A Very Potter Musical/Headscratchers

• This troper THINKS she's found it...if Voldemort made such a very PUBLIC comeback, both exposed by Harry and blogging about it himself, why the hell did Quirrell have to take the blame for Cedric's murder anyway?
  • They weren't planning for Harry to escape, and by the time he did they had already sent Quirrell off. The newspaper said he had confessed to it, meaning he was so upset by the betrayal he'd basically lost the will to live. Plus it was all Fudge needed to be convinced, thanks to Rule of Funny.
    • They're wizards. They can fly and send silvery spirit animals to deliver messages, Quirrell could have been reached. Whether he'd have come back is another matter, but it wasn't covered so we won't know. Still doesn't explain Voldemort blogging about it all instead of letting Harry be disbelieved like in the books...of course, Rule of Funny does apply.
• Another one is that while in Dumbledore's office, Dumbledore explains to the trio about horcruxes, tells them he has destroyed 5 of the 6 and presents them with a horcrux seeking medallion to help them find the 6th. Later they discover that it is in Dumbledore's office. Which presents the question of why the only horcrux (besides the * surprise* 7th one) Dumbledore didn't destroy was one he was sitting right next to, especially if the medallion would have told him it was right there.
  • Well, it is a BOSS Zefron poster...
  • And nothing related to Zac Efron could ever be evil.
• This troper just wants to know how the Zefron poster can be a Horcrux that was created at least twelve years ago when Zac Efron's only been popular for four or so years.
  • This is where Willing Suspension of Disbelief comes in handy.
  • The sequel confirms that A Very Potter Musical takes place in 2009, and the sequel takes place in 2008.
    • But the poster must have been made a Horcrux at least 12 years prior (1996, before Voldemort tried to kill Harry when he was an infant. But yeah, Willing Suspension of Disbelief plus Rule of Funny.
    • Well, Snape refers to Zefron as "Headmaster Zefron", so we can just fanwank that Zac Efron will eventually be sent back in time and become the famed headmaster of Hogwarts before Dumbledore. Taylor Lautner is a bit more questionable. The Twilight movie was released in 2008, but the Team Jacob thing wasn't really mainstream until New Moon in 2009, so that poster probably wouldn't have been available yet.
      • Ah, yes, the "Zefron is our king" theory. But while Team Taylor wasn't mainstream until the New Moon movie, Team Jacob encompassed nearly half of Twilight's fanbase (I assume), and certainly offered incentive for fans to get Taylor Lautner posters (especially if the pre-New Moon READ posters are a reasonable meterstick).
  • Maybe the sheet that it was printed on is the Horcrux
    • This troper had the same idea, or maybe that it is the picture frame that is the Horcrux, and it took the shape of Zefron due to Dumbledore putting the picture there. I also think that Pettigrew transformed into the poster frame for the Taylor Lautner poster in the sequel. Think about it. Maybe he was "killed" outside a picture frame shop, turned into one to avoid capture, waited twelve years until Umbridge bought the frame. Maybe he was wearing a t-shirt and holding a football by coincidence when Sirius attacked him.
• This troper is fairly certain she's found a plothole. Due to their Unbreakable Vow, Voldemort was forced to be Malfoy's slave for a whole day, right? If the siege of Hogwarts was that same day, why didn't Malfoy use his control over Voldemort to get him to back down? I may have the play's timeline wrong, however, so all that stuff at the end may have occurred more than 24 hours after the Vow was made. And besides, taking advantage of the Vow would've been a bit anticlimactic.
  • Well that's played as a one off joke, you're not supposed to take it seriously. And Draco doesn't kill Dumbledore so he probably does not have any power over him anymore.
    • Actually, the Vow was that Dumbledore would be killed; when the Vow was actually made, it was never specified who had to do the killing. But you're probably right, best not to dwell on a silly gag.
      • It doesn't matter whether that was specified or not, as Dumbledore was never killed at all. Which may be the real plothole here, if you want to take the play seriously, which is inadvisable.
  • I think I've found it. How did Harry get in after they'd barred the door, and why did no one comment on it?
    • The same way the bad guys got past the barred door. They walked around the door prop. And then kicked over the bench.
