5 things the Harry Potter movies got wrong

2. The age of the Marauders

There is one piece of Harry Potter trivia fact that we feel so strongly about, we may as well drive down your street shouting about it through a megaphone: Lily and James Potter were only 21 when they died.

According to their gravestones, the pair of star-cross’d lovers were born in 1960, making them little more than children when they were killed by Lord Voldemort in 1981. It makes their sacrifice even more tragic.

Even thinking of 21-year-old Lily and James holding baby Harry makes us emotional — we can’t think about them giving their lives for him.

When we first see the Potters in the movies,however, coincidentally the first time Harry sees them too in the Mirror of Erised (sob), they look closer to their 40s than the 21-year-old whippersnappers we know them to be.

There is, perhaps, a reasonable explanation for this. When the first film came out in 2001, filmmakers couldn’t have known that James and Lily Potter were mere babes when they died, because the final book hadn’t even been written yet, much less published. They cast actors who looked like parents to an 11-year-old child. It made sense at the time.

Given that there is such a reasonable explanation, the Potters being older probably shouldn’t make us so furious but just imagine this: a film where the Marauders are all the right age. Sirius Black dies aged 35. Remus and Snape are 37.

`Voldemort’s reign of terror means that an entire generation of wizards die before they’ve even hit their 40s. It runs parallel to Harry’s lost childhood and the sacrifices he made to ensure that Voldemort is defeated and the world becomes a better place.

It’s really sad, but what part of Deathly Hallows isn’t? Peeves’ tone-deaf song about Voldy going moldy?

Nope, even that’s a little bit sad.