Harry Potter might have been able to restore peace with a wave of his famous wand, but it will take a special kind of magic before JK Rowling, the boy wizard’s creator, forgives and forgets her Twitter war with journalist Piers Morgan – a spat sparked by an obscenity-laden outburst from Australian comedian Jim Jefferies.

Appearing on Bill Maher’s cable-TV talkshow Real Time, the US editor-at-large for the Mail Online was defending President Donald Trump’s stalled bid to stop citizens of seven overwhelmingly Muslim nations entering the US.

Morgan said it was wrong to characterise Trump’s executive order as “a Muslim ban” because many other Islamic nations had not been included. That comment drew a stingingly contemptuous response from Jefferies, a fellow guest on the show.

“Oh, f*** off. It’s a f****** Muslim ban,” Jefferies shot back, prompting Rowling to tweet her delight at the spectacle of Morgan being blitzed with the comic’s obscene contempt.

She informed her 9.5 million Twitter followers: “Yes, watching Piers Morgan being told to f*** off on live TV is *exactly* as satisfying as I’d always imagined.”

Morgan shot back, also via Twitter, branding Rowling as the perfect example of “peak foul-mouthed, minor celebrity anti-Trump hysteria at its most deliciously supercilious”.

That acidic exchange was just the skirmishing stage of the duo’s fiery cyber-clash. Within minutes the conflict went nuclear as Rowling and Morgan swapped a series of escalating and deeply personal insults.

Along the way the spat also saw Chelsea Clinton and Star Trek’s George Takei get involved as they leapt to Rowling’s defence.

“I didn’t know I could love jk rowling more than I already did thanks to Hermione (& Harry too). But I’ve found in the last 3 weeks I could!” tweeted the daughter of Bill Clinton and failed presidential candidate Hillary.

Briefly switching his attention – and his barbs – away from Rowling, Morgan sarcastically tweeted back to the former first daughter: “You Clintons seem very cocky given the stuffing you took in November. I admire that resilience.”

But the main action remained between Rowling and Morgan, who proudly announced that he had never read any of her books. The best-selling author is “all for tolerance & free speech, until you refuse to call Trump the new Hitler”, he sneered.

“If only you’d read Harry Potter,” Rowling fired back, “you’d know the downside of sucking up to the biggest bully in school is getting burned alive.”

.@piersmorgan If only you'd read Harry Potter, you'd know the downside of sucking up to the biggest bully in school is getting burned alive.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) February 11, 2017

It was the first blow in a one-two combination punch.

“The fact-free, amoral, bigotry-apologism of celebrity toady Piers Morgan is, of course, why it’s so delicious to see him told to f*** off.”

The fact-free, amoral, bigotry-apologism of celebrity toady Piers Morgan is, of course, why it's so delicious to see him told to fuck off. https://t.co/4XNF4G0nlD

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) February 11, 2017

Contemptuously dismissing Rowling as “a liberal” and “a luvvie”, Morgan scoffed that his antagonist was a two-time loser, having been a loud supporter of the Remain case during the Brexit referendum and a passionate advocate of Hillary Clinton’s hapless bid for the White House.

The superior, dismissive arrogance of rabid Remain/Clinton supporters like @jk_rowling is, of course, precisely why both campaigns lost.

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) February 11, 2017

When Takei, who played Sulu in the original Star Trek TV series,  jumped into the fray on Rowling’s side with a tweet accusing Morgan of being “instinctively” feared by “small children”, his response was 140 characters of weary exasperation.

I'm under attack from a comic who tells rape jokes, Sulu from Star Trek & an author who writes about wizards. What a morning.

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) February 11, 2017

There were no clear winners as the Twitter war slowly cooled amid more tweets and a general pile-on from hundreds of the antagonists’ supporters.

Whether the fracas flares up again has yet to be seen, but one thing is certain: Morgan and Rowling won’t be doing a celebrity interview in, oh, the next 100 years or so.