Elaborate Harry Potter Fan Theories That Actually Make A Ton Of Sense

From Redditor u/EquivalentInflation:

Ron's behavior and views towards Lavender match up almost exactly with a love potion:

• Obsession: Potions can't produce true love, only infatuation. Ron and Lavender are constantly engaged in PDAs and show no real personal connection.
• Dosage: The potion only lasts for 24 hours at a time. That's easy enough to do when they eat together. However, Ron first begins to dislike Lavender over the winter holidays, a time when she isn't there to give him his next dose.
• Antidote: Ron finally breaks up with Lavender after Slughorn gives him an antidote for Romilda's love potion (inadvertently removing Lavender's) and when he is then forced to spend days in the infirmary without her. She becomes upset when she can't visit him and when he is "asleep" every time she visits because she can't give him the daily potion.

Then, there's the fact that Lavender's behavior follows a pretty clear path:

• Means: Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes sold love potions, which became incredibly popular at Hogwarts, and were smuggled into the school. She could easily acquire one.
• Motive: Despite Lavender flirting repeatedly with Ron, he showed a bit of interest but never responded. A love potion would give her the chance she wanted.
• Opportunity: When Ron first got together with Lavender, it was at the Quidditch party, which specifically had a large table full of drinks for all the players, allowing Lavender to spike Ron's pumpkin juice/butterbeer. Considering that Ron missed Harry holding the Felix Felicis over his cup, how much more distracted would he be with an adoring crowd?

TL;DR: Lavender Brown used a love potion to make Ron Weasley become obsessed with her. However, when she was unable to repeatedly give him the potion (during break, while he was in the hospital), he began to dislike her and eventually dumped her.

From Redditor u/EquivalentInflation:

One of the first things we learn about Azkaban is how absolutely horrible it is. Hagrid nearly has a breakdown when he's told he's going there for a few weeks and is noticeably affected afterward. Fudge is visibly ill just thinking about making a short trip, and Ron mentions that his dad was shaking and exhausted after just a few hours there on ministry business. From everything Sirius tells us, and what we later see with Death Eaters, Azkaban is capable of driving someone insane and making them lose the will to live. This shows us that Dementors are incredibly dangerous, possibly the most dangerous things in Harry Potter. To the best of our knowledge, they can't be killed and can drive someone mad just by standing near them, as well as their “kiss.”

After Voldemort comes back, the dementors leave Azkaban and start terrorizing Muggles. Fudge also mentions that they've begun breeding (good luck getting that image out of your brain). It'd be essentially impossible for the Ministry to fight them, and we don't see any evidence of them trying to do so. Taking down even one or two requires the Patronus charm, something very few wizards can do.

Clearly, letting Dementors run free would be incredibly dangerous. They'd be a severe threat to both wizards and muggles alike (maybe 10% of adult wizards could manage to fight them off, at best), and they'd likely end up destroying the statute of secrecy. Thousands could lose their souls, and millions more would face horrible depression and fear.

We know that the Ministry has barely any control over the dementors. Voldemort basically just asks them to join him, and they do. When they're at Hogwarts, they all abandon their posts and attack children, and the ministry is powerless to stop them. Same with Barty Crouch Jr: Fudge is right there, yet can't stop the Dementor from sucking out his soul.

Azkaban acts as a sort of prison for dementors. They're given a constant supply of free prey without having to work for it, who they can make miserable. The ministry sacrifices some of its worst prisoners, the people their society won't care about. They also then get the added bonus of dissuading crime through fear. But their main goal is to keep the dementors there, under control, without the resources to breed more of their kind (from what Fudge says, we can guess they need an abundance of prey to do that).

From Redditor u/LapisLazuliisthebest:

We all know about the law regarding underaged wizards – they can't use magic outside of school.

At first glance, this seems like a fair enough law. I mean, magic is dangerous, so they would want to prevent those without proper experience from using it outside a trusted, controlled environment. Plus, we do have other laws regarding underaged people in our world.

For enforcing the law, there is a two-strike system. First strike, you get a warning from the Ministry of Magic. Second strike? You can have your wand taken away, and you are expelled from your school. So, you're telling me the punishment for using magic twice whilst underaged is you permanently lose any reasonable chance of becoming a wizard, completely screwing you over until adulthood, and are doomed to live the life of a muggle? Pretty harsh, isn't it?

In real life, if you commit an underage crime, the worst the legal system will do to you is give you a fine. Sidenote, here in Britain, we have a truancy law that says parents can be given a maximum of 6 months in jail if their child stops going to school, but that's more punishment for the parents than the child.

The Ministry of Magic places magic tabs on underaged wizards to alert them if they use magic out of school. Problem is... It doesn't just track the child. It tracks the entire radius around that child. That means if a child uses magic around adult wizards, the Ministry won't notice because it would be impossible to tell who used that spell. This actually happens when Hermione uses magic to fix Harry's glasses but doesn't get into trouble since she was around other wizards.

The opposite happens with Harry, who receives a warning from the ministry for using magic when it was Dobby using it, as he was the only magic user, the ministry knew was living in that household. This basically means that children living with wizard parents can use magic, and the Ministry will be none the wiser; meanwhile, those living with muggles will be detected and may even be framed.

