You get one passage from Harry Potter to prove the books are better. What passage do you choose?

You get one passage from Harry Potter to prove the books are better. What passage do you choose?

Originally posted on Quora. Visit my profile for more Q&A on books, writing, marketing, literary theory, and other interesting trivia. 

It’s a travesty that they didn’t even TRY to put this scene in the movie. It’s the most heart-wrenching scene of the whole book series—and deepens the motivation for everyone, not just Neville. And it makes it so much more satisfying when Neville is the one who “gets” the Room of Requirement, who improves so much in books 6 and 7.

(By the way, at the end of Book 5, Neville breaks the wand that belonged to his father in the battle in the Department of Mysteries. We are told in Book 6 that he and his grandmother get a new wand at Ollivander’s just before Ollivander disappears—and Neville is a much more talented wizard after that (though he had started getting better during DADA practice). The wand chooses the wizard. The wand Neville used wasn’t his, it was his father’s, and never was loyal to him.)

I become a weeping mess whenever I read this part. And it’s not in the movie at all—we see a headline in a news clipping and one line delivered by Neville directly to Harry, and that’s it. The movie completely robs the narrative of its emotional power.

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