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(#1) Love Potions Are Over-The-Counter Date Rape Drugs
One of the darkest aspects of Harry Potter is the proliferation of love potions. These potions are not only easy to manufacture but also perfectly legal, sold in joke shops such as the one run by the Weasley twins. Although they are portrayed as fun, wacky concoctions, they are insanely powerful and effectively act as the ultimate date rape drug.
They induce all-consuming lust and infatuation, giving anyone the ability to trick others into being attracted to them. The negative side effects of this were even shown in the novels, as Merope (Voldemort's mom) forced Tom Riddle Sr. to become her husband by constantly dosing him. She even had a child with him.
Love potions are so strong, then, that rapists can use them to force their victims to raise children with them. That's basically the plot of Room, but way more messed up because the victim has to act like they enjoy it. Yet the wizards and witches in Harry Potter treat and regulate love potions like we would fake dog vomit.
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(#2) The World Is Full Of Racists Who Think That Slaves Are Totally Normal
A brief glance at the Harry Potter universe is enough to show just how racist and discriminatory most magical people are. The vast majority of witches and wizards look down upon other (totally sentient) magical creatures, and there is a strong belief in the idea of pure-blooded families being superior.
Magical abilities such as parseltongue show that animals (or snakes at least) are fully sentient and have their own thoughts, feelings, and desires. Yet they are still treated like, well, snakes. Perhaps the worst of all is the subjugation of house elves, who are basically enslaved. The entire society of magic users has benefited from their captivity (remember, they do most of the menial labor at Hogwarts), and Hermione Granger is the only exception shown in the series. Even then, her activism for the elves is basically treated like a joke.
Centaurs, mermaids, and giants are cordoned off into "special areas" they can't leave and are forbidden to make contact with non-magical humans, it seems that goblins are only allowed to work in the banking industry (they're also forbidden from owning wands) and even otherwise "normal" wizards afflicted with lycanthropy are ostracized. That would be like if someone got cancer and we all agreed as a society that they shouldn't be invited to parties.
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(#3) Wizard Trials Are A Complete Sham And Not About Justice At All
In order to sentence people and dish out justice in the world of Harry Potter, the magic users have a court called the Wizengamot. Made up of some of the most powerful people in the world, the court decides whether a person is guilty and punishes them accordingly.
Unfortunately, they don’t make use of any of the magical items, spells, or potions that could help them to definitively get to the truth, instead relying on less credible evidence. While the truth serum veritaserum isn’t totally foolproof, it would almost certainly lead to fewer people being found guilty of acts they didn’t commit and assist in finding the real culprits, yet it is never used by the court. They also rarely look into people's memories, which seems weird for a society that keeps constant tabs on all of its citizens. The Wizengamot, therefore, is clearly a kangaroo court designed to keep the powerful in power.
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(#4) There Is Definitive Proof Of An Afterlife, Yet Wizards Literally Destroy Souls
Out of everyone alive on the planet in the Harry Potter universe, magic users are the only people who know for a fact that there is an afterlife. They have definitive proof all around them, in the form of ghosts and the existence of souls. Remember, souls are what Dementors eat and there is magic (the manufacture of Horcruxes, for instance) specifically designed around the manipulation of souls.
Harry himself even perishes and visits the afterlife before returning to the living world. Witches and wizards seem completely apathetic about this knowledge. They don't seem to have an organized religion (outside of celebrating Christmas, which is insane since Christians famously burned witches but whatever) or even education about the fact.
There's no class at Hogwarts on the nature of souls, even though they are arguably the most important part of a magic person's existence. Worst of all, most people think it's perfectly acceptable to destroy a person’s soul with a Dementor, knowing they are depriving them of everlasting life. The American penal system is harsh, but the justice dished out in Harry Potter is downright Draconian.
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(#5) The Name Of The Killing Curse Suggests Wizards Killed Lots And Lots Of Muggles
The Killing Curse is one of the three Unforgivable Curses that are forbidden because of the damage they can cause to other living things. However, its name suggests an even darker history for the spell. The incantation, Avada Kedavra, is remarkably similar to the Muggle word "abracadabra."
This is the only "real" magical word that non-magic users are aware of, and it seems to be a corruption of the curse. Many fans speculate that this means the spell was used to take out so many people that it became ingrained in Muggle culture.
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(#6) Magical Society Loves Putting Children In Danger Constantly
Obviously, it's impossible to eliminate all threats and sources of danger from a child’s life. As we know from our world, it just never works. However, the government in Harry Potter seems perfectly willing to put its children at severe risk, all the time, for seemingly no reason.
For example, myriad risky spells and potions are taught at Hogwarts with seemingly little protection or adult oversight. Meanwhile, children are encouraged to play Quidditch, a sport that has players and equipment specifically designed to injure participants. Then, there is the insurance nightmare that is the Triwizard Tournament. This government-sanctioned competition is advertised as extremely dangerous, and those involved can (and sometimes do) easily lose their lives by the various monsters and dragons that make up the "tasks."
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(#7) A Boggart Could Wipe Out The Planet
Boggarts are well-known magical creatures that have the ability to turn into a person’s greatest fear, regardless of what it is. Although it has been said that they aren’t as powerful as their genuine counterparts, they still have powers that are comparable (if slightly weakened).
