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harry potter - Has JK Rowling ever directly contradicted the movies?


The Harry Potter books are pretty different than the movies. This can be seen in depth over here.


My question however, is whether JK Rowling ever directly contradicted the movies with later books in ways that she hadn't before. In other words, a situation where the movies did not contradict canon up to that point, but where they did (inadvertently) contradict later book canon.


Did JK Rowling ever directly contradict the movies?



Inspired by this answer.



Answer




Yes, at least twice.


Both come from Philosopher’s Stone, which was released a year after the book version of Goblet of Fire:




  • In the film, after escaping from Fluffy for the first time, Ron and Harry accompany Hermione up the stairs to her dormitory (1h3m).


    When they try to pull the same stunt in the book Order of the Phoenix, they discover the stairs are charmed so as to make this impossible:



    “Let’s go and tell her,” said Ron. He bounded forward, pulled open the door, and set off up the spiral staircase.


    He was on the sixth stair when it happened. There was a loud, wail- ing, klaxonlike sound and the steps melted together to make a long, smooth stone slide. There was a brief moment when Ron tried to keep running, arms working madly like windmills, then he toppled over backward and shot down the newly created slide, coming to rest on his back at Harry’s feet.






  • In the book, Harry loses consciousness before Quirrell dies.



    Harry jumped to his feet, caught Quirrell by the arm and hung on as tight as he could. Quirrell screamed and tried to throw Harry off – the pain in Harry’s head was building – he couldn’t see – he could only hear Quirrell’s terrible shrieks and Voldemort’s yells of ‘KILL HIM! KILL HIM!’ and other voices, maybe in Harry’s own head, crying, ‘Harry! Harry!’


    He felt Quirrell’s arm wrenched from his grasp, knew all was lost, and fell into blackness, down… down… down…



    He’s conscious for Quirrell’s death in the films, which should be the trigger for him to see Thestrals in subsequent years. But he doesn’t start to see them until Order of the Phoenix, to match the timeline in the books – because Thestrals hadn’t been introduced yet.





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