• The show itself parodies Fridge Logic from the series, such as how did Quirrell sleep or go to the bathroom with Voldemort on the back of his head?
  • Do you really want to know?
• The major plot hole could be how Snape says that the Yule Ball is annual, implying that they have done it in the past, without there being a House Cup. This means that Quirrel/Voldemort could have set up the Portkey at the Yule Ball anyways, meaning that the House Cup was totally unnecessary.
• A much simpler one is when Harry gets into the barricaded Room of Requirement (or whatever it was) and, other than joy at seeing Harry alive, no one bats an eye. However, a minute later, Voldemort tries to get in, and Ron assures everyone he won't be able, and is shocked when he does. If Harry could get in despite the barricade, why wouldn't Voldemort be able?
  • Because Harry is totally awesome.
    • If its the Room or requirment then fridgelogic kicks in. A) Aberforths Pub, b) he required another entrance so it made one. Then again it could have admitted Voldemort... unless they required the room to prevent that- which they didn't since he got around the barricade. Or maybe Harry used one of the other secret entrances to hogwarts.
• Another simple plothole is the fact that Snape orchestrates much of Voldemort's revenge, including giving his hand, not stopping Quirrell when he places the portkey, and helping Voldemort enter Hogwarts and kill multiple Phoenix members, only to betray him by merely releasing Ginny and Hermione at the last minute.
• This isn't the plot hole, but it's an error people don't notice at first: Dumbledore discusses things in Act II that he says Harry should have known "seven years ago". Except the show is supposed to be set in Harry's second year... So, Harry should have known these things when he was 5?
  • I think it's set in a kind of Ultimate Universe in which the timeline is irrelevant.
• Do they ever explain why Quirrel goes to azkaban? It was supposed to be for Harry's murder but Harry survives, there's no good reason for him to go.
  • It was because of Cedric's death.
• How were Bellatrix and Voldemort able to plot against Quirrel when Voldemort was on the back of Quirrel's head? As Voldemort states several times, "I can hear everything you hear!"
  • I think they had it planned from before he even attached himself to Quirrell. He would have had to be Vapormort at the time, but he was still able to talk to people in that form. Or else he could have written her letters or used the muffliato spell on him.
  • Could be that the subject of the Horcrux had not been invented when Voldemort made it, or that Harry somehow entered through a barricaded door...
  • Why did Snape BETRAAAAAAAY the Death Eaters? He's set up as being pretty unequivocally evil, between sacrificing his hand to restore Voldemort, getting the Death Eaters into Hogwarts and his vindictive killing of Dumbledore. In the books, Snape had been a good guy all along, but in the musical it seems like an unjustified Heel Face Turn.
    • Yeah, I'm thinking that's the plot hole. I've watched AVPM at least five times just so I could try and make sense of that, and it's never happened. (Trust me, I watch nothing that many times just to figure out one plot point.)
    • Well, since Dumbledore wasn't really dead, it would seem like Snape really was a good guy after all. However, when I first watched it I got the impression he was just some crazy guy who liked to betray everyone because he's a traitor.
• I think I got it. Why make the portkey into a ladle? Anyone could grab it and then they'd be spun off to I-Forget-Place's-Name. Sure, it's implied that only Harry Potter likes what they put in there, but not everyone knew what was in the punchbowl.
  • Nah, they made a huge deal of the Squirt thing, which in a comedy is justification enough. That's why they showed everyone else refusing to drink it. You could make a case for why they couldn't just forget the tournament altogether and just serve punch with Squirt in it at a normal dance, or some random party, or with any meal in the Great Hall. Or why they couldn't just make a portkey of Harry's guitar or something, but that goes back to a plothole in the original book...
    • It's not a plothole in the original book, because the idea is supposed to be that people think he was just killed in the maze, allowing Voldemort to keep hidden for the time being.
    • Kidnapping Harry in a very public place during an important event is uber dramatic, and Voldemort is a Drama Queen in all of his incarnations.

