Harry Potter fans eagerly awaiting the upcoming TV show reboot have turned to the original films in an attempt to decipher hidden theories about the series.
With the TV show not set to release until at least 2026, many fans are taking to rewatching the films or rereading the books, and one person doing this discovered a seemingly game-changing theory about Professor Dumbledore, one where they theorise the character may even have watched himself die.
This joins the list of crazy fan theories that alter the films (and likely will never be confirmed), including one recent fan who created a theory about Cars, which transformed it into a near-psychological thriller.
The Harry Potter fan theory in question, however, is even more mind-bending and totally changes the films if you subscribe to the theory, that is.
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One fan posted into r/FanTheories, an online subreddit for wild fan theories about films and shows, to share their theory that Dumbledore uses a Time Turners and in the process witnesses his own death.
For those who are immediately confused, let’s sum up some important context.
In the third film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hermione is given something called a Time Turner to manage her massive workload of classes.
At the end of the film, however, the main trio use this to go back to previous parts of the movie and save themselves and others from trouble.
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The rules are clear that you can’t use Time Turners to change the past – you use them to fulfil it.
The Reddit fan theory goes that Dumbledore uses a Time Turner and an invisibility cloak to witness Harry’s entire arc at Hogwarts.
When trying to explain timeturners and how someone can do things in the future which have already happened, they say: “If that’s giving you a headache, here’s the simplest example: in Prisoner of Azkaban, young Harry sees someone cast a powerful Patronus.
“He later realizes that person was his older self, so when the moment comes, he knows he can cast it because he already saw that he did. Now apply that logic across seven years of Hogwarts events.
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“I realize there have been other theories about Time-Turners and Dumbledore using them, but what I haven’t seen suggested yet is that Dumbledore might have lived the a full 7 years witnessing the events of the novels first before Harry even became a student.”
They then suggested he had actually aged seven years in the summer before Harry first goes to Hogwarts, saying: “That would explain a lot of Dumbledore’s suspiciously perfect judgment calls. Trusting Harry to break school rules in very specific ways.
“His cryptic wisdom. Knowing which gifts to leave each of the students in his will to aid them on their journey.”
When someone in the comments questions whether this means that he would’ve seen himself die, they replied: “Yes, in this theory Dumbledore sees his future self die.
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“There’s a cyclical paradoxical pre-determination in all of it. If he knows he will go back in time once he has the knowledge that Voldemort will be defeated he can use that knowledge.
“It’s almost like he manifests the timeline by believing it.”
After that, your brain will either be breaking or totally open to the possibility that Dumbledore knew how he was going to die all along.
Topics: Harry Potter, JK Rowling, Reddit, Film, TV and Film
Michael Slavin