This means that if a person was afraid of some great catastrophe, like an erupting volcano or meteor strike, they could cause serious damage to the planet. It's even possible for someone to have a black hole as their biggest fear, meaning if they ever came in contact with a boggart they would inadvertently consume the entire Earth.
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(#8) They Entrust The Awesome Power Of Time Travel To A Kid So She Can Take Extra Classes
We find out in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban that the Ministry of Magic is in possession of magical items known as Time-Turners. These ludicrously powerful artifacts allow their users to travel through time. Wisely, because of the implications of the butterfly effect, they are hardly ever used by anyone. Ministry officials don't even utilize them to save important people or prevent horrific events.
So, it isn’t like the government is not aware of the dangers of time travel. They have explicit and specific laws to deal with the items, in order to ensure they are safeguarded at all times. Yet they allow a child to use this extraordinary and dangerous item just to take a few extra classes at Hogwarts. That's a serious level of negligence. It would be like giving a high school sophomore access to nuclear launch codes so they could finish a science fair project, except somehow even more dangerous than that.
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(#9) The Broken Education System Leaves Students Woefully Unprepared For The World
The education that magical folk receive during their formative years leaves a lot to be desired. Forget for a moment that most wizarding families don’t send their kids to school before they head off to Hogwarts, apparently letting them just kind of hang out at home until they're 11, but even the highly regarded magic school lacks most basic educational tenants.
While at Hogwarts, children are not taught mathematics, reading and writing, sex education, biology, or really any science. Instead, they are educated about magical powers and the history of wizards, neglecting everything else needed to create well-rounded people. Hogwarts is basically a trumped-up vocational school that wouldn't pass even the most elementary educational certification in our world. For real, can Ron do multiplication? Or like, read?
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(#10) You Cannot Trust Anybody In The Wizarding World
The intense lack of privacy, along with various magical elements, must make it almost impossible to trust anybody in the wizarding world. Whether it's the ability to spy on others using an invisibility cloak or acting as an imposter with the use of a Polyjuice potion, there are plenty of ways to trick your fellow magic users.
There are even spells that can let you manipulate the minds of other people and implant false memories. Considering how children are shown to easily use these methods throughout the films and books, everyone must be in a constant state of distrust. You would never know who you're talking to, who's listening, or if the memory of your child's birth was real or fake.
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(#11) No One Seems To Care About Privacy
Anyone who wants to keep anything private in the world of Harry Potter is pretty much out of luck. Everything in the wizarding world is set up to prevent people from keeping secrets. It's impossible to go about your life without others knowing what you're doing and where you are every single moment. The Marauder's Map is proof enough of this.
The magical item allows its user to see where every single living person is inside Hogwarts, making it easy to guess what they are doing and with whom. Magical potions and cloaks can render you invisible, making it so easy to spy on people that literally a child could do it. Also, the Ministry of Magic has shown an ability to monitor the magic usage of every single child in England. So, they know where they are at all times, right? In short, wizards and witches are constantly spied on, and there's nothing they can do about it.
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(#12) Wizards Completely Refuse To Help Muggles Despite The Good They Could Do
There is some rather evident hostility between the wizarding world and the rest of human society, perhaps due to some type of persecution of magic users or a war between the two cultures. However, it seems completely thoughtless and downright evil for witches and wizards to straight-up abandon the rest of humankind.
The Statute of Secrecy effectively bans the use of magic to help Muggles when they could, in fact, solve some of the world’s biggest problems. Famine and drought could be prevented easily with teleportation techniques, diseases could be cured using magical spells, and humanity as a whole could advance through the joint efforts of technology and magic. Yet the Ministry of Magic and its foreign counterparts simply ignore Muggles and refuse to help them in any way.
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(#13) People Are Trapped Forever In Paintings
The idea of having people essentially come back to life as painting after they die might seem charming, but the consequences are both obvious and horrifying. After all, the people in these paintings appear to have all the same memories and personalities from when they were alive. The only difference is that they are trapped indefinitely within a two-dimensional plane of existence, only able to travel between other pictures.
Worse, they're actually forced to do the bidding of the living. People charge them with guarding rooms or passing messages between different areas, all without a fleeting thought as to whether the person in the painting wants to do these tasks. It would be like bringing a family member back from the grave only to have them run errands for you. Forever.
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(#14) Wizards Are Stuck In The Technological Dark Age
Part of the initial appeal of the Harry Potter series for readers and viewers is how the wizarding world appears to maintain a focus on tradition. They write with quills and parchment, send messages via owls, and use a medieval castle for their school. Although this might seem charming or quaint, the magic abilities they possess have essentially stymied witches and wizards in the Dark Ages. They are stuck in a technological rut and rely completely on magic for all of their needs.
This serves them well enough for the most part, but it means they miss out on things like email and the internet - things that could revolutionize their world and allow them to communicate far more easily. They also seem to be blissfully unaware of the technology of Muggles, putting them in danger if a conflict ever broke out. They're wildly vulnerable to threats that they don’t understand.
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