This year, there are no fewer than three novels receiving wide releases from major publishers that started out life as Harry Potter fanfictions. After 50 Shades of Grey opened the floodgates and made it socially and (sorta) legally acceptable for writers to turn their fanfics into “original work”, the traditional publishing world quickly followed suit and went looking for the next big fandom to plunder for work. We got One Direction RPF, a ton of Reylo fics, and now, Dramione, which is the portmanteau given to the ship of Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy. One such book is Rose in Chains by Julie Soto, which was known as The Auction. This is not Soto’s first fanfic turned original work. She’s a Reylo shipper who has other works based on that ship. This was never a secret, nor are the HP roots of Rose in Chains, but now, Soto is one of many people being forced to contend with the perils of profiting from an IP created by a bigot.
Romance Con is an annual convention centred on celebrating romance novels and their readers, writers, and wider community. It was founded by Mischief Management, which seeks to ‘bring the friendships and joy of online fan communities into the real world.’ As you can tell by their name, they were originally HP-themed. The company was founded by Melissa Anelli, the webmistress of the Leaky Cauldron, one of the most successful HP fansites of all time. In 2009, the Leaky Cauldron hosted LeakyCon, a fan convention that has since gone on to become a regular event under Mischief Management. While Anelli and the site have distanced themselves from J.K. Rowling’s repeated instances of transphobia, which have only gotten worse since they released their statement of condemnation in 2020, LeakyCon is still a thing as of 2024.
With Romance Con, the presence of Soto (among dozens of authors, including the one who wrote the Harry Styles self-insert book) led to some pushback from readers. Having Soto at the event was seen as a continued endorsement, implicit or otherwise, of Rowling’s work. Not only that, but it was seen as an act of financial support towards Rowling through the ongoing promotion of her work. Many criticized Soto herself, claiming she was happy to stay silent on Rowling’s bigotry to sell her fanfic. Others saw it as part of the wider issue of how fandoms and fan-related activity can’t be separate from the wider product that it’s latched onto. Can you truly be a staunch queer rights ally and still put money down for something that will only further elevate the profile of a woman paying to hurt the community?
Many writers started responding to the issue by pulling out of Romance Con as an act of solidarity. Emily B. Rose said on Instagram and Threads that she’d no longer be attending the event because ‘the continued silence [from Romance Con] is so telling, and I’ve had a queasy feeling in my gut for 2 days now that I need to listen to.’ Katie Duggan also pulled out, writing, ‘While I was, and remain, hopeful that complete separation from JKR’s IP is possible, sitting around and waiting for them [Romance Con] to make the right choices didn’t feel like the right choice for me anymore.’ Adrianna Schuh declared that she would not attend the event ‘if they do not cancel Julie Soto’s appearance.’ Eventually, Romance Con announced that they and Soto had ‘mutually agreed that she will no longer attend’ the event. As of the writing of this piece, Soto has not said anything on her own socials about the situation.
Some fans have decried the situation, wondering how uninviting one author will impact Rowling’s bottom line or help quash her well-funded hate campaigns. It’s a fair question. If this is a matter of ethics, then why not uninvite Anna Todd, who made a lot of money from a Harry Styles fanfic that portrayed him as an abusive creep? It’s all indicative of a more tangled issue on fandom and ‘separating art from the artist’ that has waged in HP circles for many years.
Does a HP fanfic, one where Rowling doesn’t get any money from its sale, buoy the IP and help to keep it alive even as its author descends into mouldy madness? I would argue yes. With Soto’s book, and the other two Dramione fanfics released by publishers this year, the connection to the source material has been crucial in their marketing. The authors talk about being fanfic writers in interviews. The cover art for one book is practically Tom Felton fanart. HP fans are helping to promote the book online through their enthusiasm for the fics. Emma Watson and Felton’s images have been used widely in such fan promos. Make no mistake: Julie Soto, her publisher, and the industry at large want you to know that HP is alive and well, and you can get a saucy new take on your favourite racist and his bullying victim through these books.
