If you’re of a certain age, you likely spent a portion of your pre-teen years hoping, waiting and praying for an owl to drop a Hogwarts acceptance letter at your door. Maybe you even imagined attending wizarding classes. Perhaps you dreamed of hanging out with your witch and wizard friends in the common room. And maybe—just maybe—you imagined being more than friends with those wizards. Hey, no judgment.
Turns out, thousands of people online have pictured the beloved cast of characters in all sorts of positions J.K. Rowling failed to explore in the children’s series.
Lyndsay Rush, Allie LeFevere and Danny Chapman are having a hell of a time exploring the (extremely horny) underbelly of Harry Potter fandom in their podcast, Potterotica. The series chronicles three grown adults’ foray into the world of Harry Potter erotic fanfiction—which, for the uninitiated, is a mere Google search away. With hundreds of thousands of stories and a seemingly endless permutation of characters, Potterotica has no shortage of fresh podcast fodder.
It’s also worth noting a few things: a) The Potterotica hosts always ask the author’s permission before reading their stories on the podcast; b) They only read stories where the sex is legal. More often than not, the characters are grownup 20-somethings.
“These writers are taking characters and thinking, ‘Oh my god, what would these characters be like in their 20s?’” LeFevere says. “What does Draco’s apartment look like when he’s 23? It’s a natural extension of the universe.”
The most popular wizarding world sexual partners? Draco and Harry (“Darry,” duh), Draco and Hermione (“The ‘tortured’ thing works very well for Draco in all of these stories,” LeFevere says), and Hermione and Snape.
“I think it’s because they were both the most brilliant in their class,” LeFevere says of the bizarre yet wildly popular fantasy pairing. “Maybe he’s a bit tortured and lost the love of his life. In a lot of stories, she’s a bit of an apprentice to him.” Indeed, the story they read in Season 1 was by a grandmother who wrote 112 tales just about Snape and Hermione, a.k.a. Snanger. And to give you a taste of where that “mentorship” goes—Rush mentioned a story they didn’t read on the podcast, where Snape is tasked with brewing a potion for erectile dysfunction. Yep.
Meanwhile, Ron is still the bumbling best friend who doesn’t know how to please a lady, which LeFevere and Rush deeply contest. “He’s such a hero and he’s so cute!” says Rush. “But no one ever writes him sexy. Though, we recently came across a story where Ron and Pansy get it on in the Prefects’ bathroom. There’s an invisibility cloak involved.”
The hosts are the first to admit they didn’t “discover” the internet’s riches of Harry Potter erotica—they're just tapping into a very well-established online community. They maintain the utmost respect for the fanfic authors.
“We’re never making jokes at the authors' expense,” Rush says. “The way we talk on the podcast is almost the way you talk to your friends about your sexual adventures. It’s essentially friends talking about sex.”
The Chicago-based cast just finished recording its second season and will host its first live event next Tuesday at Quenchers in celebration of the 20-year anniversary of the first book’s release.
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