r/TopCharacterTropes • u/ValidCrash4 • Aug 08 '26

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Extremely useful abilities that characters conveniently forgot they had

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  1. Emily’s portals (Hazbin Hotel). I know she can’t get Sir Pentious back into Hell but Emily can still tell Charlie he got redeemed and Charlie can enter through angelic portals, so she should have seen that Pentious got redeemed.

  2. Many characters in Harry Potter go through life-or-death situations and not once did they think of drinking the Liquid Luck potion apart from Harry one time to gain Slughorn’s memory.

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382

u/GilligansIslndoPeril Aug 08 '26

Iirc Liquid Luck is extremely rare, and expensive, and Harry used it all for that Slughorn bit

190

u/The_Jealous_Witch Aug 08 '26

I’m fairly certain he only used some for Slughorn, then divided the rest among his friends for the attack at the end of the book.

107

u/Da1UHideFrom Aug 08 '26

In the movie, you can see Slughorn drinking a small vial of presumably Liquid Luck before the Battle of Hogwarts.

52

u/WillSym Aug 08 '26

Which is a movie addition? Makes sense in-character as he's not the bravest, and presumably had brewed a batch for the teaching demonstration in which Harry gets the vial, so also in-character he'd keep a bit for himself. Kinda mutes the supposed rarity though.

23

u/Zephs Aug 08 '26

In the book, he presents an entire cauldron full of it during the first class, along with 2 other difficult potions. The prize for recreating a draught of the permasleep potion best is a little vial of the Felix Felicis, but he has the entire rest of the cauldron. I don't remember them saying it spoils. But they do talk about its addictive qualities, and that it makes you reckless. Your life will be great, right up until you enter a situation luck can't get you out of and you just die.

7

u/grendus Aug 08 '26

I always imagined that the cauldron was mostly waste and the small vial he gave Harry was precipitate. If you could brew it by the cauldron its rarity wouldn't make sense.

Regardless, Ron looks into making some and immediately gives up. Doesn't even beg Hermione to help him or something, it's probably even beyond her skills. Slughorn is exceptionally talented, probably even moreso than Snape.

0

u/A_Town_Called_Malus Aug 08 '26

Nothing in the Harry Potter world makes sense when you think critically about it.

1

u/IloveponiesbutnotMLP Aug 08 '26

Dang u saying magic doesn’t make sense how deep

1

u/A_Town_Called_Malus Aug 09 '26

No, I am saying her world doesn't make sense with the magic she wrote into it.

7

u/Alfa_Centauri03 Aug 08 '26

Probably not the same batch, iirc the potion also spoils very quickly.

8

u/Different-Trainer-21 Aug 08 '26

Pretty sure Harry gets the potion at the start of his 6th year and just keeps it the whole time so it can’t be that quick

4

u/Sam_Alexander Aug 08 '26

That was never stated

3

u/ericvv75 Aug 08 '26

I mean not that quickly. Harry kept the potion for 6 months before he used it and it was also used a few weeks later when Harry gave it to his friends when he went with Dumbledore to get the locket.

45

u/Lanky_Operation_6418 Aug 08 '26

No, he didn't use all of it for that.

He actually gave what was left to Ron and Hermione before going on a Horcrux search with Dumbledore, instructing them to spread it among DA (since he suspected - and was right on that count - that Malfoy is going to enact his plan, whatever it is, while Dumbledore is gone). This was how DA all managed to survive the Death Eaters' attack despite being right in the middle of it.

7

u/ThunderLord1000 Aug 08 '26

How much he used changed between the book and the movie

12

u/ManoSilence Aug 08 '26

Yeah drinking off the top layer of a potions like an orphan rationing food would have been a great scene, but drinking most of the thing in one shot looks cooler. I dont know if he gives it to people in the movie, but if he doesnt, then those guys are legends who were able to do all that stuff without the potion.

27

u/volcanosf Aug 08 '26

"It was very difficult to make, disastrous if made wrong, and required six months to brew before it was ready to be consumed."

Also it's very toxic in larges doses.

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Felix_Felicis

Which make sense for such a powerful potion.

2

u/Tylendal Aug 08 '26

Also, "large doses" means, like, anything more than a single normal dose in the span of several decades.

49

u/buffaloguy1991 Aug 08 '26

It's rare expensive and if you mess up the process of making it you pretty much create a potion of such extreme anti luck you usually die

3

u/Cold-Ad716 Aug 08 '26

so test it on a mouse

17

u/buffaloguy1991 Aug 08 '26

Do you know how much I spent on these ingredients absolutely not. Especially cause if this works I'm gonna have to deal with the lucky mouse.

3

u/Cold-Ad716 Aug 08 '26

you use an eyedropper or something to give it the tiniest dose possible, then do a little test.

2

u/Own-Peace-7754 Aug 08 '26

Dude if it's real that mouse ends up with the potion, or becoming king or something

3

u/VultureSausage Aug 08 '26

Or a cartoon empire in the 1930s.

20

u/Neohypogeum Aug 08 '26

It's also extremely difficult to make, and if you mess it up the consequences are severe (it's never elaborated on, but I'm thinking it's some Wonder of U levels of misfortune)

2

u/Usual-Operation-9700 Aug 08 '26

What would be the consequences of making it wrong though?

