This was revelatory for me. I had never realised how much stock queer people had put into the whole Harry Potter thing.

When my daughter first started reading them, I found them to be very much akin to the childrens' books I grew up with. A welcome relief from the dysfunctional families and unreliable narrators of most mofern 'childrens' writing'. Just a good, old-fashioned boarding-school romp with a gang of loyal friends putting one over on bumbling grown-ups!

OK, so Rowlings' prose is pedestrian at best, her world-building is sloppy and there are more plot-holes than a Marvel comic printed on lace. Characters are two-dimensional, stereotypical and derivative. Dumbledore is a blend of Ben Kenobi and Gandalf. Snape is Nasty Teacher and MacGonagall is Strict But Fair Teacher. Anyone who doesn't immediately recognise Kirk, Spock and McCoy in Harry, Hermione and Ron simply isn't paying attention.

But her Christian allegory is far less heavy-handed than C S Lewis, and by comparison with the racism, sexism and class bias of the execrable Enid Blyton, she is positively woke!

Point being, they were reasonable books which allowed kids, for the first tme in decades, to read purely for pleasure and relaxation without having 'Issues' shoved at them.

Now I was aware that certain adults were in the habit of discussing the books in pretentious, pseudo-scholarly terms. This I found hilarious.

It is, however, profoundly upsetting to realise that this series of average but enjoyable kids books provided perhaps the only refuge for young people like yourself. It says far too much about the marginalisation of queer people in mainstream media and culture.

I fear that all I have to offer is the words of Epictetus the Stoic:

"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”