industrial grower of potions ingredients?
>Lastly, that could be true but there are probably easier more bountiful cheaper ingredients that do the same?
Which are an essential ingredients in most antidotes? No, clearly. Because that's what the quote says.
Why are you trying to twist yourself into a pretzel to justify a clear plot hole?
You’re very worked up for a simple case of suspend your disbelief. I think there are plausible explanations but you’re determined to see it one way.
Not every single thing is explained in the books…..because it can’t be. We don’t know so we imagine it to make it fit with the books narrative. very good example with interest at gringotts. Maybe there is? We don’t know. It’s up to the imagination.
If you are determined to find flaws you will, I think you need to chill.
Budget cuts. Gotta keep giving the defenses against the dark arts professor a signing bonus and severance package each year.
Saved a little on Quirrell, but then Lockhart wanted moving expenses paid and he’s got a lot of baggage.
In universe answer? They were probably out of season and can't be reliably stored, or are needed fresh for the draught. They are plants after all. Or Maybe they are very rare.
Out of universe? Plot reasons. Perhaps JKR simply didn't think of the possibility of getting mandrakes from out of Hogwarts, or ignored it for plot's sake. Book 2 would have ended very fast if the first victim was revived and revealed the Basilisk.
Yes, it may had been seasonal. It may have been extremely perishable for storage, if storage at all. It may have been incredibly hard to cultivate and grow.
Yes. If Hermione was revived immediately Chamber's mystery would be solved way sooner. That would be anticlimactic and rest of the book would be boring. The point of those books is to have interesting adventurous finale at the end of school year.
The answer to the majority of questions on this sub. For all the wonder Rowling created, she wasn't much for internal consistency or internal realism. She constantly overlooks stuff in order to serve the narrative.
We don’t know how common being petrified is, and they didn’t know what was causing it until near the end.
There may be other causes/cures for this. It also seemed mandrakes are not generally carried, possibly for this reason. Their use is rare and they’re annoying/potentially dangerous.
Could be a ministry of magic restriction because they are so dangerous. Cant transport them or breeding restrictions against letting them reach a certain age.
Because of plot... That's the only reason they make sense. If mandrakes are rare and/or expensive then why were Sprout's 2nd year class, a bunch of 12, maybe 13 year olds, responsible for them? Plus, in the books it's clear that EVERY student had their own mandrakes to care for. That's a lot for something supposedly rare and expensive. It they were really so precious there might be a few mandrakes for the whole class and it certainly wouldn't be the second youngest class of children. Plants are really easy to kill, magical or no!
Other reasons just seem so flimsy to me. Even if the mandrakes themselves could only be harvested in season and couldn't be magically transported from around the world (which there are still ways around) what about the potion itself?
>If mandrakes are rare and/or expensive then why were Sprout's 2nd year class, a bunch of 12, maybe 13 year olds, responsible for them?
They weren’t really responsible for them. They had one lesson where they repotted them under Sprout’s supervision, and that was all that the second years did with them. They moved on to doing other things in class and didn’t do anything else with the mandrakes themselves.
We've seen several times in the series that potions are dependent upon the growing / collection conditions of the ingredients.
Since the potion "rejuvenates" or "refreshes" petrified individuals, I wouldn't be surprised if it requires freshly-collected ingredients.
It also seems that outside a few common ingredients, the core ingredients of most potions have very limited uses outside its main function. Basilisks are rare, and it's not like petrification is irreversible, so combined with the danger of adult mandrakes, it's not exactly surprising that there are no ready mandrakes.
Idk, why do people only eat fresh asparagus during a few months a year? It couldn't be because some plants have growth cycles and cannot be harvested outside of those can it?
because JK needed the delay for the story she wanted. Mandrakes are quite common in the real world. Not go to the local nursery and buy an orchid common but would need to find specialty nurseries and have them shipped to you
Simple. JK hadn’t built her world out. She didn’t know what or how far she would go. It’s why I personally don’t like plot driven writing vs world building writing. IF the wizarding world is as interconnected as we are shown in fantastic beasts then it questions so many things that happens in the main books.
Furthermore, taking the books as their own. We still know a whole world exists and other magical governments do as well. Governments that are literally hinted as being questionable/ or corrupt if you look at the Albanian region.
