For many people, watching the HP movies will have displaced at least some of the ways they imagine Harry Potter. I am somewhere in the middle of the spectrum - some things changed, other things didn't.

It might be a struggle to think back to the time before the movies came along, but there's a certain fun nostalgia in it too.

So how did you use to imagine things in HP?

A few of mine:

1. I used to picture McGonagall as younger, as she was described in the books. E.g. with black hair rather than grey. But Maggie Smith has thoroughly displaced my mental image. Though I still describe McGonagall correctly in my fanfic, I don't actually picture her that way.

2. I used to pronounce the "Raven" in "Ravenclaw" as like "ravenous".

3. I used to picture wands as below. One image I am glad the movies displaced.



4. My mental image of Hogwarts was a lot less sprawling before the movies. I basically imagined it as all a single stocky keep somewhat like the Tower of London.



5. Also on the topic of Hogwarts, I didn't imagine it nearly as large or spacious. None of these beautiful cathedral-like arched and airy corridors. More like the castles I had visited as a kid with dark, narrow, cramped hallways. I also didn't imagine the staircases as literally moving. More like the floorplan shifted - which I still think is how JKR intended it, so is how I write it in fanfic.

 

For me, every magical creature besides Dementors and House elves. I imagined they were all bigger than life really, instead of the kinda bad cgi circa earlier movies (like for the troll) or odd-looking ones, imo I pictured the goblins as either green or dwarf-like gray skinned. And instead we got mini-human bankers with pointy ears and large noses. Though Flitwick was great casting.

And of course got to mention how veela's made me picture ethereal people like in LOTR.

 

Werewolf Lupin looked like a weird praying mantis to me. I used to see him as a lean werewolf, with more fur and flesh than what we saw in the movies.

I always imagined Hagrid to be taller than he was in the movies, so I'd say he looked more fit and intimidating in my imagination.

 

As a kid, I distinctly remember thinking, “Ah, ok. So that’s how Hagrid sounds.” I had no frame of reference for a British accent like that. While I think JKR did a great job teaching us to “hear” Hagrid with lines like “I’d not say no ter summat stronger if yeh’ve got it, mind,” 10-year-old me still struggled with lines that, to me, looked more like a Southern American accent than anything else I was familiar with (“Yer great puddin’ of a son don’ need fattenin’ anymore, Dursley”). I was very happy to get a better sense of not just the pronunciation, but the speed and cadence too.

It really annoys me when I’m reading the books and I occasionally hear Harry’s dialogue in Daniel Radcliffe’s voice, since that’s not how I picture him looking or acting. But I’m always happy to clearly hear Robbie Coltrane’s version of Hagrid in my head or Maggie Smith’s McGonagall.

EDIT: Now I'm watching Robbie Coltrane interviews on YouTube, and I found a clip where he actually says he heard Hagrid differently in the books when he first read them, compared to the way he ultimately portrayed him, which is fun to think about.

 

I certainly didn't imagine Cho to have a Scottish accent but now I can't unhear Katie Leung's voice.

One thing the movies did not change is my view of Snape. In the books he's prone to losing his temper, and has no problem raising his voice and displaying emotion (just read the ending of Prisoner of Azkaban where he's utterly enraged). The movies made a him a deadpan extraordinaire, which I don't like. Alan Rickman is a great actor, but I find his take on Snape all wrong.

I feel the same with Michael Gambon. Richard Harris absolutely fit my view of Dumbledore, but Gambon does not at all.

 

The movies didn't have an impact on how I viewed Hogwarts, but they had a huge impact on how I viewed the characters. I remember seeing the first movie and thinking, 'Holy shit, those kids are just babies!' I always imagined them as older in my head, for some reason.

Dumbledore and Hagrid were pretty much exactly as I imagined them. Hermione was the only character who didn't match up at all with my mental image. I imagined a plain but not unattractive girl with thick, untamable hair, like a Greek girl coming in from a windstorm. That ain't Emma Watson.

 

I was born a good bit later than some of us, I am reminded. Most of the movies were already out by the time I believed I was old enough to read the books, it was really just the last three that I experienced for what they were. I didn't picture Azkaban as a triangular prism and if we're being honest many of us still don't. The design made it look too modern for a prison that was supposed to have been in use for centuries.

