Staunton, Virginia, used to be a railroad hub, but now, the rail station is mainly used for thrice-weekly Amtrak stops and scenic tours of the Shenandoah Mountains. But in late September, every year, the sleepy station is transformed into Platform 9 ¾, and the roaring Amtrak is replaced by a gorgeous vintage train referred to only as the Hogwarts Express.
Hundreds of Harry Potter fans fill the waiting area as the train rounds the bend on a rainy Saturday afternoon, and one by one, familiar faces deboard and wave to adoring fans: Hogwarts faculty, friends and foes, and, of course, the Boy Who Lived himself. As they make their way back to the main drag of Beverley Street, they pass by the Sorting Hat and Arthur Weasley’s Ford Anglia, parked in front of the giant “You Belong Here” mural — an ironic town motto, considering the “U” in “Staunton” is silent.
This is Queen City Mischief and Magic, a fan-led event and festival where everyone belongs: new fans, old fans, book fans, movie fans, and everyone in between. This is an era where even identifying as a Harry Potter fan can be controversial, but for these two days in the sleepy town of Staunton, Harry Potter is celebrated not as a product owned by a creator and a studio, but as a story beloved by all. Could events like this be the future of the franchise — and fandom — itself?
Founded in 2016 as a release party for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Queen City Mischief and Magic began as “Staunton Potter Party.” It’s the brainchild of Sarah Lynch, owner of local Mexican restaurant Baja Bean Co., and was initially just a way to bring people together and support Staunton’s local businesses. It was a success, but everything changed with a single phone call.
“We got away with it for one year, and we had flyers printed for the second year, and I ended up on the phone with Warner Bros’ vice president of Intellectual Property,” Lynch tells Inverse. “I was sick, vomiting sick for 24 hours until we got on the phone and she said, ‘You've got to take Potter out of the name.’” And so, “Potter Party” was changed to “Mischief and Magic,” and “Staunton” was changed to “Queen City,” the town’s nickname.
But aside from the request, the Warner Bros. representative seemed to be supportive: according to Lynch, it was “what they like to see”: a family-friendly event with no “Hermione strip shows.” When the rep asked about money, Lynch told her it was all free. The festival has only grown since then, and in recent years, the population of the town has doubled during that weekend. “Every year, we try to add at least one major thing. So over the years, we've added a 15-foot wingspan hippogriff,” Lynch says. This year, there's going to be a 15-foot-wide, three-headed dog with animatronic, glowy, scary eyes, and a huge harp to match its proportions. And a greenhouse.”
I moved to Staunton in 2021, and since then, I have been a regular at QCMM. I’ve watched Quidditch championships in a parking lot, joked around with book-exclusive character Peeves the Poltergeist, and drank more Butterbeer than I care to mention. My little brother was even the festival’s official Harry Potter for three years, a fact my mom brags about to everyone she meets who mentions the festival.
But from my very first QCMM, my participation was tinged with guilt. In 2019, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling made statements in support of transphobia, and since then has doubled down on transphobic claims and stances, including helping to fund the fight for the U.K. Supreme Court decision that legally invalidated trans women. Now, any money poured into Harry Potter is, at least partially, going into her pocket and supporting her causes.
Is there a morally just way to be a Harry Potter fan and also an ally to trans people? To find out, I took to the streets on the busiest day of Queen City Mischief and Magic 2025.
Stephanie Snead of Whitfield, Virginia, has been coming to QCMM for five years now. “It's so much fun. There's so much to do,” she tells Inverse. “Seeing the characters and the activities, the shops, good food.” When I mention her thoughts on J.K. Rowling, I can tell she’s a little thrown. “Everybody’s their own person,” she says. “It's not really about him, it's about the world that he created.” When I correct her about Rowling’s gender, she laughs it off. “That just goes to prove my point. I don’t care about her personal life or what she says or does. I just love the characters.”
Not everyone has the same laissez-faire attitude. “It sucks f*cking ass,” Aviva Harris of Fredericksburg, said while waiting in line to take pictures with the festival’s character actors. “I wish she wasn’t the writer. I disown her.”
Staunton resident Logan Stacy has attended every QCMM since the start. She read every book as they came out, crediting them for inspiring her love of reading. I chatted with her outside the Pampered Palate Cafe on Beverley Street while she kept her dog, Granger (named after Hermione), from jumping on the table. “I love the world. I love the books. I do not love the person who created [it]. I love the world that she created, but I don't stand by her views at all.”