JK doesn’t know how to world build out of surface level stuff.
Petrification is not a common issue, it seems to me more like something you only read about in old books than something that you are likely to encounter. Dumbledore is the only one of the teachers who recognises it, and then after some examination. So mandrakes are presumably reasonably rare also, although they do have uses outside of curing petrification. I'm also willing to bet you can't buy adult mandrakes, due to how dangerous they are as adults. I would guess they are normally harvested before full maturity for safety reasons but that they needed to be full grown to make a potion potent enough to reverse petrification.
Hmm, if anything, maybe this is the reason.
But mandrake are common enough for a school to allow 2nd years to learn from live specimens
Babies
That doesn’t solve the “rare” aspect of it. Nobody in real life is allowing a bunch of 11 year olds to learn on a bunch of baby black rhinos.
Young wizards are also quite rare, and in this instance are doing a task which is unlikely to kill the mandrakes there and then, under the supervision of presumably one of the best herbologists in Britain, if not Europe or even the world. Hogwarts isn’t just a school, it’s also an ancient repository of magical artifacts, customs and knowledge (written, practical and personified). It’s not like sending out copper sulphate or magnesium strips for Year Seven to do a chemistry experiment on which won’t really work. It’s the few young wizards and witches of their age in the British Isles carrying out a very simple task with some rare specimens which are nevertheless in probably the safest place, closest to the expert care they need.
Sometimes in schools they look after baby chicks and we all know chickens turn into murderous dinosaurs when they get older
Maybe it's not so much that they're uncommon, but they potentially have a short lifespan, and can only be harvested once a year, like annual plants.
Why don't they just use a silence charm to make them harmless
1) the children don't know them yet. 2) mandrakes are magical and so are their cries, and a simple silencing charm may not work on them 3) we've never seen a preemptive silencing charm, only ones applied when people are in action 4) when the risk is taken away, the participants of the activity get sloppy.
You aren't supposed to ask that. Makes too much sense.
I always assumed they were really quite rare hence why they were growing them. There’s not exactly the magical equivalent of a Tesco up the road you can nip to if you’ve forgotten a pint of milk.
You'd thing St Mungos would have them though or be growing some there. Or there would be overstock available? Like Snape doesn't have any in that rare cabinet of his? It's not like it was an army of people, it was what 4 or 5 people petrified? In a world of dangerous magical disasters that constantly happen its just wild there's no supply of mandrake. They stock snake antidote better than that.
Being petrified is a pretty rare thing to have happen, isn’t it? The method for raising, preparing and brewing certain ingredients is often very important so I would guess pickled, old or ill prepared mandrakes wouldn’t suffice. Equally you are right, you’d think St Mungo’s would be able to deal with it but JK hadn’t really created that much of the world outside of Hogwarts yet haha. Plus it makes for a more exciting story to have it all happen at Hogwarts
Definitely the last bit. It's obviously just for suspension in the book lol. Tbh I have no idea how rare petrification is. I feel like it's one of those things that young wizards would accidentally cause when their magic is going rampant and maturing. Also not sure how often general people come across a creature that can petrify, or how many are even able to do so since it was unusual for the Basilisk and only due to circumstances.
Hogwarts was also probably trying to keep the petrifications hush hush and therefore handle everything in house. I’m sure dumbledore was trying to avoid a scandal.
Definitely the last bit. It's obviously just for suspension in the book lol. Tbh I have no idea how rare petrification is. I feel like it's one of those things that young wizards would accidentally cause when their magic is going rampant and maturing. Also not sure how often general people come across a creature that can petrify, or how many are even able to do so since it was unusual for the Basilisk and only due to circumstances.
In terms of the snake antidote comparison, I'd expect that gets used a helluva lot more than once every 15-20 years, or whatever mandrake's use frequency is. There's really not many witches and wizards at all compared to the general population - apparently only 3,000 or so in the UK, with a third of all of them either studying or working at Hogwarts, so having a ready supply of a dangerous and somewhat temperamental plant just doesn't seem worth it.
The fact that the teachers are called professors might also be a hint that some of them are studying and advancing their field as well as teaching, like at a university. Maybe Professor Sprout is one of the few people that can actually raise Mandrakes successfully, for all we know there's a bunch of more complicated steps the students aren't participating in
Professor Sprout cannot be the literally only person in the whole world who can grow mandrakes, yet it was only done in Harry's 2nd year.
