Alchemised: how Harry Potter fanfic went mainstream

A dark romance novel that started life as Harry Potter fan fiction about a BDSM relationship between Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger has been snapped up by a movie house in a deal worth more than $3 million (£2.2 million). The race to get “Alchemised” to the big screen reflects the soaring popularity of rebranded fan fiction in mainstream publishing.

It ‘always comes back to Pride and Prejudice’

“Alchemised” began in 2023 as “Manacled”, a 77-chapter work of Potter fan fiction in the “Dramione” genre, which focuses on forbidden love between Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy. Written initially in the Notes app of author SenLinYu’s phone, it soon racked up 10 million views on fan fiction platform AO3, and spawned a mini-fandom of its own.

Decades after the first “Harry Potter” novel, the “enemies-to-lovers trope” of Dramione still resonates, said The Washington Post. “It just always comes back to ‘Pride and Prejudice’,” fan fiction author Julie Soto told the paper. “Two people who are intrinsically different and do not understand each other but perhaps feel connected or attracted to each other.”

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Off the back of the success of “Manacled”, SenLinYu landed a traditional book deal with Penguin – but one that required the removal of all references to J.K. Rowling’s characters or universe. As “Alchemised”, it has been “transfigured into a dark romantasy”, set in “an alternate world of necromancers and corrupt guild families”, with the leads renamed as Helena Marino and Kaine Ferron, said The Hollywood Reporter. It’s an example of what’s known as “pull-to-pub”: a publisher taking an original work of fan fiction, getting it completely rewritten and then putting out to cash in on the trend.

Dollar signs

Traditional publishers have “seen dollar signs” in “explosively popular fanfics” ever since the success of E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades” series started as a “Twilight” fanfic called “Master of the Universe”, said Harper’s Bazaar. Other recent bestsellers began life as fan fiction about Harry Styles or, like Ali Hazelwood’s “The Love Hypothesis”, about “Reylo” (Rey and Kylo Ren) from the “Star Wars” franchise. And with romantasy “popping off” as a genre, the magical backdrop of Dramione fiction makes “Alchemised” perfectly positioned “to meet the moment”.

The “parched” publishing industry has “wrung some quenching juice” from the world of fan fiction, said Slate. And when the movie of “Alchemised” is made, it’s “likely to be a hit”. People are “drawn to the idea of men and women who once were polar opposites coming slowly but surely into alignment”. In such stories, the “outcome is always love” and “who wouldn’t want to escape into that”?