Your imagination

[Fleurdelacour]

How do you imagine Harry to be? His physical appearance? How long is his nose, is his chin dimpled or do you not see a face at all, or just everything from his perspective?

I thought it'd be interesting to find out what everyone else 'sees' when they read the books. And how the character's sound. Do you imagine them with British accents? Or accents from your own country?

How do you see the Dursley house? Is it a Victorian house in surrey or a suburban 1930s house?

go into as much detail as you want :D Remember, it is how you imagine it :)

The Dursley House:

I imagine the Dursley house exterior being a typical Surrey house. 1930s, very suburban and neat. A quaint lawn to the front with concrete paving, and little rosebush flowerbed, maybe adorned with some pansies. They've a brown door, with a round stained glass window, and a brass number four.

http://www1.findaproperty.com/watesresidential/forest-hill/p1034910.jpg

The Dursley sitting room, is typically Dursley. Uniform green walls with a floral design. Brown velvet settee, and Vernon has his own chair, complete a perfect dent, and a smelly old cushion!

Harry's bedroom is beige, typically beige with a dirty green carpet. His bed is like the Sims bed! ;) The brown one, the one for 300 Simoleons. He has a soff-white bedside table, with a scruffy off white desk beside it.

Harry: I dont see his face, I see the whole book literally through his eyes, if that makes sense!

Ron: Is tall. His shoulders are hunched over quite a lot, his nose is quite small and his freckles cover his nose and cheeks mainly. His hair is like a member of Oasis, scruffy and longish! lol, rocking ron!

Hermione is the perfect little lady. Her hair is wavy, not "crimped" as the movie does it... :rolleyes: and slightly frizzy. She's very pale, and has bright blue eyes. She's taller then Harry, but no were near as tall as Ronniekins!

That's all I can be arsed with right now!

So go on, what do you see!? (I sound like the occult...)

[ElfTBD]

Hmmm...well...I'll probably get spanked for this, but as far as Harry, Ron and Herminone go, my imagination ended up being rather close to the kids they got to play them in the movie...the only exception being Ron, but that's only because I put him a bit taller than harry...

but as far as the adults in the books, they are NOTHING like I imagined (well, except for Dumbledore, but I think he's a little hard to screw up, don't you think?)...

now, living in Boston, I imagined the Dursley's house more like the immediate suburbs of boston...lots of cramped little houses with little yards...but one of the older neighborhoods witht he cool streetlights...in fact, a friend of mine's grandmother has the perfect little house that I could imagine it to be...the whole inside is old wood, with the bedrooms upstairs....but small though....

I will say that the hardest things to imagine in my head (pre-movie, mind you) was Hogawarts and Quidditch....honestly, I couldn't wrap my brain around the castle and the dorms and all...I could only think of the dorm at my college that was the oldest on campus and had fireplaces and such...at least, that's how I pictured the common room (see, my college was small and very old, so the common room of the dorm had lots of old squishy furniture and a huge fireplace...I mean, all you would have to do is replace the purple and gold with red and gold, and poof! you have a gryffindor common room...hmmm...I wonder if anyone's tried it...:D )

Quidditch was hard because I couldn't wrap my brain around the stands...I could see in my mind the flying thing, but the stands and the layout of the field I couldn't picture well...I kept trying to imagine a soccer (or football for you non-US folks ;)) field, but then you had to put in the raised stands...*shrug* that's one of the best things I got from the movie....

ok, now that I've rambled, I think that's it....:)

[Seriphus]

I really didn't like the quidditch stands in the movies. I imagined them, as you say, like a football pitch only high up, held up on stilts on three sides and with changing rooms underneath the 'main stand' on the right.

Fleur I see the Dursleys house exterior just like that picture, in a suburb with streets laid out in a grid.

[Fleurdelacour]

Originally posted by Seriphus
I really didn't like the quidditch stands in the movies. I imagined them, as you say, like a football pitch only high up, held up on stilts on three sides and with changing rooms underneath the 'main stand' on the right.


