Factual error: Chapter sixteen (Professor Trelawney's Prediction) takes place in June 1994. In the beginning of page 341 (Bloomsbury edition) of that chapter, Harry Potter reads a note from Hagrid and says, 'Buckbeak's appeal - it's set for the sixth.' The night after the Hippogriff's appeal, Remus Lupin is forced into a werewolf form by the full moon, which means that this happened on the night of June 6th, 1994. The web page http://www.hp-lexicon.org/timelines/main/timeline_1990s.html#1994 also backs this up. However, a brief look at lunar phase calendar sites such as http://stardate.org/nightsky/moon/index.php?month=6&year=1994 and http://mysite.verizon.net/bonniehill/pages.aux/lunar/lunar.phases.1994.html definitely shows June 9th, 1994, as a new-moon night, which means that a full moon could not possibly rise three days earlier.
Continuity mistake: Before Harry and Hermione go back in time, it mentions that Buckbeak is tied to a tree. But when they go back in time, Buckbeak is tied to a fence.
Question: Could Professor Snape really get away with putting Neville's toad in danger (when he feeds Neville's potion to the toad at the end of class, saying that it might poison the animal)? I know that he is already a unfriendly teacher, but it seems that there would be some sort of rule against killing an animal that belongs to a student, and parents of other students might be outraged if they heard about it.
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Answer: Snape would never actually poison, kill, or otherwise harm any student's pet. He was just being his usual unpleasant self to Neville and any other student not from his own school house (Slytherin). If any Hogwarts teacher actually did something like that, they would be likely be dismissed.
raywest ★