The Wizarding World is full of colorful characters with many quirks, and one of the most peculiar characters in the Harry Potter universe is Sybill Trelawney, professor of Divination at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Although she made the prophecy concerning Voldemort and the one powerful enough to vanquish him, she also made smaller predictions and observations that many students considered to be fake, among those one about Harry Potter, mistakenly saying he was born in mid-winter – but it might have not been a mistake after all, and she could have been sensing something else that Harry was unaware of.
J.K. Rowling introduced readers around the world to the Wizarding World in 1997 with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first entry in a series that would consist of seven books. Harry and company made the jump to the big screen between 2001 and 2011, with the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, being split into two films. Over the course of seven books and eight films, audiences met many interesting characters from the Harry Potter universe, among those Sybill Trelawney, a very eccentric and theatrical witch teaching at Hogwarts.
Trelawney made many predictions during her time at Hogwarts, most notably the prophecy of “the chosen one”, made in the presence of Albus Dumbledore. However, when she met Harry, and while discussing star charts, she made an erroneous observation by suggesting he was born in mid-winter. Harry was born in the summer, but Trelawney might have not been talking about him.
Theory: Trelawney Sensed Voldemort’s Soul In Harry Potter
A big part of Voldemort’s (dark) legacy was the creation of multiple horcruxes, which are objects that conceal a fragment of an individual’s soul, something Voldemort did in order to achieve immortality. When he tried to kill Harry Potter and the spell backfired, his soul “broke apart” and a fragment sought out the only other living thing in the room, turning him into an accidental horcrux – but Harry (and many others) didn’t know this until much later. With that in mind, a popular fan theory says that when Trelawney commented that given Harry’s “dark hair, mean stature, tragic losses so young in life” Saturn was likely in a position of power when he was born, and suggested he was born in mid-winter, she was actually referring to Voldemort, even if she didn’t know that Harry was a horcrux.
Tom Riddle fits the “dark hair, mean stature” and “tragic losses” part (he had a very difficult childhood), and he was born on December 31, so the prediction could have very well been about him and not Harry. Trelawney’s predictions were often labelled as fake by her students, especially Hermione, who even dropped out of her class, and while many of them could have been nothing more than coincidences or events that were going to happen anyway (such as the death of Lavender Brown’s pet rabbit), she also made some accurate observations, among those Pettigrew’s reunion with Voldemort. The “mid-winter” prediction might have not been wrong after all, and it was simply that students, readers, Harry, and Trelawney herself weren’t aware of the extra piece of soul kept inside Harry Potter.