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Hello, and welcome, Harry Potter fans! My name is Irvin, though I'm known around the Internet as "hpboy13." I'm a very prolific member of the Harry Potter fandom ever since I joined it in 2003, and this is a place to keep track of all my creative endeavors. I've since been branching out into other fandoms, but HP will always be the focal point.
I hail from New York City, where I am a member of The Group That Shall Not Be Named, the largest real-life HP group in the world. Through the Group, I have become an avid cosplayer, a Quidditch player (Beater, NY Badassilisks 2010-2014), a wizard rock concert organizer (Avada KedavRock! 2012, 2014, 2019, 2024), and the leader of the world's first wizard dance troupe, the Dancing Death Eaters. I have become a regular attendee at HP conventions, which serve as a confluence of all my creative endeavors. In 2022, I became the lead organizer of a new HP-themed Meetup group in NYC, the NY Order of the Phoenix.
I have dreamed of being a writer ever since I wrote my first fanfiction in 2005; my dream finally came true as my first book was released July 31st, 2018: Dumbledore: The Life and Lies (originally titled The Life and Lies of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore). But during the last thirteen years, I have written an awful lot online; most significantly, as a columnist for MuggleNet, spearheading "The Three Broomsticks" from 2011 to 2023. Since 2025, I've been publishing HP essays over at The Harry Potter Lexicon. From 2013 to 2021, I was also a regular writer at Hypable; starting in 2022, I've become an occasional contributor to Hypable's successor Subjectify.
From 2019 to 2022, I became a regular host on the Potter podcast Alohomora!, before starting my own HP podcast in 2023 called The Three Broomsticks. All my podcast appearances, aside from The Three Broomsticks, are compiled on the Podcasts page.
In short, I have a lot of Harry Potter and all-around geeky stuff going on in my life, and I needed one place on the Internet where all of it could be centralized, and this site is that place. You can check out my bio, or click on the links page to explore all my stuff. Here are a few quick links.
Dancing Death Eaters Site Cosplay Gallery Writings NY Order of the Phoenix The Three Broomsticks Podcast
Dumbledore: The Life and Lies: Website | Mailing List | Goodreads
Buy it: Signed Copy | Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | e-book | or request it at your local bookstore!
Feel free to shoot me an email about any of my stuff at DarkLordofDance@gmail.com or to find me on Twitter or BlueSky.
3/25/25: New Dancing Death Eaters routine
We have a video of a brand-new Dancing Death Eaters routine - Death Eater Disco by the Purebloods! This debuted at Avada KedavRock! 2024. In a fun bit of synergy, I had the dancers utilize copies of Dumbledore: The Life and Lies as props during the dance routine - probably one of the more unorthodox venues of book promotions I can think of!
2/26/25: Publication of anthology book "The Phoenix or the Flame"
Last year, I was pleased and gratified to be invited to contribute to The Phoenix or the Flame, an anthology of Harry Potter essays published by The Rowling Library. I'm excited to announce that the book is now published and available for readers to sink their teeth into!
Before writing the fifth Harry Potter book, J.K. Rowling created a seven-page handwritten outline of her original vision for the plot, offering an unprecedented glimpse into her writing process. In these early notes, there are noticeable differences in the characters, terminology, and plot, culminating with a different ending, in which Sirius's fate is not brought about by Bellatrix.
Together, the essays of The Phoenix or the Flame explore the manuscript in detail, offering a new perspective on Rowling's creative process and deepening our understanding of the published book. This collection also includes detailed guidance to help fans interpret the outline themselves.
My essay is called "Belated Bellatrix," and focuses on how Bellatrix's crucial role in Order of the Phoenix wasn't part of the original plan. What precipitated her unplanned arrival at center stage, and how did the changes from it ripple throughout the fifth book? I found it a fascinating subject to explore, touching on everything from Walden Macnair to Rita Skeeter!
I am in excellent company among the contributors of this anthology! Well-known Harry Potter essayists like Louise Freeman and Beatrice Groves also contributed essays, and I impatiently await the arrival of my copy to dive into their essays.
For all the information about this new book, visit its official website at The Rowling Library.
You can currently buy it from Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Barnes & Noble - and hopefully lots of other places in the near future!
And if you'd like a sneak peek, there is a video symposium of the authors where we each presented some of our work within the book. Mine is from my presentation at CONjuration 2024, so please picture me in a slinky black dress and crazy black wig as you're listening!
2/3/25: New listings of costumes by event
Given how many years I've been doing the whole cosplaying thing, and how much I like going to regular geeky events to debut new costumes, I've been beefing up my cosplay gallery's Listing by Event to reflect the costumes I bring to CONjuration every year, and added a page for the themed Dance Parties I like attending.
Also worth noting, though it happened late 2024 as I was swamped with things... I surpassed 200 different characters cosplayed! Each hundred has taken me approximately seven and a half years, though note there was a pandemic in the middle of the second hundred!
1/28/25: New home for HP essays
After twelve years as MuggleNet's controversial columnist, I have found a new digital home for my essays about Harry Potter! I'm thrilled to say that going forward, my essays will be hosted at The Harry Potter Lexicon!
The venerable Lexicon has been the ultimate reference source for the Potter fandom ever since I joined said fandom. I’m honored that my essays will exist alongside “The most compleat and amazing reference.”
2/8/23: Launching a new HP Podcast
I recently launched a new Harry Potter podcast, called The Three Broomsticks (after my MuggleNet column). I'm joined in this endeavor with two of fellow former hosts of Alohomora, Sam and Aureo, and my MuggleNet editor Sophia. We just released our first episode, and are committed to releasing new episodes every other Saturday. This podcast will feature fun and very in-depth discussion of all things to do with HP.
I really hope you enjoy listening to it, wherever you listen to podcasts! And maybe even find it in your heart to support us on Patreon, since running a podcast is an expensive endeavor!
11/3/22: Founding a new HP Meetup Group
As if I don't have enough HP-themed projects going on in my life, I have recently founded a new Harry Potter Meetup group in New York City with my friend Julie - we are the NY Order of the Phoenix. Or the NYOP for short!
I'm really excited for this opportunity to build up the local fandom - there's so much HP stuff to do in our city, and we need an extroverted Ravenclaw to make it happen! We meet in Manhattan on the third Tuesday of every month, for book discussions and HP games and HP crafts. We will also meet for plenty of other HP-themed events, from Wizard Afternoon Tea to StarKid concerts and everything in between. Hopefully, this is the start of an exciting new chapter in my Potter fandom!
3/25/22: 100 articles at MuggleNet and 30 years on earth
After over a decade of writing for MuggleNet at The Three Broomsticks, I have now published a hundred articles there! In honor of this milestone, I ran a whole retrospective on the column titled "The Three Broomsticks Centenary" - which can be found at Editorials. I also took the opportunity to slightly reorganize the editorials section of my website, moving a bunch of articles out of "Miscellaneous Topics" into pages dedicated to the Workings of the Wizarding World and Who's Who in the books.
On a wholly different note, last month was my 30th birthday, and I threw a party that was extra as hell even by my lofty standards. And since it was HP-themed - a TriDecade Tournament - I created a recap of it here at TriDecade Tournament.
8/30/21: All websites converted to new Google Sites
Much to my chagrin, Google forced all Classic Google Sites to update to their new interface, so now the Bibliography website as well as this one have been converted. The widgets are nowhere near as elegant or easy to use in the new interface - particularly the "latest updates" kind of stuff - but I've made the most of it and tried to keep this site as clear and user-friendly as possible. Hopefully with the world opening back up, I'll actually have more exciting stuff to update soon!