How I continue to relate to Harry Potter, now that its author has lost my trust.
I’m a writer myself, so I firmly believed in “Word of God” for a long time. “Word of God” is the belief that everything an author says about his or her own work is automatically true in-universe. It’s contrasted by “Death of the Author,” the idea that once a work has been published, the author’s interpretation of or opinion on their own work has no bearing over the work’s “canon.”
J.K. Rowling personally killed my devotion to “Word of God.” For a long time, I was willing to accept any supplemental material about Harry Potter’s universe. I liked most of the early Pottermore content, such as Harry Potter’s lineage, the details given about Draco Malfoy, Umbridge, McGonagall, and Lockhart’s personal histories, and so on. If the details came from Rowling’s headspace while she was writing the actual books, so much the better. I accepted that Dumbledore was gay (and still do — it makes sense, and makes his backstory more interesting), and defended Rowling for not making that more explicit early on.
And then… Cursed Child happened. It wasn’t just a bad book. It was a colossal blow to the way that I engaged with fiction, and sent me toppling headfirst into a full-on existential crisis. Cursed Child cannot possibly be canon. No matter how stringently you adhere to Word of God, Cursed Child contradicts canon in so many egregious ways that it simply can’t exist within the canon of the original seven books. Not all stories need to be completely internally consistent, especially if they’re part of a franchise — Castlevania has multiple alternate continuities in the games alone (which also taught me a lot about what “canon” means), and don’t even get me started on comic book universes like those of DC and Marvel. But Cursed Child explicitly billed itself as the eighth story in Harry Potter’s continuity. Despite the character assassination, ripping the worldbuilding to shreds, and blatant fanfiction tropes. The very existence of Cursed Child was insulting.
At the time, I tried to shift the blame away from J.K. Rowling. She didn’t write it, she only approved it. It wasn’t really her work. But the other two people involved in its creation don’t really deserve the blame for it. John Tiffany handled all the stage-related aspects of it, and from what I’ve heard from people who’ve seen it, Cursed Child is such an impressive spectacle that it almost makes up for the shitty plot. Jack Thorne, meanwhile, wrote HBO’s His Dark Materials, which is both well-written and a faithful adaptation of its source material. Clearly, he knows how to adapt something! So, there’s no one left to blame but Rowling herself, and seeing the work that she’s put out since then… I think Cursed Child really is her fault.
I liked the first Fantastic Beasts movie, but not the other two. Fantastic Beasts, like Cursed Child, introduced awful fanfic tropes that fly in the face of all the established lore — Nagini’s backstory, “Aurelius Dumbledore” being a thing (My OC is a secret relative of [canon character]!!!), a Muggle going to Hogwarts and using a wand… It’s like Rowling is taking a sledgehammer to her own world. She’s making a desperate attempt to stay relevant, even though Harry Potter’s fandom is in no danger of dying — or wouldn’t be, if she weren’t killing it.
Alongside the Fantastic Beasts films came Rowling’s new Pottermore content about the history of wizards in America. America’s Wizarding community is almost exactly the same as Britain’s, existing alongside that of Muggles, which proves that Rowling knows nothing about American history. America’s too young a country for that to work. Either American wizards are almost completely integrated into American culture (aside from hiding their magic from Muggle neighbors), or they are literally a completely separate country occupying the same piece of land. My personal headcanon is the former: American magic would be just as cosmopolitan as the rest of American culture, drawing from a huge variety of cultural influences from all of its many immigrants. It also makes me cringe whenever I see the fiery “New Salem” banner, because “witches” in Salem were hanged, not burned. Salem could not have had nearly as significant an effect on the magical community as Rowling claims — Salem killed 20 people. Twenty! Around four thousand people were killed for witchcraft in Scotland alone! The Satanic Panic probably had a worse effect on America’s wizarding community than Salem did! Rowling also completely ignores the effect that religious hysteria had on witch trials in both America and Europe. In-universe, that actually makes some sense, because powerful wizards would spread propaganda that Muggles attacked wizards out ignorant malice as opposed to religious frenzy. But the Doylist explanation is that Rowling is bad at worldbuilding.
