Editor's Note: "Alchemised" officially hit shelves on Sept. 23, 2025. In this interview, which was originally published on Feb. 26, 2024, SenLinYu unpacked how her debut novel started as the viral Harry Potter fan fiction called “Manacled,” how she created the book's magic system and the dark themes at the core of the story.

There’s something in the DNA of SenLinYu’s “Manacled” that has readers around the globe simply bewitched. This story is fan fiction, a near 900-page alternate ending to the “Harry Potter” series with themes far darker than the original books dared to venture. And proof of “Manacled’s” power is planted all over the internet.

Take its numbers: The nearly 16 million individual downloads of the author’s works; the 84,000 likes on Archive of Our Own, aka AO3, where it wa

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