"Could Snape possibly know they'd found out about the Sorcerer's Stone?  Harry didn't see how he could - yet he sometimes had the horrible feeling that Snape could read minds." HP & tSS, pg 221, US version

wow... I am always impressed by you guys who can find these little clues.  It makes me wonder how intentional they really were.  I know JKR says she planned all 7 books out etc.  But we know from interviews that she really just meant she had an idea for the overall story. She hadnt really written/thought of all the little details yet.  So I wonder how many of these clues are intentional or just a lucky fluke.   When she was writing book one did JKR really have in the back of her mind that 5-10 years later in book 5 she would introduce snape as having this mind reading power.

One thing I noteiced in book one is when Harry is visiting the Mirror of Erised that DD is there wating for him and tells him that he doesn't need a cloak to become invisible. It makes me believe that DD trusted Snape so implicitly b/c Snape had taken him along as an invisible companion to DE meetings.  It also begs the question how much did DD see when he was invisible that we will be able to see through the Pensieve later.

  she puts things in her book in such a nonchalant way that no one would ever think that it actually meant somthing, "Oh he can talk to snakes, thats nice..."  But then she makes it a important turning point of book 2.  

well like the most popular one at the moment...the locket at #12 Grimmauld Place and the locket in the cave...they pop up everywhere

when harry hid in a cupboard in borgin and burkes in CoS and it comes back twice after that...

Yep, and the necklace, which draco examines, and the hand of glorey, which draco examines to.  And then the guy goes, "Your son has good taste, if you put a candle in that it gives light only to the holder." For for forshadoowing!

Ok, well i'm gonna continue posting on this thread and reading the CoS... Oo!  The womping willow!

Although I haven't verified this yet, someone suggested on another thread that each book mentions a Horcrux.  Has anyone else discovered this?

I think she planned everything out very carefully and purposefully which guarantees (as if it needed it) that the sereis will be a long lived classic.

"Harry stared up at Dumbledore.  'And then she sort of became normal again, and she couldn't remember anything she'd said.  Was it - was she making a real prediction?'  Dumbledore looke mildly impressed.  'Do you know, Harry, I think she might have been,' he said thoughtfully.  'Who'd have thought it?  That brings her total of real predictions up to two.  I should offer her a pay raise...'"  pg. 426, PoA, US version

I wonder how much research went into her work? anyway, best author I have ever read

But Voldermort wouldn't just leave his stuff lying around is what i'm saying.  And Harry doesn't even leave Hogwarts till book 3!!  I mean, there are a few things I could imagine, but nothing that obvious...

I think J.K. Rowling does many, many cunning things with her writing, not just through foreshadowing events for future books in previous ones. I think she very cleverly always makes sure the reader doesn't think she doesn't want them to. Not by making surprise endings, or by being random or anything like that ... She often covers over bits by tangling them in another plotline, or by leading us down the wrong path through another characters opinion, or by giving us so many connecting mysteries that we don't know which will lead to what until they all explode, or they become the fizzling fireworks that are connected to the big explosion but aren't a part of it. She will often hide an important point behind a following exciting chapter, so it's swept straight out of our brains. My favourite of her clever tricks is to flat out tell us what's happening but having us so suspicious of her that we don't realise she just went and told us (in The Goblet of Fire, it described Winky running as though she was dragging an invisible person ... Not just an interesting simile, she was dragging an invisible person! Another example, in The Half-Blood Prince the constant mention of the cabinet that becomes important later on obscuring Draco from the hiding Harry, Ron and Hermione. We think we don't know what he's talking about because he was hidden behind the cabinet ... Nooo, he was really talking about the cabinet).

She's a bit like a magician, really. Not a real magical one, but one that tricks us, but with words instead of cards and smoke. It's all there and obvious when we're shown through it, but while it's happening she's very good at making sure we don't see the strings.