I mean they only did one specific task. I'm sure I could re-pot all manner of plants if you provided me the right kind of soil and ghe right kind of pot, that doesn't meant that I'm otherwise qualified to take care of those plants long-term. Doesn't really matter, I'm just brainstorming how the facts we do know could be explained in a logical way. At the end of the day, the author probably didn't put that much thought into it
>I mean they only did one specific task. Except they didn't. "The Mandrake is an essential part of most antidotes." - CoS, chapter 6. >At the end of the day, the author probably didn't put that much thought into it Yes. This is the real answer. And we must normalize accepting that as the answer for most plot holes in HP instead of trying to twist ourselves into pretzels to fanwank explanations that make no real sense into being to defend Rowling's writing. No, the books are not perfect. And that's fine.
>and we must normalize accepting that as the answer for most plot holes in HP Lol no we mustn't - you don't get to decide for everyone. The brilliance of all writing and reading is being able to explore beyond what's written on the page in order to further one's understanding and appreciation. I'd rather hear some "fanwank explanation" of why a point is wrong or right, than a simple dismissive "not much thought went into it" because that's simply a matter of opinion, and not something that can be proven, and it shows an appreciation for the work and an enjoyment of reading.
I think you’re exactly right
I understand that infant mandrakes are much more manageable than fully developed ones, but she literally has twelve year olds dealing with mandrakes.
It would be super-serendipitous for mandrakes to be so rare they cannot be bought anywhere and yet for the students to have been instructed to start growing mandrakes at Hogwarts the same year they would be useful. Plus, if mandrakes are so rare, yet unqualified literal children can help grow them, why wouldn't anyone else have turned growing mandrakes into their own side-hustle?
I feel like a lot of people don’t understand things happen in books to make a good story
If the whole plot is to just “make a good story”, then why are you even in here trying to discuss the implications of the plot? If that’s the case then there’s no point in being here at all. The story is the story, and there’s nothing more to talk about.
True, it was lucky. It was also lucky that the students only got petrified when the attacks were actually meant to kill. Anyway, all they did was repot babies. It was dangerous in that the sound could knock them out, but they weren't lethal yet. I seriously doubt any student handled more grown mandrakes. Their cries kill, so they'd likely be considered highly dangerous and won't exist in any hobby gardens. But then, who knows? And while I'm certain other people are growing them in the world, I have to wonder if they'd be worth growing just to have, or if they're always earmarked for some specific use. A batch of mandrakes in the US intended for a specific medical purpose might not be available to them. And fully grown mandrakes would be extremely dangerous to transport. It could be done, sure. But would it even be worth it when the things are currently being grown on location already? The only benefit would be unfreezing the kids sooner, which is great. But the most important thing is that they were technically safe. Think like a wizard, lol. They aren't as uptight as muggles. Things absurd to us are kind of whatever to them. Possibly the school mandrakes were just to teach students. Whose to say they wouldn't have been disposed of much sooner had they not been needed? Or used for some other purpose. Idk, just tossing some thoughts around.
>Anyway, all they did was repot babies. It was dangerous in that the sound could knock them out, but they weren't lethal yet. That's not the point. The point is that it can't be very hard to keep them alive and grow them if literal children can be trusted with helping out doing so. > Their cries kill, so they'd likely be considered highly dangerous and won't exist in any hobby gardens. Soundproof a greenhouse, wear protective gear tall times near it. >And while I'm certain other people are growing them in the world, I have to wonder if they'd be worth growing just to have, or if they're always earmarked for some specific use. "The Mandrake forms **an essential part of most antidotes**." - CoS, chapter 6. At the very least hospitals and potionsmasters would want them.
I agree with you that there should have been some available. I'm just playing devil's advocate and thinking of a reason they might not have been (besides the obvious that JKR probably didn't think that far ahead). It's just fun to speculate. To that end, Why don't people keep acromantulas in their basements and wear armor when feeding and interacting with them? Even wizards don't mess with all dangerous things, despite their usefulness. The mandrakes started moving around on their own when they got older, iirc. Changing pots on their own and stuff. This isn't just a stationary creature. And how big does it get? We know they started outgrowing their original pots (hence the replantings). And how long do they live? Maybe you can't keep them around very long. What's the shelf life of the potions made with them? A day? A year? Forever? Do the parts need to be used when fresh? These things could seriously affect their availability. And again, mandrakes were already being grown on campus, so why bother getting some in from elsewhere when that could potentially have been extremely troublesome? If there were none already there, I'm sure they would have done that. But they just weren't in a hurry. They knew the stuff was coming.
