Long promised: Through a Glass Darkly

Unfortunately, lexin has temporarily--I hope!--removed Through a Glass, Darkly from the web. I have a downloaded copy on my hard drive that is badly in need of proofreading, so I suspect that's why she took it down. So this will be for people who read it in the past, though it does include some summary (in fact, total spoilers from end to end). Her home page is at Red Rose Press, if you want to check in.

Working within the apparent terms of the books, fan writers can radically rewrite the Potterverse by exploiting the same background materials that Rowling draws on, but taking them in directions that would be utterly impermissible within Harry Potter. Lexin's Through a Glass, Darkly is a dystopian public school story set around the turn of the last century. Instead of the gung-ho coming-of-age topoi of House rivalries and sports heroism that Rowling takes from the school stories, Lexin focuses on traditions about brutal conditions including flogging, Spartan provisions, and of course pederasty.

Lexin's Hogwarts is a boys' school where younger students "fag" for older ones, acting as sexual and household slaves in exchange for protection from dangerous bullies. She locates the period setting gradually, in details like the fact that the boys study Greek or are called by their last names, brothers being distinguished by order of birth using Latin numbers. The beginning of the story finds a thirteen-year-old Harry patiently lying on his stomach while being sodomized by his house prefect, "Weasley Tertius" (Percy). As in canon, Harry is an orphan; small, with no family or resources, he is especially vulnerable to bullies. He has enjoyed protection as Percy's fag, and when Percy leaves he recommends Harry to a privileged position as fag to one of the masters--Professor Snape.

In the Potter books, Harry suffers abuse at the hands of his relatives, the Dursleys, who keep him locked in a closet and treat him like a slave, but, at least in the early volumes, Rowling presents them as largely comic figures, foils for Harry's strong character and for the fantasy of escaping to a magical world. In Lexin's story, Harry has been dumped at Hogwarts by his aunt and uncle and never leaves the school for seven years. Instead of providing occasions for adventure, the horrors of his childhood are omnipresent, painfully naturalized by his bland acceptance of them. When given a piece of toffee, he finds it inedible; he has never tasted anything so sweet. Hogwarts is utterly claustrophobic, but Harry's journey beyond it at the end of the story brings no relief: in this alternate universe, Voldemort rules Britain, until Harry assassinates him as he passes Hyde Park corner in an open carriage. The grim and impoverished Muggle world that Harry glimpses on his journey from Scotland to London contrasts sharply with the frantic consumerism of Rowling's Privet Drive but resonates with older images of industrial misery.

Within this harsh setting, Lexin romanticizes the central relationship. Harry finds sexual pleasure with Snape and forms a strong attachment to him, telling him early on, "Nobody else likes me enough to give me rules." She engages a fantasy about order, about the ebb and flow of power, while acknowledging that order based on domination exacts a terrible price. Lexin's story systematically recontextualizes details of the original series to render them sinister, but it also engages some of its larger themes, in particular adolescent responses to institutional rules and hierarchy. The fearsome powers Harry develops as the story progresses seem to be inversely proportional to his abjection at the beginning, implying a logic whereby power is transferred from generation to generation by means of subjugation, an exaggeration of the ritual pain by which Harry gains power in canon; at the end, a messenger arrives to announce that Harry is the new Dark Lord.