Yeah, that's how I imagined the stands :) Like Standford Bridge or something ;)

[Colli]

:) As far as the voices go, I imagine them with American accents.. especially Lupin. I'm going to have trouble getting used to Thewlis' accent.

Even as much as I love Alan Rickman and his velvet-y voice, I think I have a different voice in my head for Snape.

I never thought a whole lot about the houses... Harry I much imagined like he is on the Sorceror's Stone cover (mostly because he was on the cover ;)).
http://www.mugglenet.com/images/%7Ebook1.gif
I can't even remember what I thought the others looked like. :(

James Potter I envisioned as literally an older version of Harry... tall and thin with messed up hair... and retaining a lot of the same facial features. Movie James annoyed me.

Lupin I imagined with shoulder-length hair, more silver grey than brown and a tired, pale, sorrowful face.

Sirius has black Aragorn-style hair and I imagine the skin on his face clinging to his cheekbones.

[StarGazr]

This is a cool thread. You'll have to excuse "Miss-I-read-fifteen-romance-novels-in-four-weeks" here... but when I first read the books through... I pictured Sirius looking more like Aragorn a'la Viggo Mortensen then the straggly unkept version in the book. I pictured him as the hunk.. lol *rolling eyes*
Another character I have been mortally doomed to look at another way (thanks to certain beta of mine... mmm hmmm) is Snape. First time I read it I thought... ooh bad guy, not good looking... now thanks to another suggestion I can only picture him as something like my favorite soap opera vampire Caleb Morely on 'Port Charles'... you'll have to look up a picture of him to see just how hott this man is... believe me... I wouldn't be able to sit through a potions lesson if he were my professor:swoon:
It's funny, but I must have missed the initial description of Hermione the first time through because I did not imagine her as the movie depicts her. I saw her with her hair in a short bob... I don't know why! Maybe I was personifying myself or something into the character... until I saw the movie (and even now when I read the books) I see her as just this cute little thing with short bouncy hair who is just talking non-stop...
OK, the insanity must end now and I must get some sleep! g'night

[Rivenlas]

Alright, I won't talk about those I have seen in movies because I'm sure I've somehow skewed how I once imagined them.

Lupin--Good looking in a tired, kind of sweet, way. The person you're around who is very charming but alway seems soooo tired...

Sirius--real ugly, terrible-looking guy who suddenly turns good-looking with a little haircut.

Pettigrew--small, short, a little chubby. Bald, with a sort of pointed face...like a turnip or something.

Madame Maxine--a giant who is really big-boned--not necessarily heavy, but wide.

Rita Skeeter--sort of like a lineman in drag.

[Seriphus]

I imagine Harry as being quite good-looking. The British cover of GoF is the closest to how I see him.
James Potter I envisioned as literally an older version of Harry... tall and thin with messed up hair... and retaining a lot of the same facial features. Movie James annoyed me. Me too! He should look just like Harry because Harry thinks he sees him in book 4. If you had movie James in that case, then Harry's eyesight must be terrible, even with his glasses. :p James should be a lot younger as well. He was only in his early 20s when he died.

My Ron is so totally different from the movies, he has a long face with a pointed nose and freckles. He's really tall and his hair is red rather than ginger.

I imagine both Sirius and Remus as being attractive, Remus in a boyish sort of way, a bit like Jude Law or Ewan McGregor; Sirius as being more conventionally...er, well...hot I guess is the right word. With sparkling eyes and a devilish smile, but his looks have to compete with the dirt and his long, tangled, greasy hair and so are kind of muted until he cleans himself up a bit.
Here's a cartoon of roughly how I imagine them at the Shreiking Shack:
http://homepage.mac.com/kia/dementors/images/sirius&remus.jpg

[lithorose]

Well, having seen the movies first I imagine the characters looking like they did in the films, except for Snape. In the books he seems taller, thinner, younger, more insinuating, with a real hooked nose and higher, raspier voice. In short, more snake-like.

I'm curious. Does is mention anywhere that Ron is tall?

I imagine Lupin as tall, thin, with regular features, straight nose, pale eyes, short WW2 style haircut with ash blond hair with bits of grey in it. Handsome, but not extraordinarily so. The sort that you wouldn't pay any attention to until you get to know them.

