The Harry Potter films do require a certain degree of suspension of disbelief, whether it’s the fact that muggle conveniences like ballpoint pens and email have never been brought to the wizarding world, that no one seems to question children running into a brick wall at King's Cross Station and disappearing, that Gringotts doesn’t have an ATM, or how a hapless twit like Gilderoy Lockhart (Kenneth Branagh) gets hired for what presumably would be a pretty important subject. Yet we're willing to overlook these things in order to lose ourselves in the fantastical world of Harry Potter. Most things, that is. I can get over entrusting a 13-year-old Hermione (Emma Watson) with a Time-Turner, but the Hogwarts point system? It's utter bollocks.
The Hogwarts Point System in 'Harry Potter' Makes No Sense
The quote above, from Minerva McGonagall (Maggie Smith) to the first-years at Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, sums up the purpose of Hogwarts' house point system in a nutshell. Answering questions correctly, or winning an inter-house Quidditch match (which is another bone of contention, but for another time), can earn points, while sassiness and walking the corridors at night can have them taken away. All Hogwarts staff and Prefects have the authority to award, or deduct, points, and those points are tracked magically by means of a set of four giant hourglasses in the Great Hall, with each hourglass having colored stones that rise and fall based on the points: red rubies for Gryffindor, blue sapphires for Ravenclaw, green emeralds for Slytherin, and yellow diamonds for Hufflepuff.
In theory, it's a great motivational tool and something each house can rally around over the course of the year. In practice? Crap. It's crap. It's a level of crap akin to what Buckbeak drops on the windshield of your flying Ford Anglia 105E. Firstly, there are no set standards. Points are awarded and deducted arbitrarily: Snape (Alan Rickman) takes a point away from Gryffindor because of Harry Potter's (Daniel Radcliffe) cheekiness, but Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) blatantly disregards Hagrid's (Robbie Coltrane) instructions for approaching Buckbeak, putting himself and potentially others in danger, and has no points deducted from Slytherin. Hermione gets 50 points deducted for walking the halls at night, but only 5 for looking for the mountain troll. Where's the logic in that? It also reeks of favoritism. Slytherin wins the House Cup at the end of the first film, save for a rather convenient flurry of points for Gryffindor, awarded by Dumbledore (Richard Harris), that ties the houses, and then awards the go-ahead points to Neville (Matthew Lewis) for "bravely standing up to his friends," an act that wasn't witnessed by anyone other than those directly involved. Which means there's a creepy level of surveillance going on too.
Here's How to Fix the Hogwarts House Points System in 'Harry Potter'
It all has a very Whose Line Is It Anyway? vibe, where "everything is made up and the points don't matter." How can the House Cup really be taken seriously when points can be deducted just because Snape is an a**hole with a heavy Slytherin bias, or Gryffindor awarded points because Potter is the golden child? It's a broken system left unchecked, with points given or taken away at the whims of the leaders at Hogwarts. As mentioned before, it is theoretically a worthwhile pursuit, which is probably why it's endured for years, unlike those daft things like owls and ink wells that are held on to tenaciously for no good reason whatsoever (seriously, try a freaking ballpoint pen just once).
But it can be fixed by a resource that is already being utilized by Hogwarts: the sorting hat. Think about it. After the sorting ceremony, the hat has nothing to do but sit on a shelf until next year's fresh batch of first-year students. Why not give it a purpose? It has no biases, so any points given or taken away can be judged fairly on merit alone. It's already entrusted with an important role, so they're not bringing in an unknown. It's certainly not like giving a 13-year-old girl a Time-Turner and assuming she won't use it for personal gain, that's for sure. The points are already being tracked magically, so it's a simple detour that allows the hat to make that impartial judgment. And with one party deciding the points, it removes that variance between the points that the staff initially assess. You might say I'm… brimming… with confidence about this solution. No cap.
The films of the Harry Potter franchise are available to stream in the U.S. on Max
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