This detail you probably missed in “Harry Potter” totally predicted Dumbledore’s death

J.K. Rowling is known for having woven an extremely intricate world within the Harry Potter novels, to the point where when someone dismisses them as anything other than genius literature, we fans have gotten used to telling them to take a seat. Jo has filled these stories with so much life, in fact, that there are still side stories to be told – via Pottermore and companion works like the upcoming play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the film series based on the same book of its name, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Even further proof that there’s more to Harry Potter than it being just a fleeting kids’ fantasy story? Almost ten years after the last book in the main series was released, we’re still finding Easter eggs. Like this one discovered by Tumblr user mynameisdavid23, where Dumbledore’s death was foreshadowed three books before it actually happened: in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

As BuzzFeed recounts, there’s a scene in PoA when Professor Trelawney refuses to sit down at a table that already has 12 people sitting at it, due to a superstition that says when 13 people dine together, the first person to get up is going to die. GASP.

But here’s the thing: There may have already been 13 people sitting at the table, even without Trelawney there…if Scabbers, AKA Peter Pettigrew, was with Ron at the time. And considering Ron carried Scabbers around in his pocket very often, it’s likely this was the case.

So who, then, stood up first?

Yup. If you remember correctly, Dumbledore gets up to offer Trelawney a chair because he’s such a (doomed) gentleman before she flips out and tells everyone why she won’t sit down. Of course, this could just be a coincidence, but if we know one thing about J.K. Rowling, We know she doesn’t do anything by accident.

Case in point: This isn’t the first time someone in a room of 13 has stood up and met their maker by the end of the series. Remus Lupin was the first to stand at The Burrow at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, right after Moody’s death. And our favorite would-be Slytherin with a heart of gold but literally zero manners, Sirius Black, was the first to rise from a table of 13 in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Dude bit it by falling through a veil, too, so we know there was some RILLbad juju going on.

We’re still sad over Dumbledore’s death. And some of us sort of knew it was coming by the time it happened regardless, since all Harry’s father figures seemed to be knocked off eventually anyway and Dumbledore WAS really old. But thanks to J.K. Rowling’s cleverness, it’s nice to know that we can go back and re-read the series and find something new every time.