6 Harry Potter characters the movies cut that the TV series can finally bring back

There’s a certain irony in how the Harry Potter films managed to cram in so much of J.K. Rowling’s original material yet still left behind some surprisingly key characters. Now, with HBO’s new series on the horizon, it looks like there’s finally room to put this right. More episodes mean more space to revisit some of those book-favourite faces and subplots that were given the chop – or just quietly shunted aside – when the films came out. And with the show landing on Christmas Day this year, it feels a bit as if HBO is conceding that Harry Potter and festive telly were always meant for each other. I’ve no idea if that was their thinking or just convenient timing. Either way, Potterheads are hoping this 'ultra-faithful' adaptation is going to be the present they’ve always wanted.

Mind you, there’s already been confirmation that the series won’t be a page-for-page copy – any book-to-screen project gets a bit creative. That said, with so much more screen time in hand, it’s hard to see why we can’t finally get a more complete roll call of Hogwarts oddballs, heartbreaks, and side quests this time round. They’ve even announced a proper Peeves for the first time ever, which is a decent start.

Characters the Films More or Less Forgot

• Frank & Alice Longbottom
  In the films, Neville Longbottom always felt a bit underwritten compared to his counterpart in the novels. Yes, they touch on his backstory – if you blink, you might catch Gary Oldman’s Sirius Black summing up the trauma in "Order of the Phoenix" with that line about 'a fate worse than death' – but the important details, including his parents’ tragic fate, were shoehorned into a few throwaway lines. What really happens: Neville’s parents, Frank and Alice, were top Aurors, tortured into madness by Death Eaters with the Cruciatus Curse after Voldemort’s fall. In the books, we actually see Neville encounter them at St Mungo’s Hospital in a scene that’s as tough to read as anything in the series. If HBO sticks to the novels, that heartbreaker of a visit will likely turn up in season five, and we might even get flashbacks to Frank and Alice’s pasts. About time, if you ask me.
• Charlie Weasley
  The Weasleys are basically the First Family of the wizarding world, and yet poor Charlie (the dragon-mad one stationed way off in Romania) is pretty much only present in a photograph in "Prisoner of Azkaban". The films paid lip service to his existence, mainly keeping him well away so nobody had to bother with casting him properly or giving him screentime at the Battle of Hogwarts. Makes sense for a film, I suppose, but with a series there’s really zero excuse for not giving him his moments, especially since he’s got actual lines and plot relevance in the books.
• Marietta Edgecombe
  Book fans will remember Marietta mostly for her one big moment: betraying Dumbledore’s Army under pressure from Professor Umbridge. She’s Cho Chang’s best mate, and the plot puts her in a difficult (albeit pivotal) spot. The films, for reasons best known to themselves, hand this responsibility to Cho herself, blaming a little dose of Veritaserum for her indiscretion. It tidies up screen time but does nothing for Cho’s character arc, and leaves Marietta on the cutting room floor. For HBO’s more sprawling episode format, I’d like to see Marietta introduced way sooner so that her betrayal actually lands the way it did in the book – as a gut punch, not an awkward last-minute twist.
• Sir Patrick Delaney-Podmore
  If you’ve ever wanted a dose of absurdist ghost comedy, you’ll know 'Nearly Headless Nick’s Deathday Party' from "Chamber of Secrets" is an absolute gem – and one of my main gripes with the 2002 film is that it cut the entire thing. Sir Patrick, ringleader of the Headless Hunt, turns up with a horde of ghostly troublemakers, creating merry havoc at Nick’s party. The HBO series could score points with die-hard fans by bringing this lost scene – and Sir Patrick – to proper life for the first time. While we’re at it, John Cleese’s Nick should get more screen time too; the books gave him a genuinely poignant talk with Harry about the limits of ghostliness, which the films skipped.
• Professor Binns
  Hogwarts’ only spectral teacher, Professor Cuthbert Binns is such a non-entity that even death didn’t get him to give up teaching History of Magic – he just got up as a ghost and kept on droning. Binns’ main claim to fame comes in "Chamber of Secrets" when he gives the students a crash course in the legend of the chamber itself. If you only watched the films, you’d never have met him; instead, Maggie Smith’s McGonagall explains everything. Binns isn’t exactly riveting, but his inclusion would be a nice nod to book accuracy.
• Winky
  I can’t have been the only one, back in the day, to have picked up "Goblet of Fire" and thought, 'Blimey, this one’s a doorstop.' With the films, Warner Bros. got absolutely ruthless with what stayed or went. Winky the house-elf, and all her associated subplots, went straight out the window. If you only know the movies, you probably don’t even know Hermione founded S.P.E.W. (the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare), which is all thanks to Winky’s sorry tale. Cutting her loose meant rewriting swathes of plot and mashing what was left into other characters. I get that films have to move quickly, but a series does not. Winky deserves her moment, tantrums and all.

It’s an odd feeling watching HBO’s adaptation shape up to be the first time a lot of these secondary characters might actually get their due. If things go to plan, even the fringe weirdos could finally make it out of the footnotes and onto centre stage. For once, there’s no 'just ran out of time' excuse.