• I think I've got it. If Snape was working for Voldemort all along and was in on the plan to the point that he was in the graveyard facilitating Voldemort's resurrection, why did Quirell have to hide from him? Right before the Yule Ball, Snape asks Quirell what he's doing with the punch ladle, and Quirell tries to hide the fact that it's a portkey AND the fact that a Voldemort is on the back of his head. Wouldn't Snape already know all that?
  • It's made a point at the beginning of Act II Scene 2 that none of the Death Eaters know that Snape is on their side. Voldemort obviously couldn't say anything because they were in public, and he couldn't be sure no one else was around.
• Perhaps the plot hole is that Snape has to convince the other Death Eaters that he's on Voldemort's side even though he was the one who, you know, resurrected him. A Death Eater as prominent as Snape would probably be recognized, and a voice like that DEFINITELY would.
  • It's not all that obvious that it's Snape in the Graveyard scene. Until the hook was revealed, I assumed that it was just a case of Acting for Two.
    • Snape does mention giving Harry detention during the Graveyard scene, but it's said quickly and not especially loud.
• Maybe they're just trying to screw with our heads and there isn't a plot hole at all.
  • That's what they want you to think!

• It might actually be as simple as Molly Weasley saying 'disapparate' as she leaves the scene after dropping the subtle message that everyone's dead. As you know, you can't apparate and disapparate on the school grounds.
  • It's implied in the sequel that no one actually does disapparate inside of Hogwarts. Everyone in the play merely says "disapparate" when they leave a room.
• If you think about it, it doesn't really make sense that in Voldemort Is Going Down, the entire population of Hogwarts is calling him Voldemort instead of You-Know-Who, He Who Must Not Be Named, etc.
  • It helps to take away his mystique.
• Quirrel just takes Voldemort out to the middle of the wizarding world's most popular pub, they chat up ladies, and no one recognizes Voldemort at all.
  • We never see what he looked like prior to his first death and subsequent resurrection. Maybe the whole snake-face thing was a result of that, same as it was in the books. I'm not sure that I would connect a random sexy, sexy wizard-Naga with the human wizard who had massacred a lot of people people eleven years ago, then recently took over Hogwarts and something about a blawg.
• How did Voldemort make the Zefron poster a Horcrux? Did he originally own it, then Dumbledore bought it off him pre-first-defeat, or did Dumbledore just raid Voldy's house?
  • The Zefron poster is an antique!
• And how did those idiots get captured? They were invisible!
  • *coughcoughcough*
    • Maybe one of them tripped, or sneezed or said something near a death eater and they did the invisible man search thing.

• In Dumbledore's office, Draco says that the one thing he wants more than anything in the world is Hermione Granger (and a rocketship). Hermione & Co. are standing right there under the Invisibility Cloak -- why didn't they react?
  • This is addressed in the sequel: Future!Draco confessed his love for Hermione the year before, she already knew that he felt that way about her.
    • I don't think they thought that bit out ahead of time.
    • Well, even so, it works in retrospect.

• This troper has two ideas that could be the plot hole:
  • First, Snape's betrayal of the Death Eaters. So far, we've been justifying all of his previous actions for helping the bad guys as a ruse to keep the Death Eaters from suspecting him. But near the beginning, he tries to kill Dumbledore with a bomb sandwich. This is before Voldemort gets his body back, and therefore most don't know that he's still alive, so why would Snape be attempting to kill Dumbledore?
    • Maybe he was anti-Dumbledore then, but when Voldemort returned Snape switched his allegiance.
    • Maybe it really was just an awesome sandwich, with ticking sounds and everything, until Granger made it explode by taking and throwing out of the window. See Snape likes Dumbledore enough to make him an awesome sandwich, but he set it to explode in the face of anyone who tried to steal it.
    • They planned it to screw with Hermione's head.
  • Second, Malfoy sneaks Harry and his friends back into the castle through the same route he used to sneak the Death Eaters through, the air vents. So, not one of the bad guys thought "Hey, maybe somebody could sneak into the castle using the exact same route we used?" and chose to block this secret way into the vents?
    • Stupid Evil or Mook Mistake
• If the House Cup is being done differently that year, why does Gryfinndor continue to have points removed from it? What would be the point?
  • Rule of Funny. It's just used to show off what a Butt Monkey Hermione is. Although, when Draco fails to kill Dumbledore...

