“Where has your blog been all my life? I didn’t know I needed you until I found you!” That was reader Fitzgiggler’s reaction to Hogwarts Nine-Nine, a fun little Tumblr that, since May 2015, has been taking screenshots from the Harry Potter films and captioning them with humorous dialogue imported from Fox’s current cop comedy, Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Some lines have been slightly altered to fit J.K. Rowling’s fictional universe, but the spirit of the Nine-Nine remains intact. In this incarnation, informally dubbed “the inevitable HP/B99 crossover blog,” Hogwarts is still a formidable wizarding school, and the good-vs.-evil stakes are as high as ever, but the characters get to relieve their considerable tension through the breezy banter of the Andy Samberg sitcom. In hindsight, this crossover makes a lot of sense. Imperfect, headstrong protagonist Harry Potter makes a good stand-in for Samberg’s hotheaded Detective Jake Perralta, while wise Dumbledore and goody-two-shoes Hermione are obvious counterparts of, respectively, Captain Ray Holt and Detective Amy Santiago. A typical Hogwarts Nine-Nine exchange has Harry confronting his supposed friends, Ron and Hermione.
The Tumbr’s creator is admirably humble about this comedic accomplishment: “I’m so happy other people are finding this dumb thing funny!” Perhaps the only disappointment here is that no one has yet thought to create a parody of Nine-Nine’s awesome opening titles, using Potter footage and freeze-framing the characters at awkward, inopportune moments.