By the time we are got to the end of the final Harry Potter movie (and recovered from being sobbing wrecks, let’s be honest), we at last fully understood the weird link between Harry and his nemesis Voldemort. His hurting scar, his ability to talk to snakes – it was all explained because Harry was a horcrux, which meant that part of Voldemort’s soul resided within him. But the hints go all the way back to the third movie, or maybe even the first.
If you’re a bona fide Harry Potter fan, it’s likely that you end the film series (or books of course) thoroughly annoyed at Dumbledore. That lemon-drop-loving wizard may have been wise, but he definitely withheld an awful lot of information that might have saved Harry a whole heap of heartbreak.
But Dumbledore isn’t the only character who potentially knew about Harry’s vital link to Voldemort. In the Prisoner of Azkaban, we’re introduced to no one’s favorite Harry Potter character – the seemingly mad-cap Divination teacher, Professor Trelawney (Emma Thompson).
Trelawney is generally viewed as either incompetent or a fraud, but we later realize that she makes several accurate prophecies. One of her incorrect guesses about Harry is that he was born in mid-winter, but this might mean that she can ‘see’ the Voldemort horcrux within him.
As Reddit user Sabatouer pointed out; “When Sybil Trelawney predicted Harry was born in mid-winter, she was laughed at, as Harry’s birthday is in July. However it is a known fact Voldemort’s soul is inside Harry. It’s possible that Professor Trelawney was detecting the part of Voldemort inside Harry, as Voldemort was born mid-December.”
Another theory is that the reason the Sorting Hat so keenly pushes Harry towards Slytherin to begin with is because it can ‘see’ Voldemort’s soul within him. In hindsight, there are lots of clues from the first moments of the series – the first ‘magical’ thing we see Harry do is talk to a snake at a zoo and set it free. This is before he even knows he’s a wizard or about the existence of Hogwarts.
While you could (at a stretch) blame Trelawney or the Sorting Hat for not picking up on hints that Harry was connected to Voldemort, no one is more to blame for his misfortunes than Dumbledore. In many ways, Dumbledore is almost as big of a Harry Potter villain as Voldy himself.
The fact that we can go back and analyze all of these tiny clues regarding Harry’s fate is what makes the Potter series amongst the best fantasy movies. And these are the kinds of details we’ll be looking out for when the Harry Potter TV series comes around.
We’re also holding out hope for a Cursed Child movie. In the meantime, we’ll have to look forward to House of the Dragon season 2.