MuggleNet Drops Staff, Gets Sued, Disapparates, Reappears Brand New

June 1, 2026 by 2 Comments

MuggleNet.com is, with The Leaky Cauldron and The Harry Potter Lexicon, one of the few Harry Potter fandom websites with an international following and more than a quarter century of reporting, commenting on, and celebrating everything to do with the Wizarding World. These sites were daily stops from Generation Hex during Potter Mania, 1999 – 2012, the years the books and first film film adaptations appeared.

In July 2020 with the advent of the Trans Wars, however, MuggleNet broke with Rowling, Inc., with which entity they had previously served as an unpaid marketing extension, in fidelity to their beliefs that human beings can become the other sex by believing they are. MuggleNet made this move, all but declaring the author of the Harry Potter series ‘She Who Must Not Be Named’ on their site’s posts and podcasts, by linking arms in a brotherly boycott with every other fandom site (except this one and The Rowling Library).

The difference in those closed ranks, though, was that the founder of MuggleNet, Emerson Spartz, had sold his website in 2020 to Topix Media Lab, a magazine and paperback book publisher that had already been printing Potter titles with MNet cooperation for years. The new owners oversaw a reformatting of the site and published a wave of new book titles but for the most part retained its staff of many years, most of which were technically volunteers, and its large archive of posts and podcasts.

In September 2025, though, Topix decided to clean house and start over. They fired everybody and in April 2026 wiped the site clean of its past. As The Leaky Cauldron’s ‘Amanda Kirk’ wrote last week in a piece titled ‘MuggleNet Has Become a Horcrux:’

In 2020, the site changed ownership to a company, Topix Media Lab, that had been in partnership with MN for its print publications. For some years after the sale, operations at the site appeared similar from the outside, albeit with a seemingly bigger push for ad revenue by Topix. In September 2025, Topix emailed MN staff to inform them that their services were no longer required. Staff numbers had fluctuated but some had remained dedicated to MN for nearly 20 years. Unless the owners planned to shut down MN, why abruptly dismiss all that institutional knowledge and devotion? The mystery deepened when Topix posted an ad on LinkedIn looking for a single full-time paid staff member to run the site. Qualifications listed for the position included an MBA.

The staff decided to fight back in court — and watched Topix guard its legal flank in April by dropping all their “volunteer” labor efforts overboard of the site with a new MuggleNet in everything but name: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Beatrice Groves, Hog Pro Notes, MuggleNet Academia

Warren Farha: Memory Eternal!

May 21, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Warren Farha died last night. If you’ve heard of Warren or had the pleasure to meet him, if you don’t live in Wichita, Kansas, odds are it is because of Eighth Day Books, an independently owned bookstore in a quirky private residence whose every shelf contains at least a month’s worth of challenging reading, fiction and non-fiction, that will provoke and raise up your thinking about what it means to be human.

Read the wikipedia page about Eighth Day Books or the New York Times 2015 profile (unlocked by Rod Dreher) after taking the Sorina Higgins quick guided tour of the store above. Hogwarts Professor is a weblog for Serious Readers; Eighth Day Books is a pilgrimage site for such people. Like few other places I have been and even fewer business establishments, Eighth Day Books reflects a single person with a vision of a possibility that no one else saw and which grew to include an international and local community of other faithful, intelligent people whose lives were changed by it.

I was invited by Eighth Day Books to be the featured speaker at the first Eighth Day Institute symposium sixteen years ago. I met Warren then, met him again when I spoke a few years later at the Orthodox cathedral in Wichita, and once more most recently at a St John’s College graduation in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Each time I was impressed by his quiet solidity and sobriety, a perceptible depth of character beneath kindness and a sense of humor that was much more about thoughtful smiles and the connection of eye contact than guffahs.

The topos of grief is to say, ‘The world is a better place because of Warren Farha; the world will be less a place of joy and fraternal love in his absence.’ This is true, of course, and profoundly so however cliched the sentiment may seem especially to those of us who were blessed to meet him, even incidentally as my meetings were. I trust that the thoughtful people at Eighth Day Books will continue to run the business as Warren did and that readers here, if they have not been there already, will visit the store in person or via its website.

My take-away from Warren’s life and Eighth Day Books, though,  is from the sui generis genesis point of the operation. As he explained it years ago in a talk he gave about vocation: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Rowling’s Sarcasm about ‘Assisted Dying’ (Medical Murder) Escapes Fans

April 24, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Url to Tweet Above

A casual reading of Rowling’s tweet this morning about the “legalisation of assisted suicide” suggests that she is in favor of making into law the suspension of the Hippocratic Oath‘s prohibition of a doctor’s killing a patient intentionally:

I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgment, and I will do no harm or injustice to them. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.

This is sadly a credible reading because Rowling has expressed several times her support for laws allowing pre-natal infanticide, a murder of the innocent expressly forbidden in the Oath. Regardless of its credibility, the great majority of Rowling’s 13.8 million twixter followers who responded were appalled by her seeming support of said “legalisation” (see here, here, here, and here) and more than one celebrated it (see here and here).

