hey here’s something I learned only today despite being a lifelong Harry Potter reader

people are having a laugh at me for not knowing this but can you blame me? i thought “really tall” was like… 8-9 feet maximum. 12 feet is a fucking lot

Soooo…uhh…

…let’s talk about this.

I feel like—we—we definitely need to talk about this.

Okay I’ve taken these comments into account…

…and I’ve made a new scale.

You’re not going to like it.

You’re really not going to like it.

…That can’t…possibly be right…

you’re right, that can’t possibly be right. because it isn’t. the passage you quote says “twice the height of a man and four times as broad.” the depiction you’ve edited into being accidentally takes this to mean “twice the height of a man, and four times as broad as a twelve-foot-tall man” which simply isn’t what we’re meant to take away. allow me to take the liberty of starting us over.

figure 1, harry’s approximate height. figure 3, hagrid’s height. figure 2, four average adult males (about 5′10″), put side by side to illustrate what rowling meant when she wrote “four times as broad.”

these are hagrid’s clearly intended approximate proportions compared to an average 11-year-old’s height. stocky, but not horrifically so.

again, this is still an absurd size for hagrid to be while people around him somehow don’t notice he’s half-giant. but i think we should reasonably conclude that the descriptions above are exaggerations from the perspective of a young boy and not the gospel truth. here, as always throughout the series, harry has a rather vague idea of what’s going on around him.