Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince shows Dumbledore visiting a young Tom Riddle, and a blink-and-you-miss-it moment reveals an impressive Easter egg – as unearthed by a fan on Reddit.
On the face of it, it’s not much to get excited about: a shot of seven rocks neatly lined up on the window sill.
But the significance of the number seven in the series is huge: Voldemort did, of course, split his soul into seven Horcruxes.
Seven is also explained as the strongest number in magic – and JK Rowling is known to have an affection for that number too.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was the sixth film in the eight-part series, based on the sixth of the seven books.
Released in 2009, it was directed by David Yates and starred Hero Fiennes-Tiffin as a child Riddle, and Frank Dillane as the teenager.
Christian Coulson played the young Riddle in Chamber of Secrets but was considered too old (29) to return to it for the character’s next appearance.
The Harry Potter films officially finished in 2011 with the second part of The Deathly Hallows, but the franchise lives on via the Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them series.
After the first film came out in 2016, the second – The Crimes of Grindelwald – is due in November of this year.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is also still playing on London’s West End, and speculation over a movie continues – though it has been consistently shot down.
JK Rowling continues to write for her latest ongoing series: the Cormoran Strike novels, for which she uses the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
