SAD NEWS: Just moments ago, a lifelong Harry Potter fan shared their deep disappointment, revealing that a new word is needed to express their feelings towards J.K. Rowling… more

I think I speak for all of those who had one of the 500 million copies sold of Harry Potter and millions more who watch the films to this day when I say, Harry Potter felt like a friend to me. For myself and my fellow millennials, the first movie came out when we were about eight years old, and I remember Deathly Hallows 2 coming out the summer we graduated high school, as many of us turned 18. It was literally the book series of our childhood.

The Harry Potter books taught me how to think about the world beyond me. It made me curious about all the intangible things that are still very real and can impact the world I live in. It expanded my imagination and filled me with the understanding that just because I can’t see something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

And while there were many lessons to be gleaned from the books, as I’ve grown older, I think J.K. Rowling was decades ahead of her time with the way she showed that sometimes the family you choose is more pivotal in your growth than the family you were given. It’s a radical concept that so many of us are only reckoning with now.

Rowling’s personal story was one that also resonated. She had been a domestic abuse survivor who wrote the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone at a time when she was fearful, desperate and in dire need to create a better life for herself and her child.

She was a single mother who, despite having been rejected by 12 publishing houses, got one fair shot and ran with it (to the tune of a billion-dollar fortune from the franchise). She represented so many possibilities for people who didn’t come from much, but all of a sudden believed they could weave magic and transform their circumstances through sheer determination. It was inspiring.

Even in the years after we had all said goodbye to Harry Potter, Rowling seemed to have the same deep affection for the characters, using her social media to engage with readers and even weigh in on fan theories. As a result of these interactions and how close people felt to the characters in the book, they also felt close with Rowling herself. She earned affection for seeming to stand with marginalized groups; in 2007, she told fans she imagined Professor Dumbledore as gay, confirming reader speculation and defending how his relationship with Grindelwald would be depicted in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them from internet trolls.

For me, I admired Rowling most when she defended Noma Dumezweni’s casting as Hermione in the 2016 stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Because the “greatest witch of her age” was played by Emma Watson, a white actress, in the films, Dumezweni became the subject of racist comments, with people going as far as conducting book analyses looking for character descriptions that proved the fictional character was white and needed to remain so in the play. 

Rowling threw her support behind Dumezweni’s casting, telling The Guardian, “With my experience of social media, I thought that idiots were going to idiot,” she says. “But what can you say? That’s the way the world is. Noma was chosen because she was the best actress for the job.”

It was yet another reason to love Harry Potter and Rowling; not only was Dumezweni a Black girl like me, she is also of South African heritage and as a Zimbabwe native, seeing her represent a franchise that had been such a big part of my life with full support from the author herself, was meaningful to me.

It was Harry Potter forever for me. I was locked in. Rowling had spent years of her career making me and the people I hold dear feel accepted, seen and wanted, and in fact, studies from about a decade ago showed that reading the series made children more tolerant. It felt like the Harry Potter world had limitless possibilities, so when she posted that picture last Wednesday, I was stunned. 

Maybe I shouldn’t have been. For years now, the author has been on a near single-minded social media crusade against transgender women, and more recently has begun lending the campaign her financial support too. According to Katelyn Burns of MSNBC, the author donated £70,000 to For Women Scotland, a campaign group which brought legal challenges arguing that trans women should not be considered women.

On April 16, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled that trans women should not be considered women under Britain’s Equality Act — and to the ruling, Rowling posted a picture of herself, cigar and drink proudly in hand, backed by an smug facial expression and an equally gloating caption that read, “I love it when a plan comes together. #SupremeCourt #WomensRights.”

Despite being aware of her ongoing transphobic comments, it was still jarring for to me to see her post a photo reveling in her role in legislation that may have dire consequences for people, many of whom are already disenfranchised — and many of whom identified so much with the themes of otherness in her books.

The topic of gender holds so many nuances. My personal belief, like those of the Harry Potter cast members and other actors who have spoken out against Rowling’s beliefs, is that people’s gender identity is whatever they say it is. That’s not to say there’s not a role for healthy discourse to educate and create understanding; initially, Rowling appeared to come to the conversation from a feminist perspective, which devolved into something much darker and crueler. X, of course, is not the place to have those fruitful discussions, and can escalate what started out as discourse into, well, the photo she posted last week.

I’m not telling Rowling she has to feel a certain way about anything; that’s her own personal journey to embark on. But to use her power and privilege to back a harmful law is a villainous turn that ironically feels like it’s ripped from the darker parts of Harry Potter.    

What’s worse is that during the U.K. hearing, trans people and organizations didn’t testify, “in part because individuals and organizations that fund and support trans rights thought they would not be believed and feared negative repercussions,” according to MSNBC’s Burns. A legal decision was made without any input from the people it would affect, with power wielded by a few wealthy, angry individuals; Rowling sat on a yacht, removed from all the repercussions to follow, in a way that just cemented how much she isn’t the person we looked up to as children.

It’s a turn that, if I’m being honest, has made me more sad than angry. 

Of course she is entitled to her opinion and what she does with her money is truly her business. (Although, if I ever become a billionaire, I would like to hope I’d find something more interesting to do with my money than fight with people on the internet. CC Elon Musk!)

It’s just that, as the world is giving Deathly Hallow vibes lately — constant fears of a looming recession, civil rights for women and minorities under attack and the damn tariffs! — seeing one of my childhood heroes fully descend into villainy was both unexpected and somehow, depressingly, inevitable.

As a die-hard Harry Potter fan, I never thought I’d see the day when I’d question my allegiance to the franchise. But I now find myself having this inner conflict: How can I, in good conscience, read a book that brought so much love and light, unity and inclusion to my life, when the woman who wrote it is sinisterly campaigning for the removal of people’s human rights?

I fully understand people who want to boycott the franchise. J.K. Rowling’s actions have tainted the experience. Harry Potter was our friend, who reminded us that “happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one remembers to turn on the light.” His creator, meanwhile, has taken a grim turn, reminding us that sometimes our heroes can turn into the monsters they warned us about.

It’s giving Dolores Umbridge in Order of the Phoenix and I really hate it.