It's been more than a decade since the final book in the Harry Potter series was released and more than eight years since we first watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 in theaters, but we're still as obsessed with J.K. Rowling's wizarding world now as we were back then. We thought Rowling was an absolute genius the first time we enjoyed the beloved franchise, but every time we reread the books or binge-watch the films, we discover new, mind-blowing details and Easter eggs that she cleverly slipped into the series without us realizing!

If you were eagle-eyed and obsessed with Harry and his friends enough to notice these hidden gems before now, we give you some serious credit. Only a true Potterhead could have figured out these shocking fun facts on their own!

15 10 points to Dumbledore

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When Professor Dumbledore awarded the 10 points to Neville Longbottom at the end of Sorcerer's Stone, we all thought it was his not-so-subtle way of ensuring Gryffindor (his clear favorite House) had enough points to beat Slytherin in that year's House Cup. Sure, Neville deserved some credit for standing up to Harry, Ron and Hermione... but we just didn't buy that his courage was the real reason Dumbledore awarded him those crucial points. Well, now that we've put some serious thoughts into this seemingly insignificant scene... we realize that those points actually weren't insignificant to Dumbledore at all. Albus knew first-hand how difficult it is to stand up to friends, because he had to take down his first love and best friend when Gellert Grindelwald rose to power as one of the most powerful dark wizards of his time.

14 Take that, Voldemort

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We all loved the Weasley twins in the Harry Potter books and adored the way James and Oliver Phelps portrayed Fred and George in the films. We thought the iconic duo was impressive for rebelling against Umbridge when she was in charge of Hogwarts, being willing to fight Death Eaters and opening up their own joke shop as teenagers, but their most bad*ss move of the entire series actually took place when none of us were paying attention—in a fairly forgettable paragraph found in the first book. Apparently, the twins got in trouble for "bewitching several snowballs so that they followed Quirrell around, bouncing off the back of his turban." At first, we thought this was just another classic example of Fred and George innocently goofing around, but we failed to realize until now that in throwing snowballs at the back of Quirrel's head... they were pelting Lord Voldemort right in the face!

13 Harry was right about Snape

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Harry's intuition when it came to Severus Snape was off for pretty much the entirety of the series. He thought the greasy-haired professor was an undercover Death Eater who couldn't be trusted, when in reality, Snape was a double agent who was watching over Harry and his friends and who used to be madly in love with Harry's mom. Harry did actually get one thing correct when it came to Snape, however—in Sorcerer's Stone, he told Ron and Hermione that he was worried Snape knew what they were up to because he had "the horrible feeling that Snape could read minds." At the time, we didn't know that was even possible, but fans learned later on that Snape is actually a skilled Legilimens and has the ability to read minds! Finally, Harry was right about something.

12 The real reason Ron and Neville weren't good wizards

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Whenever Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom failed to perform well in their classes at Hogwarts during their first few years at the school, we just assumed that they weren't particularly talented wizards and didn't really think anything of it. After all, not everyone can be Hermione-level skilled. But now that we've seen and read Deathly Hallows a dozen times and know that if you're using someone else's wand, your magic will never be as strong as it'd be if you used your own... we realize that Ron and Neville's underwhelming performances in class weren't their fault at all! Ron was using Percy's old wand because his family couldn't afford to buy him his own yet, and Neville was using his father's. They probably still wouldn't have been a match for Hermione if they did have their own wands, though.

11 The Sneakoscope WASN'T broken!

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Remember Ron's birthday present for Harry in Prisoner of Azkaban? He gave his best friend a pocket Sneakoscope that was supposed to light up, spin and whistle if someone was doing something untrustworthy nearby. but everyone assumed it was broken because it went off constantly. Harry just put the gift away and moved on with his life, but that Sneakoscope was actually perfectly functional and he probably should have kept it with him at all times for the rest of the series!

