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The first Harry Potter book may have been released 20 years ago, but the fandom is still going strong — with fan conventions, theme parks, an international sporting competition and even a music genre all dedicated to the series.
Key points:
- Hundreds of wizard rock bands sing songs from characters' perspective
- Quidditch a real-life international sport with a world cup
- Harry Potter fandom "of the millennial generation", "alive and well"
In 2002, two brothers spawned a new genre of music — wizard rock or "wrock" — when they donned Harry Potter costumes and sung songs from the character's perspective.
"The concept was: What if Harry Potter started his own punk rock band?" guitarist Paul DeGeorge said.
DeGeorge and his brother keyboardist Joe, from Massachusetts, both sing as "two different Harry Potters … at different points in his career at school".
Their songs include Save Ginny Weasley, My Teacher is a Werewolf, The Wrath of Hermione and Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock.
But DeGeorge said his favourite was The Economics of the Wizarding World Don't Make Sense — about its closed market economy.
They have since played to audiences as large as 10,000 people and continue to play internationally.
Hundreds of bands have followed, including Draco and the Malfoys, the Parselmouths and the Moaning Myrtles.
Real-life quidditch has own world cup
The game of quidditch is even played in the muggle world, inspiring a real-life international sport with its own world cup.
The Australian team, the Dropbears, won in Germany last year.
The game is played by mixed-gender teams with broomsticks and a golden snitch — although they do not fly.
Players run around with a broomstick in between their legs, while the seekers attempt to catch the golden snitch — a ball in a sock attached to the back of a person dressed in yellow.
Kirsty Coombs plays for Australia's largest quidditch league, at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.
"We get people mocking us more often than not … until they play the game, then they realise how hard it actually is," she said.
Book on fandom became bestseller itself
The fandom inspired "super-fan" Melissa Anelli to write a book about it — which became a New York Times bestseller itself.
Its foreword was written by Harry Potter author JK Rowling herself.
"The online Harry Potter fandom has become a global phenomenon with its own language and culture, its own wars and festivals, its own celebrities," Rowling wrote.
Anelli's book detailed the community built around the books, fighting leaks ahead of book releases, fan fiction and discussion in between books, including its heated "shipping" debates — short for relationships.
Popular "ships" included Dramione (Draco and Hermione), Bellamort (Bellatrix and Voldemort), Drarry (Draco and Harry) and Hinny (Harry and Ginny).
"I wanted to be sure that there was a way for future fans to look back on this incredible time we all spent together, when Harry Potter was new, when the phenomenon was really raging," Anelli said.
And it has continued to rage.
Anelli, from the United States, owns fan website the Leaky Cauldron and co-hosts podcast PotterCast — which both still reach tens of thousands of people — and runs international fan convention LeakyCon. This year's is in Ireland.
Fandom 'alive and well'
Andrew Sims also built a career on the fandom, combining his "loves of Harry Potter and computers/websites into one passion project".
His website Hypable reports news about Harry Potter and its fandom, as well as others, with 2 million visitors a month.
"Harry Potter is the fandom of the millennial generation," he said.
"We all grew up on the Harry Potter series — experienced all of Harry's trials and tribulations together — and learned a lot from JK Rowling's work."
He said there had been a resurgence in the fandom recently, with the release of the spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie series, and stage play script book Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
"The fandom is alive and well," he said.
Topics: books-literature, fantasy-books, arts-and-entertainment, human-interest, offbeat, australia, united-states
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