Harry Potter fans are reimagining the popular books and movies with a bit of a black magic twist.
Thousands of fans of the epic series have been tweeting their ideas for a slightly-different version of Harry Potter, where Professor Dumbledore is played by Morgan Freeman, the Sorting Hat’s replaced by a Sorting Durag, and nearly every major moment can be summed up with an expressive GIF.
Using the hashtag #BlackHogwarts, countless muggles have shared clever and often downright hilarious tweets — and even author J.K. Rowling has voiced her approval.
All-star cast: Fans have been using the hashtag #BlackHogwarts to reimagine Harry Potter’s world, recasting some of the movie rolls
Albus? One of the most popular idea is Morgan Freeman as Dumbledore
Of course it’s happening in your head! This moment from Bruce Almighty in particular, with Freeman as God, reminded fans of a scene toward the end of Deathly Hallows
Herbal magic: Some feel that Snoop Dogg would make the perfect Professor Sprout, who teaches Herbology
And next, Head Boy! A GIF of Carlton on Fresh Prince of Bell Air perfectly sums up Percy’s attitude upon becoming a Prefect
Goblet of Lemonade: Yule Ball entrances would have looked a lot different if Beyonce had been in attendance
Daring, nerve, and chivalry: Several renamed Gryffindor, jokingly calling it Cripindor
The hashtag appears to have become popular overnight on Thursday, and fans are still using it to suggest black twists on the story.
The most popular ones have thousands of likes apiece, and on Thursday night Rowling responded to a fan who asked if she’d seen them.
‘Seeing them and loving them,’ she wrote, also using the hashtag #BlackHogwarts.
Some Twitter users have sought to hypothetically recast all the major roles in the movie, reimagining each character played by a black actor.
Unsurprisingly, Morgan Freeman won near-unanimous support for the role of Dumbledore, with one fan tweeting an image of the actor as God in Bruce Almightly, saying it’s what Dumbledore would look like in during Harry’s death scene in Deathly Hallows.
He makes this look good: Will Smith’s neuralyzer in Men in Black is basically a scientific version of the spell Obliviate (though it looks a lot like a Put-Outer)
Now you see me… Instead of an Invisibility Cloak, there are Invisibility Timberland boots
Some suggested Donald Glover to play Harry, Jaden Smith to play Ron, and either Zoe Kravitz or Yara Shahidi Hermione.
Several ventured that Shaquille O’Neil would make the perfect Hagrid (being as ‘half-giant’ as humans come), that Forest Whitaker would make a great Mad-Eye Moody, and Michael B. Jordan could play Draco Malfoy.
Other suggestions included Erykah Badu as Professor Trelawney, Viola Davis as Professor McGonagall, Don Cheadle as Voldemort, Idris Elba as Sirius Black, and Snoop Dogg as a male version of Herbology’s Professor Sprout (for his expertise with a certain herb in particular).
But the tweets that have earned the most attention, by far, are those that use GIFs to illustrate a specific scene if it had played out at ‘Black Hogwarts’. Many of them perfectly capture the feeling or mood of a moment, or offer a funny twist on magical spells and objects.
She approves! Author J.K. Rowling has been following the funny tweets and loves them
Far out: Another favorite recasting was Erykah Badu as Professor Trelawney
Oh you may not think I’m pretty, but don’t judge on what you see… No longer a Sorting Hat, houses are picked via Sorting Durag
Brilliant! Thousands of fans have used memes, GIFs, and stills to illustrate scenes and characters
One person tweeted a GIF of Wendy Williams stumbling and fainting on her show last year, writing: ‘When they hit you with that “Stupify.”‘
Another showed Wendy taking off her wig at the pool, joking: ‘When Professor Quirrell revealed Voldemort on his head…’
A video of people recklessly shooting fireworks at each other on the street subbed in for a fight between the Order of the Phoenix and Death Eaters, and Tiffany ‘New York’ Pollard walking with attitude illustrated Bellatrix Lestrange being broken out of Azkaban.
The Eddie Murphy film Coming to America was a goldmine for #BlackHogwarts GIFs, as were videos of athletes celebrating and Beyonce performances.
Viral: The most popular tweets have earned thousands of likes each
Students out of bed! A GIF of Samuel L. Jackson in Black Snake Moan reminded fans of Argus Filch, the caretaker
Don’t say it: At Hogwarts, it’s the M-word — mudblood — that’s racist
There are actually few characters described as being black in the Harry Potter books — Dean Thomas being the most prominent — though some fans were surprised when a black actress was cast as Hermione in the Potter play, Cursed Child.
In fact, Noma Dumezweni faced quite a bit of racist backlash following the initial announcement, and Rowling came to her defense — and also defended the decision not to choose a white actress to play grown-up Hermione.
She pointed out that Hermione is never actually described in the books as being white.
‘Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Hermione,’ she tweeted in 2015.