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.

TK is a nonbinary wizard rocker who strives to bring inclusivity into their music. They have been making wizard rock since 2014 and they live in sunny California with their partner, cat, and foster kittens.

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I felt incredibly disappointed when I first learned about JKR’s opinions on trans people. I thought that she was better than that. But when the fandom came forward and cited other problems in her writing, such as her racism in the new Fantastic Beasts franchise in addition to samples of it from the original books, my disappointment turned into realization, frustration, and anger. I stood with my community through the hurtful words and ideas that she was putting out into the world, and I wanted to do something about it.

Many of us in the Harry Potter community, and specifically in the LGBT community within the fandom, decided that the books no longer belong to the author. We vowed that we would not purchase any more Warner Brother’s merchandise, see the new films in theaters, go to the Wizarding World, or do anything that would otherwise directly benefit JKR. We crafted. We wrote more fanfic. We created. We donated to LGBT organizations. We spread the word. We made music. We changed from the dedicated “Harry Potter fan” in the family or at the workplace to either being awkwardly silent about it or choosing to educate.

Usually I am not lacking for inspiration when it comes to writing wizard rock songs. As most people that know me and my music are aware, I can be a pretty prolific songwriter. When JKR’s transphobia came to light, not only was I frustrated, angry, and disappointed, but shortly after feeling all of those emotions, I was inspired. I had already been writing LGBT-inclusive wizard rock as Totally Knuts, but this news pushed me over the edge. I began writing more and more. I wrote several songs that were directed at JKR herself (Consider, Take a Page, and Sit Down). It was part of a Black Lives Matter wizard rock album. I released two EPs soon after, focusing on queer relationships, called Witches Loving Witches and Wizards Loving Wizards. But I still felt upset. I needed to do something more. So I set to work making something that no one had ever done before: I was going to make every named character in the Harry Potter books part of the LGBT community through music. Every. Single. One.

I had already written songs about a fair amount of characters that I thought would be queer or gender non-conforming, so the big task that lay ahead of me was to write down the name of each named character in the series. To do this, I quickly found that there is no comprehensive complete list of the characters from the books. Naturally the only thing to do was to reread the series and write them down myself.

While rereading the books, especially for this specific purpose and keeping in mind that I was reading the work of a transphobic person, it occurred to me that I will never feel the same way about reading the books again. There is still a lot of good in them (after all – if there wasn’t, wouldn’t we all just have given Harry up?), and that is the part that I tried focusing on. It made me feel that what I was trying to do was on the right track for me. Seven books and about 650 characters later, I was ready to start. It didn’t seem daunting; it seemed like a project I sincerely wanted to do and was excited for.

Here I am now, in March of 2021, with my huge list of characters and my pen in hand. I’m feeling inspired, and I’m feeling ready. Ready to show my community that we are valid, that we belong, and that we are enough. That we are not defined by others but by who we choose to let ourselves be. I’m ready to change the world.