Did You See These Coming? Best Plot Twists in Harry Potter, According to Reddit
Redditors were recently asked what they thought the best plot twists were in the Harry Potter books.
The answers were surprisingly consistent, considering there are more than 4,000 pages in the whole series and that JK Rowling is famously good at throwing literary curveballs. Still, in spite of the number of surprises in the books, there are a few that seem to stand out for most readers.
It was Quirrell all along. By the time the series ended, we were used to plot twists and surprise villains. But the original Harry Potter twist was a total mind-blower because we had been set up so thoroughly to believe that Snape was the bad guy. Did anyone ever look twice at "poor, stuttering Professor Quirrell?" You got us good with this one, JK.
Ginny opened the Chamber of Secrets. Like all great mysteries, the answer to the question: who has opened the Chamber? seems so obvious once it's revealed, but unless you were paying very close attention this twist came as a total shock.
Tom Riddle is Voldemort. Of course, the REAL villain of the piece is not sweet little Ginny, but Tom Marvolo Riddle. This was the second major twist in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, a book that should really get more credit as a solid mystery story.
Ron was sleeping with a villain for years. Ron's pet rat Scabbers – originally set up as a mere background character – was actually a grown man who went into hiding after betraying Harry's parents and faking his own death. This revelation was not hinted at, and the fact that this objectively ludicrous twist actually works is a testament to the strength of JK Rowling's writing.
Mad Eye was really Barty Crouch Jr. We should have known by book 4 that the villain would turn out to have been under our noses the whole time, but did anyone see this one coming?
Snape sent the doe. The mysterious doe that guides Harry in Deathly Hallows is so serene and beautiful that he knows instinctively it is there to help him. That same serenity and beauty made it a total shock to readers when they understood it was actually Snape's Patronus. Finding out that the doe is a symbol of his love for Lily Potter made the twist even more astonishing and poignant.
Draco Malfoy owns the Elder Wand. Rowling tricked us into believing (as Voldemort does) that Snape killing Dumbledore meant he was the true owner of the wand. When Harry explains who the wand really belongs to, it's a real "gotcha" moment.
The other major plot twists of Deathly Hallows (Harry is a Horcrux, Snape being a double agent) also got mentions from readers. Gotta give JK Rowling credit where it's due – even after more than a decade of Harry Potter books, she knew how to surprise the audience up to the very end.