This issue is perhaps more complicated than, say, the obvious problems around HP fans still buying Rowling’s books, going to the theme parks, and seeing that terrible play. That’s money that goes directly into her pockets (then to her new fund designed to financially bolster transphobic campaigns in the UK.) You can easily point at Felton or John Lighgow and be like, ‘heinous loser behaviour’ in them signing onto HP projects because that’s an active show of support to a bigot. Their payday is tied to hers.
With fandom stuff, the waters are muddier. Fandoms were, for a long time, hesitant to make money on their efforts. The idea of filing the serial numbers off your fanfic and making it ‘original’ was condemned out the gate. 50 Shades obviously changed that. Fan-related works and merch is in a similar territory: often it’s not endorsed by the estates but quietly tolerated because it’s good not to piss off your own fans and it’s good unpaid promo in the long term. Maybe you’re not paying for Rowling’s books anymore but getting stickers from Etsy and cosplaying at a convention is still a sign on some level of where your loyalties lie, right?
Yes, it’s perfectly fair for some HP devotees to want to enjoy the books they prize so much without funding hate. It’s possible to do so. But I’ve become increasingly unsure that it is so when you’re still bragging about your allegiances through stuff like published fanfic and fandom. Like, if you go to, say, San Diego Comic-Con and you’re dressed in Hogwarts robes, how do you expect people to respond? Do you think they’ll assume you’re one of the ‘good’ fans and not someone they should avoid? Rowling has made it perfectly clear that she sees financial support of her work as a direct endorsement of her views. Being ignorant of that in 2025 is a choice.
Honestly, I know I’m especially hard-edged on this issue compared to many others, but I view people with Hogwarts houses in their social media bios the same way I do those with MAGA hashtags. It’s a proud bellowing of your politics, whether you like it or not, and I’ll cross the road in traffic to get away from you. Conventions hosting wizard rock concerts and signings with the least employed bit-part players of the movies can be profitable. I imagine LeakyCon has pulled in some serious cash for its organisers. And I bet Julie Soto will see a few bucks from still-ardent HP fans. There is too much money on the line for even the so-called progressives to let this increasingly out-of-date and hate-fuelling IP die on the vine. It’s why Warner Bros. is pushing forward with this TV show that is surrounded by red flags. Eventually, it will become too embarrassing for them to keep doing so, but for now, they don’t care.
It’s perhaps not entirely fair to compare a fanfic writer and her fans to a corporate giant. We’re dealing with barely comparable levels of power here. And I don’t think removing Soto from an event is going to cause Romance Con to reassess their own continued plundering of HP for profit (their next convention, a fantasy fiction-themed one, has several HP-themed events on its roster.) At the very least, I would hope that it makes the likes of Anelli question the obvious disconnect between preaching acceptance and maintaining a mutually beneficial financial relationship with J.K. Rowling. They can condemn her all they want but they’re still helping to keep her work relevant and therefore profitable.
I often get asked how HP fans should react to Rowling. They don’t buy any of the new stuff anymore but they still want to be fans, and many fan creators are queer so we should support them instead, yes? There’s logic and earnestness behind this mentality. I’m not disputing that. But as a queer Scot who has watched Rowling decimate my country’s LGBTQ+ community through her well-funded hate campaigns, then had to walk through Edinburgh and see tourists giddily take selfies on Victoria Street in their Hogwarts robes, I have zero patience for this mealy-mouthed middle ground. Let Harry Potter die. Let it become irrelevant. Let it become such a financial drain that its presence on bookshelves lowers the value of surrounding titles. Only then will a hell of a lot of us feel safer. It shouldn’t be harder for you to let go of a children’s book series than it is to let queer and trans people know that you’re in their corner. At the very least, you shouldn’t be paying hard cash for fanfiction. Surely on that issue, we can agree.
