If you ask a random Harry Potter fan off the street what they think of Severus Snape , chances are you will get a strong opinion. Get 100 Potterheads in a room, and there's a chance none of them will share the exact same take on Snape. Over the years, fan opinions have slowly but surely turned against Snape. While some still view him as a hero, it's a lot more common for people to see him as no more than a common villain who was needlessly cruel to an abused child because he still has a crush o…

If there's one Harry Potter character whose hype I never really understood, it's Draco Malfoy . So many Draco fangirls see him as a misunderstood boy with secret depth and hidden pain. I don't think that the text of the books or the movies really supports that, but I believe they get this idea from the aesthetics of Harry Potter itself. Draco is in the dark Hogwarts house. He lives in the dark dungeons of the school and doesn't really have any other friends besides his lackeys. He is raised in…

Gilderoy Lockhart is one of the funniest characters in the entire Wizarding World. He's one of those goofy, incompetent, largely unimportant fake-out villains that could've only come out of the first couple of books. It is such a wonder how this man even got hired at this school. Professor Quirrell, I get it. He's a socially awkward guy who happens to have Voldemort on the back of his head, but at least he knows the basic tenants of magic! Lockhart is worse at magic than 12-year-old kids who ha…

Happy Boxing Day, Potterheads! It's days like today that really make me think about how Dudley Dursley is doing as an adult. Of course, I know Dudley Dursley isn't a real person, but there are thousands of kids just like him all over the world who are all grown up now. Kids who cried if they got 36 presents for Christmas instead of 37 are walking the earth as we speak. I like to believe that Dudley ended up as a better person than when we first met him in Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone .…

Bri-ish

I'm sure everybody, no matter what Hogwarts house they're in, wishes they could spend their hours of study and leisure in the Gryffindor Common Room . None of the other common rooms could compare to where Harry, Ron, and Hermione spend their Hogwarts days between classes. The Slytherin Common room would feel like you're surrounded by concrete, with the AC always turned up way too high. There's probably a lot of fluorescent lighting that would do a number on the complexion. The Hufflepuff common…

My first exposure to Harry Potter was through a meme. Call it a meme, call it one of the most influential viral videos of the late 2000s, call it whatever you please. No Harry Potter parody media will ever top Potter Puppet Pal's rendition of The Mysterious Ticking Noise. What could be more fun and simple than Harry Potter characters repeating their names to the catchy rhythm of a metronome? “Snape, Snape, Severus Snape DUMBLEDORE” is still stuck in my head after all these years. The fact that…

The future of Harry Potter movies is unclear, as the Wizarding World's biggest spinoff series has been nixed. This week, it was reported that the rest of the Fantastic Beasts series is being quietly canceled due to the lackluster financial performance of the last film and Ezra Miller and J.K. Rowling's respective scandals. In all honesty, I'm not that mad about this. Fantastic Beasts was a weird series, and I somehow got through it without caring about a single one of the characters. I feel lik…

It never fails to boggle my mind how many people are fans of Harry Potter because they just want to date Draco . I've personally never wanted to be in a relationship with any of the characters in the Wizarding World, but I'm not a hater of those who do. If you started reading or watching the series when you were a teenager, it makes sense if your first crushes were Tom Felton or Daniel Radcliffe. However, nothing could have prepared me for stumbling upon the Harry Potter side of TikTok to find…

Gilderoy Lockhart is one of the funniest characters in the entire Wizarding World. He's one of those goofy, incompetent, largely unimportant fake-out villains that could've only come out of the first couple of books. It is such a wonder how this man even got hired at this school. Professor Quirrell, I get it. He's a socially awkward guy who happens to have Voldemort on the back of his head, but at least he knows the basic tenants of magic! Lockhart is worse at magic than 12-year-old kids who ha…

One of the best things about the Harry Potter books is you can imagine yourself living in them. You might think that many children's series provide escapism and character identification. While that's true, the Wizarding World allows you to imagine yourself as just a regular person within the world. You don't need to be a heroic and brave Gryffindor to want to go to Hogwarts. Even though I'm not likely to be leading any revolutions, I still would like to attend that school. Many of Potterhead's…

If you ask any Harry Potter fan what they think of Severus Snape , chances are you will get a strong opinion. However, get 100 Potterheads in a room, and there's a chance none of them will share the exact same take on Snape. Over the years, fan opinions have slowly but surely turned against Snape. While some still view him as a hero, it's a lot more common for people to see him as no more than a common villain who was needlessly cruel to an abused child because he still has a crush on his dead…

I know it has been said hundreds of thousands of times by Harry Potter fans everywhere, but the Mauraders deserved better. Imagine being Lupin and watching your entire friend group die before they reach 40, only to die before you turn 40. One of his friends was killed by Voldemort, one was falsely imprisoned and villainized by the media, and the other turned over to the side of the Death Eaters. The trauma, drama, and absolute conflama of the Maurader's lives can sometimes be too much for me to…

There's something about Dolores Umbridge , Harry's Defense Against The Dark Arts professor from his 5th year, that continues grinding readers' gears years after reading Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix for the first time . Many Potterheads even cite her as their most hated villain, superseding the series' ultimate villain, Voldemort . Why is that? I believe it's because Voldemort represents a type of evil that is terrifying but not relatable: I'm guessing you didn't have many red-eyed…

So many people think they'd want a 6-hour-long Harry Potter movie that covers every single of the details of the books with no variation whatsoever. Not to be contrarian, but I believe this is a delusional take. Film and literature are two completely different mediums. Nobody really wants the exact details of Harry Potter played back at them onscreen like nobody would want a 129-part BBC “miniseries” of War and Peace. There are some plot points of the Harry Potter books that I wish they'd inclu…

Being sorted into your Harry Potter house is one of the most important moments of a young Potterhead's life. There are so many ways to do it. If you're one of the lucky ones, you can do it in person, like my friend who was sorted into Hufflepuff at a bookstore the night of the Deathly Hallows book release. Imagine how much fun it is to have a real sorting hat plopped on your head as an eight-year-old? Lucky dog. If you were sorted in the pre-Pottermore era, you likely had to fill out a question…