I just looked up this picture of it and it's even worse than I remembered. It's not nearly narrow and rickety enough, it's like a cursed minecraft meme.

 

I always forget that in the books, Neville and Dudley are both blond.

 

...Holy shit.

Guess that's what I get for not reading any of the books again in the last... wow, 13 and a half years.

 

I saw the first 2 movies before I read any of the books, so this is a really odd question for me to try to answer.

I guess maybe the biggest one is that I picture the movie version where the kids have school uniforms they wear under the black robe. Rowling seems to use 'robes' as the catch all clothing option for magical people in general and I never see them that way in my head. Plus, honestly, wearing nothing more than a robe over your underwear in a castle way up north in Scotland? The kids would be fucking freezing.

For the most part, I do not see the actors when I think of the characters. A bunch of them are way too attractive or just flat out wrong looking.

 

Not going to lie. I had completely forgotten about that.

 

I saw the first movie before I read the books (2002, 2003?), so it left quite an impression on me.

I've got old McGonagall stuck in my head, but I don't like it. I've managed to overcome the short-looking Hagrid in the films. The rest of the character appearances have basically stuck.

My imagination of Hogwarts has always been wide corridors. It also includes a mostly empty castle.

I've managed to mostly avoid the lack of robes the later films fostered. I imagine many students wearing muggle-like clothes in their free time though.

The lake was much smaller. A bigger lake didn't enter my mind until the 4th film. I remember being confused about the lake in the 3rd film. I imagined that was the big lake described in the book, but in the film it was like a pond. It was way too small. Checking the wiki, it was supposed to be the Great Lake. The lake in the 4th movie was too big though.

I imagined veela is slightly inhuman looking. Still beautiful, but something unnatural about them. The films have never displaced that.

My imagination of Harry's voice started off a bit generic, went to Radcliff, and then to my own internal voice as I started reading fanfic.

Azkaban continues to be an island with a fortress on it in my mind, not the inter-tidal rock with a fortress on it seen in the films. I do like the idea of the fortress defying conventions for fortresses though. It's a magical fortress built with magic, so it looking like modern art works in my mind.

I'm glad movie wands displaced the jagged twigs seen in pre-movie art. I don't like the overly ornate designs though.

 

Agreed. The gnarly movie wands remind me of every shitty Indy!Harry fic where he gets an Uberwand made of Ent cock with a Phoenix and Basilisk cum core that 'his magic' shapes into the form of two dragons assfucking each other.

On another note, I always pictured the school cauldrons as great big hulking things like in Macbeth, not tiny little table top 2.5 gallon pots.

 

I'm also one of the people who got introduced to the movies before the books (thank/blame my little sister for dragging me to the theatre). So I think the movie definitely coloured some of my opinions. Character-wise there's not much I picked up on my own, though like many others Maggie Smith supercedes everything McGonagall and I still imagine a slightly more energetic Richard Harris for Dumbledore. And whilst I love Gary Oldman, seeing Sirius with a moustache was jarring.

In terms of setting, I never pictured anything but the film's depiction of Hogwarts castle itself, but for the Black Lake and Azkaban I pictured a decently sized lake that was near the house I grew up in (about an hour/hour-and-a-half's walk around the circumference) and a slightly pointier Alcatraz from the SF Bay Area. Both of which I visited fairly frequently in my childhood. If I hadn't seen the movie first, I might have added Hearst Castle to that; a mix of various buildings/towers connected by open-air walkways with the Great Hall being a more centralised keep.

Minor things: I didn't consider broomsticks to have footrests at all. Veela were very fae-like in demeanor—perfectly polite and pleasant until you got on their bad side. House elves like a weird cross between gnomes and brownies. More pointy witch hats everywhere. Peeves was a desaturated/whitish Slimer. Also I somehow imagined familiars being more of a thing. Hanging onto robes, resting on hats/heads, etc. I imagined wands looking a bit less... polished and more organic-looking.

 

People, please!

It's Dame Maggie Smith.

 

Well, I remember my Mam reading the Philosopher's Stone to my sister when I was about four, and for some reason I kept hearing Squirrel instead of Quirrel. Bit of a nasty shock for me when I watched the movie.

I'm fairly certain that I watched most of the films before I read the books, so for me it was likely the opposite of the OP's question.