The biggest shocker for most fans? Richard Harris, the original Albus Dumbledore. He passed away in 2002, just after Chamber of Secrets—and no, it wasn’t a curse from a cursed diary. Harris had been battling Hodgkin’s disease, and he famously only took the role because his granddaughter threatened to never speak to him again if he turned it down. “I’m doing it for the money,” he once joked, but we all know he gave us that twinkle-eyed wisdom for love.
And then there’s Michael Gambon, who took over as Dumbledore and gave us a fiercer, more mysterious headmaster. He died in 2026, leaving us with that iconic line in Goblet of Fire: “Did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire?” You can’t read that without hearing his voice, right? Gosh, that scene still makes me flinch.
