Harry Potter: Why Do So Many Wizards Hate Portkeys?

There are a lot of interesting and fantastical magical artifacts to be seen across the Harry Potter series. Some may find themselves interested in the vitally important artifacts like the Elder Wand or any of the other Deathly Hallows, while some may find themselves more interested in day-to-day wizard magic. One of the more heavily featured magical objects is portkeys, an object that happens to be of massive significance to the plot of Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire.

There is a lot to learn about portkeys and how they work, but an interesting tidbit is that many witches and wizards revile their use. It’s not uncommon for there to be magical people who just don’t care for certain kinds of magic, but with how handy portkeys seem to be, this can be a bit of a surprise. Understanding why so many wizards dislike portkeys might just help people to understand why they aren’t more heavily used throughout the sprawling Harry Potter film series.

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What Is A Portkey?

Thanks to Harry Potter acting as a blank slate for the audience, he actually directly asks what a portkey is in both the movie and the book, though the conversation in the book is a bit more fleshed out. In Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, Harry openly wonders about portkeys and Arthur Weasley answers him in the exact way fans of the character might expect:

Arthur Weasley’s description is perfect as portkeys typically are disguised as ordinary every day objects. In Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, portkeys are seen as a manky old boot and as the Triwizard Tournament Cup. These objects serve as fast transportation devices, immediately sending a Wizard from wherever they and the object that is acting as a portkey is to a new location in a matter of moments. While there were plenty of other similar means to travel in a similar way, a portkey would be the only way for many younger wizards to travel great distances in a short amount of time without showing off the wizarding world for non-magical folk.

There are some issues with portkeys, most notably the fact that they are limited in scope when it comes to travel in the wizarding world. The portkey could only be used to transport a wizard to a predetermined location instead of just taking them wherever they wished to go on a whim. Portkeys were even capable of working on a kind of magical timer to make sure only certain individuals would be able to access certain events.

Why Do So Many Wizards Hate Portkeys?

While there could be a number of reasons why wizards don’t like portkeys, namely the limited nature of the fast travel, the real reason is what has been referred to as becoming portkey-sick. While being transported to a new location far across the globe in an instant sounds wonderful, the feeling of doing so is said to be quite awful, to the point that some people require hospitalization to recover from the experience. The feeling of traveling with a portkey was said to be like the traveler was being pulled from their stomach by some kind of hook, a feeling that ranged from simply being uncomfortable to flat-out making people sick.

It is because this method of travel left the user so uncomfortable that many wizards found it hard to use or recommend. Most would only turn to the method of transportation out of singular need should all other available options fail. It is also worth noting that in comparison to other methods of fast travel, there was a lot higher chance for Muggles to use a portkey accidently. It would be difficult for a Muggle to even begin to attempt to use Floo Powder, but should a Muggle accidentally touch an unattended portkey, the wizarding world would immediately be put at risk.

Do Portkeys Work In Hogwarts?

Interestingly, portkeys actually have a unique bit of history with Hogwarts. The school is known to have a variety of protections against other forms of fast travel, but for a while at least, portkeys were the primary mode of travel for witches and wizards to get to Hogwarts. Long before the Hogwarts Express ever existed, magical folk from all over would have to find a way to the school, making a portkey the best option for those with little magical experience. The portkeys could be set up to take the user to Hogwarts, and it could be set to do so only at a very specific time, keeping Muggles from accidentally transporting themselves to the school.

The problem is that a lot of the young students having to experience a portkey for the first time would become extremely ill, something that obviously created a lot of problems for Hogwarts. Additionally, this method made it a bit trickier for students to even make it to Hogwarts as they would have to meet the requirements for travel without running into any issues. It’s not clear where the portkeys would have taken students, but it is likely that they wouldn’t have been taken directly inside Hogwarts Castle, something that would pose an obvious safety risk to students. Instead, it is likely that the portkey would have transported students on the Hogwarts grounds quite a ways from the school, forcing them to then continue their hike up to the school.

Even the one portkey that resides in Hogwarts doesn’t actually transport anyone while directly inside the school itself. Instead, it transports Harry from the Quidditch Pitch (where the third task of the Triwizard Tournament takes place) to the twisted graveyard in which Voldemort is fully resurrected. With this in mind, it seems clear that a portkey is capable of transporting students anywhere on Hogwarts grounds as long as it isn’t directly within Hogwarts Castle itself.

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