You Probably Missed These Harry Potter Details As A Kid

I mean, since everyone in the Wizarding World seems to marry their high school sweetheart, I guess it's not so shocking that Lily and James were a very young couple. But if Lily was born in 1960 and died in the attack on Godric's Hollow in 1981, as it says on her gravestone, then she was only 21 years old when she died, which means she was 19 or maybe 20 when Harry was born. Just in case you weren't sad enough about her tragically short life already.

Professor Trelawney is constantly making incorrect predictions...which then turn out to be kind of right. She tells Harry that he was born in mid-winter, which is obviously false since we all know his birthday is July 31st. But, Harry's soul also has a little shard of Voldemort lodged in it, with him being a horcrux and all. And Voldy was born in mid-winter, so Trelawney is only mostly wrong.

Aunt Petunia isn't exactly a fan of witches and wizards, but in book five she correctly remembers the role of dementors in the wizarding world. Her explanation is: "I heard – that awful boy – telling her about them – years ago." On a first read, you might think she's talking about smarmy James Potter. But, looking back at it, when she says "that awful boy" she must mean a young Severus Snape. Little Snape told Lily all about wizard nonsense when they were kids, so it makes sense that Petunia might have overheard (also, Snape is an awful boy).

You've probably already caught the moment when the gang finds and discards the locket horcrux in book five, but did you catch the sneak peek at the diadem in book six? When Harry goes to hid his potions book, he sticks in in the Room of Requirement near an old tiara that just so happens to house a chunk of Voldy's soul.

As a kid, I remember feeling like Fleur and Bill's relationship came straight out of left field. But in the fourth book, Fleur totally knows exactly what she's doing, as Harry observes: "Fleur Delacour, Harry noticed, was eyeing Bill with great interest over her mother’s shoulder." The girl gets what she wants.

The poor parents in these books, man. They send their kids to a school that is somehow simultaneously the "safest place" in the world, and also full of giant serpents and dragons and has no mandatory math class. As a kid, you barely think about the Granger parents but looking back at it... why on Earth would they send their only child to a invisible school for magic that they're never allowed to visit?

The dementors definitely freaked us out as kids—but we didn't necessarily make the connection between evil wizard prison guards and clinical depression. Looking back now, though, the comparison seems obvious, and Rowling herself has said that the dementors are informed by her own struggles with depression. It also drives home the point that Harry isn't weak for being more affected by the dementors than the other students, he just has more trauma in his past.

She says that she just walked in on Percy Weasley and Penelope Clearwater "kissing," but given how freaked out little Ginny is and how flustered Percy acts... I think we can safely assume that Ginny walked in on Percy and Penelope doing a lot more than kissing. It might have just flown over our heads the first time around.

So...can we all agree that Cormac Mclaggin forcibly groped Hermione and we were just too young to understand the implications of that and it's super not OK? Seriously, read the quote:"'What's happened to you?' asked Harry, for Hermione looked distinctly disheveled, rather as though she had just fought her way out of a thicket of Devil's Snare. 'Oh, I've just escaped — I mean, I've just left Cormac,' she said. 'Under the mistletoe,' she added in explanation, as Harry continued to look questioningly at her." No one should look that disheveled from mistletoe.

At the end of book one, Dumbledore famously ruins the Slytherins' night by giving the Gryffindors a whole mess of extra points. Harry and the gang get points for saving the day, of course, but it's Neville's points that put them over the top. Neville tried to stop them from charging out into danger and, as Dumbledore puts it: "It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends." Once you get to the end of the series, though, you realize just how much that act meant to Dumbledore, because he wishes he had had the bravery to stand up to Grindelwald, back when they were friends. Oof that hurts.