Sirius is what he is in the books, with deadened, pale eyes and with really rough features and a crooked nose. For some reason I see him as a cross between Alan Rickman and several others. Younger than Alan of course;) I could never quite picture the skull-like appearance JKR mentions.

I see Bill as tall, with strawberry blonde hair and shades. Very suave (hey, he works in a bank!), and the sort of person that usually bugs me in real life, they are soo cool. Charlie, however, is cool without trying or realizing it. He is not short but not tall, a bit like an older Ron, but much heftier, with a few scars already from the dragons. A nice guy, and really into his dragons (as many are really into their cars, y'know?)

And I imagine the Shrieking Shack as an old, American-style Victorian farmhouse. You know, the kind that always have ghosts in them! Wooden, with all the paint worn off. Can't help it I guess, being an American;)

Skeeter is a fifty-ish woman wearing too much makeup and 60s style clothing, too bright! Flaming red hair threatening to be a beehive, and long, brightly colored fingernails. The evil aunt or mother-in-law sort, in everybody's business.

[Kristin]

Yes, it is mentioned a few times that Ron is tall. :)


For me, they all sound American. I don't want them to, and I know it's inaccurate. But I have to work to make them sound British and hear the accent in my head. (And sometimes I do make the effort to make them sound like proper Brits.) Otherwise everything just sounds what the norm is for me -- American.

As for visuals, I don't have really strong, clearly defined images in my mind. I have a general view of what something looks like. (Some things have a stronger picture than others.) Again, I can nail it down to a specific look, but I have to stop reading and concentrate on what I really think something/someone looks like.

I mostly read it for the words, for the flow of the writing, for the overall story and for the emotions of the characters. I've never been real big on description or visualizing things.

[Athelas]

When I first read the books, they sounded 'American' in my head, unless they were using particularly 'British' phrases.

But then I read them to my daughter, and used various British (and other, since Irish is not considered British?)dialects for the different character voices, and since then, they have all been veddy Brit to me!
(In a very American way! but I love all those Masterpiece Theater, P. G. Wodehouse plays et al, and have always loved doing English accents)

[ChianaWeasley]

On the contrary for me it struck me as British with the slang and the way they spoke in general. But I also imagined everyone speaking with accents.Besides, noone in America says git, well except me ;) And with all the locations...it might as well be another planet.

But with some imagination it can very easily become british for me, even though it always has been.

And dont you find it odd, that when you first read the books you had this picture of the characters in your head. And when the films came out, they were replaced by the actors as you read the books again? I always pictured Snape as this greasy,thin,snarling man with a goatee. And Ron, well he's tall and skinny with a big nose and freckles. These arent in the film of course, so its rather odd when I read the books.

[Athelas]

I'm actually amazed that the book characters don't look ANYTHING like the movie characters to me (except Hagrid and Dumbledore). We have both of the DVDs, but I just reread the books and Hermione is more homely (until partway through GOF;) ) Ron is taller, eith a thin face and a long nose, and Harry is ...just very different.

Oh, McGonagal is fairly close to Maggie Smith.

[LuthienElentari]

For me?

I pictured Lupin young with grarish patches fuzzy eyebrows a rough face with red blothches on his cheeks. Green eyes ( I don't know why but I think green eyes are attractive)and wide eyes with black hair and very short for a man. His voice to me was kinda deep with a hint of fun in him.


I pictured Sirius with long brownish blackish greasy thin hair with a pale plastered face with brown eyes and a mushtace ( not sure I spelled that right) and wearing a black torn rugged robe with
a sash on his chest. I pictured him so vividly I swooned for him in my dreams. As for his voice a harsh deep manly voice with a tint a of sadness.

[Moxie]

Originally posted by StarGazr
...I must have missed the initial description of Hermione the first time
through because I did not imagine her as the movie depicts her. I saw her
with her hair in a short bob... I don't know why!

