Seventeen pairs of Mickey Mouse ears, a trip to Disneyland every season and making your entire family dress up as Monsters Inc. characters for Halloween are all symptoms of being a Disney adult.
I will admit that these individuals have been on my judgment list since the retirement of my “Keep Calm and Hakuna Matata” shirt in sixth grade, but I have been exposed to a fandom that is much more extreme.
Even a middle-aged mom with an entire Beauty and the Beast leg sleeve tattooed on her does not come close to the level of this army.
The branch I am talking about is Dumbledore’s Army – aka Potterheads.
Okay, listen, I myself am a fan of the Harry Potter movies and am not ashamed to be a Hufflepuff. I am not even phased by people who have an entire area in their homes dedicated to the franchise’s merchandise (my 25-year-old brother).
I am sure we have all met our fair share of Harry Potter fans that dress up as Hogwarts students for Halloween every year, regularly use spells in their day-to-day and have read the books cover to cover multiple times.
I would consider that type of person to be the average fan. Once I learned that it goes much deeper than this, I fell into a rabbit hole, or should I say, “forbidden forest” of Harry Potter lore.
Let’s start off with one of the most bizarre subset of fans – Snapewives. This group of women claims that they channel Professor Severus Snape, Hogwarts Potion Master, and are romantically and spiritually involved with him. They self-identify as Snapeist and practice a religion called Snapeism.
Snapeism is basically a form of Christianity, but instead of praying to God, they are connecting to him through astral projection. Oh, and God is Snape.
They also believe that the sacred text they follow was written by J.K Rowling because she was also channeling his spirit. To the followers of this religion, Severus Snape is the one true God.
Snapeist do not stop with worship. They are also married to their God. Yes, all of them at the same time, which makes this a sister-wives situation. They all take their marriage very seriously and solemnly swear to Snape that they will not get involved with any other man. Well, at least most of them. There are women who have a physical husband in real life and Snape as their partner in the astral world because why would they not?
The loyal following slowly drifted away after one of the main Snapewives fell in love with another man, which was, of course, Jethro Gibbs from NCIS. Now, Snapeists are worshiping his luscious dark hair from the shadows.
A more current take on the astral projection experience is through shifting, which means moving your conscious thoughts into a new reality. This blew up on TikTok in the Harry Potter fandom.
Numerous people made videos claiming they went to Hogwarts for not just the night, but literal months, and in some cases, years. These individuals truly believe they have spent multiple years in the school of wizardry and are having full breakdowns because they did not want to leave.
This initially made me think of lucid dreaming, but this community has made it clear that it is not a dream. They truly believe that they are going there. They talk about their interactions with Draco and Hermoine and nonchalantly discuss what they are studying in their history of magic class.
Because of this trend and the abundance of shifting influencers sharing their stories, people in the comments are starting to believe that Hogwarts genuinely exists. Just like Snapewives, they believe that J.K. Rowling shifted to Hogwarts and the book series is based on her personal experience.
The idea of Hogwarts being a real place quickly turned into the belief that nothing is real and our current reality is just a shift we are stuck in. A trend that started with silly content turned into something pretty bad when you realize that mostly everyone in the comment sections saying these things are minors.
As someone who has experienced derealization, which is the feeling of experiencing your body and the world from an outside perspective, I can confidently say that hearing content creators talk about how nothing physically exists and we are just our thoughts is definitely not good for mental health, especially for young and vulnerable minds.
I honestly feel bad for kids in this generation who know nothing but the internet. They cannot even enjoy a fictional story about magic and adventure without people online making it a harmful thing.
Let kids be kids. Let magic be fun. Let Severus Snape stay in the story. Please.
