Watch this trans woman’s viral ‘gender transfiguration’ from Harry Potter to Ginny Weasley
(Zoey Seeley)
A transgender woman has gone viral by posting her transition photos which appear to show her turning from one Harry Potter character – into his wife.
Zoey Seely, 22, was bullied when she was young because of her likeness to Harry, but a decade and a half later, she bears more than a passing resemblance to Ginny Weasley.
She posted a side-by-side comparison on social media, with the message: “Transition has low-key changed me from Harry into Ginny…” – and people loved it.
(Zoey Seeley)
The Geography graduate’s post has attracted around 3,000 upvotes on Reddit, with positive responses like “You just radiate happiness now! It’s so beautiful to see,” “THIS IS AMAZING” and “This is gay as hell” flooding the comments section.
Speaking to PinkNews, Zoey said that she hadn’t noticed the similarities between herself and Ginny – a crucial member of Dumbledore’s Army and the Gryffindor quidditch team – until last year.
“The original likeness I noticed was as a child – and how often I was told I looked like Harry Potter,” she said.
(Anthony Harvey/Getty)
“Only problem was that I was also being bullied at the time, and so my child’s brain associated ‘Harry Potter’ with bad… so I actually didn’t get into the series until last year.
“That’s when the second likeness hit me, for the most part.
“I was constructing a transition timeline for a post, and it hit me that ‘If I looked like Harry as a kid, who do I look like now? Long reddish hair with freckles and pale skin, and looks like a young adult?'”
(Jamie McCarthy/Getty)
Zoey said it was a toss-up between Ginny and Harry’s mother, Lily Potter, but explained: “I went with Ginny just because of the connection she has in the story to Harry, and how cute that consequentially is!
After posting the photos on Facebook and the transtimelines sub-reddit, she took the post to the site’s lgbt sub-reddit, where, in her words, “it blew up.”
There have been some hateful reactions – as Zoey said, “a lot of transphobes and uninitiated people are coming in who think it’s edgy to downvote trans-positive content” – but on the whole she said she had found the response “super uplifting.
(Kevin Kolczynski/Getty)
“A lot of people either posted with comments complimenting my appearance (which helps when you’ve got poor self esteem like myself!), and the others were some fun jokes around the series, which were fun to entertain.”
She joined in with these kinds of responses, writing back to one fan that her transition had been “like polyjuice…except R E A L L Y . S L O W.”
She has noticed the effect the image has had on other people, too, telling PinkNews: “I’ve also seen a lot of fellow trans girls post their timelines that were on /r/transtimelines onto /r/LGBT, and seeing that as well is super uplifting as well!
(Gustavo Caballero/Getty)
“I might have to post a more complete timeline on there someday rather than my somewhat-less-serious one from 8 yrs old to 22!”
When she looks at the pictures of herself from now and 14 years ago, she said she feels “a mix of pride and joy. The joy comes every [day] for me honestly.
“Like, there’s still that part of my brain that lights up and is like: ‘Hey, remember? You’re a girl! Wearing girl clothes! In a girl body! How awesome is that?’ And there’s that giddy satisfaction.
(John Sciulli/Getty)
Zoey added that she felt like “a younger me could look at who I am now and be proud of who she’d become.”
However, she said this pride was still tinged with a hint of sadness.
The 22-year-old said that this thought train often takes her to “another tangent where I regret that I didn’t get to live my childhood as the girl I am today, but what can you do!”
(Stephen Lovekin/Getty)
One person commented that it was like she had fallen in love with herself, just as Harry did with Ginny.
Zoey said this resonated with her somewhat.
“As I said before, I still deal with a lot of self-worth problems, but those are independent from my sexual orientation or gender identity,” she said.
(Bryan Bedder/Getty)
“If there’s any internal self-hate going on, it’s now thankfully ‘I hate what I’ve done,’ rather than ‘I hate who I am,’ you know?
“That’s at least something.”
It was particularly funny that she had gone from looking like Harry to resembling Ginny, she said, because it was another of the series’ characters whose name she had given a special significance.
(Warner Bros.)
“You know what’s ironic?” she asked. “The likely first name of my first daughter? Luna!”
It’s certainly a better choice than Albus Severus.