Snape: Coward! Ten points from Gryffindor!

• The books have Seven Horcruxes with Harry being an accidental eighth. The musical says there are only six Horcruxes. It might be Rule of Funny taking place, but other than that, that's something that seems to be extremely overlooked/could be the "plothole" that Starkid productions is talking about.
  • ...No..Harry's the accidental seventh. There were six horcruxes, and the one in Voldemort's body to form seven pieces of his soul. In the musical, Dumbledore has killed five horcruxes, they kill the locket, thus there's six horcruxes, plus Harry and Voldemort.
    • And Quirrel.
• ANOTHER very simple plot hole: Ginny mentions in the song "Harry" that she's seen him "conquer certain death" ... When? They've just met. It seems like it could be easily overlooked since most fans will think it references the Chamber of Secrets incident which actually never happens. It could've easily been solved by changing the one lyric or placing the song at a different point in the play after the action and danger begin, but as is it doesn't make sense.
  • They DID have an earlier year at Hogwarts (the sequel, which is really more a prequel, is all about it)
    • And Ginny doesn't even exchange names with him in the sequel - so how could she have seen him conquer certain anything?
  • I assumed it was meant to refer to how Ginny had heard his story, in which he did conquer certain death (albeit without doing anything himself) and now intended to know him beyond that.

• This troper wonders why nobody has found the big plot hole yet and thinks it's quite obvious. Why did Quirrrell need to make sure harry's name was drawn from the cup? Everybody goes to the Yule ball so that isn't a factor and if he had died on the first task they couldn't have used his blood to revive voldemort. Just seems sort of anti-productive.
  • Because... Quirrel didn't draw Harry's name from the cup, Snape did. P.S. new examples go at the bottom of the page.
    • But Quirrel specifically says that they made sure it was Harry's name drawn from the cup.
• In the sequel, Lucius Malfoy claims had they killed potter in his first year of hogwarts, they (voldemort and the deatheaters) would be ruling the world right now. But even if they had killed potter voldemort wouldn't have been able to use his blood to come back. So they probably wouldn't be ruling the world.
  • They just needed the blood of his greatest enemy, so with Harry dead they could just use his next greatest enemy's blood. So probably Dumbledore, or maybe a vengeful Ron or Hermione. Or Neville, of course.
• In AVPM Harry and the others claim Harry has been in love with Cho since first year...then in his actual first year he does almost nothing to indicate he likes her.
  • There is the scene where Cho is crying.

Harry: Guys, you made Cho cry! ...I don't even care who did it. You're gonna die, Schlongbottom!

