Disclaimer: I love Harry Potter with all my heart.

Those who know me know that the Harry Potter books, stories, and magical world are the closest things to my heart fictionally speaking, and have been since I was very small.  I can attribute 99% of my friendships to a mutual love of the wizarding world, and I was once the Head of the Department of Mysteries for York University’s Ministry of Magic; our resident expert on real (aka book) trivia, Chapter liason for the Harry Potter Alliance, etc.. I am a proud Gryffindor.  I still reread the entire series almost every year (I am currently working my way through them in French).

I have also been known to refer to J. K. Rowling as “Our Queen” as many in the fandom like to do when some new brilliant bit of cleverness is discovered in the books or she does something wonderful in the world.  There can be no denying that the Harry Potter books and franchise have made the world a brighter, happier, and better place for billions of people.  There is no denying that Jo Rowling has done some pretty good things for the world herself, including founding the non-profit Lumos and at one point donating so much to charity that she was reduced from billionaire to millionaire status (this was a while ago. pretty sure she’s back to being a billionaire again).

But sometimes we need to take a deep breath and recognize that our heroes are not always right.  They have flaws.  They make mistakes.  They get lost.

Diversity & Lack Thereof

Newcomers to the books and fandom have been critical of some lack of diversity in Jo’s writing of the Harry Potter books.  We do have to give her some credit in recalling that she did write the first book and the outline for the entire series in the early 90’s.  Times were different then.  In our current cultural atmosphere of “extremely woke”, these criticisms by younger readers are understandable.  I am referring mainly to the critique of the lack of sexual and gender diversity in the characters; Dumbledore, the only non-hetero person apparently in the entire series, was never explicitly “out” in the books; it only became public knowledge when Jo revealed it soon after the publication of the 7th book.

I myself do not blame Jo Rowling for this particular lack of diversity, because she had trouble enough publishing the first book as it was–a children’s book about witchcraft?? written by a woman?? the horror!!–I imagine adding even one openly gay character to a children’s book in the 90’s would have stopped every publisher from even considering it.  Here is a discussion of what Jo would have been up against in Britain at that time.  So no, I am not angry with Jo Rowling for all of the characters throughout the books appearing to be straight–but I am a little miffed that those characters whose identities were vague could not have become more diverse when she did her later “reveals” on Pottermore.  If you were wondering, she revealed all of them (Dean, Seamus, Luna, Neville, etc.) to be straight.  That was already into the 2010s and the books were over, she could have done anything but it apparently didn’t cross her mind that more than one non-hetero person could exist in Hogwarts/the British wizarding world.

Anyway, that’s just a little miff, and I can look past it (though I can’t blame any of my LGBTQ+ friends for being less forgiving).  The second critique I’ve been seeing more recently is regarding cultural and ethnic diversity–if you look past the Golden Trio (Harry, Ron, and Hermione, all white–headcanons aside) and the Silver Trio (Ginny, Neville, and Luna, all white), the cast of characters in Hogwarts is fairly racially diverse.  However I recently saw this slam poem pointing out the flaws and apparently lazy writing that made up the series’ lone Chinese character, Cho Chang, and it gave me pause.

I think a lot of the things that people nowadays, including myself, critique regarding Jo Rowling’s writing of the wizarding world (especially as it continues to expand with stories happening outside of Britain) can be attributed to lazy writing or lack of research.  This is deeply upsetting and frustrating when the intricacies and tightly woven subplots and complexity and well-roundedness of the entire story throughout the 7 books prove that J. K. Rowling is perfectly capable of excellent writing that is the opposite of lazy.

The Problem With Ilvermorny

Up until now I have been writing about some things that I have heard and read in the past few years that have irked me, but now I’m going to get into the things that really started to make me lose faith in J. K. Rowling as she is today.  I still whole-heartedly love who she was when she was releasing all of the original Harry Potter books, but I think since then the wizarding world (both the fictional one and the one created by the fandom) has grown far to large for one person to be able to supply all of the “canon” stories and people and identities and cultures to fill it.  The last new stories I was entirely happy and excited about were the ones surrounding the Quidditch World Cup in 2014.  Back then the Pottermore stories still felt true to the world, pure and fun and unproblematic.  At this point, however, I’d be happy if Jo stopped posting her post-Hogwarts “reveals” and stories on Pottermore–the books are done, the books are ours now, and I think it’s up to the fans to choose what journeys their favourite characters might have gone on to next.

The first time I was truly taken aback and disappointed by Jo Rowling’s new writings was when she released the information on the American wizarding school Ilvermorny in anticipation of the Fantastic Beasts films.  Her history of the school and explanation of the Ilvermorny houses was stylistically exactly the way she wrote all of the British and European wizarding world content; it was therefore entirely ignorant of actual American history.  One of the wonderful things about the wizarding world of Harry Potter is that Jo always tied the magical history to actual British and European history, pointing out real historical figures as being magical, turning mythological creatures into real creatures, etc.