TL;DR: The underaged magic law was created to be deliberately biased against Muggle-born and (in some cases) half-blood wizards and given harsh penalties, so they could revoke magic from those groups at any chance they get. Therefore, helping to eliminate impure wizards from wizarding sociality.

From Redditor u/EquivalentInflation:

It's mentioned that when Harry was younger, before he found out he was a wizard, he accidentally did magic several times. Some of these were relatively minor and seemed to be the usual underage magic: Turning his teacher's wig blue, making his hair grow back, etc. However, there are a few that are... different.

At one point, Harry was being chased by Dudley's gang, and he then suddenly found himself on top of a roof. This was explained away by the Dursleys as him jumping and being caught by the wind... but as we know, it was magic. What's the odd part? Only highly advanced dark wizards can fly unaided. It couldn't have been disapparation, as there was no mention of a 'crack' sound, and without any training, he most likely would have splinched himself trying to do a magic spell that many adult wizards considered too dangerous.

So, how could he have done a spell linked to dark magic? Because of Voldemort's soul inside of him. We know from the locket that Horcruxes can defend themselves if they are somehow put in danger: the locket first tried to choke Harry, then created an illusion to try and turn Ron against Harry.

The Horcrux part of him likely was also responsible for making the pane of glass disappear on Dudley. The Horcrux recognized the tormentor that had attempted to harm its host and decided to try and remove it by dropping Dudley into the enclosure of a deadly snake. Even if it failed (as it did), it meant that Dudley would likely be terrified of Harry's power (which he later was until he found out Harry couldn't do magic outside of school).

TL;DR: The piece of Voldemort's soul inside of Harry used its magic to protect him from harm. Not enough to make him invulnerable but to avoid dangerous threats

From Redditor u/MultiverseOfSanity:

They claim the trait of the house is ambition, yet, it always attracts a certain type of person. Almost all Slytherins support blood purity and look down on muggles/muggle-borns to one degree or another.

In fact, this trait seems to be more prevalent than their stated trait. A lot of Slytherins we see have little to no ambition. Like yeah, Malfoy wants to be the top dog and to be a Death Eater (until he finds out all that it entails). But others, like Crabbe and Goyle, seem perfectly content to just be lackeys. They seem to have no ambition at all.

And this isn't totally out of left field. Being sorted into houses means that you embody the aspects of that house founder. For Slytherins, this is Salzar Slytherin. Who strongly believed muggle-borns were inferior and didn't even want to let them in the school at all.

And Hermione, for all her smarts, relates to Ravenclaw, but not to Slytherin even a little bit, even though she is very ambitious. Despite being probably the most ambitious character in the series. Also, evil wizards are disproportionately in Slytherin. If Slytherin was just the "ambitious" house, this would make no sense.

Even the "token good guy" Slytherin, Slughorn, looked a bit taken back that Hermione could be so good “despite being muggle-born,” which is basically a way to show Slughorn is the racist grandpa trying to adjust to modern times and still lets his old insensitivity show from time to time. Plus, he treats his students like collectibles. And again, he shows very little actual ambition. In fact, he disguised himself as a chair to try and get out of work.

Saying that Slytherins are ambitious is just a way to kind of sugarcoat that this is low-key, the “racist house.” Kinda like they sugarcoat Hufflepuff being the "miscellaneous house" where people go if they don't fit the other three categories.

From Redditor u/gijabs2992:

After reading the Half-Blood Prince, I got to thinking about what could be the ingredients in that potion and I believe I have the answer for two of them. The flesh of a dementor and rattlesnake venom.

Firstly I'll explain why I believe [why one ingredient is] the flesh of a dementor. We get one firsthand experience of the drinker’s reactions with Dumbledore. He keeps saying he doesn't want to and not to hurt them but hurt him. This is him reliving his worst memory, the death of Ariana, the guilt of which he carried for at least 130 years. Then we get 2 secondhand encounters with Kreacher's Tale. Kreacher describes that he saw terrible things when made to drink the potion, but no evidence of Regulus Black being driven out of his mind.

Now the Black connection is significant because I also remembered what Sirius had told Harry about surviving in Azkaban for so long. He tells him, "I knew I was innocent, which isn't necessarily a happy thought, so they couldn't take it from me." This shows determination to not fall to the dementor’s power. Just as Regulus had determined to finish Voldemort after hearing from Kreacher what happened.

I came to the conclusion of dementor flesh because it's a Dark potion, and it wasn't designed to kill but to incapacitate until he could question them. And also the only part of a dementor's anatomy we can be absolutely sure of is flesh due to the hand that Harry sees protruding from the dementor's cloak in his first encounter.

As for the rattlesnake venom, well, I got to thinking because Kreacher said his insides burned; that dementors cause cold, not a burning sensation. Then I remembered both Dumbledore and Kreacher were thirsty after drinking the potion. So I did a Google search for 'snake venom that causes thirst' and rattlesnake venom fit. I believe this because Voldemort wouldn't have Nagini at this time, and also, we know that he likes to use snake venom in his potions, as seen in Goblet of Fire with his rebirth potion. Being a Parselmouth, it wouldn't be hard for him to obtain the venom either.