In-Laws from Hell·
THE POTTER HAND-ME-DOWNS
A 32-year-old mother lets her kids read her old Harry Potter copies, sparking a family feud as a trans brother-in-law condemns Rowling and a husband questions passing on the relic.
Should she keep the books or let them go?
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The fight started over a stack of old Harry Potter books sitting in a kid's hands.
A 32-year-old mother says the series was a huge part of her childhood, even though she now calls J.K. Rowling "a disgusting and bigoted waste of both oxygen and space." She says she has not bought any new Harry Potter merchandise in years, and the movies she still keeps are downloaded on her iPad. The books her children were reading? Those were the original copies she bought back in the '90s.
Her 8-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son had asked to read them, so she handed over her old hand-me-downs.
Then her husband's brother, a 29-year-old trans man, visited and noticed the kids with the books. He immediately took issue with what he saw. He told her he found it "problematic" and said the children should understand that reading Harry Potter meant endorsing a "bigoted and hateful person."
The mother pushed back. These were not new purchases, she said. They were her old books, passed down in the family and not adding anything to Rowling's cause. In her words, "this was not new property and thus is not contributing to JKR's cause."
That answer did not settle things. The brother left angrily.
But the argument did not end there.
After the visit, her husband came to her with a new complaint. He told her that if Harry Potter was really such an essential part of her life, then maybe she was pushing it on the children too. She answered that the kids had asked for the books themselves. They wanted to read them, and she gave them the copies she already owned.
She also made one thing plain: she was not throwing them away.
For her, the books are part of her childhood. For her brother-in-law, they are tied to a creator he sees as hateful. For her husband, the issue became whether she was passing that attachment on to the kids.
But the mother's position stayed the same. The children asked. She handed over her old books. And when told to get rid of them, she said, again, that she will not throw them away.