Will The Real Daphne ‘Queenie’ Greengrass In The Harry Potter Movies Please Stand Up?

It’s one of those lasting mysteries of the Harry Potter series, trying to figure out which of the unidentified students corresponded to which side characters.

For a while, the character of Daphne Greengrass, has been assigned by Potterheads to Chloe Rich, who was a background extra in ‘Order Of The Phoenix’ and ‘Deathly Hallows’.

One problem.

Here’s Astoria Greengrass, Daphne’s two years younger sister with husband Draco Malfoy (looking alarmingly like Sir Richard Stilgoe – Mr I’m So Fucking Middle England himself). Her hair is brown.

While siblings do not necessarily have to have the same hair colour if they share the same biological parents, it tends more often to be the case.

Here’s a theory as to who did play Daphne Greengrass in the movies.

One of the most notable parts of the Harry Potter films is the way certain links are put between the films. For instance, Ron Weasley has a nightmare about spiders trying to make him tapdance in ‘Prisoner Of Askaban’. One film later, Barty Crouch Junior polyjuiced into Mad Eye Moody made a spider tap dance on Ron’s head in his Defence Against The Dark Arts class. ¹

With that in mind, cast your minds back to ‘Prisoner of Azkaban’, and the scene of Hagrid’s Care Of Magical Creatures lesson in the Forbidden Forest.

In the part where Draco’s gang elbow their way to the front, you may notice something rather odd (as Tom Riddle would say).

Pansy Parkinson – one of the main supporting characters – finds herself hidden behind Vincent Crabbe. Over to Draco’s right, and to the immediate right of Pike ² (next to Gregory Goyle), is an unidentified Slytherin girl in pigtails (who looks alarmingly like Greta Thunberg). Draco takes a single bite from a French Golden Delicious.

Fast forward to ‘Half Blood Prince’ – Golden Delicious and all – and Draco uses one of these to test the connection between the vanishing cabinets in the Room of Requirement and Borkin and Burkes.

Still with ‘Half Blood Prince’, during Dumbledore’s ‘welcome back to Hogwarts’ speech when he announces Snape is the new DADA teacher and reminds them Tom Riddle was one a Hogwarts student (cue Slytherins going from celebrations to feeling like the spectres at the feast), you will see, again to Draco’s right, another brown haired Slytherin with pigtails.

Coincidence?

Consider that on Draco’s left, instead of another of his close companions, there is Flora Carrow – one of the two twins whose role in ‘Half Blood Prince’ was to signpost to Harry Potter and the viewers Malfoy was going to use twin vanishing cabinets to connect to Hogwarts and bypass its protective enchantments, in a scene (just before Harry goes with Dumbledore to the Cave with the Inferi) which was cut from the final movie because it made the Golden Trio look thick as pigshit as they still couldn’t figure it out.

Flora: ‘Good. They looked. Do you think they’ll get it this time?’

Hestia: ‘Any more than passing Potter on the train together did?’

Flora: ‘ … and sitting together at the Slug Club supper party?’

Hestia: ‘… and standing together at Slug Club Christmas Party?’

Flora: ‘…. and doing everything in near perfect synchronisation including clothes for an entire year?’

Hestia: ‘We really didn’t think this plan through, did we?’

Flora: ‘Oh, look at this paragraph in Adalbert Waffling’s ‘Magical Theory,’ page 69.’

Hestia: ‘Hmmm …“… therefore in accordance with the First Fundamental Law of Magic, a magical plan has failed to work if all Hell does not promptly break loose in exponential size to the amount of effort put into it.”.’

Flora: ‘Bail?’

Hestia: ‘Bail!’

Sorry, couldn’t resist!

On the basis that Rowling insisted on subtle links being put between the movies to events, Daphne Greengrass is the brown haired pigtailed Slytherin, recast between movies as so many minor characters were during the series. In the books Greengrass is part of Pansy Parkinson’s gang. It would make sense that as with the books, her presence in the movies would signpost Draco’s eventual marriage to Astoria.

Notes:

¹ the one with the ridiculous over-emphasis on the melodramatically acting Emma Watson at the point in time she started disappearing up her own arse and her ego-masturbating agent began making ever more ridiculous demands, knowing full well the new director and scriptwriter had enormous boners for J K Rowling’s Author Avatar. Amongst those were the rumoured sacking of Genevieve Gaunt before a replacement could be found – hence why ‘Goblet Of Fire’ was the only Potter movie without any Pansy Parkinson cast for it.

² Pike is one of the two bit part characters created for ‘Prisoner Of Azkaban’ (the other being bloodshot eyes fat black kid Bem, introduced to ‘increase diversity’ when they could easily have given his two lines to Dean Thomas who never got to say a single line in the entire film series. Don’t even start about the Patil sisters, other than ‘Hi, Harry!’ twice – less lines than Betty ‘Do you want hotpot, Ken?’ Turpin received in four decades of ‘Coronation Street’).

At the time of filming, Josh Herdman – the actor playing Gregory Goyle – had been injured on set (he has a long history of being accident prone on and off set). In order to keep him in the movie without having to reshoot (and remember scenes were shot not in order of appearence), the remainer of his tasks requiring physical interaction were given to Pike (played by Bronson Webb), whose other duty was to stand in front of the taller Herdman and act as an effective barrier between Goyle’s arm and any jostling crowds of extras on set.