23 Harry Potter Moments the HBO Series Could Bring to Screen for the First Time
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Scholastic
Warner Bros. is pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry… or, at least, is pleased to return to the enchanted school in HBO’s upcoming series adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books.
Channing Dungey, chair and CEO of Warner Bros. Television Group, gave an update on the project during a recent MIPCOM panel. “We’ve got our fantastic writing staff in place, and they are doing what they need to do,” she said, per Variety. “And casting calls have opened up in the U.K. and Ireland, so the process is moving along. It’s going quite well.”
Plus, the upcoming Harry Potter TV show will go “more in-depth” into the stories than the film adaptations did, Dungey confirmed. “It’s an unbelievable dream, honestly, and as somebody who is a huge fan of books, the opportunity to get to explore them in maybe a little bit more in-depth than you can in just a two-hour film, that’s the whole reason we’re on this journey,” she explained.
With that in mind, here are nearly two dozen moments from the books that haven’t been shown on screen yet — and could be shown on HBO very soon.
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Sorcerer’s Stone
- Peeves peeving. The poltergeist Peeves causes much mayhem in the Hogwarts halls and complicates Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley’s search for the Sorcerer’s Stone.
- Hermione solving the potion riddle. One of the obstacles stopping Harry, Hermione, and Ron from accessing the Sorcerer’s Stone is a riddle involving potions — a riddle that Hermione, brainiac that she is, solves.
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Chamber of Secrets
- Arthur and Lucius’ fistfight. Ron’s father and Draco’s come to blows at the Diagon Alley bookstore Flourish and Blotts after Lucius Malfoy speaks ill of Arthur Weasley’s support of Muggles.
- Ginny’s Valentine’s Day message. Ginny Weasley sends Harry a singing telegram via dwarf on Valentine’s Day. The dwarf sings, “His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad / His hair is as dark as a blackboard / I wish he was mine, he’s really divine / The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.”
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Prisoner of Azkaban
- Firebolt gets Hermione fired up. In the Prisoner of Azkaban book, Hermione is suspicious when an anonymous donor sends Harry a high-powered Firebolt broomstick, suspecting — correctly — that Sirius Black sent it. And so Hermione reports the gift to Professor Minerva McGonagall, who confiscates the stick for testing.
- The Quidditch Cup. Gryffindor and Slytherin faced off in Hogwarts’ 1994 Quidditch Cub, which Gryffindor won after Harry caught the Snitch.
- The Marauders’ backstories. The third book delves into the time Sirius, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, and James Potter spent at Hogwarts. For example, readers know that Sirius, Peter, and James became Animagi to keep Remus company during his werewolf transformations.
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Goblet of Fire
- The Weasleys on Privet Drive. Harry’s Muggle relatives meet Ron’s magical family in the fourth book, as the Weasleys crash Privet Drive to pick Harry up ahead of the Quidditch World Cup. Fred Weasley uses the opportunity to prank Dudley Dursley with a tongue-enlarging Ton-Tongue Toffee.
- Quidditch World Cup. The Goblet of Fire film doesn’t actually show the gameplay at the Quidditch World Cup, in which the Irish team defeated Viktor Krum and the rest of the Bulgarian players.
- Hermione starts S.P.E.W. After witnessing mistreatment of house-elves at the aforementioned World Cup, Hermione founds the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, or S.P.E.W. for short.
- Triwizard Maze. The Goblet of Fire film also omits many of the maze’s obstacles in the Triwizard Tournament, including a sphinx-like riddler, a Blast-Ended Skrewt, and an Acromantula.
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Order of the Phoenix
- Molly’s breakdown. After a distressing encounter with a boggart in the fifth book, Molly Weasley breaks down over her concern for her family amid the danger to come.
- St. Mungo’s. Readers got scenes set at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries — seeing, for example, how the Cruciatus Curse had ravaged the minds of Neville Longbottom’s parents.
- Firenze’s hiring at Hogwarts. The centaur Firenze becomes the school’s new Divination teacher after Sybill Trelawney runs afoul of Dolores Umbridge, though Firenze’s colony in the Forbidden Forest exiled and even attacked him for taking the job.
- Harry’s tantrum. Following Sirius’ death, Harry rages at Albus Dumbledore in the headmaster’s office, even smashing his property. And Dumbledore accepts responsibility for almost all of it.
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Half-Blood Prince
- Meeting with the Prime Minister. Half-Blood Prince opens with outgoing Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge meeting with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, showing how the leader of the U.K.’s wizarding world and his Muggle counterpart keep in communication about important events.
- Pensieve memories about Tom Riddle. The book also depicts many more memories about the man who’d become Voldemort, via Dumbledore’s Pensieve. For example, Harry learns that Tom Riddle was born to a poor Slytherin descendant who was duping her husband with a love potion — and that as an adult, Riddle unsuccessfully applied to be Hogwarts’ Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.
- The Battle of the Astronomy Tower. The Half-Blood Prince film did show Severus Snape killing Dumbledore but didn’t depict the battle between the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters that night. (It also didn’t show that Harry was frozen still by Dumbledore’s own spell, which is why he didn’t step into help his favorite teacher in that moment of crisis.)
- Dumbledore’s funeral. The film also skipped over the book scene in which the Hogwarts staff and students and other mourners lay Dumbledore’s body to rest on the school grounds.
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Deathly Hallows
- Pettigrew’s death. After Pettigrew hesitates to kill Harry in the Deathly Hallows book, he’s killed by his own prosthetic silver hand — a gift from Voldemort — which strangles him for his disloyalty.
- Fred’s death. In the second Deathly Hallows film, the Weasleys cry over Fred’s corpse following the Battle of Hogwarts, but the book depicts his death. He’s killed in a Death Eater-caused explosion outside the school’s Room of Requirement.
- Voldemort’s final duel and death. In the book, Harry and Voldemort have a war of words in the Great Hall, with Harry explaining how he now has the upper hand with the Elder Wand. And when Voldemort’s Killing Curse backfires, the Dark Lord’s lifeless body falls to the floor, instead of disintegrating as it does in the film.
- Harry repairing his wand. In the book, Harry uses the Elder Wand to repair his own wand and vows to bury the former with Dumbledore. In the film, however, he snaps the Elder Wand in two without fixing his own wand first. (Does the film version of Harry no longer have a working wand then?
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