False Facts About Harry Potter You Always Thought Were True

As spell-binding as the Harry Potter series was (and is, always), a few falsehoods have floated around that fit better in one of Gilderoy Lockhart's self-aggrandizing stories or Rita Skeeter's unreliable articles than in our own Muggle news feeds. Some of these misunderstandings have had a lasting confundus charm effect on the fandom and have become widely accepted canon well outside of Hogwarts. Even when truth serum has been introduced into the potions recipe, they still loom larger than any of those pesky dementors. Here are some false facts about the series even the most devoted Potterphiles might have been tricked by.

As adorable as it would've been for the Harry Potter series to throw in this Easter egg, this one's about as true as the rumor that Harry manipulated the Triwizard Cup to get in the competition. A 2012 meme that went ultra-viral claimed that the child actor who played baby Harry in those gutting flashback sequences from the night of his parents' murder returned for the last pic to play Albus Severus, Harry's second son. However, baby Harry was actually portrayed by one of the Saunders triplets in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and by Toby Papworth in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, while Albus Severus was played by Arthur Bowen. It's a bigger bummer than every time house points got unfairly deducted from Gryffindor, but lies of any kind are best left to the Death Eaters.

Let's be honest; Ron Weasley got the short stick in the character development department. Sure, he ended up with Hermione Granger in the end, but even J.K. Rowling has said that was an authorial mistake. He couldn't hold a candle to Hermione in the way of brains, he didn't have a percentage point of the charisma Harry carried, and he wasn't even the coolest among his bevy of siblings — not by a long shot from one of the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes' own contraptions. So, it's understandable why fans conjured up their own ideas about his significance to the story by theorizing that he was actually a time-traveling version of Professor Dumbledore. But it still isn't true.

The belief is that the two, widely referred to as Ronbledore, were interconnected by Ron's future as a time-traveler who was sent back in time to live out his days as Dumbledore, based on a loose collection of details scattered throughout the series (and, of course, the hopes that Ron might've been more than a chocolate frog-loving dud). However, J.K. Rowling shot that one down with same brand of brief snippery that made Hermione completely synonymous with proper pronunciation of "leviosa."

In the Harry Potter world, werewolves sometimes dined on children (except Remus Lupin, RIP), so the idea that bad boy Draco Malfoy might be in the lycanthropy business on the sly isn't too much of a stretch for his personality. But it's also not true. Nor was Professor Snape — despite his looming presence, pallid complexion, preference for gloomy robes, and preference for gloomy locales — a vampire. So sayeth the queen of the Wizarding World.

Since Rowling admitted to mixing up her 'ships between Harry and Ron where Hermione was concerned, there were some fans who suspected there was another couple who never made it to shore as originally planned: Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood. Considering they were both secret heroes of the series who prided themselves on being a little weird and against the grain — not to mention, their shared appreciation for fantastic creatures like the mandrake root and thestrals — many fans hoped the pair would end up together. When they didn't, some said they were meant to like Harry and Hermione.

But Rowling has said that was never in her writing plans for the pair because it "felt too neat." Ultimately, Neville went on to marry Hannah Abbott and fill Pomona Sprout's shoes as Herbology professor at Hogwarts, while Luna ended up with Rolf Scamander — the grandson of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them centerpiece Newt Scamander. So, officially, the Neville-Luna relationship is exclusive to the fanfic regime and has no basis in reality.

It's no secret that the Harry Potter series earned some major loot for Warner Bros. over the course of its eight films, and the studio was happy to expand the magical realm for the Fantastic Beasts prequel. So reports were flying faster than one of Mrs. Weasley's angry howlers that the studio was also planning to develop the stage sequel Harry Potter and the Cursed Child into a film. The kicker was that original series lead Daniel Radcliffe was being courted to reprise his role. Reports that the studio filed for copyright protection of the property for cinematic purposes certainly boosted the claim.

However, Rowling denied that Cursed Child would be lifted from the stage to the big screen. (To be fair, her denial also said Fantastic Beasts would be three films, when it's now expected to include five.) Warner Bros. also issued a statement denying the buzz: "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a stage play, with no plans for there to be a film."

We can probably give this one a little merit for the fact that a new chapter of the Harry Potter series did make it into print form by way of the Cursed Child script (and then a ninth with the release of the Fantastic Beasts screenplay), but the long-rumored eighth chapter of the Harry Potter book series proper was a total hoax. The original story which "confirmed" that Rowling was working on Harry Potter and the [Insert Magical Item Here] was filled with obvious fake news markers like un-sourced quotes and "hush hush" rumor tones, but still, a lot of people were getting their pre-ordering fingers ready for this one after the story dropped ... and some are probably still wondering why it hasn't arrived yet.

As much of a moment as Pokemon Go had within the phone gaming world in 2016, the game's developers aren't planning to have everyone in New York hunting down secret entryways to Ilvermorny any time soon. Somehow, word spread like wildfire that Niantic was officially putting Harry Potter Go into motion as its follow-up to the Pokeball-slinging craze, but the story was as full of wrong as Hermione's first try at Polyjuice Potion.

Alan Rickman's character in the Harry Potter series, Professor Snape, was a conflicting figure until the end, but his real-life counterpart Alan Rickman was always a precious gem where the fan community was concerned. In the books and films, Snape eventually got some heart-warming redemption when it was revealed that he carried a lifelong torch for Harry's late mother — cemented by a wistful "always" during his revelatory conversation with Dumbledore.

After Rickman's passing in January 2016, a dormant meme about Rickman went viral and quoted him to state, "When I'm 80 years old and sitting in my rocking chair, I'll be reading Harry Potter. And my family will say to me, 'After all this time?' And I will say, 'Always.'" The originator of the post publicly admitted to having made it up with no malice after it became widely circulated due to his death.

Daniel Radcliffe is an avid supporter of LGBTQ rights organizations, so it would seem pretty out of character for him to be harboring a secret about his sexuality. However, rumors have been swirling around for him for years that he's secretly not straight, despite his constant refusals of the same. In 2010, the actor declared quite plainly to MTV, "If people want to say that, they can. I'm not. I'm straight." He went on to add that if he were gay, he wouldn't have felt like he had to hide it from anyone. "I don't think my position would have stopped me if I was gay," he explained, later adding, "Coming out is such an important moment in a gay man's life that I would never want to actually comment on whether or not anyone should or should not."

There's no doubt that after Emma Watson became the plucky academic Hermione Granger for the Harry Potter series, she was one of Britain's most desirable bachelorettes. The actress (turned student, turned model, turned philanthropic spokeswoman, turned Disney princess) was rumored to have been on Prince Harry's radar due to her superstar status. Some sources even went so far as to claim that the two were sneaking around in a secret relationship with one another in 2015. However, Watson herself shot down the gossip by writing, "Remember that little talk we had about not believing everything written in the media?!" and adding, "Also ... marrying a Prince [is] not a prerequisite for being a Princess."