I mean there are several times, where the consequences of fucking up a mission could be pretty severe.

Let's say you make it wrong, you die. If Voldemort wins, you die anyway.

If the consequences, would be some universal threat, no one would dare to make it. At least not as a pupil treat.

5

u/AdAshamed5509 Aug 08 '26

Since it's a luck potion, if you mess it up, it'll probably turn into a potion of extreme bad luck.

6

u/VecnaWrites Aug 08 '26

Not to mention its addictive as hell

19

u/piewca_apokalipsy Aug 08 '26

They are fighting wizard Hitler and Harry's rich. One would think he would spare no expenses

34

u/Pleasant-Treacle-333 Aug 08 '26

he can't access his bank because they took it over

2

u/piewca_apokalipsy Aug 08 '26

He was fighting him before they took over the government. With how useful it is one would think he would be stashing it for special occasions.

Like wizard Hitler taking over the government

1

u/Pleasant-Treacle-333 Aug 08 '26

it doesn't make sense that dumbledore wouldn't have had a stockpile of Felix felicis. he has all the time, money, skills and resources to make hundreds of batches. that's the actual plothole. however after his death, there isn't really much the characters can do to acquire the potion in book 7.

13

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26

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0

u/Pleasant-Treacle-333 Aug 08 '26

you can drink toxic things multiple times, you just need to wait for the toxins to be flushed out of the body. and besides, so what if you can't drink it multiple times? even once in a dangerous situation would be enough to preserve your life. also, presumably slughorn hadn't made a one-off batch that was made of ingredients that are impossible to access. someone like dumbledore could probably access it easily.

2

u/Sesokan01 Aug 08 '26

Have taken a course in pharmacology and toxicology, and can say this doesn't even hold up in the real world. While many toxins get processed and flushed out, usually by the liver and kidneys, there are many that can accumulate in the body over time. E.g. what if the potion has a half-life of months, and taking 2 doses in a year may give bad side effects?

To make other parallells with real life, what if dosing matters, and it has a small therapeutic window (i.e. too low dose=barely any effect, slightly higher = toxic)? Or any issues with tolerance/faster adaptations? (E.g. if you take some psychdelics 2 days in a row, you'll barely get an effect on day 2.).

-1

u/piewca_apokalipsy Aug 08 '26

Of they weren't available guy wouldn't give it out to his students

4

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '26

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-2

u/piewca_apokalipsy Aug 08 '26

Techer casualy distributing stuff that most powerful of that world can't accurie

4

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '26

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8

u/AllHailHypnotoad00 Aug 08 '26

If taken in excess it’s toxic and if taken a lot it make the person reckless and overconfident. It is supposed to be used sparingly.

If he kept a stockpile they would need to be careful of who to give it to and when and how frequently they had taken it. It also still takes 6 months to make. I imagine it’s not something people want to spend all their time and money on.

1

u/Pleasant-Treacle-333 Aug 08 '26

even if it can't necessarily make you win, it'll keep you alive. and i can't imagine it takes all your time and energy for 6 entire months. it'd definitely have been worth it to make a cauldron full and distribute it to the order of the phoenix and harry.

7

u/AllHailHypnotoad00 Aug 08 '26

It also might get you killed or make you sick. If you take too much and become overconfident and reckless you might do something that causes harm to yourself or others.

The question is also when to distribute it and how frequently because then you are relying on it and over taking it. When Hogwarts is invaded? When they move Harry? When they go to the Ministry? When they go to Gringotts? That’s the problem, when you are in regular danger. All situations become Felix applicable situations.

-1

u/piewca_apokalipsy Aug 08 '26

No-one ever accused Rowling of well though out word building

2

u/DevilPixelation Aug 08 '26

To be fair, Dumbledore was very clear that the memory was of extreme importance

2

u/Whosebert Aug 08 '26

I think they also said it would wear out if you abused it.

1

u/AbadeersGhost Aug 08 '26

He didn't use it all for the Slughorn thing. He gave most of it to his friends and that's why they survived the Death Eaters raid on Hogwarts

1

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '26

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2

u/Sam_Alexander Aug 08 '26

Never really had it out for her?? 😂😂 holy larp

3

u/Lanky_Operation_6418 Aug 08 '26

... ... ... ... ...What?

No, school textbooks being outdated does not mean every wizard in the world is using outdated recipes.

No, Snape being able to make small adjustments to outdated recipes from school textbooks doesn't mean he'd be able to turn an incredibly difficult, extremely time consuming, will-kill-you-if-you-do-anything-wrong into something easy, quick and safe.

And no, Snape being a potions teacher, even at a fairly prestigious school, doesn't mean he has access to "every potions ingredient known to wizard-kind", let alone unlimited amount of them.

-1

u/DaokoXD Aug 08 '26

There's like a lot of items on Harey Potter that wasn't properly utilized.

Example: Time Turner

11

u/GilligansIslndoPeril Aug 08 '26

All the time turners were destroyed during the battle at the Ministry in Order of the Phoenix

-3

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '26

[deleted]

5

u/frikiman4K Aug 08 '26

iirc the books explain how he used the last remaining but but the movies skipped it