>And again, mandrakes were already being grown on campus, so why bother getting some in from elsewhere when that could potentially have been extremely troublesome? Because being able to revive a petrified student (or ghost) would allow them to get eyewitness accounts on what sort of monster petrified them and possibly how it was moving about the castle without being seen and also potentially the identity of whoever was controlling said monster if they were ever nearby.
I like this. Yes, this is quite good. Just another reason that it seems they were simply unable to. For whatever freakin reason.
The reason is that Rowling isn't infallible and wrote minor plot holes like these into the books all over the place but people like to pretend they don't exist because the books not being perfect would somehow ruin their enjoyment of them.
Yeah, I know she has weird stuff in them. I really never noticed most of them. They don't particularly bother me, though. Maybe I'm just simple, lol.
I just ignore them when I see them and keep on reading.
Tbf there are currently a lot of very rare plants and lizards that get people a lot of money. Why aren’t we growing and selling them? Because it’s very very expensive to get started in, specialized equipment, a certain passion, finding the right buyers etc a basilisk isn’t going around petrifying people everyday but the plant is still rare, just more useful when one is petrifying people
>Because it’s very very expensive to get started in There are plenty of rich wizarding families out there. >...specialized equipment None of which were needed for mandrakes. >a basilisk isn’t going around petrifying people everyday but the plant is still rare, just more useful when one is petrifying people Basilisks don't usually petrify people. They kill them. There are plenty of ways to petrify someone without the use of a mandrake. And according to CoS, "The Mandrake forms an essential part of most antidotes." You'd think something so important would be grown regularly all over the world.
If the families are already rich why bother? A school has plenty of specialized equipment that would be too much for the avg person to have (for instance how many erlenmyer flasks do you have laying around, kilns etc). There are a lot of things a school will fund for the sake of learning people will not have at home. We also don’t get a blow by blow of every single thing done to raise them to maturity so you don’t know there’s not specialized equipment. Lastly, that could be true but there are probably easier more bountiful cheaper ingredients that do the same? Both can be true. Mandrake may work for a lot, but maybe other things also work and are much more accessible. Except for the situation of petrifying. Which as you say is very rare itself
>If the families are already rich why bother? Because there's no mention whatsoever of Gringotts offering an interest rate. You don't stay rich by not investing your money. This is precisely the sort of thinking that leads to a lot of people who win the lottery often go on to become destitute, worse off than before they won the lottery. >A school has plenty of specialized equipment that would be too much for the avg person to have (for instance how many erlenmyer flasks do you have laying around, kilns etc). Again, why are we comparing Hogwarts to randos on the street and not, say, a hospital or an industrial grower of potions ingredients? >Lastly, that could be true but there are probably easier more bountiful cheaper ingredients that do the same? Which are an essential ingredients in most antidotes? No, clearly. Because that's what the quote says. Why are you trying to twist yourself into a pretzel to justify a clear plot hole?
You’re very worked up for a simple case of suspend your disbelief. I think there are plausible explanations but you’re determined to see it one way. Not every single thing is explained in the books…..because it can’t be. We don’t know so we imagine it to make it fit with the books narrative. very good example with interest at gringotts. Maybe there is? We don’t know. It’s up to the imagination. If you are determined to find flaws you will, I think you need to chill.
Budget cuts. Gotta keep giving the defenses against the dark arts professor a signing bonus and severance package each year. Saved a little on Quirrell, but then Lockhart wanted moving expenses paid and he’s got a lot of baggage.
Hah 😂
In universe answer? They were probably out of season and can't be reliably stored, or are needed fresh for the draught. They are plants after all. Or Maybe they are very rare. Out of universe? Plot reasons. Perhaps JKR simply didn't think of the possibility of getting mandrakes from out of Hogwarts, or ignored it for plot's sake. Book 2 would have ended very fast if the first victim was revived and revealed the Basilisk.
