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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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."