J.K. Rowling will not rest until she squeezes every bit of felix felicis out of the magical world she created. The author, who delivered the first book in the Harry Potter series more than 20 years ago, has been doing the absolute most to get every ounce of juice out of her beloved universe. And now, The Independent reports that Rowling has more Harry Potter-centric stories on the way.
She'll be releasing four new e-books via Pottermore Publishing that delve further into the magic courses and folklore at the extremely fictional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, including Defense Against the Dark Arts, herbology, and potions. In the twelve years since the release of the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, she has released six additional books in the Harry Potter universe, including Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, the former spawning its own film series. She’s also penned a pretty large collection of short stories, as well as the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which is currently on Broadway, London's West End, and other stages around the globe. Let’s not forget the TWO massive theme parks where children can go into a butterbeer-fueled rampage through the cobblestone streets of a recreated Diagon Alley. There are even more capitalist forays into her world of wizardry, but there's only so much evidence one can compile before it becomes overkill.
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While Rowling can and should play off her hyper-prolific body of Harry Potter-related work to satiate the mega Potterheads out there, at some point, we have to ask if Rowling is a dementor draining every bit of living soul from these characters. Her enterprising ways of finding new revenue streams, her relentless ambition, and her thirst for ever-increasing riches and power sound an awful lot like a certain group of people that did some very, very bad things. It's pretty obvious: J.K. Rowling is a Slytherin.
According to the Harry Potter Wiki, a Slytherin is known to embody the following characteristics: ambition, shrewdness, cunning, strong leadership, and achievement-orientedness. "They also have highly developed senses of self-preservation. This means that Slytherins tend to hesitate before acting, so as to weigh all possible outcomes before deciding exactly what should be done," reads the wiki.
Wow. Read J.K. Rowling to filth, why don't you.
Rowling has gone on record claiming she's a Gryffindor, and maybe at one point, she was. She showed immense bravery and determination in pulling herself out of poverty to follow her dreams and write the book that shot her to literary fame. But as is the case with many who get a taste of that money life, Rowling has turned Slytherin. The proof is right there in the Yorkshire pudding. She shrewdly chooses and creates more and more projects to increase the Harry Potter universe, even if no one asks for them. She's shoving handfuls of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans into our already overfilled mouths, and they're starting to all taste like bitter, bitter earwax.
One can even argue that there is a level of cunningness in her practice of routinely retroactively claiming that her characters were from marginalized communities in order to shoehorn them into a woke narrative she wants to claim was conceived in her head all along. This feels like a pretty devious means to gain more followers and social consciousness clout, especially considering the books could have made it clear all along that, as she has claimed, Dumbledore is gay and also somehow (considering he's not a real person and is instead a character she created) against the academic boycott of Israel , Hermione is Black, Professor Lupin's werewolf condition is a metaphor for AIDS, Death Eaters reflect the evil beliefs of Nazis, and so on. Representation is vital in all forms of media, but making claims that you've been doing it all along when there's not really proof of that, well, that's so Slytherin.
It's clear she doesn't want to let the universe she so lovingly and thoughtfully built die, possibly to preserve her own legacy, possibly to increase the zeros in her bank account. But is this all really necessary? Her legacy is more than cemented, and we know Rowling and the next five generations of her bloodline are set for life. Potterheads have enough to read, watch, wear, ingest, and experience for the rest of their lives. What's next? Wand-shaped tampons? A Kanye-Weird Sisters remix of "Do The Hippogriff" with her laying down a verse? When is enough enough?
Rowling has given Potter fans—and really, everyone—more than enough to feed on, ignoring the old adage of quality over quantity. There seems to be no end to her thirst for sauce. Isn't that just like a Slytherin?
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