• Yaxley is the one to get Lucius the Time Turner that makes the time travel plot possible. Then when they go back in time to Harry's first year, Yaxley switches sides. So how is he with the Death Eaters again in Year Two after Voldemort is defeated? Draco said that the first year at Hogwarts goes exactly the same both times, so it can't be a new development.
  • I thought all the Death Eaters went back in time, so it was future Yaxley who switched sides while past Yaxley is still evil.
• The sequel throws another humongous plothole into the mix: in the sequel, Draco goes back in time and saves everyone's lives. And he says that's the way the group's first year at Hogwarts always happened. Why, then, do Harry and Draco still hate each other so much in the first play (which takes place afterwards?)
  • Because that was future Draco who's really nice now, and past Draco is still an annoying jerk. It's possible he wasn't even told about future Draco. He probably just heard enough snippets that he would able to recognize when they got into the Stable Time Loop, but if he knew all the details about future Draco then it would have made sense from the beginning. And it's not like he would have believed them if they did tell him. Plus, Harry still hated Draco even after he helped them out in the original too.
  • Because Future!Draco went back in time after the events of AVPM. So, he lived in the forest for all of year two while Present!Draco was the one who was at Hogwarts during the second year and hadn't experienced the character development of Future!Draco yet. It also explains why Luna wasn't there during second year, she was still in the forest with Future!Draco.
• Isn't there also the issue in the sequel that Draco, not Dumbledore, sent the letter to Sirius to help him break out - so how did he get the invisibility cloak that belonged to Harry's father?
  • Hopefully not from future Harry! That would create a horrible Object Loop paradox! I'm just going to tell myself he found it in the past timeline because the alternative is breaking my brain.
  • He says that he had to spend some time and effort to find it, so I guess he just found it in the past. Contrived Coincidence, maybe, but not a paradox.
• If Harry had spent his entire life up to his first year at Hogwarts being abused in "a cupboard under some stairs" then how does he have and know how to play a guitar in the prequel/sequel? Also, in his next year he was already writing songs and lulling dragons to sleep with it, which implies a decent amount of practice when all he had was the summer between the 2 years.
  • Perhaps, like dancing, he's just naturally awesome at it?
  • Because, just like in the books, just because he slept in the room under the stairs, doesn't mean he literally never went out and saw the light of day. In the prequel he talks about how everyone in school thinks he's a douche who plays the guitar all the time.
• How about the beginning of Different As Can Be? Quirrel: "You won't sleep on your tummy" Voldy: "You won't sleep on your back" when Quirrel WANTS to sleep on his back.
  • I think that was supposed to be a command. "You may want to sleep on your back but you're not gonna get to!" Rather confusing though.

• If the events of the Sequel (taking place in their first year) occurred in the same time-frame and so directly affected the events of the original - how is Lucius alive at the beginning to conduct the plot in the first-place, considering he was supposedly killed by Lupin?
  • That was FUTURE Lucius that went back in time and plotted to kill Harry. PAST Lucius is still alive, ignoring Draco's potty issues in the present timeline, however he WILL eventually become the Lucius that travels forward in time. What you should be worried about is TWO Yaxley's running around during the entire 2nd year.
  • My brain hurts from thinking about two Yaxleys...
    • STABLE. TIME. LOOP! One of the Yaxley's is going to travel back in time with Lucius and the other Death Eaters. The good one just has to stay hidden from himself until then.
• When Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Draco go back in time to save Sirius, there are 3 Malfoys now existing at the same time (Past!Draco who's crying in the Dormitories, Future!Draco who's going to deliver a fake pizza, and Future!Future!Draco who's with the others). Is....is that allowed? 3 Lauren Lopezes might just be too much awesome for the world to handle.
  • True, but it was very brief since Future Draco quickly integrated with Future Future Draco since they only went back in time a few minutes.
    • It was an hour, actually. Malfoy says "Quick, Hermione, what were we doing exactly 1 hour ago?".
  • Three Lauren Lopezes? ...I can't tell you what I'm thinking right now.

• At the Yule Ball, Harry and Cedric are fighting and Harry yells "I'm gonna kill you!" right before they dissappear. And then when they get back, nobody assumes that it was Harry who killed Cedric. They don't even mention how suspicious it is.
  • Because he's Harry Freaking Potter and the most popular kid in school, they would never think that Harry would kill another student (besides, Voldemort begins twittering about his return shortly after that happened, so they know for a fact that Harry didn't do anything).
  • Shouting "I'm gonna kill you!" is called hyperbole, and people do it, oh, all the fucking time in Real Life. And they're kids; they wouldn't know how to kill each other.
• When the trio was in the dungeon they lost the invisibility cloak on a magical walking chair, right? How did they get it back?
  • They could have spent the rest of the night looking for the chair, but since it wasn't important, or funny, they didn't bother showing it.
  • I assumed it was a case of mistakenly placing the cloak on something that was then taken offstage in the next scene change.

