Most people may not realize the significance of July 31st. Heck, I had to look it up myself. But for Harry Potter fans like 25-year-old Jessica Jordan, it’s the day The Boy Who Lived came into this world, as written by J.K. Rowling in her acclaimed series.

“My sister read the [Harry Potter] books first, and decided they were the best thing ever. She loved them so much she didn't want me to read them, so she could keep them all to herself,” Jordan tells me over email. “But this was the year 2000, and Harry Potter was everywhere, so I read them in secret and fell in love. The rest is, as they say, history.”

About 12 years later, Jordan saw “a call for volunteers” on the Twitter account of MuggleNet, now self-dubbed “the world’s #1 Harry Potter fan site.” She recalls, “I sent in my application, which was a test post written in HTML, and was soon accepted as a member of the news team. I've been working with MuggleNet ever since!”

Jordan, who currently works as a bookseller as she prepares to start a PhD in Literature in the fall, is now one of more than 90 Harry Potter lovers who contribute to MuggleNet on a volunteer basis, driven by their love for Rowling’s world.

Harry Potter changed Jordan’s life, but MuggleNet is just one of many fan-run websites and organizations that have popped up since the book saga first hit shelves. The Potter-specific fan club trend may have lost some of its luster over the years as other franchises build their brands, but there are still groups, conventions, and even bands paying tribute to the teen wizard with the lightning bolt scar.

With more Fantastic films on the way, a Cursed Child stage production premiering in London, and Harry Potter theme parks, it may even get a second wind.

The Quidditch World Cup…in America

In 2005, Xander Manshel, a freshman at Middlebury College in Vermont, brought the most popular sport of Rowling’s wizarding world to life. Using the books as inspiration, their first quidditch match took place in October on Battell Beach with players running across a field with a broom (or, in one player’s case, a lamp) between their legs and wearing towels as capes. By November, seven teams of Middlebury students competed in what was dubbed an intramural tournament.

"You can use any means necessary to get the quaffle," Alexander Benepe, a sophomore student and referee, told The Wall Street Journal at the time. "It's a dirty game. Tackling, tripping and sliding are all encouraged.”

These games sparked a quidditch trend in schools around the country and would eventually evolve into U.S. Quidditch. Formally founded in 2010, the organization is “the national governing body for the sport of quidditch,” according to its website, and is responsible for organizing events with more than 4,000 athletes participating.

“We envision a future where every person in the United States is aware of quidditch as a sport and has opportunities to play and engage at all levels,” reads their mission statement.

Their version of the Quidditch World Cup, which (obviously) involves international teams, took place Comic-Con weekend in Frankfurt, Germany. "With a sport like soccer, every single thing has been done or tried before," Jayke Archibald, one of Team U.S.A.’s chasers, told The Sun Chronicle before flying out. "In Quidditch, you can truly innovate, and have the opportunity to radically change the way the game is played."

The Group That Shall Not Be Named

A group of Harry Potter fans dressed flooded Battery Park in New York City in 2011. Some were dressed as Bellatrix Lestrange (channeling Helena Bonham Carter’s performance), Mrs. Weasley (Julie Walters), and even the pink-haired Nymphadora (Natalie Tena). The cosplayers posed for photos and reenacted scenes from the films before walking over to a theater to watch the premiere of Deathly Hallows, Part 2.

The group popped up the same year at New York Comic-Con in their own version of dueling club — Harry experienced this his second year at Hogwarts when Professor Lockhart taught Defense Against the Dark Arts. A wand instructor at the convention, dressed head-to-toe in black, led a class several common offensive and defensive spell casting.

This is The Group That Shall Not Be Named.

The fan group has more than 2,000 members who participate in a number of Harry Potter-themed activities, from the more lax (trivia, board game nights, screenings) to more involved (fan fiction readings, cosplay photoshoots) to diehard level (convention appearances, wizard rock shows, costume ice skating).

To celebrate July 31st, TGTSNBN is teaming up with minor league baseball team The Brooklyn Cyclones to host a magical meet-up at MCU Park on Coney Island that’ll include more cosplay photo co-ops, an Intro to Spells class, and a costumed parade around the park.

News, Straight From the Fans

MuggleNet.com, The-Leaky-Cauldron.org, SnitchSneeker.com, Magical-Menagerie.com. These are all Potter blogs, providing as much information and discussions on anything related to this world — some sites even blog about the actors’ post-Potter jobs. But the work for these fan journalists extends beyond the computer.

Jordan says she reported from the set of Syfy’s The Magicians in Vancouver, Harry Potter: The Exhibition in New York, New York Comic-Con, park openings, the Harry Potter Studio Tour in London, and even attended a play co-written by Mrs. Figg actress Kathryn Hunter. “She wasn’t even there,” Jordan remarks.

Catherine Horvath of The Leaky Cauldron says her team also likes to be present for any major press events that might have interest to her audience. Though she’s working on getting a masters at the University of Notre Dame, she still makes time to manage Leaky’s news team as their senior editor, spearhead social media outreach for the site, report on special events, and participate in Leaky’s podcast called PotterCast.

