If you haven't yet heard of this Harry Potter fan fiction, it's likely that you soon will, as Manacled by SenLinYu will be appearing on bookshelves in the near future. The book is nearly 900 pages and covers an alternate ending to the Harry Potter series with darker themes. It has had nearly 16 million individual downloads, with 84,000 likes on Archive of Our Own (AO3) where it was first published in 2018. The book has also been translated into 19 languages, has 71,000 ratings on Goodreads, and has 470 million TikTok views.
With all these numbers, the 32-year-old has managed to land a book deal. By 2025, the book will undergo a reconstruction in order to become a novel titled Alchemised. SenLinYu made the announcement on February 5, 2024.
The new book will still have a dark theme, but have new characters. It’ll be published by Del Rey at Penguin Random House in the US and Michael Joseph in the United Kingdom.
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“It didn’t feel like there was a way to pull (Manacled) back over just to fandom,” the author exclusively told TODAY.com. “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 story of Manacled takes Harry Potter and imagines a version that comes after the fifth book, The Order of the Phoenix. In the reimagined version, Harry Potter is dead, Voldemort won the war and has started a “repopulation effort,” Hermione is imprisoned and then sent to be a surrogate to Draco.
On AO3, the author has warnings of rape, nonconsensual sex, psychological trauma, and torture references. She says that her version was inspired by Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale. A scene in the pilot episode, where the handmaid named Offred is in a room with her commander, a figure that holds physical and sexual control over her, is the one that had a specific affect on SenLinYu's work.
“That scene just really intrigued me,” she said. “I was thinking, imagine being in that kind of situation, but actually, this person is a spy. But … there’s a reason they can’t disclose that.”
Her publishing journey hasn't come without some hiccups, however. While SenLinYu has permitted personal bookbinding of Manacled, other book fans have taken the book and sold it for profit. "There has been a growing issue with illegal sales of Manacled, putting both me and the incredible community that shares fan fiction freely in legal jeopardy," she said.
Alchemised will debut in the fall of 2025. However, Manacled will still be available to download through the end of this year. “People are being given lots of time to save a copy,” SenLinYu said. “So if they want that version, if that’s the version that’s the most special to them, they are welcome to keep that. … But this is sort of my way of taking ownership back.”
