There is an essential scene in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that sees Harry Potter bonding with another character, but the Harry Potter movie changes who this character is. In Half-Blood Prince, Harry spends much of the film trying to discover who the mysterious Half-Blood Prince is while also realizing that Lord Voldemort is raising his Death Eater army for an eventual attack launched against Hogwarts and the Wizarding World.

This led to Harry seeing Draco in a suspicious meeting on the Hogwarts Express. Harry used his Invisibility Cloak to sneak up on Draco and his family, but he wasn’t sneaky enough. Draco realized Harry was there and launched an attack when only he and Harry were left on the Hogwarts Express. Draco cast the Petrificus Totalus spell, which bound Harry, effectively paralyzing him.

He then threw the invisibility cloak over him to leave him there, with no one knowing about it. Luckily, someone found Harry and saved him. With that said, the book and movie changed who his savior was.

The Movie Swapped Tonks For Luna In The Hogwarts Express Scene

Nymphadora Tonks Found Harry Potter In The Books

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry thought Draco Malfoy had become a Death Eater like his father. He begins to follow Draco on the Hogwarts Express and eavesdrop on his conversations with his family and other Death Eaters. However, when Draco realized Harry was under the invisibility cloak, he attacked, broke Harry’s nose, and hit him with the Petrificus Totalus spell.

He left Harry under the cloak and departed the train, leaving it looking like no one would find Harry. However, Luna Lovegood found him thanks to the spectrespecs she wore.

This isn’t what happened in the book, where Nymphadora Tonks finds Harry. Instead of Luna, which was used as a quirky and fun scene with her making funny comments as she saved him, the scene in the books was a lot more serious. Instead of a light-hearted moment with the fun Luna, it was a time for Harry to share with Tonks, who had become deeply depressed after her cousin Sirius died and her lover, Remus Lupin, rejected her.

In the scene, she rescues him, heals his broken nose, and helps send him back to Hogwarts. However, the scene happens differently from the movie. In the film, Luna finds Harry there thanks to her glᴀsses. However, in the book, Nymphadora Tonks is there to watch after the kids, and she realizes Harry has never gotten off the train and goes to find him. As she takes Harry back to school, the two have time to connect, and he realizes how much pain Tonks is in at that time in her life.

Changing This Scene Takes Away An Important Moment For Tonks

Nymphadora Tonks Deserved Better In The Harry Potter Franchise

Nymphadora Tonks had a powerful storyline in the Harry Potter novels. She was a wizard struggling to come into her own, and she doubted her magic skills. She watched her cousin, Sirius Black, die in the previous book while she battled Bellatrix, making her feel guilty over his death.

She also had Remus Lupin reject her and take dangerous missions because he thought his status as a werewolf with no wealth wasn’t good enough for her. She was in a deep state of depression when she found and saved Harry Potter.

Throughout the films, Nymphadora Tonks’s storyline was almost eliminated. Her relationship with Remus Lupin was an essential part of the books but glossed over in the films, which hurt the final movie. When Remus and Tonks die in the Battle of Hogwarts, the movie shows them side by side, and it is supposed to hit hard. However, the Harry Potter franchise never allowed fans to care enough about her for their deaths to matter. Changes like the Hogwarts Express scene were a big part of that.

With the upcoming Harry Potter series on HBO Max, there will be much more time to devote to other characters and storylines. This means people like Nymphadora Tonks can see their stories told in greater detail. If the series adds back in things like Tonks and Harry bonding after the attack, it could go a long way toward making her eventual death mean so much more for fans.