“In high school I saw a post for an editorial position and applied,” she recalls over email. “Almost a year later I heard back from Leaky, and eventually got an interview with one of the senior staff at the time — being only a junior in high school, he was surprised how young I was, but I proved I could do the job and I was ‘hired.’”

Much like with MuggleNet, the 16 “official” Leaky staffers and their bounty of freelancers have to support themselves with other jobs. But for Horvath, who played competitive quidditch as an undergrad at Indiana University, being involved is important to her. “I grew up with the series, it was a huge part of my life, and it still is a huge part of my life,” she writes. “I love working for Leaky and being apart of the fandom in a more ‘official’ way.”

The Harry Potter Alliance

Being a fan is already a lifestyle, but the international non-profit known as The Harry Potter Alliance “turns fans into heroes.”

Founded in 2005, the organization has spearheaded a number of charitable initiatives, one of the most talked about in recent years being “Accio Books!” The campaign ran from April 2nd to June 2nd of last year and sought to donate more than 60,000 to communities in need. Two weeks in, HPA conjured 8,000. By the end of the campaign, more than 250,000 books were donated.

The non-profit also helped raise more than $123,000 for Partners In Health, funding the delivery of five cargo plans with supplies to Haiti; partnered with Walk Free to successfully petition Warner Bros. to change the sourcing of its Harry Potter chocolate to become Fair trade; and smaller efforts, like link fans and Internet personalities over Net Neutrality.

One of HPA’s slogans is, ”Nobody should be forced to live in the cupboard,” pointing to their efforts to fight for LGBTQ equality, immigration equality, and similar civil rights issues. "We are effective in getting activists to be first-time activists…because we organize around modern myth and popular culture," HPA founder and executive director Andrew Slack told U.S. News & World Report in 2012. "It builds unprecedented positive communities.”

The Music of Harry Potter

Paul DeGeorge, 36, is a member of HPA’s board of directors, but he leads a double life…as Harry Potter. He and his brother, Joe, 29, are the members of Harry and the Potters, a band that performs songs based on the books.

Joe tells me over the phone that the concept came from his experiencing performing in bands at the age of 14 when he looked very much like Harry. “I was playing another show with one of my other bands at the time, and someone in the audience was like, ‘Hey, it’s Harry Potter in the band,’” he says.

Paul approached him afterwards about a concept he was thinking of — both brothers would form a band in which they both dress up and act like Harry while performing. “We thought the band would be a great way to play shows in libraries like shows for kids and expose kids a kind of music they’re not gonna necessarily hear on the radio.”

Joe recalls the band formed “in an emergency,” after the show they book was in need of more acts when a slew of bands canceled. So the brothers, who come from “a DIY punk background,” grabbed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and whipped together some songs. The band has since played in everything from kids’ birthday parties to rock spaces and “DIY venues.” While Joe works at art space AS220 in Rhode Island and Paul runs a shop with his wife in Kansas, the two have a few shows lined up in Florida starting July 25th.

They even have their own rivals, a Woonsocket-based band called Draco and the Malfoys. “For the record we’re enemies,” Joe jokes, though he says they’re friendlier out of character.

Dumbledore's Army

While The Group That Shall Not Be Named is spreading the word of Harry Potter in New York, Dumbledore’s Army is fighting the good fight in Los Angeles. With close to 2,000 members of their own, the fan group, named for the student-sparked duelers at Hogwarts, is still making headlines for their large turnouts.

This April, more than 1,000 members came out for the fifth annual Harry Potter Skating Night. "I loved roller skating growing up," Adrienne Alwag-Aipia, the event organizer, told ABC. "[I] thought it would be a great tie-in with Harry Potter if we infused the music from the films, costume contests, Butterbeer, free raffles and Harry Potter hand-made merchandise and themed candy."

Dumbledore’s Army has since expanded to include more facets of the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Their book club meets regularly to discuss Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, and the like.

Potter-Cons

This year’s Comic-Con brought geeks from all walks of life together at Comic-Con to celebrate the books, TV shows, films, and video games they love. Other more well-known conventions, like New York Comic-Con and Star Wars Celebration Europe, fulfill the same function — and that includes gatherings for Potter-heads.

Perhaps the most well-known of them, LeakyCon will celebrate another year beginning this October 19th in Los Angeles. Programming submissions are still being accepted until August 1st, so the schedule of events is currently unavailable, but Joe says Harry and the Potters will make an appearance.

A similar convention, Leviosa, already took place earlier this month in Las Vegas with a schedule that included a welcome feast, quidditch lessons, classes on copyright laws (you know, for fan-fiction), various games, and more.

MISIT-Con is another. Organized by The Group That Shall Not Be Named, the convention already put plans in motion for next year’s events, taking place in New Hampshire. The website promises to “have a wide variety of programming including academic presentations, skills and crafting, training, group discussions and panels,” as well as being a celebration of 20 years of fandom.

Potter fandom is about to embark on a new era kicking off with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, in theaters on November 18th. Eddie Redmayne portrays a new character in the universe, magizoologist Newt Scamander, and brings with him both a magical briefcase filled with a wide array of beasties, as well as new characters for fans to enjoy.

With plans already in motion to spark a new series of films, it doesn’t look like the fandom will die out anytime soon.