When the Dark Detector went off at the Weasley supper table, Ron's brother Bill called it a piece of rubbish intended for dumb tourists... failing to realize that Fred and George had put beetles in his soup. When it lit up while Ron was tying it to Errol's leg, it was because Ron wasn't supposed to use the very old owl for long journeys. And when it went off when Harry first received it, it was because the rat on Ron's shoulder, Scabbers, was actually Peter Pettigrew—the Death Eater who betrayed his parents to Voldemort! A lot of lives could have been saved or improved if people took that Sneakoscope seriously.

10 Was Trelawney's prediction right?

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Every fan's first impression of Divination professor Sybill Trelawney was that she was a complete fraud with no actual ability to see into the future or past. She made some laughably wrong predictions over the course of the series, like that time she tried to guess when Harry was born by merely looking at him.

"Your dark hair… your mean stature… tragic losses so young in life… I think I am right in saying, my dear, that you were born in mid-winter?"

Harry instantly and hilariously shut her down by telling her that he was actually born on July 31, which is about as far from mid-winter as you can get, but maybe Professor Trelawney was actually looking into the past of the piece of Voldemort's soul that was inside of Harry! Tom Riddle, after all, was born on December 31, which is in the middle of winter. Some may call this a coincidence, but we think it's possible she was getting a reading on Voldemort's final Horcrux.

9 Wait, maybe ALL of her predictions were right!

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Now that we're thinking about it, it's possible Trelawney wasn't a fraud at all. Just consider her seemingly crazy statement that "when thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die." She made that prediction when she was invited to join a group of 12 students and teachers in the Great Hall on Christmas, but since the group seemingly never became 13, we never thought anything about it. However, since Ron technically had Peter Pettigrew in his pocket, they were 13 all along. That evening, Dumbledore was the first to stand up when he invited Trelawney to sit with them, and he was the first of that group to die. When thirteen members of the Order of the Phoenix dined together at the beginning of the fifth book, Sirius was the first to rise and went on to be the first to die. When thirteen people raised a toast to Moody after his death in Deathly Hallows, Lupin was the first to leave and was the first to die. Coincidence? We think not!

8 Uncannily accurate

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Sybill Trelawney may not have been the only low-key skilled Seer at Hogwarts—believe it or not, Harry and Ron might be similarly talented at Divination! The two slackers hated the class, and when their professor told them to try to make some predictions, they goofed around and pretended to see a bunch of nonsense in their crystal ball. Harry said that he was "in danger of burns," Ron predicted that Harry would "lose a treasured possession," and they both agreed Harry would be "stabbed in the back by a friend." They were just joking around, but every single one of those faux predictions came true! Harry was in danger of being burned by the dragons in the first task of the Triwizard Tournament, he had a friend taken from him in the second task, the fake Professor Moody stabbed Harry in the back by being one of the Dark Lord's top Death Eaters in disguise, and Harry certainly came off worse in his graveyard fight against Voldemort. J.K. Rowling basically gave us the whole plot of Goblet of Fire in these predictions, and we never noticed!

7 Another prophecy came true

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When Harry and his friends fought off Lucius Malfoy and his fellow Death Eaters in the Hall of Prophecies in Order of the Phoenix, one of the prophecy orbs fell off a shelf and we were able to hear a small amount of the prediction it contained over Malfoy's voice.

"At the Solstice will come a new... and none will come after."

It was another throwaway line that we didn't think anything about, but that prophecy was actually Rowling's ridiculously clever way of revealing when we'd find out an important detail about the seventh and final book in the series! The title of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was announced on December 21, 2006—the same day as the Winter Solstice. And no books came after Deathly Hallows. 

6 "That awful boy"

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After Dudley was attacked by Dementors at the start of Order of the Phoenix, Aunt Petunia shocked readers by demonstrating an understanding of the frightening magical creatures. Uncle Vernon demanded Harry to explain what dementors were, but his wife chimed in and told him that they "guard the wizard prison, Azkaban." Harry couldn't believe his ears, and when he asked how she knew about dementors, Petunia explained that she heard "that awful boy - telling her about them - years ago." Us readers and Harry all assumed that she was talking about James Potter, but she actually wasn't. The "awful boy" she referenced was young Severus Snape, who befriend Lily when they were both kids! If only Harry had thought to ask her more about that "awful boy," we could have learned the truth about Snape years earlier!

