“Harry Potter” fan fiction went mainstream in 2025.
In 2023 and 2024, fan fiction about Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger — or Dramione, to their fans — went viral. Stories long beloved by the fic community reached wider audiences through social media, particularly TikTok, but few got as much attention as “Manacled,” a dark romance by SenLinYu.
Following the influx of readers, Del Rey published SenLinYu’s “Alchemised,” a reimagination of “Manacled” with original characters and a fresh plot, on September 23, 2025. The novel became an immediate success, hitting No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list.
“Alchemised” is also set to become a movie, as SenLinYu secured a reported seven-figure deal for the film rights to the novel.
Here’s everything to know about “Alchemised,” from how it differs from “Manacled” to its film adaptation. Minor spoilers ahead.
‘Manacled’ is a dark romance between Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy
Enemies-to-lovers fanfics about Hermione, Harry Potter’s precocious best friend, and Draco, the morally gray Slytherin, have been popular online for years.
However, SenLinYu’s “Manacled” has a darker tone than many Dramione stories because it also draws inspiration from Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
It imagines an alternate universe in which Lord Voldemort killed Harry Potter, and the Death Eaters defeated the Order of the Phoenix in the final battle at Hogwarts. “Manacled” diverges from the canonical “Harry Potter” plot after the events of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”
After fighting alongside Harry in the war as a healer, Hermione is imprisoned for sixteen months and robbed of her magic through enchanted handcuffs by Dolores Umbridge, one of the most loathed characters by “Harry Potter” fans. Hermione also has magical gaps in her memory about her life during the war that even she cannot remove.
Following the war, witches who fought for the Order are forced to become surrogates for dark wizards to repopulate the magical population (à la “The Handmaid’s Tale”). The Death Eaters give Hermione to Voldemort’s second-in-command, known as the High Reeve, as a surrogate in the hopes that he can also help uncover her lost memories.
Hermione is horrified to discover Draco is the High Reeve, and she goes on to live out a waking nightmare trapped at Malfoy Manor. However, the more time they spend together, the more Hermione finds her repressed memories hold truths about her relationship with Draco — and her impact on the war — that she could never have imagined.
SenLinYu published “Manacled” in installments over 2018 and 2019 on the fan fiction website Archive of Our Own (Ao3). The work amassed millions of hits, becoming particularly popular in 2023 when it blew up on BookTok.
In 2025, “Manacled” was removed from Ao3 ahead of the release of “Alchemised.”
‘Alchemised’ is a reimagined version of the fic
In a February 2024 interview with Today, SenLinYu said they wanted to turn “Manacled” into an original novel because of how viral the fan fiction had become.
“Using this opportunity to reimagine it felt like a way to leave the original version to fandom so that they could keep it, but that I could take back the rest of the story and rework it in a way where it became mine again,” the author told Today.
“Alchemised” follows Helena Marino, an alchemist and healer who fought in the Resistance before she was captured by necromancers when they defeated the rebels.
Helena can’t remember the months before her imprisonment, which alarms the necromancers. They send her to the High Reeve, Kaine, hoping he can uncover anything suspicious lurking in her mind. She isn’t the only one with secrets, though, leading Kaine and Helena down a dangerous path.
Because “Alchemised” is an original novel, it cannot exist in the universe of “Harry Potter” or “The Handmaid’s Tale” due to trademark laws, so the author had to make some substantial changes to get the new version published.
The magical elements inspired by “Harry Potter” have been replaced with necromancy and alchemy in “Alchemised,” lending the novel its title. Although much of the novel is similar to the fanfic — even including some identical lines — SenLinYu removed over 50,000 words from the text, according to The New York Times.
Likewise, the surrogate aspect of “Manacled,” inspired by “The Handmaid’s Tale,” has been altered in the story. Rather than witches being forced to be surrogates, alchemists can participate in the necromancers’ “repopulation program” in exchange for money in “Alchemised.”
The book’s cover also features a woman walking toward a mansion in a red cloak and hat, which resembles the cloaks handmaids wear in Atwood’s original work.
At a June 29 pre-publication event for “Alchemised” at The Strand in New York City, SenLinYu shed some light on the rewriting process. For instance, the author said they knew what the protagonist’s new name would be from the beginning, as a clip shared on TikTok of the event shows.
“Helena was always Helena,” SenLinYu said. “It was actually funny because initially, I had several people tell me I needed to come up with a different name for her. And I, actually, I really did try to give her several other names, and I always ended up coming back to Helena because of the different kinds of meanings to the name.”
“Helena means light, but then she also gets nicknamed Hel, which is the Norse goddess of death,” the author added. “I kind of liked this kind of duality within the character of having a name that both means light and death.”
An ‘Alchemised’ movie is in the works
In addition to being traditionally published, “Alchemised” is set to become a film thanks to a massive deal between SenLinYu and Legendary Entertainment, as the media company announced on September 10. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Legendary paid seven figures to secure the film rights to “Alchemised.”
“I’m honored by Legendary’s incredible enthusiasm for the project and can’t wait to see the world of Paladia come to life,” the author said in a press release shared with Business Insider.
SenLinYu’s work wasn’t the only Dramione fan fiction adapted into a traditionally published novel in 2025. On July 25, Julie Soto released “Rose in Chains,” inspired by a fan fiction she wrote called “The Auction,” and Brigitte Knightley published “The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy” in the same month. The novel took inspiration from her beloved fic “Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love.”
When they were published, Soto and Knightley’s works debuted at the No. 1 and No. 2 spots on The New York Times fiction bestseller list, respectively, and “Alchemised” followed suit.
As of Wednesday, “Alchemised” was No. 1 in both the combined print and e-book fiction and hardcover categories, highlighting the eagerness of audiences for Dramione-inspired works in mainstream publishing.
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