Hello everyone, and welcome to the Why We Fight series. I’ve asked some of our favorite wrockers from around the world to talk about what they’re feeling now that JK Rowling is openly transphobic. Please feel free to join the conversation in the comments, but do remember these are sensitive subjects and real people you’re talking to.

Shauna Carrick (she/her) is an Irish Composer, Writer and self-professed Baby-Wrocker. She has been creating music for almost fifteen years and is currently working on a new piece of bilingual musical theatre called Tír na nÓg. She has performed at many LeakyCons and other Harry Potter conventions in the US and Europe and is desperately waiting for international travel to be a thing again so she can hug her friends.

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I would like to start this piece with the information that I am a white, cis-woman and all of my opinions should be taken with that caveat up front. I do not pretend to understand other people’s life experiences so I choose to listen to others instead. I listen, I learn, and I try to alter my actions in ways that support the people I care about, and just people in general. I encourage others to do the same.

It’s interesting to me that much of my opinion about embracing differences and learning about other people, has come from my experience as part of the Harry Potter community. I come from a small country, lived a relatively sheltered life as a child, and as a 19 year old, I travelled across the Atlantic Ocean to room with four total strangers, attend LeakyCon, and be a part of a Harry Potter musical with my friends.

To say I was naive then is an understatement. I suppose many of us are at 19. My newfound friends marvelled at my excitement over donuts for breakfast (my new favourite food), an entire restaurant for pancakes (seriously, America knows how to do sugar), traffic circles (they’re called roundabouts people), and my abject terror when faced with a Florida thunderstorm. Not only that, I met many people of varying shapes, sizes, colours and identities, from towns, cities, and countries – some of which I had never even heard of. I realised how small my world had been, and I revelled in expanding it.

One fateful thunderstorm night, our newly established friend group went for dinner together. One Irish, one Norwegian and three Americans from Kentucky, Alabama, and Washington. We sat for hours discussing anything and everything we could think of, from sex education to politics, weather to family life. Usually, we Europeans were shocked at how different our upbringings had been to our American friends, but every now and again something simple and commonplace to us would generate a new round of questions.

This pattern would continue for me throughout my time travelling to the US. The opportunity to meet new and different people helped me to shape who I was as a person. I learned new words to describe myself, learned that other people felt the same way as I did, and when I attended a Harry Potter event, I felt a freedom in myself that I can very rarely find elsewhere. I think this experience is not unique, I know many of my friends feel the same way. We grew up together. We made mistakes. We called each other out on those mistakes. We started again. Harry Potter gave me those friends, gave me opportunities that I never could have dreamed of and, to me, felt like one of the most inclusive communities that I had ever been a part of. I’m aware that I’m lucky to feel that way too, our community is not perfect by any means. But it felt like a Home.

Last year changed that for me. While I was aware that as a community we had a lot of work to do to create that home for other people, the blatant hate and hurt coming from the creator of Harry Potter shook me to my core. Harry Potter, the book that had comforted me through almost every day of my life, that taught me that bravery comes in all shapes and sizes, that standing up for what is right comes before all else, had been created by a woman who was now actively fighting against those ideals. This was a book that I listened to every night falling asleep. I could beat any of my (muggle) friends in a Harry Potter quiz. Any money I had went towards saving for my next trip to America to sing songs about a boy wizard with my friends. Harry Potter was an intrinsic part of my identity, as it was for so many of us. Now we were faced with an unavoidable reality. This wasn’t someone being a problematic fave. This was actively hurtful and damaging to other human beings, people in our communities, my friends.

My wonderful friend Ashley Hamel posed the question in a lunchtime concert, where do we go from here? It struck a chord with me. With her permission I wrote a song about it, using the method I always used to process my feelings. My question to myself was and is this. How do I continue to be a part of something that now actively promotes hate? I love being a wrocker. I was writing a musical with a friend about Neville. Harry Potter gave me some of my dearest friends. But I had to stop. At least, for now.

I told family and friends that I would no longer like to have anything Harry Potter related for birthdays or Christmas. I stopped listening to the audiobooks at night to fall asleep. I took Harry Potter out of my bio, lest someone think that I supported JKR in any way. I haven’t written any more songs. Thankfully, I have kept my friends.

Where do we go from here? If I’m honest, I don’t know. All I want to do is sit in the Malfoy basement (rip) and sing funny/heartbreaking songs with my friends. To me, we were always the magic. But we were brought together by this book, and ultimately by this woman. It’s an incredibly difficult fact to reconcile.

I first started writing this opinion piece at the start of March and now here at the end of the month we have OWL Fest and the community is regrouping, albeit virtually. It’s becoming clear to me that perhaps what we need is to be in a room together, to play music, to cry, to hug, to work through everything that has happened to our community, against the backdrop of everything that has happened in the world. And maybe there are no right answers but maybe there are still ways to create that magic together in new and exciting ways. We will have to wait a bit longer before we can do this, but I do believe that the day is coming.

My last draft of this essay ended in despair, but I think this one ends in hope. Where do we go from here? I don’t know. But we will go on together.