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  • Top 10 Magical Facts You Didn’t Know About Harry Potter

  • 10. Evanna Lynch beat anorexia, but wasn’t guaranteed the role of Luna Lovegood because

  • of it

  • The story that originally made the rounds was that Evanna Lynch was dying of anorexia

  • and wrote to J.K Rowling, begging her for a part in the Harry Potter movies. Rowling

  • then apparently agreed on the condition that Lynch got better. Not so. Evanna Lynch was

  • just an average 11 year old girl from Ireland who was doing inpatient therapy for anorexia,

  • she also happened to be a massive Harry Potter fan. She wrote to Rowling, expressing her

  • fondness for the author and to her surprise, Rowling responded every time. She told Rowling

  • about her disease and the author encouraged her to beat it, but the role of Luna Lovegood

  • was never mentioned in the letters. Lynch recovered and at the age of 14, she found

  • out that auditions were being held in London from a fan website and begged her father to

  • take her. “It happened in such a short space of time that I didn’t get to tell her,”

  • Lynch said. “The producers told her (Rowling) because they just mentioned the names of people.

  • She was really shocked.”

  • 9. Alan Rickman didn’t really know all about Snape’s secret from the beginning

  • It’s been rumoured that before the producers, directors, cast or any of the crew knew, there

  • was only J.K Rowling and Alan Rickman. You know what were talking aboutthe secret

  • that unravelled Severus Snape. The fact that he was a good guy, pretending to be a bad

  • guy, pretending to be a good guyor something like that. Truth is though, that the only

  • one who truly knew from the beginning was J.K Rowling. “Not true. I don’t know who

  • thinks that is true, but it’s not true,” Rickman said. “She gave me one tiny, little,

  • left of field piece of information that helped me think that he was more complicated and

  • that the story was not going to be as straight down the line as everybody thought.” Rowling

  • thought that it was important that Rickman knew that Snape was going to be a very important

  • character later on, but she never mentioned him being a double agent.Strangely enough,

  • Rowling has never mentioned anything on the matter in any interviews, leaving it to Rickman

  • to answer any questions on Severus Snape. So was Snape’s secret planned from the beginning

  • or was it just a fluke? I suppose well have to wait for Rowling to let us know through

  • Pottermore

  • 8. Dame Maggie Smith underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer during the last movies

  • Can you imagine the Harry Potter series without the great Professor McGonagall? Dame Maggie

  • Smith embodied the strict, but sensible professor through 10 years of filming and honestly we

  • couldn’t imagine anyone better suited for the role, but it almost happened when Smith

  • was diagnosed with breast cancer. WhenHalf Blood PrinceandDeathly Hallows

  • Part 1 and 2 were being filmed, she underwent treatment andstaggered throughthe

  • final scenes. “You feel horribly sick. I was holding on to railings, thinking ‘I

  • can’t do this’,” she said in an interview back in 2009 and thankfully, she has made

  • a full recovery since then. “My energy is coming back. Shit happens. I ought to pull

  • myself together a bit.” Attagirl Maggie!

  • 7. Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double was left paralyzed after a flying scene went horribly

  • wrong inDeathly Hallows

  • From 2001 David Holmes had been Daniel Radcliffe’s (the actor that plays Harry Potter) stunt

  • double. He took on fake dragons, ill-tempered trees and massive spiders, only to meet his

  • match whilst rehearsing a flying scene forDeathly Hallows,” when an explosion sent

  • him hurling straight into a wall. Holmes broke his neck, which left him paralyzed for life.

  • The horrific accident happened on January 2009 at the Warner Bros Studios in Leavesden.

  • “I hit the wall and then landed on the crash mat underneath,” said Holmes in an interview

  • with The Daily Mirror in March 2014. “My stunt co-ordinator grabbed my hand and said,

  • Squeeze my fingers.’ I could move my arm to grab his hand but I couldn’t squeeze

  • his fingers. I looked into his eyes and that’s when I realised what happened was major. I

  • remember slipping in and out of consciousness because of the pain levels. I’d broken a

  • bone before, so recognising that weird feeling across my whole body from my fingertips right

  • down to my toes, I knew I had really done some damage.”

  • 6. Harry Potter and Voldemort turned out to be blood relatives

  • There’s been a lot of debate surrounding the Peverell brothers and theirfamily

  • heirloomsamong Potter fans. Harry received the invisibility cloak from Albus Dumbledore,

  • only because he kept it for him after James Potter (Harry’s father) died. The cloak

  • was passed down from generation to generation since Ignotus Peverellone of the brothers

  • from The Tale of the Three Brotherswas said to have gotten it fromDeathhimself.

  • On the contrary, Voldemort used the resurrection stone to make his ring horcrux and the books

  • say that it had been passed down in his family as well. Does this mean that Harry and Tom

  • Riddle have been blood-related all this time? Some fans say it’s obvious and that all

  • pure-bloods in the Wizarding universe are related in some way. Sort of like the royals.

