Harry Potter Season 2 Cast: HBO Reveals Dobby, Tom Riddle And Ginny Weasley Actors

Three new roles have officially been announced for Season 2 of HBO's Harry Potter series — which we can safely assume will be titled "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" — before Season 1 premieres at the end of 2026. 

As reported by Variety, house-elf Dobby, Ginny Weasley, and Tom Riddle will be played by Lenny Rush, Bonnie Hill, and Billy Barratt. Considering that HBO's main guy Kit Harington is officially set to play that season's Defense Against the Dark Arts professor Gilderoy Lockhart, it's nice to see some lesser-knowns getting involved in this project (although Barratt admittedly just starred in Danny and Michael Philippou's acclaimed 2025 horror flick "Bring Her Back"). In the Harry Potter film franchise, these pivotal roles in the second movie, also titled "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," were handled by Toby Jones, Bonnie Wright, and Christian Coulson, respectively.

These actors join fellow (relative) newcomers Dominic McLaughlin, Alastair Stout, and Arabella Stanton, taking the reins from the Harry Potter movies' "golden trio" Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson as Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger.

In case it's been a while since you revisited the book or movie version of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," let's discuss Harry's second year attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Frankly, Harry barely even makes it back to the magical institution. His evil non-magical Muggle aunt and uncle Petunia and Vernon Dursley (Bel Powley and Daniel Rigby in HBO's series) are infuriated after Dobby wreaks havoc in their home over the summer, and they blame Harry and imprison him in his room. Thanks to Ron and his clever but troublemaking twin brothers Fred and George Weasley (Tristan and Gabriel Harland in HBO's reboot), who use the Weasley family's bewitched flying car to jailbreak Harry, he's able to return to school.

Dobby keeps showing up at Hogwarts, though. (Hence, Lenny Rush should remain booked and busy throughout HBO's show.) He keeps telling Harry, the young wizard is in danger at Hogwarts because someone there wants to kill him, and, as it happens, he's right. Through Ginny, a memory of Tom Riddle — the guy who grows up to be Voldemort — is hellbent on opening the titular Chamber of Secrets, and by possessing her through a diary that once belonged to the future Dark Lord, Ginny does open the Chamber ... and the basilisk contained therein starts attacking Hogwarts students.

Harry saves the day, because that's how these books work: He figures out what's going on, heads into the Chamber himself, saves an unconscious Ginny from certain death, and uses a basilisk fang to stab and destroy Riddle's diary, "killing" the memory (and destroying a Horcrux in the process). These three actors have their work cut out for them, is my point.

Now, let's talk about Ginny Weasley, the character who will be played by Bonnie Hill on HBO's Harry Potter series in Season 2 following previous Ginny actor Gracie Cochrane's exit. While Bonnie Wright, who portrayed Ginny in the Harry Potter films, is not a terrible actor, her role was incredibly under-written. Ginny is introduced as a meek, shy character in "Chamber of Secrets," but as the franchise progresses, she quietly becomes the coolest kid at Hogwarts. (Hermione even reveals, in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," that Ginny spent a considerable amount of time in her childhood sneaking into the broom shed on the Weasley family property and stealing her brother's brooms to learn to play the wizarding sport of Quidditch.) She joins the Quidditch team, dates a bunch of boys, is generally popular, and even ends up with Harry after he develops a surprising and all-consuming crush on her.

This does ... not come through in the films. Again, I think this is a writing issue more than anything else, but Wright's Ginny is a flat, largely lifeless character who gets one "cool" moment during "Order of the Phoenix" where she casts a massively powerful spell as the student vigilante group known as Dumbledore's Army practices defensive maneuvers. Even her first kiss with Harry — which, in the book version of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," happens after Ginny wins the Quidditch Cup for Gryffindor in Harry's stead while he's stuck in detention — is lackluster in motion. Hopefully, as the HBO Harry Potter series makes its way through its source material, this genuinely fun character will get her due.

HBO's "Harry Potter" TV series premieres on Christmas Day 2026.