15 Things That Almost Completely Changed The End Of Harry Potter

9. The Original Epilogue

What Happened

The infamous epilogue - which featured some of the most uncharitable ageing make-up in the history of cinema in the adaptation - tied up the events of the Harry Potter series nicely with a "19 years later" cap that roundly established that everyone was okay, as well as introducing the next generation of the wizarding world.

It's glorious, gorgeous fluff that doesn't have any need to be particularly complex.

What Could Have Been

Apparently, Rowling wrote a much more extensive epilogue, with a lot more information on the central clan, including "the name of every child born to the Weasley clan in the past 19 years" and generally way more detail about what Harry, Ron and Hermione had got up and how they'd changed the Wizarding World.

But rather than dump an encyclopaedia of 19 years worth of information on readers, she instead wrote a briefer, "more poetic" version and then actually wrote the encyclopaedia - in the shape of Pottermore, to fill in far more detail.