Which is all well and good when you’re writing about your own culture, but becomes problematic when you think you can do the same thing with other people’s cultures, especially when those cultures are already oppressed, misused, and appropriated in a million different ways.  If you look at the description and history of Ilvermorny you will see that it is founded by British settlers in America, in particular a witch and her children who stormed in over Indigenous territory and built the school in the style of Hogwarts, naming the four houses after four magical creatures that they encountered in the new world.  The problem with these creatures, however, is that they are all modelled after actual spirits which are sacred and significant to four different First Nations peoples.  Jo Rowling also went so far as to say that the First Nations peoples did have their own magic, but that it was unorganized and primitive until the Western wizards arrived to bring some order to things.  Now, if I read this without thinking about the author I can still see it as canon because it seems exactly the sort of thing colonial wizards would do, behaving with just the same sort of superiority and dismissiveness as actual colonists in history–but while I can fit it that way into the overall canon of the wizarding world in my head, it does not excuse Jo for writing it the way she did.

td;lr Ilvermorny is founded upon cultural appropriation and it is not okay.  This critique explains it in a lot more detail.

I don’t think Jo Rowling meant any harm by it, she just didn’t do enough research (aka talk to any Indigenous people about the significance and potential impact of this) to know that writing about Thunderbirds and Wampus is not the same thing as writing about dragons and banshees and other Western mythological creatures.  I think it’s pretty sad that nobody in her entire team managed to catch the error in this, and I also think it’s pretty sad that Jo Rowling has failed to comment, when the critique has surely been raised to her by now.

Fantastic Beasts and Disappointment

Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald
Crime #1: Casting Johnny Depp as Grindelwald

The final straw that broke any present-day faith I had in my one-time hero and idol J. K. Rowling was her continued support of Johnny Depp in his role as Grindelwald after the mess of abuse allegations and divorce proceedings that went down last year.  If you don’t know about this, just look it up any pop culture news source from 2016-17.  I’m not going over the entire story but basically Johnny Depp was accused of physical and verbal abuse by his (at the time) wife Amber Heard and after a long time their divorce was settled along with a statement from both of them that made the abuse allegations out to be less serious.  Now I and many other people took this to mean that the abuse did happen but they were both putting it behind them.  J. K. Rowling seems to have decided to align with those who say the abuse never happened at all.

I obviously don’t know enough about it to be certain either way, but I think given the evidence, the statements, and the fact that celebrities break under the strain all the time and Johnny Depp seems exactly the type… At any rate there is likely more than a grain of truth in the allegations .  The point is that there have been calls for Johnny Depp to step down or be fired from the cast of Fantastic Beasts (it would be simple enough as he was only seen for about 30 seconds in the first film) but they went unanswered and J. K. Rowling has openly stated her support of Johnny Depp in this role.  I recently read an article in which she commented on the complaints and defended the casting of Johnny Depp, and not only do I not agree with that being “the right thing to do”, but the fact that she says she’s happy to have him continue in the role… I have no more words, to be honest.

There are other reasons why I don’t want to see the second Fantastic Beasts film but they aren’t really relevant.  Aside from the whole Ilvermorny business/American wizarding society completely excluding Indigenous peoples except to appropriate their culture, which I’ve already discussed long enough, I think.

So now what?

So now that I have lost faith in the one whom I once called “Queen”, now that everything she creates for the HP universe from now on will be tainted with these disappointments in my eyes, can I still love the original work that has brought so much joy and empowerment and friendship into my life?  Can I still admire the person who J. K. Rowling was back when she wrote those seven beautiful, life-changing books?

Yes, I can.  I can still love the stories I have always loved, the characters I have always loved.  I can still get lost in the world alone in my room or discuss theories and plot points and headcanons with friends for hours on end.  I can still say I’m a proud Gryffindor and dress up in a robe and house tie and practice duelling with my custom-made Allivan’s wand, dream of opening an HPA chapter in my hometown, read the Harry Potter books to my kids when I have them.

I just have to enjoy all of these things out of the context of their creator from now on.  I just have to say “books belong to their readers” and stop taking every new mistake J. K. Rowling makes to heart.  She gave so much goodness to the world, and I’m not about to let her take it away from me just because she’s become to wrapped-up in it and overwhelmed and blinded by fame and fortune.

My fave is problematic.  It’s taken me a while to admit it to myself because I was worried it would make me like the books less, or feel guilty liking them, but I think the best thing to do is acknowledge the problem and move on, choosing new role models for writing, and continuing to find joy in the magical world I have loved and learned from since I was 8 years old.