Both reactions misread her tweet. It is a sarcastic response to the assertion that killing someone is a “choice” equivalent to “gay marriage” rather than an irreversible ending of human life, one that is much too often the result of coercion and manipulation rather than free and rational choice.

How do we know this for sure? First, because Rowling has tweeted previously her position against “assisted dying.”

Second, we know that she isn’t pro “assisted dying” because Rowling finally felt obliged to spell it out:

Nick Jeffery and I discussed the tweets and the several others Rowling posted in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. You can find that conversation about perhaps the most meaningful and personal tweets Rowling has made about her beliefs over at the Hogwarts Professor Substack site: Hallmarked Man and Rowling’s Tweets after the Shooting of Charlie Kirk: The Four Definitions, the Fixed Beliefs She has Given Up, Her Doubts about “Religious Faith” in God, and the Evisceration of Emma Watson.

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Twitter

Rowling Celebrated for Heroism on ‘National Transgender Day of Visibility’

March 31, 2026 by Leave a Comment

The last day of March, the day before April Fools, is now set aside as ‘National Transgender Day of Visibility.’ This year the Supreme Court of the United States marked 31 March with a near unanimous decision in Chiles vs Salazar (!) that a Colorado law which forbade so-called “conversion therapy” was unconstitutional; Kaley Chiles, a Christian counselor in the Rocky Mountain state is again free to “help gender-confused children become comfortable with their own bodies instead of pursuing irreversible transgender medical procedures.”

On the same day, Megan Brock posted ‘She Spoke Out On Gender Ideology And Became A Global Target: Transgender Day of Visibility is a perfect day to celebrate a real woman: J.K. Rowling‘ at The Daily Wire. Brock reviewed the history of Rowling’s courageous stand against TRAs and Gender Ideology Extremists. She placed special emphasis on the 2020 essay that created both an avalanche of nonsense about the Harry Potter author being “transphobic” and the cancellation of anyone and everyone in Rowling Studies who took the same position. Brock concludes her ‘Trans Day of Visibility’ post this way: [Read more…]

Filed Under: HBO+ TV Adaptation, Hog Pro Notes

Full Cast Audio Harry Potter: Is It Worth a Listen? Three Potter Pundits Discuss

December 8, 2025 by Leave a Comment

John Granger rarely listens to audio adaptations of books unless he’s on a long drive, though he admits they have played an important part in his life as a reader.

Nick Jeffery listens to audio books everyday and often for hours at a time; he credits the medium for his mid-life rebirth as a reader (re-reader!).

Zossima Granger, writer in residence at ProtagonistBook.com (Give the gift of an unforgettable story!) and host of Teller Talk interview series at Zossima’s Story Stack Substack page, cannot remember a time when Harry Potter and audio books were not an important part of his life. He like Nick listens to one book per week or more.

So — what do these Potter Pundits and Serious Strikers think of the new Audible ‘Full Cast Audio’ (FCA) unabridged dramatization of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which in the UK and Commonwealth nations is Philosopher’s Stone?

They loved it! Listen to their in-depth discussion at the HogwartsProfessor Substack page.

No, the adaptation wasn’t perfect, and, yes, there are a few jarring miscues and disappointments. As they explain in their ten point discussion of their experience listening to the Audible production, however, there’s reason to be very excited about this audio version of the first Potter novel and the six promised FCA dramatizations.

Nick lays out the audio adaptation history of the Hogwarts Saga, to include, in addition to the background of the new FCA books, the Stephen Fry and Jim Dale legacies. And then he asks the questions below!

  1. What is your relationship with audio books? Are you a frequent listener?
  2. Were the Fry/Dale Potter adaptations an important part of your experience of the Hogwarts Saga?
  3. Did you listen to the ‘full cast audio’ adaptation of Christmas Pig? Other books?
  4. What were your expectations — fears and hopes — for the Sorcerer’s Stone full cast audio adaptation?
  5. What was the biggest surprise you experienced in your first listening?
  6. Which of the voice actors brought out a different dimension of the text than you expected?
  7. What is your favorite scene in Stone and was the full cast audio depiction of it a delight or a disappointment?
  8. Fry, Dale, or Full Cast: will you listen to all three versions in the future? Do you have a strong preference?
  9. Thumbs up or down: one to five stars, please, for the Audible production and your biggest grins and gripes.
  10. What changes do you hope the producers will make before they release the next six adaptations?

Please join in the conversation by sharing your answers to these questions in the comment boxes below. What is your relationship with books you listen to rather than read? What do think of the new FCA dramatization?

And, when you’ve made your contribution to this conversation and you’d like more conversation between Nick Jeffery and Zossima Granger for dessert, check out Teller Talk #4, ‘Harry Potter and the Skill of Reading’!

Filed Under: Christmas Pig, Hog Pro Notes, Nick Jeffery