With the Deathly Hallows pt. 1 DVD coming out and DH pt. 2 coming to theaters in just a few months, there’s been a lot of Harry Potter movie news. I’ll be a little sad when the HP news dies down and there’ll be less PotterWatch posts. But for now, we have a bunch of crazy new stuff!

First of all, with the DVD release of Pt. 1, we’ve also been given a bunch of deleted scenes from the film. So far, we’ve seen four scenes; considering the past DVDs rarely have many deleted scenes, to have so many in just one half of the last story is pretty great.

Most are in one video, although I found a few stragglers on their own. Go take a look!

So let’s start with the best scenes. Obviously, I’m thrilled they actually shot the Dursleys saying goodbye, but it still bums me out that they didn’t put it into the film. Heck, I didn’t even need most of the dialogue… if they had just added the part where Dudley shakes Harry’s hand, I would have been appeased. Was the moment perfect? …No, the scene was probably a little too goofy for my taste, but it was at least something! And afterall, I don’t expect the filmmakers to read my mind and bend to my will. If they had, then the horocrux stories from Half-Blood Prince would still be in Half-Blood Prince.

Speaking of horocruxes, the scene where they discuss what Dumbledore told Harry about Voldemort’s choices in soul objects is the most important scene in the movie… that wasn’t in the movie. Honestly, would two extra minutes of film have killed them when it meant so much to the story? I’m still pretty frustrated that this wasn’t mentioned when it really needed to be there, especially when you remember it was passed over so quickly in the previous movie. As far as the other scene I really liked, that would be the additional Ministry of Magic footage. It’s more-or-less directly from the books (except I believe Ron was originally absent from Harry’s warning to Mr. Weasley), and we really needed as much from the books as possible.

There are a few that were ok scenes, but not really nessesary. I could understand why both scenes weren’t used because they didn’t add very much. Obviously Yaxley in the Grangers’ home wasn’t absoutely nessesary (I’m guessing it would have been a quick cut around when the Death Eaters stop the Hogwarts Express). Ron talking with his dad in the shed probably would have explained to non-readers why the radio wasn’t spewing propaganda, but compared to the other scenes, I get why it was cut.

A scene I’m on the fence about is the Ron/Hermoine scene. As a Ron/Hermoine shipper from early on – I actually called it by the Halloween chapter of Sorcerer’s Stone – so scenes with them together do make me all giddy as a fangirl. But the whole “here, let me show you how to do a sport by wrapping my arms around you” thing is so freaking cliche. Plus, we once again see Harry with the mirror without any character explaining to the audience what it is. Yeah, I know readers already know what it is, but as I mentioned in the review, the mirror just popped up in this movie because it’s part of the bigger picture yet without any explanation of why Harry has it. Seriously, if that doesn’t get resolved in the last movie, I will go mad.

Now, besides the deleted scenes, we got another fantastic bit of Harry Potter goodness. For April Fool’s Day, IGN made a trailer for a fake series apparently debuting this summer. I already wrote a detailed review of the video about it’s awesomeness for CliqueClack (I would highly suggest you read it!), but I thought I’d share it with you on here, too.

Don’t you think this would make an amazing real show? Accio kickassia – make it happen, FX!