Rereading older Harry Potter book threads

With the Harry Potter special coming up on Jan 1, I had some fun scrolling through the old Dope threads that emerged when the books were published. I was less interested in reliving any excitement, more interested in reading predictions and takes unsullied by advance knowledge. The Half-Blood Prince thread in particular has a lot of interesting speculation on Snape and Horcruxes, some of it dead-on, some of it wildly off.

Anyway, thought it was better to create a new thread than bump much older ones. The two linked below had the most speculative content; older threads were either short or based on movies.

Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix (Major Spoilers!!!) - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (spoilers) - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board

Here also is a speculation thread pre-Half-Blood Prince.
With One Week To Go, Yet Another “Harry Potter Year 6 predictions” thread (spoilers) - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board

Enjoy! (if this is your kinda thing)

I mean, I guess it’s obvious in retrospect, but I certainly didn’t figure it out, and this person had it all down by post #11.

I’m still annoyed that the Ravenclaw horcrux wasn’t a wand. I mean, the horcruxes corresponding to the other three Houses were a coin-shaped object, a sword, and a cup: What’s the fourth member of that set?

I don’t know… a fourth suit of an ancient deck of cards?
Or…wait, a minute, you’re not trying to play Texas Hold’em with tarot cards, are you? That’s how gates to the netherworld get opened…

I was wondering if their username would suggest some kind of secret insider knowledge, but no, it’s just “Sony TV” backwards.

Got a full house and three people died.

Not quite on topic but still a classic old thread: Okay, who ordered the phoenix?