• Why did Harry go to Mars when he died? (unless all wizards and witches go to Pigfarts when they die - Sequel Hook?
  • But Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact it's cold as hell.
  • It's not important. What's important is that he believes in himself.
  • The real question is, how the hell did Dumbledore survive being Avada Kedavra'd to end up on Mars at all? Mars(/Pigfarts) as Wizard Heaven is starting to seem more likely...
  • He didn't go to Mars, he was speaking to Dumbledore on Earth. Then when he left, Rumbleroar came in to take Dumbledore to Mars and Pigfarts. Hence Dumbledore needs his space suit.

• I think I know the plot hole: In the book four, one of the ingredients in the potion that restores Voldemort to his body is the flesh of an ally or a servant (or something). Assuming it's the same potion in the play, and that Snape, who contributes the flesh, really is a double agent from the beginning, why does the potion work?

• In AVPM, Hermione remarks that "[Snape's] hated [Harry] for years, and he's hated [Harry's] parents too, everybody knows that." Two problems with that. 1) According to the AVPM timeline, Harry would have known Snape for exactly 1 year, which doesn't really constitute "years." 2) In AVPS, all of the protagonists learn of Snape's love (or at least some kind of twisted lust) for Harry's mother, which means that she herself would know that Snape did not, in fact, hate both of Harry's parents.
  • For the first one, presumably Snape hated Harry before they even met. For the second one... I got nothing.

• I have one too: During "Harry Freakin' Potter", why does Cho Chang tell Harry to stop by the Ravenclaw house before she was sorted to that house?
  • Because Cho's a year older than Harry in the book canon, so possibly the musical canon too. The movie got her age wrong (Among other Ravenclaw-related Canon Rape). Cho passes Harry while he's singing "Home" with her friends long before anyone else as been sorted and she clearly has her tie on. She is addressed as a first year, but she might have been held back to repeat the year. Besides, the question's not Cho, its GINNY. In Diagon Alley she's got her Gryffindor tie on and she hasn't even seen Hogwarts yet, much less been sorted.
    • Ginny has a Gryffindor tie on. She has six brothers, you know.

• In AVPS Ron and Hermione meet draco from the future however they don't treat draco any differently in their next year despite learning that draco is in love with hermione
  • Hermione probably either feels that she "shouldn't" treat him different due to timey-wimey problems, and Ron has no reason to treat his romantic rival any better.

• The plothole is probably Luna being in AVPS, and she wouldn't be at Hogwarts until the next year.

• So, in the opening song of the first musical, Harry has the line "This year, no one's gonna die!" which he sings in a cheerful voice, implying an optimistic hope for a lack of deaths. Of course, in canon, Quirrell was the only person who died in the first year, who's in this musical... and in the sequel, the only deaths are Peter Pettigrew and (presumably) Lucius Malfoy, neither of whom Harry gave a damn about. So... why does he have that line?
  • Coming back to this- could this be the legendary plot hole? OK, yes, they hadn't written the sequel, but with Quirrell alive and no reason to assume the other two dead...

• In AVPS, Lupin and Sirius fly off together on Harry's firebolt, and in AVPM, Harry says, in the opening song, "... take my firebolt, gonna take to the sky." So, why does he say that if he no longer has his firebolt?
  • Because AVPM was written first, and the Starkids hadn't planned on that?
  • They sent it back, or bought him a new one?

• How did Cedric, Snape and Dumbledore find a way to come back to life in the final scene? Unless these are short-haired Lucius Malfoy in school uniform, random Death Eater, and random bearded wizard.

• When did Future!Draco steal the time turner? Cause Lucius has it prior to the Quidditch game...
  • He mentions that he got to the past by hiding in his father's fanny pack after having learned of his plans.
    • Erm, exactly how big was that fanny pack?! I know Lauren Lopez is tiny, but still.
    • Remember those Undectectable Expansion spells from canon? It probably had one of those on it.