Harry Potter/His Dark Materials
With additional theories for The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit and The Inheritance Cycle
What if both Dumbledore and Voldemort knew how to cross between the worlds, and ever since they both did this, both have had external dæmons? (Fawkes and Nagini respectively are Dumbledore and Voldemort’s dæmons—discounting Nagini’s origin story in Fantastic Beasts, which contains many contradictions of the main Harry Potter timeline) It could also be that it was not Voldemort, but rather his ancestor Salazar Slytherin, who knew how to cross between the worlds, and ever since then Slytherin’s descendants have all had dæmons in the form of snakes.
If phoenixes are immortal, then it would be plausible that Fawkes did not die with Dumbledore.
Through his Horcruxes, Voldemort could have made himself impossible to kill even by killing his dæmon.
It is also possible that in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Middle-Earth is one of the many worlds in the multiverse of His Dark Materials—or that Alagaësia, the fictional continent where The Inheritance Cycle is set, exists only in Lyra’s world.
Harry Potter/A Series of Unfortunate Events
What if Count Olaf is secretly a Dark Wizard? That would explain why his house bears such a strong resemblance to 12 Grimmauld Place in HP, which was owned by the Black family—several members of which were Dark wizards. Also, what if Count Olaf was a Metamorphmagus—and that’s how he changed his appearance in seemingly impossible ways between his different disguises? He could perform Confundus Charms on anyone who he thought might see through his disguises—and the Baudelaire orphans (who are Muggles) would ignore any signs of his magic.
What if Aunt Josephine is a Squib, but still had enough connections to the magical world to get her house held up by magic? And what if Count Olaf reversed the magic that held up her house?
One-fandom theory concerning Professor Binns from Harry Potter
Not only does he often confuse his students’ names (and possibly not recognize them at all), when interrupted, he is described as “[always] looking amazed...to find the room in front of him full of people”—possibly meaning he forgets where he is. Could he have died from complications of dementia? (If so, it’s possible that he was allowed to continue teaching only because dementia isn’t very well understood in the Wizarding world.
