The 7 most mind boggling brilliant Harry potter theories... 

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The 7 Most Mind-Bogglingly Brilliant Harry Potter Theories

The Harry Potter hype craze may technically be over, but a lifetime of debates and debacles is just beginning. We\'re well on our way to becoming that one generation that\'s still donning Ravenclaw scarves and squabbling about Severus Snape as we settle into nursing homes. In lieu of any new material (IS THE NEW MOVIE HERE YET?), we\'ve got a lot of overzealous enthusiasm that\'s bubbling over into things like Harry Potter slash fiction, offers to adopt Tom Felton, and also BRILLIANT FAN THEORIES:

Fred and George never saw Wormtail on the Marauder\'s Map BECAUSE...

It\'s the question that\'s plagued fans for years. You\'d think two mischievous masterminds would\'ve noticed a little thing like a well-known murder victim sleeping in their little brother\'s dorm for three years, so wheat\'s the deal? The answer, according to one fan, involves the Marauders\' ingenuity: you can only see someone on the Map in their Animagus form 

 Mischief masters James Potter and Sirius Black wouldn\'t have wanted to risk revealing their big, bad, illegal secret. The proof? Lupin was the only one who saw Wormtail on the Map their third year—Harry never did, and neither did Snape when he went barging into Lupin\'s office. Plus, Harry didn\'t see Rita Skeeter in 

There\'s a theory bouncing around the interwebs that Trelawney, resident Hogwarts fortunetelling fraud who was notorious for predicting the death of one student every year, actually predicted the deaths of people who died in the Battle of Hogwarts. It\'s not so much a theory as it is a tragic "OH MY GOD WHAT IF" scenario, but Harry

So if Trelawney\'s actually pretty competent, why did she get that one thing wrong? MAYBE SHE DIDN\'T.

If Trelawney isn\'t actually terrible at what she does, why did she guess that Harry was born in midwinter instead of July, pretty much confirming everyone\'s suspicions that Divination was useless and mostly stupid? Some fans say this foreshadows the fact that Harry is a Horcrux and has a part of Voldemort\'s soul inside of him, because Voldemort 

Neville just had the wrong wand the whole time. A popular theory is that timid, no-talent Neville, who had been given his father’s wand as confirmed in

Order of the Phoenix, was particularly bad at magic simply because he was using a wand that didn’t choose him. J.K. Rowling is very explicit about the mechanics of wand lore in Deathly Hallows, and once Neville got a wand for himself and stopped trying to live up to his father’s name (metaphorical resonances, yo), he showed remarkable improvement and went on to become the infamous Hogwarts badass.

Voldemort\'s actual master plan was pretty amazing and could have TOTALLY WORKED. One bone we’ve all had to pick with Goblet of Fire is this: why did Voldemort, barring a deep-seated concern for the state of Harry’s education, wait until the end of the year to kill him? There must\'ve been easier ways of getting to him besides smuggling him into a tournament and watching him barely blunder his way to victory each time. The answer, according to one fan who is smarter than all of us and probably destined to take over the world, is that Voldemort was planning (once he killed Harry in the graveyard) to take his place using Polyjuice Potion and

. Portkeys, you\'ll remember, are not usually a two-way street, but

Once there he’d be in prime murdering position. He could\'ve easily killed Dumbledore or staged a coup d\'état in the body of the Boy Who Lived, sowing doubt in all those who ever stood behind him. This theory is so flipping cool we all just had to take a step back and 

Sirius Black had more of an agenda than we thought AND IT MAKES US SAD. Some Potterheads have speculated that Sirius broke into Hogwarts on Halloween not only because he knew everyone would be out of the dormitories, but also because it was the anniversary of James and Lily’s death. And then we all sobbed forever because Sirius Black lost everything, and his life was miserable and short.

This one cropped up before the end of the series, but it\'s cool nonetheless. The theory went that the prophecy (

"either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives..."

) could be interpreted to mean that Harry and Voldemort could only die 

 Harry was literally the only one who could physically kill Voldemort, and Voldemort was the only person in existence who could kill Harry. By that logic, Harry\'s defeat of Voldemort would\'ve solidified his own immortality, dooming him to a fate where he could never die and see his parents, Sirius, Remus, or Fred again in the King\'s Cross afterlife—or even Ron, Hermione, and Ginny when they too inevitably succumbed to death\'s sweet embrace. I don\'t think any of us anticipated, when we purchased the first book, that ten years later we\'d still be knee-deep in speculative fan theories and crying a lot, BUT HERE WE ARE AND HERE WE\'LL STAY.

THESE THEORIES MAKE US MISS HARRY MORE THAN EVER. But are they wickedly awesome and smart or WHAT?! (Rhetorical question. They are wickedly awesome and smart.)

Tags: harry potter, books we love, wizards, jk rowling, voldemort, fandoms, the harry potter series, fandom theories, sirius black, the battle of hogwarts, dumbledore is really just a super-smart muggle

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