5 Right hand man

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J.K. Rowling may have been as obsessed with slipping spoilers into the Harry Potter novels as we were with reading them! When gardener Frank Bryce overheard Voldemort's conversation with Wormtail in the Riddle house at the start of Goblet of Fire, his eavesdropping gave readers a huge spoiler for the end of the book that we totally didn't notice. The Dark Lord told Peter Pettigrew that if he is loyal, he will be allowed to perform "an essential task... one that many of my followers would give their right hands to perform." See the Easter egg hidden in that sentence? In order to complete the ritual that brought Voldemort back to his human form, Wormtail had to cut off his right hand. Good one, J.K.!

4 Awkward gleam

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Albus Dumbledore is one of our absolute favorite Potterverse characters, but he's been the source of a lot of confusion for fans. People still can't get over the way he screamed "DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET OF FIRE?!" at Harry in the fourth film, when the book said he was supposed to ask that question calmly. Fans don't understand why J.K. Rowling announced Dumbledore was gay after the series was over, or why he never told Harry about his relationship with Grindelwald. And we never understood why the headmaster had "a gleam of something like triumph" in is eyes after Harry told him that he had a role in bringing Voldemort back to his human form. We still don't have answers to those first few mysteries, but we may have figured out what that weird gleam was all about. It's possible that Dumbledore realized that since Harry's blood runs through Voldemort's veins, he would be able to survive a Killing Curse from Voldemort and finally defeat him. Assuming that's the case, he probably should have just told Harry.

3 We should have guessed

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If we took the time to search for all the hidden clues and spoilers in the Harry Potter books, we probably could have saved ourselves a lot of shock and heartbreak. We absolutely lost it when George's ear was cut off and Fred died in Deathly Hallows, but it was actually possible to predict both of those tragedies! Almost all of the Weasleys were named after past monarchs of Britain, but Fred and George's namesakes basically spoiled the two characters' fates. George was named after King George III, who went deaf in his later years (hence the chopped off ear). George became heir to the throne after the untimely death of his father, Prince Frederick of Wales... who Fred was named after. We see what you did there, Ms. Rowling.

2 The Horcrux hunt should have been easier

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Harry and his friends spent several months looking all over the world for Voldemort's Horcruxes, but their search should have been much easier. They stumbled onto two of the magical items earlier in the series, and just assumed they were random trinkets! When Harry and the other kids staying at Grimmauld Place were tasked with cleaning up the Order headquarters while the adults were busy working, they found a bunch of creepy-looking stuff in the drawing room that included "a heavy locket that none of them could open." This locked turned out to be the Horcrux that Regulus Black (who used to live there) wasn't able to destroy. When Harry hid the Half-Blood Prince's old potions textbook in the Room of Requirement, he placed a "tarnished tiara" near it to make its hiding place more distinctive. That tiara was Ravenclaw's Diadem, another of Voldemort's Horcruxes.

1 The most important lesson

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Harry learned a number of incredibly important lessons over the course of seven books and eight films, but possibly the most important of all was the one taught to him on his very first day in the wizarding world... before he even stepped foot into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. Ollivander told Harry "the wand chooses the wizard" during The Boy Who Lived's first trip to Diagon Alley, and the wandmaker's tip proved to be all Harry needed to finally take down Voldemort! The Dark Lord tried killing Harry with the Elder Wand that rightfully belonged to him, so when their two spells collided, the third piece of the Hallows flew out of Voldemort's hand and propelled "through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last." If Harry didn't have Ollivander's little magic lesson up his sleeve, there's no way he would have been able to defeat Voldemort.