Everybody remembers Harry Potter, if not for the fond memories of the magical world of flying broomsticks and messenger owls, then for it being the highest selling series ever. Its movie adaptations are nothing to scoff at either, with a total gross of $7.7 billion in worldwide receipts, making it the fourth highest-grossing film series.

To say Harry Potter is popular would be like saying Hitler was a bad guy or that Elon Musk has money. However, I think Harry Potter is not as good as you remember, here’s why:

The mess that is Hogwarts

Harry Potter is a story about friendship, magic, and racism set in late 20th century England, which is fine and all, until Harry Potter goes to magic school and the whole world is revealed to be a total joke.

At Hogwarts, students are taught subjects like charms, transfiguration, mixing things in a pot (how does Snape expect Neville to make proper potions if the “professor” never taught him basic chemistry?), magic fighting, magic petting zoo, magic gardening, palm reading, and magic history. Note the lack of any mundane classes students aged 11-17 should have, like math, language arts, or science. This was either an oversight on the part of Rowling or just because the Wizarding world replaced all its accountants, writers, and managers with desk goblins. Who needs calculus when you have four different ways to turn into a cat?

The apparent lack of any real-world curriculum in Hogwarts is not the only part that’s broken. What worries me the most about Hogwarts is how dangerous it is. Obviously magic would be dangerous in a world where it can hit you with a summoned bull if you chant wrong. However, short-circuiting magic is the least of Harry and co.’s problems if the almighty Albus Dumbledore, the greatest mage (sorry, wizard) in the world has to repeatedly rely on three children barely educated in the arcane arts to find and defeat magic-Hitler in his own school.

There’s also the problem that magic school doesn’t seem to actually teach Harry anything. Despite all the stuff Harry should have learned during six years (the last year doesn’t count) of magical education, Harry doesn’t use any of it, with basically every spell and piece of magical lore he knows either taught to him by Hermione and Ron or self-taught. It’s fine that Rowling wanted to make Hermione really smart, but letting her know every plot-relevant spell is just bad writing.

The concept of “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry” was appealing to us as children because magic was cool and we would rather go to magic school where we learn how to wave a wand instead of our boring muggle schools. I’ve seen reviews that say Rowling’s magical world is immersive or believable, but for me, reading Harry Potter now just makes every inconsistency really obvious.

Of wizards and witches

JK Rowling’s world is filled with relatable characters, with Snape, Hermione, and Draco being three of the best characters written by Rowling, as well as a handful of less plot relevant characters that have their own depth and growth readers notice in little glimpses. Unfortunately, there are also some that are really badly done, including two of the story’s most important characters.

Voldemort might be the most disappointing villain and character in the whole story. His younger self and myths in the first half of the series portrayed him as a genius mastermind who was undefeated and held a reign of terror so absolute that a decade later, wizards were still terrified of his name.

Then he was reincarnated, and all that buildup just crashed and burned as we watch Voldemort do one stupid thing after another and somehow blunder his way into letting Harry slip out of his disgustingly long fingers – four times in five confrontations (he dies the fifth time). He was also a boring character since he had nothing more than spite for motivation, and it just makes him feel like a stereotypical villain who does bad things “just cuz”. Dolores Umbridge and Gilderoy Lockhart made better antagonists than him by virtue of having a reason to be bad.

Albus Dumbledore, the only wizard powerful enough to scare Voldemort, is also a terrible character. He is the headmaster of Hogwarts and has the power to go toe to toe with Voldemort in a duel, which happens a total of one time in at least five encounters with Voldemort and his agents. In every encounter between Harry and Voldemort, Dumbledore is either late to the party, doesn’t show up, or dies. He is also a really flat character, with him being apparently crazy all the time until he shows up to clean up after Harry beats up Voldemort, in which case he becomes deadly serious and dispenses sage wisdom before reverting to being eccentric.

Dumbledore might also be the dumbest Merlin rip-off ever. During the course of Harry’s education, the Ministry of Magic tries to replace Dumbledore with someone else at least three times. While this was always portrayed as the Ministry being corrupt or wanting to take Dumbledore down because his methods were too controversial, any sane person would wonder how Dumbledore got the job if he regularly did things like encourage students to fight serial killers.

Harry Potter’s magical world sounds cool, and the adventures of Harry, Ron, and Hermione are exciting to read, in the same way watching bad shows on Netflix by not thinking too hard about them is exciting. Harry Potter is a great read for children who wanted to get whisked off to magic school and learn how to brew potions instead of having to deal with math class. However, for anyone who wants to read a deep, magical world with real, relatable heroes and villains, Harry Potter is sorely disappointing.