Reflecting on the Harry Potter Card Game

Pokemon, YuGiOh, Magic. These were major names in the trading card game market, and it was an interesting matter that other franchises would try their hand at the trading card game area, and one was Harry Potter, and because of that, we'll go over the history of the game and some possible reasons why it failed.
The Harry Potter card game was published by Wizards of the Coast, and was mostly oriented around the events of the first two books, and featured artwork and different types of cards, such as Lessons, spells, locations, items, creatures, characters and adventures. The game worked in part by being a game to "deck" the other party, with damage causing the opponent to discard from their deck.
Interestingly enough, this seemed to be downplayed in card text, and would lead to a small bit of confusion. This with the lack of internet popularity at the time left things fairly vague unless the card game was purchased with a deck, or a rulebook.

In my memory of playing the game after I understood how it worked, it was interesting, but I recall that the rules were a bit murky without that rule book. I don't recall any deck limits, or interesting strategies, though I do recall one card that I ended up using almost exclusively, that being the Golden Snitch. This was an auto-win card, and part of the expansion that introduced quidditch, and was, at that point, my third favorite card (the top two were the Unicorn and the invisibility cloak).

So why didn't this game take off? To that I'd pose two reasons, one being that Wizards of the Coast was poorly run at the time, and would soon be hit with copious amounts of litigation, and that would affect the company and its holdings, and competition, as there was still Magic the Gathering, and the up-and-coming YuGiOh to promptly displace it while it was fumbling after Wizards of the Coast's missteps.

If you want to give it a try now, you'll find that the cards are out of print, and I assume they still will be unless the rights to the card game have somehow reverted to warner brothers and they wish to implement it as a game. However, there is LackyCCG or Apprentice, two programs that allow individuals to play mock-games with access to all the cards, and I can only assume there are more places online to attempt a game, though as always, practice safe computing when attempting something like this.