The Draco Trilogy is a Draco-centric epic written and posted in instalments by Cassandra Clare over a period of six years, consisting three novel-length stories: Draco Dormiens, Draco Sinister, and Draco Veritas. The series begins after the events in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and therefore is an alternate universe fanfiction, not including the events in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
In the beginning there is a love triangle where both Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter are interested in Hermione Granger. By the end of the series, the resolution of the romantic entanglements confirms the pairings Draco/Ginny and Harry/Hermione.
The trilogy contributed to the popularisation of Fanon Draco, called "Leather Pants Draco" after a famous scene in Draco Sinister where Draco ends up looking good in incredibly tight leather pants.[1]
Since the launch of Cassandra Claire's profic career, the stories have been taken down, although it is possible to find them circulating by email and file sharing sites, and has even been reuploaded in the form of a blog.
Author[]
Judith Rumelt
Judith Rumelt, more commonly known as Cassandra Clare, is the author of many Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fanfictions, including the Draco trilogy, notable for a plagiarism controversy. Her fanfictions were taken down after Clare began her published career with The City of Bones. As of today, she has written the Magisterium series with Holly Black and continues to write the Shadowhunters Chronicles.
The trilogy[]
Draco Dormiens, Draco Sinister, and Draco Veritas are almost one million words (or 207, 996, and 1697 pages) and the fanfics were many fans' first introduction to fanfiction. The trilogy is hailed by some as the fanfiction of all Harry Potter fanfiction, but like all things that are hailed,[2] others couldn't or didn't believe the hype.
Draco Dormiens[]
Draco Dormiens
- "When an accident in Potions class turns Harry into Draco and Draco into Harry, each is trapped playing the part of the other. Romance, mistaken identities, Really Cunning Plans, evil bake sales, a love triangle, and snogs galore."
- — Author's summary
Draco Dormiens, the first novel of the trilogy, was posted serially to FanFiction.Net in August 2000. It is the shortest novel in the series by far, totaling roughly 70,000 words. The story is an AU, diverging from canon after Goblet of Fire. It is set during Harry's sixth year, and begins when unforeseen consequences with Polyjuice Potion in Potions class cause Harry and Draco to become indefinitely body-swapped. The need to keep this a secret, the even greater need to find an antidote, and a love triangle where both Draco and Harry are interested in Hermione, power the plot of the novel.
Draco Sinister[]
Draco Sinister
- "When Hermione is kidnapped, Harry and Draco must team up to rescue her from a thousand-year-old evil that threatens the entire wizarding world. Cursed demon swords, love potions, time travel, dementors, flying dragons, Draco wears leather, and everybody dies at least once. Except when they don't."
- — Author's summary
Clare began posting Draco Sinister on FanFiction.Net in late 2000. In June 2001, when the fanfic was one chapter away from completion, it was reported for plagiarism and Clare's works were deleted from the site.
Draco Sinister and Draco Dormiens were uploaded to FictionAlley in July 2001, and Draco Sinister was completed on 22 July.
Draco Veritas[]
Draco Veritas
- "The sequel to Draco Sinister, featuring winter at Hogwarts, snogging, Quidditch, mysterious things and Rhysenn Malfoy."
- — Author's summary
Draco Veritas was posted over a period of five years, from August 2001 to August 2006, totaling roughly 540,000 words. It only appeared online in its entirety for about two weeks before Clare took down her fanfiction in order to embark on her profic career.
Plagiarism controversy[]
The story first became the subject of major controversy when one reader identified an extensive sequences of action, description and dialogue from Draco Sinister, Chapter 9 as having been lifted from The Hidden Land, an out-of-print fantasy novel by Pamela Dean. Though this was sufficient to get Clare banned from Fanfiction.Net, readers have identified other borrowed text as further evidence of Clare's plagiarism[3] also incorporates an intricate web of dialogue pieces and text passages from popular genre television shows and books. Two characters might have a lengthy conversation which Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans will recognise as dialogue from the show, or Harry might answer a question with the words of a character from Babylon 5.
The practice of hiding quotes from other media sources in the text of the story was well-known and accepted by some of Clare's readers, and it was used as a way of engaging the fans on a mailing list the story was posted to. Readers would guess which parts were quoted and what the source was, they would suggest lines to include from different sources that would fit this or that character, and there were unofficial "quote-nabbing contests" with other fanfic writers. However, in spite of the relative candidness of these practices, they contained huge potential for trouble because they relied heavily on context to be understood.
Another major issue, related to the use of pop culture dialogue, was that Cassandra Clare reproduced concepts, rough scenes, descriptive phrases and dialogue from several fantasy novels. Such borrowings were often not cited, or cited in such a way as to make the amount of borrowed text appear far less extensive than it actually was.
Notes and references[]
- ↑ TV Tropes - Draco in Leather Pants
- ↑ Wall Street Journal - The New Queen of Fantasy: Cassandra Clare's Breakout Career
- ↑ Avocado - [http://www.journalfen.net/community/bad_penny/8985.html The Great Plagarism Debacle]