As the Lunar New Year of the horse gallops in and families across Asia prepare for one of the year’s biggest celebrations, Chinese social media has found an unlikely mascot: Draco Malfoy. Across Chinese social media platforms, including Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin, thousands of videos emerged this week of people hanging traditional red square paper decorations on their doors bearing the characters for “blessing” or “good fortune” — known as fuzi (福字).

But this year, in a magical twist, these fuzi featured the smirking face of the bully from House Slytherin who harassed Harry and Hermione in the halls of Hogwarts. 

Why Malfoy? 

In an article on Wednesday, the state-run Global Times explained that the trend comes from a simple play on the magical surname. “Malfoy” has been rendered phonetically in China as Ma Er Fu (马尔福), in which the first character, mǎ (马) means “horse” — this year’s new zodiac sign. The third character, Fu (福), or “fortune,” comes after the character Er (尔) for “thus.” So Malfoy means something like “fortune through the horse.” 

The trend reached its peak on social media as the actor Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy in the Potter films, shared the meme on his Instagram Stories feed. Weibo promptly exploded with excitement under the hashtag “Malfoy himself is in on the meme”  (#马尔福本人也在玩梗). The phenomenon even caught the attention of major Western media outlets, with both the BBC and CNN reporting on China’s unexpected Harry Potter obsession.