The Most Intense Harry Potter Scene We Never Got To See

The Harry Potter film franchise is already pretty intense, but one of its tensest scenes didn't make the transition from page to screen.

Obviously, adapting J.K. Rowling's epic, seven-part novel series was a massive challenge for any one of the many directors who worked on the Harry Potter movies, and considering how long her books were, it would have been more or less impossible to keep every single scene in the final cut of each film.  When it comes to the fourth installment, director Mike Newell's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the movie is missing one of the book's most intense scenes.

Whether you've read the Harry Potter books more times than you can count or have only seen the films, you'll have to agree that this cut moment, no matter how small, would only have added to the final cut of the film. Here's the most intense Harry Potter scene we never got to see on the big screen.

As a competitor in the dangerous, multi-school Triwizard Tournament, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) has some huge obstacles to overcome during Goblet of Fire, including a mysterious golden egg, which itself is a clue as to what Harry will face in the second of three tasks. After getting some cryptic advice from his fellow Hogwarts competitor Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson), Harry brings his egg to the private prefect's bathroom, a scene which does make it into the final cut of the film. What happens right after Harry's bathroom outing, howeer, ended up on the cutting room floor.

On his way back to the Gryffindor common room and dorm, Harry, clad in his Invisibility Cloak, slips on a staircase with a fake step, getting his foot stuck with no way out and dropping his egg, which causes a racket by screaming. Almost immediately, Hogwarts' caretaker Argus Filch and Potions professor Severus Snape — played in the films by David Bradley and Alan Rickman — arrive on the scene, though they're the two last people Harry wants to see. Naturally, as Harry's nemesis, Snape immediately suspects Harry thanks to the tell-tale egg, but before he can discover Harry under his cloak, Mad-Eye Moody (played in the movies by Brendan Gleeson), a fellow professor friendly with Harry, appears.

Invisible and trapped on the stairs, Harry is forced to watch as Filch, Snape, and Mad-Eye squabble over the mysterious egg, as well as the fact that someone broke into Snape's office earlier that night. Ultimately, Mad-Eye rescues Harry — as his magical eye can see through Harry's cloak — and the two discover that Barty Crouch, a Ministry of Magic official, broke into Snape's office, though the truth behind that story comes much later.

While it's easy to understand just why this scene was cut from Goblet of Fire when push came to shove, it's still disappointing that so many great moments from the Potter books ended up left out of the movies due to time constraints. With that in mind, many Potter fans have considered an important question over the years: Should the Harry Potter movies have been a television series instead of a film franchise?

If the Potter films had been allowed to take a sprawling, epic journey like HBO's Game of Thrones, it could have remained as faithful as possible to the books, including every detail that was cut for time in the final films. The fact remains, however, that films are definitely more lucrative than television when all is said and done, and when you consider the Potter franchise's incredible box office draw, it makes sense that Rowling and Warner Bros. were hell-bent on putting Potter on the big screen.

All eight Harry Potter films will arrive on Peacock soon, and in the meantime, fans can ponder the scenes left out of the franchise and wonder whether or not it should have been a television series instead.