I finally watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows parts 1 and 2 over the weekend. They were great. As good as all the rest of the Harry Potter movies. There were some scenes that didn’t live up to the awesomeness of the book – like Molly Weasley’s big moment, and Neville killing the snake – and I wish they’d given Snape a better death. But overall, they were great movies and a fine finale to the Harry Potter saga.

I just feel really bad for Alfred Enoch, the actor who played Dean Thomas.

Gryffindor represent!

Find out why after the jump.

Dean Thomas barely appeared in the Deathly Hallows movies! He had one tiny scene at the start of the Battle of Hogwarts, one line, where he says ‘Yes sir’ to the only other black wizard in all of Potterdom. Then he gets a close up for about 3 seconds. That’s it. But do you remember the book? Dean Thomas, for whatever reason, had a fairly substantial role in the middle of the book. He was with a band of travelers fleeing the Snatchers, and was with Harry, Ron and Hermione when they got captured and taken to Malfoy Manor. He was even there for Dobby’s funeral, having joined the escape to Bill and Fleur’s house.

Enoch has played Dean Thomas since the very first movie. Just as Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson have all grown up on screen, so too has Alfred Enoch. I imagine he’s very attached to his minor supporting character.

'Minor'? Nonsense! Dean rules!

So I wonder what it must have been like for Alfred Enoch when he found out he wouldn’t get his big scene in Deathly Hallows the movie.

Deathly Hallows the book came out in 2007, during which they were making the Order of the Phoenix movie. I imagine that Enoch was like every other person in the world in highly anticipating the 7th and final book in the Harry Potter series. And then I imagine him reading the book and getting to Dean’s big scene, where he’s on the run and then gets to team up with Harry. I bet he got really, really excited that, in a few years time, he’d get to act out that scene on the big screen. Finally Dean Thomas and Alfred Enoch would get their due!

At some point in time, one day, someone had to tell Alfred Enoch that he would not get to play that big Dean Thomas scene. Or maybe he just found out reading the script. But at some point in Enoch’s life, his hopes were dashed. There would be no great Dean finale. No scene even close to what Dean Thomas got in the book. Heck, fellow Gryffindor bit player Seamus got a bigger moment to shine in the Deathly Hallows movie than Dean Thomas.

So I feel bad for the guy.

Though according to IMDB, he’s only ever acted in the Harry Potter films. So maybe acting isn’t his thing.

But at the same time, what about actress Katie Leung, who played Cho Chang? I feel kind of bad for her too for sort of the same reason.

Though at least she's got 'smokin' hotness' going for her

Leung was a complete unknown when she beat out 3,000 other auditioning girls for the role of Cho Chang for the Goblet of Fire movie, which came out in 2005. So we can probably assume she got cast in 2004 or sooner. As we all know, Cho Chang was Harry Potter’s first crush, his first kiss and his first girlfriend in the books. I remember articles online back around 2003/2004 congratulating Leung on being cast as such an important character. And as far as we knew from the Goblet of Fire book, Chang could very well have been Harry’s love interest for the rest of the series.

So I imagine Leung was all excited to be Harry Potter’s love interest. Maybe she’d get to star in all of the rest of the movies!

But then she had to have read Order of the Phoenix, and then of course was in that movie. Where Chang quickly goes from Harry’s first girlfriend to a whiny little girl who gets dumped. And in the movie, she betrays Dumbledore’s Army. So long first crush. Then Chang barely appears in the Half-Blood Prince or Deathly Hallows movies.

For one brief moment, Leung would have been on top of the world…only to read the next novels and finding out that her character is quickly ditched.

Conversely, how awesome must it have been to be Bonnie Wright, the girl who played Ginny Weasley?

'Why yes, I am a total babe, thanks for noticing.'

Born in 1991, Wright was only 10-years-old when she first appeared as Ginny for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Did she even have a line in that movie? I know she appeared briefly in the beginning at the train station. The first four books were out, so everybody knew they’d be casting her for her big role in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. But did Ginny do anything in the books between Chamber of Secrets and, say, Half-Blood Prince?

I don’t know about the rest of you, but the Harry/Ginny relationship came out of nowhere to me. As did the Ron/Hermione relationship. I guess I just don’t think JK Rowley writes good romance. Anyway, who could have predicted at the time of Wright’s casting that Ginny would not only become Harry’s one true love, but that she’d be such as ass-kicker by the end of the series? I imagine Wright found all of this out like the rest of us, reading the new books as they came out and discovering Ginny’s role like that.

I guess what I’m saying is that it must have been weird for these young actors to read the new books as they came out in order to learn what would become of their acting careers. But I suppose that’s what’s going to happen when you start filming the movies before the book series is even over.