Yer a wizard Harry

Having a knack for computers is one of the most valuable skills someone can possess. Many people want to be programmers , but only a tiny elite group can actually pull it off successfully. A lot of wannabees think that since they changed their Tumblr theme with HTML in 2012 they can do this extremely difficult job. Coding takes hundreds of hours of your life but when a project is finally complete, it's the greatest feeling in the world. Programmers and coders are also well known for being able…

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…

I was never one of those kids who was obsessed with reading . I was a fan of child pulp fiction books (Magic Tree House, Junie B. Jones, The Babysitters Club, etc.), but I never identified as a bookworm. I was known to fabricate entries on my reading log, and I was not ashamed of it. My reading-neutral stance was mostly because I never found books I really fell in love with, but it was also related to my disdain for kids who bragged about reading at a college level. Even in my 4th-grade mind, I…

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…

Ronald Weasley is a horrifyingly underrated character in the Harry Potter franchise. According to some sources, before the first Harry Potter movie came out, Ron was a much more popular character among fans than Hermione. Unfortunately, that changed quickly when the Harry Potter films turned Ron into a goofy comic relief sidekick with fewer heroic moments. Hermione was the smart friend, Harry was the hero, and Ron was just there. The Ron depicted in the movies was definitely not the Ron in the…

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…

"Look here, fellas! The boy who lived has came to d*e..."

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…

I must start this off by saying that I am not a person of the British persuasion. While many Gen-Z Americans get their knowledge of British culture from Harry Potter or Doctor Who, I got mine from a far more embarrassing source: Season 2 of RuPaul's Drag Race UK. Before then, I had no idea what Greggs, Pantomime, or Eastenders was, but now I've finally seen the light. The spin-off of the American drag competition show stars British contestants, two British judges and airs on the BBC, but it sti…

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…

One of the greatest mysteries of my life has been a question I'm sure all of us have asked: “what does butterbeer taste like?” This is. That is why I recently marched myself down to the Harry Potter store and spent 12 whole American dollars on a foamy butterbeer. Nobody had ever described what it tasted like to me, so I went in cold.

Some memes are just better than others. There's a conspiracy theory amongst older generations that because millennials were given participation trophies, they feel like they are way better than they actually are. Boomers fail to realize that kids could, and still can, tell the difference between an award everyone got and one they earned. For instance, when I was in high school, I won the award “Most Likely To Fall Off Of The Risers” in choir class. I wish I could tell you that earning this most…

Let's be honest. You need a laugh; I need a laugh. We all need to laugh a little bit more. We can't keep rewatching the same three seasons of Strangers With Candy until we die to get the last few giggles out of our usually unamused husks of bodies. Laughter is a force of healing, and if we don't do it enough, we're going to shrivel up and die. There are only so many 22-minute comedies you can consume in one day, especially if you are a person of the employed persuasion. Those 22-minute comedies…