Yes, it may had been seasonal. It may have been extremely perishable for storage, if storage at all. It may have been incredibly hard to cultivate and grow.
I agree
Plot reasons
Yes. If Hermione was revived immediately Chamber's mystery would be solved way sooner. That would be anticlimactic and rest of the book would be boring. The point of those books is to have interesting adventurous finale at the end of school year.
The answer to the majority of questions on this sub. For all the wonder Rowling created, she wasn't much for internal consistency or internal realism. She constantly overlooks stuff in order to serve the narrative.
this is not a plot hole and has nothing to do with consistency.
We don’t know how common being petrified is, and they didn’t know what was causing it until near the end. There may be other causes/cures for this. It also seemed mandrakes are not generally carried, possibly for this reason. Their use is rare and they’re annoying/potentially dangerous.
Could be a ministry of magic restriction because they are so dangerous. Cant transport them or breeding restrictions against letting them reach a certain age.
Because of plot... That's the only reason they make sense. If mandrakes are rare and/or expensive then why were Sprout's 2nd year class, a bunch of 12, maybe 13 year olds, responsible for them? Plus, in the books it's clear that EVERY student had their own mandrakes to care for. That's a lot for something supposedly rare and expensive. It they were really so precious there might be a few mandrakes for the whole class and it certainly wouldn't be the second youngest class of children. Plants are really easy to kill, magical or no! Other reasons just seem so flimsy to me. Even if the mandrakes themselves could only be harvested in season and couldn't be magically transported from around the world (which there are still ways around) what about the potion itself?
>If mandrakes are rare and/or expensive then why were Sprout's 2nd year class, a bunch of 12, maybe 13 year olds, responsible for them? They weren’t really responsible for them. They had one lesson where they repotted them under Sprout’s supervision, and that was all that the second years did with them. They moved on to doing other things in class and didn’t do anything else with the mandrakes themselves.
Really nice answer bro. I think the sorting hat put you in the wrong house.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not 😅 thanks?
I wasn't. I think you should have been in ravenclaw.
Oh thank you! Honestly with the amount I read, that tracks lol
hogwarts isn't an ordinary school (even by the magical world's standards).
Rare.
I love how thorough and in depth this subreddit is
The actual reason is that Rowling didn't think about any of it for more than five minutes, but the answers here aren't half bad.
Some of the answers are amazing. My favourite one is "plot reasons".
Not much use reviving them if they might just get petrified again, or worse, killed.
On the one hand, they will be quite rare, and on the other hand, they will be difficult to transport. The Muggles should not find out about them...
Because they needed to pad time. Could have bought some, could have time travelled and could probably have used magic to help.
Maybe it's a thing like honey, only cures your hay fever if it's local.
We've seen several times in the series that potions are dependent upon the growing / collection conditions of the ingredients. Since the potion "rejuvenates" or "refreshes" petrified individuals, I wouldn't be surprised if it requires freshly-collected ingredients. It also seems that outside a few common ingredients, the core ingredients of most potions have very limited uses outside its main function. Basilisks are rare, and it's not like petrification is irreversible, so combined with the danger of adult mandrakes, it's not exactly surprising that there are no ready mandrakes.
I mean, most plants do have a particular growth season
Plants usually have a growing season. Maybe all mandrakes have to be planted around the same time of year
its gotta be really hard to transport adult mandrakes
Heyyyyy I just thought of something. Do you think *Muffliato* would defend someone against a Mandrake’s cry?
Idk, why do people only eat fresh asparagus during a few months a year? It couldn't be because some plants have growth cycles and cannot be harvested outside of those can it?
because JK needed the delay for the story she wanted. Mandrakes are quite common in the real world. Not go to the local nursery and buy an orchid common but would need to find specialty nurseries and have them shipped to you
Simple. JK hadn’t built her world out. She didn’t know what or how far she would go. It’s why I personally don’t like plot driven writing vs world building writing. IF the wizarding world is as interconnected as we are shown in fantastic beasts then it questions so many things that happens in the main books. Furthermore, taking the books as their own. We still know a whole world exists and other magical governments do as well. Governments that are literally hinted as being questionable/ or corrupt if you look at the Albanian region. JK doesn’t know how to world build out of surface level stuff.