Other fans I spoke to took a different view of Rowling’s stances. Kimberly Siepman from Springfield, Virginia, and Delaney Fetzer from the Outer Banks of North Carolina met as theater teachers. Kimberly showed Delaney the Harry Potter movies for the first time, and later she read the books in preparation for a trip to Universal. I spoke to them while they wandered Beverley Street in matching Hogwarts-house-themed plaid outfits.
“I am proud of her for standing up for what she believes in and not backing down,” Siepman said. “I feel like today, too many people think if they don't say what everybody else says, then they're afraid of what people will think of them. And she's saying, this is what I believe and I'm not going to change just because you think I should.”
“We’re here for Harry Potter, not for J.K. Rowling”
But that stance is enough to get people to separate themselves from the fandom altogether. Diamond Hawkins made that explicitly clear when I spoke to her outside of the town’s cigar shop. “I wouldn’t call myself a Harry Potter fan because I don’t want to associate myself with the creator at all,” she said. “Get to know me in other contexts, and then I’ll say I like fantasy things like Harry Potter, but I would not introduce myself as a Harry Potter fan.” In fact, she came down from New Hope, Virginia, thinking Mischief and Magic was just a general fantasy event. “I just like the high fantasy,” she said. “Put me in a Ren Faire, I’m happy.”
No matter who I spoke to, no matter what their thoughts were on Rowling and her opinions, one phrase kept getting brought up again and again: separating the art from the artist. The “death of the author” argument regarding fandom is as old as fandom itself, but with a franchise like this, it’s a little more complicated. Buying officially branded merch and visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios does put money directly into Rowling’s pocket, money she has said would go towards her fight against trans rights through efforts like the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund, which provides “legal aid for women protecting their sex-based rights.”
“I don't really give a sh*t. I just love her books,” Rebecca Klimkowski from Lynchburg, Virginia, said. “Yeah, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of controversy around her right now and with how she views things. Honestly to me, I just love Harry Potter. It's a whole world. I don't know what she's doing now or how she is now. I don't really care. I just care that she created something so awesome.”
“The people here are not gathered in her name,” said Kathy Jones, who traveled from Charlottesville with her family. “We’re here for Harry Potter, not for J.K. Rowling.”
Lynch takes pride in that and credits much of the festival’s success to how accepting the fandom is, regardless of the creator’s actions. “The children who read Harry Potter are the sweetest, most accepting, most empathetic,” she said. “There have been psychological studies about the children who read these books, and I do believe that the fandom is well served by those characteristics that develop because they fight against discrimination against mudbloods and house elves.”
However, being part of the Harry Potter fandom is about to get a lot more complicated. Warner Bros. is currently filming a series adaptation of the Harry Potter books, re-adapting the story for a new generation. It’s just as polarizing for fans as Rowling’s recent activism.
“I'm against it on an artistic level because literally they had the movies, they followed the books. That's the story. Awesome. Stop there,” Klimkowski said. “It was a great story. When they do live action versions or when they do remakes of older movies, personally, I think they end up being garbage. The original is always, always better.” Other fans thought retreading the original story was redundant. “I think they should have touched on other things in the past,” Aviva Harris said, “Like tell the story of the Marauders instead of just redoing the movies in a show.”
Diamond Harris — the self-described non-fan — said she actually would be interested in checking it out. “I would begrudgingly watch it, because I’m so curious, and then I would feel bad afterwards,” she said, “and then keep watching it as new episodes come out. The worldbuilding is just so insane.”
It’s clear that every person has a different definition of what it means to be a “responsible” fan, be that being careful with purchases, distancing yourself from new media, or disavowing the franchise altogether. But that’s completely different from the communal experience you get in wandering the streets of Staunton, where you have to navigate through hordes of young girls dressed as Beauxbatons students, children taking 18th-century dance lessons, and people with owls perched on their hands. Here, fandom is diluted down to the bare necessities: people with a shared interest. Beyond J.K. Rowling, beyond Harry Potter, it’s the fans who bring the Mischief and the Magic.
“It seems like the sort of thing that you don't need to say as a good person with the heart in the right place,” Lynch says, “but bring your brand of magic. We are here for everybody.”
