How The Harry Potter Movies Failed Lavender Brown

Harry Potter’s Lavender Brown was a regular presence throughout the franchise’s books, but the movies consistently failed her character. Lavender was one of the often-seen background Gryffindors, as both Hermione’s roommate, and Ron’s girlfriend through Half-Blood Prince. Though she was commonly portrayed as a girl always consumed with her latest crush, she was also a member of Dumbledore’s Army and a friend to several of the lesser-known Gryffindors. However, the movies cut her part significantly, left her fate uncertain, and mired her in a casting controversy.

Lavender Brown appeared only in small or non-speaking roles throughout the first movies, where she was played by Kathleen Cauley and Jennifer Smith. For her larger role in Half-Blood Prince, Jessie Cave was recast as Lavender. Lavender’s parts in the earlier films were largely ignored. Other characters like Crabbe were left out of the Harry Potter movies for behind-the-scenes reasons, but Lavender was simply cut for time. In the books, she maintained a regular presence as a fellow student and Hermione’s roommate, but she does not come into play in the movies until she becomes Ron’s girlfriend.

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The recasting was a point of contention with fans, as the films recast Smith, a Black actress, with white actress Jessie Cave for Lavender’s most prominent story. Cauley, another Black actress, occupied the role before Smith, so Cave’s casting broke an established pattern of casting Lavender as Black. This decision is often cited as an example of the film industry’s tendency to relegate actors of colors to lesser roles, as Smith was not allowed to continue in her part once Lavender had a lot of screen time. The filmmakers sacrificed any consistency for Lavender’s character to recast her as white.

Although many of the characters met violent ends in the final movie, and others such as Arthur Weasley narrowly avoided their planned deaths, Lavender Brown’s fate is left entirely uncertain. The book mentioned her as “feebly stirring” during the Battle of Hogwarts when Hermione knocked the approaching werewolf Fenrir Greyback away from her, indicating she was still alive at that point. In the movies, though, Greyback had already attacked her when Hermione knocked him away, and Lavender showed no signs of life. Pottermore long listed her as “presumed dead” with no further information. The main trio had known Lavender for years, even as a fellow member of Dumbledore’s Army and Ron’s love interest, so it was a significant slight to her character that her ultimate fate is never mentioned.

Lavender Brown was consistently ignored in the movies, even at her presumed death. She is far from the only character who got unfair treatment in the films, such as all of the Slytherins who were painted as one-dimensionally evil, but she is a notable example of a character who could have been much more. Harry Potter falls short on its portrayals of a number of characters, and Lavender Brown was one of the unfortunate Hogwarts students that the story left behind.

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