It might be Dean Thomas.

This is from wikipedia:

Dean Thomas is a black male who is taller than Ron and was sorted into Gryffindor house; he is good at drawing and forging signatures. He shares his dormitory at Hogwarts with Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Neville Longbottom and Seamus Finnigan.

Dean comes from a Muggle family which is evidenced by him being a fan of the football team West Ham United and using the word "cool" a lot. Dean was raised by his mother and stepfather, because his original father left the family when he was young. Dean was raised with a number of half-brothers and sisters. When Dean got the letter inviting him to Hogwarts, his mother wondered if his father had been a wizard. The truth, which they never discovered, is that Dean's father was killed by Death Eaters when he refused to join them.

(Bold-face mine.)

I don't remember that bit.

That's because it was never in the books. At JK Rowling's website, she has a section called Extra Stuff, and there's random things there that got cut, never made it, etc. Dean's story is there. And if you see it in the Sun, it's so.

Sorry about no direct link... it's a popup kind of website.

Isn't Angelina Johnson (on the Gryffindor team) black, too? I think she is in the movies, and I'm pretty sure Rowling mentions her hair being cornrowed at one point in the books. She was Fred's date to the Yule Ball in Gof, IIRC.

I'm wondering if they cast that new Gryffindor student in PoA as a semi-replacement for the actor who played Dean. Dean was still there (at least he was in the first-night-back scene with the joke candy) but he got hardly any lines at all. Actually, the directors have been pretty inconsistent with the class size throughout all the films. There are only eight Gryffindors in Harry's year (Dean, Seamus, Neville, Ron, Harry, Hermione, Lavender, and Parvati), but the films fill up the classes with a few dozen Gryffindors onscreen.

Of course, Ray kicked my crippled ass up and down the street because a lot of the things were relatable...including some eerie synchronicity with a conversation with Hec.And Bunk Moreland was in it(Y'all might be able to look him up as "Wendell Pierce")

Anyway, I watched Kingdom of Heaven for the second time yesterday.

I want to do that too. The first time, just last week, I enjoyed myself far too much and laughed the whole time up until the last ten-twenty minutes. (I don't think I was the right audience for this movie in the theatre.) It would be interesting to see if I enjoyed it more because of the company than the movie itself.

Hi, Ailleann!

Kingdom of Heaven: I thought she cut off her hair in her shame at making Guy king. So it was all her fault. Except it wasn't. (Except in real life, apparently, it was. But not in the movie.) Anyway. The line you quoted still makes little sense to me. I guess she meant she'd be faithful sexually if he'd be faithful to her brother's wishes for the kingdom, but he was a bigger cheater than her.

I thought Orlando just looked shell-shocked throughout the whole thing, which may have been intentional.

Which one was the guy with the BBoC factor? The main Saracen guy who wasn't Saladin? Because he was pretty pretty, I thought.

The Hospitaler.

That looks wrong -- is it two ts?

Hospittaler?

Oh, heck.

The Knight of St. John.

Ooooooooooh:

Monty Python star John Cleese is writing the next feature film for Aardman Animations, the makers of Wallace and Gromit have announced.

Aardman co-founder Peter Lord said the Fawlty Towers actor was currently writing the "pre-historic comedy".

Voting yup on the Thewlis BBoC thing. I've been back-stalking his career, through Prime Suspect, Dragonheart (sheesh), Total Eclipse, Restoration, Dinotopia (sheesh again), Seven Years in Tibet, etc. The man's mesmeric onscreen.

Up this weekend from Netflix: Bridges of Madison County (by request--not my request), Mystic River, which we missed in the theatre, and Bad Boys II, ditto. We're hip-deep in house stuff, so we won't have time to make a theatre-showing of Kingdom of Heaven this weekend. Maybe next.