When Pottermore was announced, it would have been laughable to suggest that a chunk of fans would someday want J.K. Rowling to stop releasing new content.

Five years, an upcoming film trilogy, a play and an endless amount of new content later, the belief that Rowling should stop has become a common one.

This knee-jerk reaction to new content can be sympathized with. No one can be blamed for not taking Cursed Child well and wanting the original seven books to be preserved as they were. Saying that you want Rowling to stop as a reaction to new content is perfectly valid, as is holding the personal opinion that you don’t want the series to be expanded.

The problem is the adamant belief that Rowling should refrain from expanding her Wizarding World.

It is a belief justified with a multitude of reasons, ranging from canonical issues to feeling that the additional content is a form of self-destruction on Rowling’s part. Many fans attempt to justify with a ‘Death of the Author’ philosophy; that Rowling’s words cannot hold weight now that the series has been completed.

As the author of Potter, Rowling is now dead and, thus, cannot add to the series. When applied to the issue of canon, this argument fundamentally misinterprets this school of literary criticism. This school of thought argues that the writer’s intent and biographical background must be ignored. For example, this literary philosophy would completely disregard Rowling’s own experience with poverty when critiquing how it is represented Potter with the Weasley family. While there can be some overlap, the issue regarding Rowling’s current expansion of canon is often separate to that of the debate regarding the significance of authorial intent.

Even if you were to use this school of literary thought as a means to argue that Rowling shouldn’t add to canon, it doesn’t mean that this is the only literary philosophy that can be applied to how we treat issues of canon and authorial intent. All readers make an individual decision as to how they engage with a text.

It is fine to consider the canon of Potter to be the original seven books. If readers want to disregard Cursed Child then they are entitled to do so. If they want to acknowledge, say, Remus Lupin’s backstory on Pottermore, but ignore McGonagall’s then that’s also valid. There are also fans who want to enjoy what Rowling has to say and add to her Wizarding World and fans who simultaneously enjoy both headcanon and Rowling’s canon. To tell any fan that their approach is wrong would be a bitter attempt to police how they engage with fandom and literature.

Fandom engagement and the role of the author often overlap but the argument that Rowling should stop completely disregards her role as the creator of the biggest selling series of all time. We know that the majority of Rowling’s additional material exists in physical form — notebooks, boxes upon boxes of paper. The majority of it will not die with her; it will continue to physically exist.

As a creator, Rowling should absolutely have the agency and right to decide how she wants such content to be produced and made available. This is Harry Potter, a series that sold 450 million copies. It would be foolish to think that such material would be able to remain locked up forever, even if that means a ridiculous bidding war in a hundred years for the content of Rowling’s old notebooks.

The expansion of the Wizarding World through Rowling’s extra material is not a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’ and ‘how’. If Rowling wants to have control of how her extra material is presented in her lifetime then that should be respected. The extra material is her hard work; the product of two decades of imagination and labour. Despite how much you may dislike the actual content, you should be able to understand why Rowling would want to be in control of her work and how it is presented to the world.

She could, of course, just decide to set fire to it all in her back-garden and tweet about it.

It would be a fittingly epic way to destroy two decades worth of work and knowledge. However, what the Rowling-Please-Stop Brigade seem to forget is that this extra content was actually work for Rowling. It is an effort that she’s accumulated and put time into over a long period — a period that most authors do not spend in a fictional world.

Creating a fictional world as robust as Harry’s takes time and effort. This is a fictional world where the majority of it was built between her original idea in 1990 and the publication of Philosopher’s Stone in 1997. Rowling’s extra material was created during this period in order to make the Wizarding World exist in the vivid way that has made it so successful.

While I’m sure it was enjoyable for Rowling, it takes time and effort to create and gather together various wand cores and woods and then come up with the significance of them. Rowling has every right to want to show and make use of that detailed and time-consuming work rather than let it pointlessly sit in her house in waste.

Five years after the launch of Pottermore, many fans still want more and enjoy how Rowling has expanded the Wizarding World. While fans have a right to be vocal in their dislike of the expansion of the Wizarding World, they have no right to try and dictate if Rowling should release extra material.

Don’t want it? Ignore it. Don’t like it? Critique it. But to argue that two decades of material from the biggest selling book series of all time should be left to rot until it’s inevitably released without Rowling’s input? That I can’t understand.