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Me: He's evil, isn't he?

Story: ah-HAH! Shock and terror! He's evil!

Me: Who woulda guessed...

Story: Behold! The evil witch!

Me: She's a good guy.

Story: But what if she was the good g- Okay, smarty pants. How's this? The kind and noble king is-

Me: Evil. Or incompetent. Or both. Is it both?

Story: Th-The stepmother-

Me: Is a misunderstood victim.

Story: The goblins and trolls-

Me: Are good people being opressed by the wicked humans. And let me guess. Fairies and mermaids are evil man-eating monsters?

Story: M-maybe. Well... uh... I swear this world is super surprising and subversive. The themes are unique!

Me: Are the themes related to disillusion with one's own childhood and what you were taught by birth, using fairytales and classic motifs as a stand-in for government, parental figures or religion? Does it frame traditional mindsets as inherently flawed and harmful?

Story: Er ... well... the princess-

"oh my gosh guys guys I had an AMAZING IDEA what if... we did everything we normally do, but BAKCWARDS! I'M A GENIOUS!"

That doesn't mean you have to give up Harry Potter at all. Read it, enjoy the audio books, have fun watching the movies, and discover your otps in all the AU -verses out there. Just, don't give her money. Pirate it, borrow it, copy it. Take a moment to find out how to get it without paying for it.

The books are really actually kinda awful if you are able to step back and look at them a bit more clearly.

Harry Potter inherits a slave. He does not free the slave. Harry Potter inherits a slave and does not free the slave. "Oh but he couldn't trust him--"

Harry. Potter. Inherits. A Slave. And. Does. Not Free. The Slave. Like, Sixpencee spent more time thinking about having a slave than Harry Potter did.

You are also refusing to see the real Weird and Fucking Odd naming choices Joanne chose for basically ALL of her POC characters. It's been said before, but you KNOW she named Seamus "Paddy O'Carbombs" and the editor made her walk it back or something because that is the same format she used for ALL of her her non-Perfect British People.

There is also a casual cruelty in all of her books EVEN in Gryffindor and it isn't all just tidily "oh that was in the past!" with things like the Marauders. There's the treatment of Neville, Seamus, Colin, and Hermione (YES including Hermione, the boys are ROTTEN to her for basically all 7 books).

There's also the essential kidnap & rape of Tom Riddle's father via magical means which is just...handwaved away, just a little dot on Tom's journey to mass murder.

Do not get me started on the goblins, whose entire subplot in every book they appeared in was "three antisemitisms in a trench coat" - they are depicted as powerful enough to force the wizarding world to use their hyper-wide-reaching banking and yet she also depicted them as doing back-stabby-weird-betting-deals with Ludo Bagman AND then there was the entire goblin storyline in Book 7 with Griphook, again with goblins [who control ALL the banking in wizarding britain if not the wizarding world!] being backstabby and untrustworthy individuals who despite their own innate magic will never be the Right Kind of Magic to get full rights in the SOCIETY THEY LIVE IN. oops I got started

I am betting that your nostalgia for this property comes from the films and your merchandise and fanspaces. With the films SO much of this was scrubbed off in the name of making it palatable to a wider market and even more was scrubbed off under the guise of "we can't put everything from the books into the movies!"

There are SO MANY rich and varied worlds you could be enjoying aside from Harry Potter.

The very first one that comes to my mind is Full Metal Alchemist - which has its own problems but one of the biggest points in the 'plus' column is that the creator isn't using BILLIONS to ruin the lives of people she's deemed 'icky and undeserving of life.'

Edogawa Ranpo, “The Psychological Test” from Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination