Why Harry Potter Fans Believe Ron Was Secretly Brilliant At Divination

In the real world, people who claim to be able to see the future get roughly the same response as people who say that they can read their cats' auras: a brief moment's pause, a swift screenshot for posterity, and a heartfelt left swipe. But in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, where magic is as common as smartphones and failed attempts at making fondant, fortune tellers are treated ... actually, about the same. 

Dumbledore considered removing classes on the subject from the Hogwarts curriculum owing to their perceived uselessness, and Hermione, who would later drop the elective course in an unprecedented display of scholarly frustration, described the process of scrying what's to come as — brace yourself — "wooly."

Then again, maybe there's something to the whole business. In fact, maybe Ron Weasley, who once used a hazy crystal ball to predict fog, was a remarkable fortune teller all along. Stranger Harry Potter fan theories have popped up over the years (see: "Snape was saved by never mourning properly"). Besides, this one has some hard, fictional facts to back it up. At least, that's what the sleuths over on Reddit's /r/HarryPotter forum think. By their collective reckoning, the youngest of the Weasley boys could prognosticate with the best of them.

It all comes down to an exchange between Ron and Harry in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Harry has just learned that Tom Riddle had once received an award for "special services to Hogwarts," and expresses curiosity as to what actions led to the commendation. "Could've been anything," Ron replies. "Maybe he got thirty O.W.L.s or saved a teacher from the giant squid. Maybe he murdered Myrtle, that would've done everyone a favour."

Maybe he did, Ron, you insensitive, unfeeling, remarkable psychic.

As we learn later in the book, Riddle, also known by his alias Lord Voldemort, abso-lutely killed Moaning Myrtle, the ghost who chooses to spend eternity in a restroom at a private school, but is inexplicably never arrested. He did it in 1943, when he was a student at Hogwarts and became chummy with a basilisk (one of Harry Potter's many mythical creatures that might have actually existed) that shared his objectionable views on racial purity.

This, according to Reddit users, appears to single Ron out as a gifted fortune teller — even if he wasn't aware of the gift himself. "Ron seemed to be best at Divination when he wasn't trying, and without even realising," one user wrote. "When they [were] doing homework Ron correctly predicted that Harry would suffer but be happy about it."

Of course, all of this begs the question: Why didn't Ron realize that the rat he slept with was actually a middle-aged wizard racist? Maybe they cover that in Cursed Child.