Harry Potter: the Evolution of Drarry
Recently, I've been having fun diving into the insane depths of fanfiction history, wondering whether or not the world went insane because fanfiction existed, or if it was the other way around. Yes, we know that fanfiction used to be mostly Star Trek and those irascible Trekkies couldn't seem to get enough of it, but even in those hallowed early days of fanfiction, the threat of badfic loomed over like a large German man with a bad cold, just waiting for the chance to sneeze…
Point in case, slash-fics became popular right from the get-go, despite social prejudices at the time, and many people decided that there was enough gay subtext to give Captain Kirk and Spock some pretty interesting…ahem…positions in which they might "explore" their "intense sexual frustrations" with each other – so to speak. Point in case they fucked.
A lot.
More than we should ever really think about.
But we do.
A lot.
Anyhoo, to the point of this little essay sort of thing that we (oh God I hope there's a 'we') fanfiction historians do sometimes, slash-fics eventually got popularized in just about every fandom that there ever was. Now, some might call this an abomination, but who cares; more gay smut for us. Now, it is interesting to note that of the some six-hundred thousand Harry Potter fanfictions found on this esteemed website, no less than forty-five thousand of those are a slash fiction involving none other than Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, presumably apart from the potential 5% that simply have them as the two main characters.
Now, add on to that:
14,000 Severus / Harry
5,000 Ron / Harry
800 Lucius / Harry
1,000 Lucius / Draco (that there are more of this than the one above really says something to me)
15,500 Remus / Sirius
900 Lucius / Severus
Total: roughly 83000 slash fics, taking all of about ten seconds to research.
Compare that to the popular Draco / Hermione pairing standing at around 45000, as well as the canonical Harry / Ginny at around 20000, and the canonical Ron / Hermione pairing at 22000, discrediting any fluctuations and mixing numbers, the most popular slash pairings are coming up and up, while some of the true canon pairings are starting to fall.
Obviously, the list goes on, but this gives you a basic idea of quite how much slash can be found on this site alone, not taking into account the monstrosity of our…lovely adult counterpart, as well as several websites which are dedicated almost exclusively to slash pairings. This sets the number of main slash fiction pairings and the main non-slash fiction to a draw in the Harry Potter fandom (at about 100,000 each total estimates), begging the question: why is it that this is the result when all of this for the most part is being written by teenage girls with too much time on their hands?
Let us delve into the year 2000, when our beloved fandom was still young and fresh, that Harry and Draco were being paired together not as lovers, but simply as they were presented in the books: as enemies.
It was a time before Order of the Phoenix, a time when Goblet of Fire was set to be printed. The oldest recorded Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy fanfiction on this site was called 'Harry Potter and the Quantum Mechanic', by author Katie Bell. It tells a story of quite mad things, several literary references, and charming bits and pieces of humour.
The next one up, a few months after GoF was released, is a story by Izzy entitled 'After Ten Years', and it is slash.
It is almost alarming that in roughly the first ten seconds after a book is published nowadays, especially if part of a large series, at least two of the more attractive male characters in the book will be paired together mercilessly. Now, I will argue to my dying day that Harry cannot possibly be straight based on his character, and neither can Draco, but I will say that that is almost impossibly depressing to note how this happens.
Witchcraft some say, but I say no! It is boredom! Boredom, and overactive imagination!
It is my query to discover the soul, the purpose, and the reason behind Drarry, and perhaps the reason behind all slash in the world.
In the next few chapters of this essay, I shall explore the different stereotypes associated with Drarry fanfiction in every period of Harry Potter. I shall delve into the remarkable depths of Drarry badfic and goodfic alike, taking indiscriminately from every year or two a fic or so, and I shall analyse – taking into account the publication dates of Harry Potter books in accordance with the dates of the fics provided. Some of these fics will be oneshots, but then some of them will be multi-chaptered monstrosities. I hope that I will come out of this alive – wish me luck.