Dear HBO: Please Don’t Just Make the Harry Potter Films Again

I am excited about the new Harry Potter television series. I am also slightly terrified of it.

Because if we are going to do this again — seven books, seven years at Hogwarts, another Harry, another Ron, another Hermione, another Dumbledore — then there needs to be a reason for it beyond giving the Great Hall a new coat of paint.

The films already exist. Some of them are excellent. Their casting became so culturally embedded that it is difficult to read certain characters without hearing the actors’ voices. They created a visual language for the Wizarding World that has survived for more than twenty years. Trying to make those films again, only longer and with newer CGI, would be pointless.

Television has one enormous advantage the films never had: time.

So use it.

Give me the weird things. Give me the seemingly insignificant things. Give me the characters who disappeared because a two-and-a-half-hour film could not justify them. Give me the subplots that seemed disposable until removing them accidentally changed someone’s entire personality. Give me the complicated politics, the mundane school days, the unanswered letters, the Quidditch songs, the house-elves, the Squibs, the memories and the moments where Harry is actually allowed to be a teenager rather than a protagonist sprinting between plot points.

Most importantly, please do not make exactly the same cuts again.

Give Hogwarts Back Its Weirdness

One of the things the films gradually lost was the sense that Hogwarts was an actual school.

Yes, we saw lessons, but increasingly only when those lessons advanced the plot. The books give us a much stronger sense of pupils having timetables, teachers they hate, subjects they find boring and decisions to make about their futures.

I want History of Magic. Not simply a passing reference to Professor Binns, but the magnificently boring ghost droning on while his students slowly lose the will to live.

I want the fifth-years having their career interviews, because Professor McGonagall calmly informing Umbridge that she will personally help Harry become an Auror if it is the last thing she does is precisely the sort of character moment television should have time to preserve.

I want Ron and Hermione becoming prefects, particularly because Harry’s reaction is important. Harry expects to be chosen. For a horrible little moment, he is jealous of Ron. Then he is ashamed of being jealous. That is good character writing because Harry is allowed to have ugly thoughts without becoming an ugly person.

And Hogwarts needs Peeves.

Not a cameo. Not an Easter egg. Peeves.

I want seven seasons of this poltergeist making everybody’s lives substantially more difficult, culminating in one of the most satisfying acts of rebellion in the series when McGonagall effectively assists him in making Umbridge’s life hell.

While we’re restoring the inhabitants of Hogwarts, can we finally explicitly establish that Filch is a Squib? His Kwikspell correspondence in Chamber of Secrets tells us something rather sad about him. Filch lives inside the most magical school in Britain while being unable to perform magic himself. Suddenly his resentment of the students has another dimension.

And while Harry, Ron and Hermione are protecting the Philosopher’s Stone, I want the potions puzzle beneath the trapdoor restored. Hermione’s contribution to the climax should not simply be reduced to hugging Harry and turning around. The puzzle demonstrates exactly why she belongs in the trio: there are problems neither courage nor magical power can solve.

Give Us the Marauders — Properly

Please, for the love of God, name the Marauders.

Moony. Wormtail. Padfoot. Prongs.

Explain who they are.

This remains one of the strangest casualties of the film adaptations because the films retain the Marauder’s Map while largely removing the revelation that makes its creators emotionally significant.

Harry discovering that his father, Sirius, Lupin and Pettigrew created the map connects Hogwarts past and present. It explains why Lupin understands it. It connects James’s Animagus form to Harry’s Patronus. It makes Pettigrew’s involvement more painful. It turns a magical prop into a surviving piece of Harry’s father.

The series also has the opportunity to explain Secret Keepers properly. The Potters did not simply happen to be betrayed by Pettigrew. Sirius was supposed to be the obvious choice and they deliberately switched to Peter because nobody would expect him. Sirius effectively handed Peter the weapon that destroyed the Potters and then spent twelve years in Azkaban knowing it.

That matters.

So does Sirius giving Harry the two-way mirror.

The film version essentially introduces the mirror when the plot suddenly needs Harry to possess a mysterious piece of glass. In the books, Sirius gives it to him earlier and Harry does not use it. After Sirius dies, Harry desperately tries the mirror and discovers what it could have done.

