In the famous prophecy about Harry Potter and Voldemort, Harry is said to have “power the Dark Lord knows not.” To Harry’s dissatisfaction, Dumbledore explains that this power is his capacity for love — but new information reveals that it’s actually something else: balls.
Everyone knows that Harry Potter handles balls well — it’s why he was the youngest Seeker to play on the Gryffindor Quidditch team in a century. But a new revelation about why Daniel Radcliffe was cast places the importance of cojones in an entirely new light. Harry Potter casting director Janet Hirshenson recently explained that the final choice was between Radcliffe and another boy.
“We went back and looked at Daniel again,” she told The Huffington Post. “The other kid was terrific and very vulnerable and very Harry-looking, but besides that, Harry was going to become a very powerful kid, too. And Daniel had both sides. He was very vulnerable, but the other kid, it was like, he [was] not going to have the balls that Daniel has, to put it that way.”
Quidditch aside, Harry has also dealt with balls at the Yule Ball, handled ominous glowing balls in the Department of Mysteries’ Hall of Prophecy, and he gently handled the Snitch in a non-Quidditch environment to see his parents again in the heartbreaking Deathly Hallows chapter “The Forest Again.”
Harry was also smart enough to keep, uh, his own balls safe. He was able to avoid the side-effects of Fred and George Weasley’s Fever Fudge. From Order of the Phoenix:
“But you get these massive pus-filled boils, too,” said George, “and we haven’t worked out how to get rid of them yet.”
“I can’t see any boils,” said Ron, staring at the twins.
“No, well, you wouldn’t,” said Fred darkly, “they’re not in a place we generally display to the public. But it makes sitting on a broom a right pain in the —“
In short, Harry would not be Harry if he didn’t have exceptional balls. Balls the Dark Lord knows not, and balls anyone but Daniel Radcliffe knows not.
Radcliffe’s post-Potter career has certainly been ballsy, both metaphorically, as he’s played oddball roles like farting corpses, and literally, as he’s bared all on stage in “Equus.” For a while, it seemed that this was his way of proving to the world that he’s different than Harry.
But in a plot twist worthy of Viktor Krum catching the Snitch, but Ireland winning the Quidditch World Cup, it turns out that Radcliffe’s actions have been in line with Harry all along.