Were you reading US editions of the books? The picture for the chapter "The House-Elf Liberation Front" shows Hermione with dark brown hair, in about a chin-length bob... which of course cemented my opinion that Hermione is just like me. ;) Ron I see as looking somewhat like a kid I knew in high school who was also named Ron - he didn't have Weasley-red hair but was quite tall. Harry, OTOH, is quite short and scrawny though he's likely to grow quite tall eventually... and be pretty good-looknig in a geeky sort of way :) (I recently saw some cousins for the first time in years, and one of them looks quite like my
image of Harry :eek: except for his skin and eye color, and the lack of any
facial scars.) The only other kid I have a firm mental picture of is Dean,
who will grow up to look like this good-looking guy I used to see around the Physics building at my uni and I never had the guts to go say hi to.

As for the professors, my mental Flitwick is taller than his movie
counterpart and looks quite entirely human, just much shorter than
average... like one of the guys in my office. Snape, on the other hand, is
shorter than most fanfic authors make him out to be (probably between 6' and 6'2", though of course he seems very tall from the perspective of young
students - and, I suspect, most adult wizards' and witches' preference for boots that add a few inches to height make most of the faculty seem taller to the young'uns. He may or may not have a goatee now, but probably did when he was younger (like a lot of guys who grew beards their freshman year at uni, just because their moms weren't around to tell them to shave)... and what the little students can't see is that his hair is starting to thin on top. Apparently given the absence of anyone in my life who remotely resembles Snape, my brain is trying to meld the book-pic and movie Snape images, along with a few features of my own beloved spouse :) McGonagall I only have a partial mental picture of, but her hair is just starting to go grey and she looks to me like a Muggle in her late 40s or early 50s - quite unlike her movie depiction.

Oh, and Rita Skeeter not only uses the magical equivalent of the entire Mary Kay cosmetics line all at once, "she" is very likely a transvestite. :eek: So there. ;)

[ChianaWeasley]

I keep running into transvestites! First at the eye doctor, then one at TJ Max. She needed a shave very badly...and she/he wasn't particularly friendly.

[Fleur]

wow this is a great thread it's really interesting to read other people's ideas.

As for the professors, my mental Flitwick is taller than his movie
counterpart and looks quite entirely human, just much shorter than
average... like one of the guys in my office.

I agree totally Moxie, in the movie he looks like a little like the goblins! I pictured him short and with loads of mad proffesor type hair.

I pictured the durleys house different to how it was in the movie - but hard to say exactly how. It should be white, semi detached with a neat garden and a low brick wall at the end. I pictured Harrys room like a junk room, full of clutter, with wooden floorboards and a bed with babyish covers.

Diagon Alley should be much wider! I think of it as a square more than a street actually, like a plaza or something.
I thought they got the Burrow exactly right. it looked just how I imagined it, except it should be on a hill.
I see things from Harry's pov, but when I do imagine him he is thin and a bit scrawny, but with a nice smile that makes people feel comfortable with him.
I have always found it hard to imagine Hermione for some reason, except I know she has really big dark eyes.
Ron should be quite good looking, but very tall. His hair should be slightly curly, and he should look.. erm.. sheepish!

I imagined Fred and George to have floppyish hair, and a big cheeky grins. I have a friend called george who I think looks exactly like them:
http://www.geocities.com/dorothystringeryearbook/George.jpg
Two of him with ginger hair, and that's what I think Fred and George look like!

[katzpotter]

I always pictured Draco with just a little gel in is hair, without his hair slicked back, ya know, hanging down.

I pictured Lucius with slightly longer hair and a nasty sneer. :D

[ChianaWeasley]

I agree, from the descriptions in the books I pictured someone REALLY pale, and horselike in the face. Felton is attractive, and I had always pictured someonemore...well attractive in a horse like way....

::Chian laughs at the sentance::

Does that make any sense?
:LOL:

[lithorose]

Yes. I imagine Lucius different when I read the books. I imagine him very slender, with pale smooth skin and a narrow face and pointy jaw. Almost like a cartoon character. And what's funny is I saw the movie first! That happens sometimes though. I've also noticed that when I havent' seen the movie for a while, yet read the books, the characters warp a bit in my mind, and when I re-watch the movie, I'm struck by how subtley different it all is. Go figger. :p