While we’re at it, Ilvermorny would definitely not be Hogwarts 2.0, and it could not possibly be the only Wizarding School in the entire United States. America has a population of over 300 million people. It’s also gigantic — even with magic, it would take more than a train ride to get to school. Rowling’s history of Ilvermorny’s founding is awash with colonialism that goes almost completely unexamined, which is frankly a much bigger problem than the specific history of witch trials. There would also be far more than eleven wizarding schools in the entire world. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more than twenty in the United States alone. There’s definitely more than one in the entire bleeding continent of Asia. So, Pottermore wasn’t reliable anymore either.
That’s another reason not to take everything Rowling says about her world at face-value. She’s not that good at worldbuilding. Well, actually… in certain respects, she is (or was) genius at it. She created a world so damn immersive that everyone wants to be apart of it, which has fueled the existence of so many wonderful Harry Potter-themed experiences. But Harry Potter’s world only works on the most basic level as a fun children’s story. It falls apart under scrutiny, and doesn’t stand up to more sophisticated levels of complexity. It works well enough in the original seven books (when Rowling was completely engaged with writing it, as opposed to now when it’s been over a decade since the last book was published). In everything that’s come after that, the holes have been much bigger and impossible to ignore. The absolute nadir of bad worldbuilding came when Rowling claimed that wizards used to publicly shit themselves and then Vanish the evidence until they discovered that plumbing existed. Leaving aside the crass, inhuman absurdity of wizards publicly shitting themselves, plumbing has existed since the literal Bronze Age. In a single line, J.K. Rowling somehow managed to insult everybody who cared about her story, and that was before she started actively insulting various groups of people.
When the transphobia reared its ugly head, that was the final nail in the coffin. Blatant ignorance was one thing, but Rowling’s comments were now tinged with malice. It became impossible to defend her in good faith. Harry Potter’s Author was officially Dead. I have not seen anyone in Harry Potter spaces quote her (as opposed to the books proper) since then — no more inspiring quotes from her, no more using her words to back up interpretations or make points about the books, nothing. And Rowling herself doesn’t seem to care. It’s not that she’s made missteps, it’s that she doubles down when called out on them. It’s that she doesn’t even try to understand where her fans are coming from when they complain. It’s that the latest piece of content is basically “Blood Libel: The Game.” Seriously, its optics are so bad that I almost wonder how it got published.
The release of Hogwarts Legacy is putting me through a slower, quieter, but no less painful version of what I experienced around Cursed Child. Harry Potter isn’t just a story to me. It’s legitimately a part of my identity. It’s a story that took residence in my soul, becoming my blood and self and purpose (to paraphrase Erin Morgenstern). Now, I have to once again question what my relationship to it is. I have to ask myself where the magic went. Looking back through the original seven books, I’m still impressed by the writing in them. Even knowing what I now know of Rowling, I still think that the books are masterpieces that will endure for decades (or even centuries). There is a unique magic in them, and the joy they’ve brought to my life and the lives of millions of others is palpable and meaningful in and of itself. I’m not going to let Rowling and her creative decisions ruin Harry Potter for me, just as I didn’t let Warren Ellis and his creative decisions ruin Castlevania for me. But how do I separate this story from the more unsavory parts of it, from Rowling, and from myself?
Perhaps the magic comes not from Rowling, but from the books themselves. Perhaps Rowling was just the vehicle for something greater than herself, a story that transcends both her and every other person who’s read or contributed to it. Some creators are like that. They put forward one incredible masterpiece, but the genius is more in the work than it is in them, and when the person behind it actually comes through, they don’t measure up to the thing they created. I think that we’re finally seeing the real Rowling, the person whom the Muse acted through. The positive messages in the books about diversity, inclusion, love, and antifascism are there in spite of her, not because of her. Or maybe being a billionaire went to her head, and made her an objectively worse person, so she is literally not the same writer now that she was 20 years ago. I feel weird saying that, because I’m a writer and I want to be lauded for my work one day. I don’t want to be separated from my work like that. I don’t want to be canceled or locked out of my own story. But I also am making a commitment to be better than this — better to my readers, and better to my story.
We’re allowed to disagree and argue with J.K. Rowling because this is unacceptable. She has disrespected and betrayed everyone who has ever felt emotionally connected to her work. She’s grievously insulted trans, Indigenous, and now Jewish people. She’s disrespected her story, her characters, and her world, by twisting them into unrecognizable fanfic-like abominations. Why should she be listened to regarding Harry Potter anymore? The story exists independently of her. It, and its positive influence, is much bigger than she is.
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