5 Harry Potter “Facts” You Probably Believe (And Shouldn’t)

If you’ve spent years engaging with the Wizarding World, you may feel like you’ve got all the facts straight. Between seven books, eight movies, a Broadway play, a theme park, a few spinoffs, and even an upcoming reboot series, Harry Potter fans have collected a vault full of trivia and lore. Yet even devoted Potterheads might be surprised by just how many misconceptions they’ve picked up along the way. Blame it on collective headcanon, oversimplified adaptation, or even a certain author’s conflicting tweets, but it turns out a lot of these so-called facts are closer to fan fiction.

Many of these hotly debated details call into question what is technically canon and what isn’t. The original novels certainly are, but what about the films? What about J.K. Rowling’s tweets, are they clarifications or unsuccessful retcons? It’s hard to know for sure, but if you’re looking to get all your owls in a row, we’re setting the record straight on five of the most common Harry Potter misconceptions.

5) If You’ve Seen Death, You Can See Thestrals

The Thestrals were a great magical creature addition in Order of the Phoenix, but the skeletal steeds also created some confusion. Since the fifth book was released, fans have wondered why Harry didn’t see them before Cedric’s death. After all, He was in the room when Voldemort killed his mother, and when Professor Quirrell went down, so if people who’ve “seen death” can see Thestrals, he should have seen them from the beginning, right? Not exactly. According to the author herself, you have to not only witness but also remember the event and fully understand death’s finality to see Thestrals. Baby Harry saw it but didn’t understand it, and in Sorcerer’s Stone, he passed out before Quirrell’s demise.

4) Beauxbatons Is an All-Girls School, Durmstrang Is an All-Boys School

A pervasive myth among Harry Potter movie fans, the Goblet of Fire is to blame for this one. The fourth film, directed by Mike Newell, plays up the gendered school dichotomy for theatrical flair. The Beauxbatons beauties flit in like fairies, and the tough Durmstrang dudes pound their sticks into the ground. While it makes their entrances cinematic, it’s not actually accurate. In the books, both schools are co-ed. A “Beauxbatons boy” is explicitly mentioned in the Goblet of Fire novel, and author confirmations and expanded lore back it up. While we’re at it, Durmstrang isn’t located in Bulgaria either. 

3) All Slytherins Are Evil

Malfoys, Carrows, Lestranges; the roster of dark Slytherin wizards is extensive. And Hagrid’s line, “There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin,” adds further fuel to the fire. However, the truth isn’t that black and white. On one hand we have Tom Riddle, but on the other we have Horace Slughorn, who may be lazy and self-serving, but not evil. Snape is a mean teacher, but in the end, he turns out to be one of the series’ biggest heroes. Slytherins are ambitious and cunning, but those traits alone don’t necessarily equal “evil.” So if not all Slytherins are evil wizards, likewise, not all evil wizards are Slytherins. For example, Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor, and Professor Quirrell was a Ravenclaw. Still, Slytherins have the worst batting average by far. 

2) Harry Frees Nagini at the Zoo

When the boa constrictor Harry chats with at the London Zoo in Sorcerer’s Stone makes his great escape, he slithers away, hissing, “Thanks.” For years fans have insisted that this snake was none other than Voldemort’s pet Nagini. The notion fueled all kinds of wild theories, like that it was the earliest Horcrux foreshadowing. As fun as that would be, unfortunately, Nagini is technically a Maledictus, meaning a cursed woman who slowly turns into a snake permanently. And, notably, she’s a female viper, not a male boa constrictor. So officially Harry isn’t to blame for accidentally letting Voldemort’s seventh Horcrux loose on the streets of London. 

1) Voldemort’s Name Is Pronounced “Vol-duh-mort”

In 2015, Rowling dropped a bombshell tweet on fans when she admitted everyone had been saying “Voldemort” wrong for the last decade. To this day, the incorrect pronunciation persists. As it turns out, the “T” is silent, and the name is meant to be spoken in the French pronunciation: “Vol-de-more.” It makes sense in hindsight, given that “mort” means “death” in French. Yet the correction came too late, as all the films and video games had already disseminated “VoldemorT” en masse. The only person who clued in originally was audiobook narrator Jim Dale, who used the “Voldemore” version throughout the first three audiobooks. Yet, even he was eventually peer-pressured into pronouncing the silent T. Given that the upcoming HBO series has yet to cast its You Know Who, the jury is out on whether the hard T will continue its reign. 

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