  • Others strongly refuse to believe it. Whatever the case may be, we really doubt that Harry

  • felt bad for killing his cousin 50 times removed.

  • 5. There’s a hotel in London with Hogwarts-Themed Wizard Chambers

  • The Georgian House Hotel in Central London is a beautiful and luxurious retreat that

  • was built back in 1851, and although all of its rooms and apartments are remarkable, none

  • of them hold a candle to The Wizard Chambers. It comes with potion bottles, cauldrons, 4

  • poster beds and various wizardcor that make the room feel as if youve just come

  • from dinner in The Great Hall! The site offers various tours a muggle can take to educate

  • themselves on the Wizarding World, but for the room being £209 for two people a night

  • it sure doesn’t come cheap.

  • 4. J.K Rowling hid a LOT of plot details that were later revealed

  • If there’s one thing that was safe to assume, it would be that J.K Rowling loves her riddles

  • hmm is that why her antagonist’s real name is Tom Riddle? Well, it sure seems like she’s

  • quite the Riddler if you look at all the puzzles hidden in the pages of the Harry Potter series.

  • Remember howTom Marvelo Riddlebecame an anagram forVoldemort”? Well that

  • was just a small taste. InThe Order of the Phoenixafter Harry and Dudley were

  • attacked by dementors, they return home to an angry Uncle Dursley. When Harry mentions

  • that they were attacked by dementors, Uncle Dursley demands to know what they are, only

  • to have Aunt Petunia tell him (absentmindedly, of course) thatThey guard the wizard prison,

  • Azkaban”. An astonished Harry then asked her how she knew about them and she responded

  • with, “I heardthat awful boytelling her about themyears ago”. Obviously

  • Harry assumed she had meant his father, James, but we learnDeathly Hallowsthatthe

  • awful boythat Aunt Petunia was referring to was Severus Snapeand that’s just

  • one conundrum out of numerous others.

  • 3. The First Wizarding War was at the same time as Word War II and Voldemort was influenced

  • by Hitler

  • Many writers are influenced by history, culture and literature and Rowling was no exception

  • to this rule. She based the story of the First Wizarding War greatly on that of Nazi Germany

  • in the Second World War and also centred it on that time. “I wanted Harry to leave our

  • world and find exactly the same problems in the wizarding world,” she’s said in an

  • interview. “So you have the intent to impose a hierarchy, you have bigotry, and this notion

  • of purity, which is this great fallacy, but it crops up all over the world. People like

  • to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves in nothing else they

  • can pride themselves on perceived purity. So yeah that follows a parallel [to Nazism].”

  • Voldemort’s life and likeness was also greatly influenced by Hitler and his dictatorship.

  • Although the two are different in their own ways, their hunger for power and distaste

  • for anyonedifferentfrom them still remain the same.

  • 2. Seventeen actors who worked on the Harry Potter movies have died

  • A staggering amount of actors and actresses have died since appearing in Harry Potter.

  • From David Ryall who played Elphias Doge inDeathly Hallowsto Sir Richard St. John

  • Harris, who played the first Albus Dumbledore before his unexpected death in 2002. It’s

  • true that the films are filled with people of an older generation, but even a few younger

  • cast members have had an untimely death. Take Dave Legendo who played Fenrir Greyback, for

  • example, who died at the age of 51 because of heart-related issues. An even younger actor,

  • Robert Knox, who portrayed Marcus Belby, died at the tender age of 18, when he was stabbed

  • to death outside a bar when he was defending his little brother. Others include Timothy

  • Bateson, who voiced Kreacher, the house elf, Richard Griffiths, who played Vernon Dudley,

  • and Rik Mayall who played Peeves the Poltergeist, but whose scenes were cut from the finished

  • film.

  • 1. J.K Rowling regrets Hermione ending up with Ron instead of Harry and nearly killed

  • Ron off

  • It seems that J.K Rowling had no love lost for poor Ron Weasley at times. She’s admitted

  • that shemay have got it wrongto pair him and the beautiful Hermione Granger up

  • in the end, when it was obvious that Hermione should have ended up with Harry Potter instead.

  • “I wrote the Hermione-Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfilment,” she said. “That’s

  • how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature

  • and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended

  • up with Ron.” She believed that Ron would never really be able to make Hermione happy

  • and Emma Watson, who played Hermione, agrees. Not only that, Rowling once considered offing

  • poor Ron altogether! “Funnily enough, I planned from the start that none of them would

  • die. Then midway through, which I think is a reflection of the fact that I wasn’t in

  • a very happy place, I started thinking I might polish one of them off. Out of sheer spite.”

  • Luckily though, Ron didn’t end up at the wrong end of Rowling’s pen, unlike Dumbledore,

  • Dobby or Hedwig.

Top 10 Magical Facts You Didn’t Know About Harry Potter

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