That is not a minor detail. That is tragedy.

And if we are going to understand Sirius’s death properly, we need Kreacher’s betrayal. Kreacher lies to Harry about Sirius being at Grimmauld Place because Sirius has treated him appallingly and because Kreacher has been communicating with the Malfoys. Remove that and you remove another link in the chain of mistakes, cruelty and manipulation that leads Harry to the Department of Mysteries.

Speaking of which…

Give Me the Actual Department of Mysteries

Not just shelves of prophecies and then a big room for a wand fight.

I want the Department of Mysteries.

Give me the rotating room. Give me the brains. Give me the Time Room. Give me the strange magical experiments. Give me the locked door. Give me the Death Chamber and the Veil.

The entire sequence should feel as though Harry and his friends have accidentally wandered into the part of the magical world that even adult witches and wizards do not properly understand.

The Department of Mysteries is one of the strangest locations Rowling created. Television has the time to let it be strange.

Restore the Entire Crouch–Bagman–Winky Plot

If the new series wants to justify existing, Goblet of Fire is where it can really do it.

Give me Ludo Bagman.

Give me his gambling, his debts and his questionable history. Give me Fred and George betting with him and discovering that the supposedly charming Ministry official is considerably less trustworthy than he appears.

Give me Winky.

Winky is not incidental to the plot. Her relationship with Barty Crouch Sr and Barty Crouch Jr is part of the machinery underneath the entire mystery. Removing her requires the film to simplify an extraordinarily elaborate conspiracy.

And give me S.P.E.W.

Not because Hermione is necessarily right about everything she does — actually, the interesting thing is that she isn’t — but because it is a major part of her developing political consciousness. Hermione recognises an injustice everyone else has normalised and immediately decides she is going to fix it, while initially failing to listen properly to the people she wants to liberate.

That is very Hermione.

And yes, give me the Sphinx in the maze.

The Third Task should not just be Harry running through aggressive shrubbery. The maze in the book tests the champions. Bring back the creatures, spells, puzzles and riddles that make it feel like the culmination of the Triwizard Tournament.

And when Dumbledore asks Harry whether he put his name into the Goblet of Fire?

He asked calmly.

I am begging you.

Calmly.

Let Dobby Have His Own Plot Back

The films gave an extraordinary amount of Dobby’s material to Neville.

I love Neville.

Neville does not need it.

Let Dobby give Harry the Gillyweed. Let Dobby tell Harry about the Room of Requirement. Let Harry develop an actual relationship with Dobby across the series so that when Dobby eventually dies saving him, the audience understands that this is someone Harry has known for years.

The films’ solution created another problem: Dobby disappears for several instalments and then reappears just in time to die.

His death is sad because audiences remember Chamber of Secrets. It should be devastating because we have continued to know him.

Neville has his own story. Let him have that instead.

And Please Give Neville His Parents

Take us to St Mungo’s.

Show us Frank and Alice Longbottom.

Show Neville quietly visiting his parents while his classmates unexpectedly discover the truth.

And keep the sweet wrapper.

That tiny moment tells us more about Neville than pages of exposition could. His mother, permanently damaged by torture and apparently unable to recognise him in the conventional sense, gives him a wrapper. His grandmother tells him to throw it away.

Neville keeps it.

That is Neville Longbottom.

It also makes the later question of Harry or Neville far more interesting. The prophecy could initially have referred to either boy. Voldemort makes Harry the Chosen One by choosing Harry. Neville is not merely the slightly incompetent classmate who unexpectedly becomes brave; he is the other child who might have occupied Harry’s position.

Their lives are parallel consequences of the same war.

Restore the Weasleys Who Went Missing

There are quite a lot of Weasleys. The films occasionally seemed to solve this by pretending some of them did not exist.

Give me Charlie Weasley as an actual character rather than a name on the family tree.

Give me Pigwidgeon, Ron’s absurdly enthusiastic tiny owl, because Ron deserves his own ridiculous pet.

Give me the family de-gnoming the Burrow, because not everything needs to advance Voldemort’s master plan. Sometimes magical families should just have magical garden pests.

Give me “Weasley Is Our King.” Give Ron his disastrous Quidditch confidence, the humiliation of the Slytherin song and then the triumphant reversal of it. Ron needs the victories the films so frequently reassigned or removed.

And please give us the full Percy Weasley story.

Percy working for Fudge, separating himself from his family and siding with the Ministry is painful precisely because Percy genuinely believes he is doing the sensible thing. His ambition becomes a vulnerability. His eventual return means something because we have watched the estrangement happen.

Television can allow Percy to be a character rather than an occasionally visible redhead.

Rita Skeeter Is a Beetle

Please actually solve the mystery.

Hermione discovering that Rita Skeeter is an unregistered beetle Animagus is both an important plot revelation and one of Hermione’s most delightfully ruthless moments.

Hermione catches her.

Hermione traps her in a jar.

Hermione blackmails her.

Film Hermione was sometimes polished into a much more straightforwardly admirable character than book Hermione. Book Hermione can be vindictive, obsessive, self-righteous and genuinely frightening when somebody crosses her.

Let her.

Give Us the DA Coins

The enchanted coins Hermione creates for Dumbledore’s Army are a small detail with enormous significance.

They show Hermione using the Dark Mark itself as inspiration for resistance: Voldemort uses magical marks to summon his followers, so Hermione devises a harmless version to secretly communicate meeting times.

It is clever, slightly unsettling and completely in character.

It also makes the DA feel like an actual underground organisation rather than a group of pupils who apparently just know when to turn up.

Let Firenze Teach Divination

I want Firenze replacing Trelawney as Divination teacher.

Not simply because having a centaur teaching inside Hogwarts is wonderful, but because it expands the conflict between Umbridge and Dumbledore and gives us a radically different conception of divination.

It also continues something the films increasingly struggled with: reminding us that the Wizarding World contains intelligent magical beings with their own cultures, beliefs and conflicts rather than simply humans with wands plus occasional CGI creatures.

“Remember My Last.”

Please restore Petunia’s Howler.

When the Dursleys want to throw Harry out after the Dementor attack, Petunia receives Dumbledore’s message:

Remember my last.

And suddenly Aunt Petunia knows far more than Harry — and perhaps the audience — realised.

That moment is essential groundwork for understanding why Harry has remained at Privet Drive. Petunia is not simply tolerating Harry because the plot requires him to return there every summer. She entered an agreement with Dumbledore, however resentfully, and Lily’s blood is maintaining the protection around Harry.

That deserves explanation.

Give Harry Grimmauld Place

Harry inherits Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place from Sirius.

That matters legally, magically and emotionally.

It establishes Sirius’s intentions towards Harry, determines Kreacher’s ownership and ultimately gives Harry, Ron and Hermione a headquarters while they are hunting Horcruxes.

It is another example of something the films could skim over because they had limited time but a television adaptation absolutely should not.

Give Us Tom Riddle’s Entire Story

This might be my biggest demand.

ALL. THE. MEMORIES.

Every important Pensieve journey.

I want to see the Gaunts. I want Merope. I want Tom Riddle Sr. I want Hepzibah Smith. I want Borgin and Burkes. I want Morfin. I want the young Tom Riddle manipulating Slughorn.

I want to watch how Tom became Voldemort.

The sixth book is essentially a psychological investigation. Dumbledore is not merely telling Harry, “Here are some objects you need to destroy.” He is teaching Harry how Voldemort thinks.

Why these objects?

Why these locations?

Why trophies?

Why Hogwarts?

Why seven?

Harry ultimately succeeds partly because Dumbledore teaches him to understand the person underneath the mythology.

The films retain fragments of that investigation and consequently turn much of the Horcrux hunt into intuition.

Give us the detective story back.

And Give

Half-Blood Prince

Its Ending Back

The end of the sixth book should be devastating.

The Battle of the Astronomy Tower matters. The Death Eaters are inside Hogwarts. Greyback is there. Bill is attacked. The castle that has represented safety for six books has finally been penetrated.

And give us Fenrir Greyback properly.

Greyback should be frightening because of what he deliberately does to people. His attacks and victims demonstrate another face of lycanthropy within the series: Lupin experiences being a werewolf as a condition he desperately manages, while Greyback deliberately weaponises it.

And no, Bill does not simply become a werewolf in the conventional sense. Greyback attacks him while not transformed, leaving Bill scarred and with some wolfish tendencies rather than full lycanthropy. That distinction is exactly the sort of lore a long-form adaptation has room to explain.

Then give us the hospital wing.

Give us Fleur.

Give us Molly assuming Fleur will no longer want Bill because of his scars, and Fleur being absolutely furious at the suggestion.

That is where Fleur Delacour becomes magnificent.

Give Us Lupin, Tonks and Teddy — Properly

The films barely have time to tell us Tonks and Lupin are together, never mind allow us to understand their relationship.

The series has time.

Use it.

Show Lupin’s fear that he is too old, too poor and too dangerous for Tonks. Show Tonks’s unhappiness. Show their marriage. Show Lupin panicking after she becomes pregnant and attempting to run away with Harry, Ron and Hermione. Let Harry become furious with him.

That confrontation matters because Harry, the orphan, has absolutely no patience for a father voluntarily leaving his child.

Then give us Teddy Lupin.

Give Harry the moment of becoming Teddy’s godfather.

Because when Lupin and Tonks die, Harry is not simply mourning two more members of the Order. Another child has been orphaned by the same war that orphaned him.

That parallel is deliberate.

Let it hurt.

Let Mrs Diggory Exist

Cedric had two parents.

Give us Mrs Diggory.

The aftermath of Cedric’s death should not belong exclusively to Amos. Harry meeting both of Cedric’s parents gives the tragedy a human scale that spectacle cannot.

And while we’re here, restore what happens to the Triwizard prize money.

Harry does not want it. He tries to give it to the Diggorys. Eventually he gives the thousand Galleons to Fred and George, helping finance Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.

That means Harry quietly helps create one of the brightest, funniest places in the later books using money he associates with one of the darkest nights of his life.

That is beautiful.

Keep it.

Let Harry Look Like Somebody Else at the Wedding

At Bill and Fleur’s wedding, Harry is supposed to be disguised.

Not Harry Potter standing around hoping nobody notices the most famous seventeen-year-old wizard in Britain.

Give us Barny Weasley.

It reinforces how dangerous Harry’s presence has become and allows him to listen to conversations without everyone immediately censoring themselves because the Chosen One has walked into the tent.

Most of All, Stop Treating the “Little Things” as Disposable

This is really what I want from the new Harry Potter series.

I don’t need every sentence of every book dramatised. Adaptation inevitably means changing things. Television has its own rhythm, and something that works beautifully in prose will not necessarily work on screen.

But I want the writers to understand that sometimes the little things aren’t little.

Winky explains Barty Crouch.

The mirror explains Harry’s grief.

Kreacher explains Sirius’s downfall.

The memories explain Voldemort.

St Mungo’s explains Neville.

S.P.E.W. explains Hermione.

The prefect badge explains Ron and Harry.

Percy explains what Ministry propaganda can do to a family.

The prize money explains the beginnings of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.

Teddy explains the generational cost of the war.

Filch’s Kwikspell letter explains something about why an apparently ridiculous caretaker is so bitter about living in a school full of magical children.

Pigwidgeon doesn’t explain anything.

I just want Pigwidgeon.

And that is fine too.

Because Harry Potter was never compelling solely because Harry had to defeat Voldemort. We loved that world because it felt as though things continued happening when Harry wasn’t looking. There were Ministry departments, family arguments, school clubs, boring lessons, magical illnesses, newspaper scandals, employment disputes, house-elves with their own loyalties, centaurs looking at the stars and tiny overexcited owls annoying Ron Weasley.

The films gave us the spine of the story.

They had to.

The television series now has the opportunity to give us the body around it.

So don’t simply remake the films with different actors.

Give us the corridors we never walked down.

Give us the characters who were standing just outside the frame.

Give us the mysteries that had to become exposition, the relationships that became background details and the consequences that disappeared between scenes.

Give us Dobby before you ask us to mourn him.

Give us Neville’s sweet wrapper.

Give us Sirius’s mirror.

Give us Voldemort before he became Voldemort.

Give us the Marauders’ names.

Give us Peeves.

Give us Winky.

And when Dumbledore asks Harry whether he put his name into the Goblet of Fire, for the love of all that is magical:

Let the man ask calmly.