By Amie Kealy
*spoilers ahead for those who haven’t read it*
*trigger warnings: rape, self harm, abuse and violence*
I’m not really a massive Harry Potter fan but I’d read reviews about how this book is one of those books that you can’t stop thinking about… And after having a serious book hangover from Normal People, I needed something I could get my teeth into so I could stop thinking about Connell and Marianne *sigh*. Manacled was originally a Harry Potter fanfiction but I do believe the author is now in the process of getting it published with Penguin under the name Alchemised.
Manacled diverges from the events of Harry Potter after The Order of the Phoenix and takes a look at a world where Voldemort wins instead of Harry. With Hermoine and Draco as the leading characters, Manacled is a twisted fantasy-romance that grapples with rape, torture, abuse so that by the books HEA, the notion of feeling happy that things worked out for Hermoine and Draco leaves one questioning if that is the end we should have wanted.
It was dark and twisted, painful and traumatic. It’s the kind of book that doesn’t sit comfortably.
The book starts in the post-war world, with Harry and most of the Order of the Phoenix dead and Hermonie imprisoned for two years in solitary confinement. We learn that Voldemort has started a breeding program to try and repopulate the wizarding world after high causalities in the war. Hermoine is one of the chosen surrogates after Voldemort’s interest in her as Potter’s mudblood friend from school. We learn that some of Hermoine’s memories of the war are locked away which causes an increased interest in unlocking these by Voldemort. As such, Hermoine is given to Draco as he is highly skilled at breaking into people’s minds and looking through their memories. It is also believed that a magical pregnancy could lead to Hermoine regaining her lost memories.
So, Hermoine is sold to Draco and the first third of the book deals with Hermoine’s new prison: Malfoy Manor and her new life as Draco’s whore. Whilst Draco is cold and verbally vicious towards Hermoine, he mostly leaves her to her own devices apart from the few days a month where he is forced to rape her, as per Voldemort’s request. Hermoine, traumatised from imprisonment, suffers from anxiety and fears Draco and all other characters she encounters. Whilst Draco’s treatment of Hermoine is inexcusable, we learn of the fate’s of the other surrogates, whose masters treat them so much worse, that we begin to see that Hermoine is almost well-treated by comparison. And then there’s the little things that Draco does, that leave us questioning whether or not he’s really as bad as he seems. For instance, Hermoine suffers from such severe anxiety, that she can’t even go out in the garden without a panic attack, so Draco takes it upon himself to take her out for her walks so that she doesn’t feel as frightened. Or how he’s incredibly possessive, to a point where he bans his wife (Voldemort forced him into marriage soon after the war) from seeing Hermoine because she treats her worse then he does.
5 months later and Hermoine ends up pregnant – a fact that horrifies both Hermoine and Draco. But as speculated, the pregnancy helps in bringing Hermoine’s memories back and then next third of the book consists of a series of flashbacks of Hermoine’s life during the war. We learn that her friendship with Ron and Harry is a ghost of what it used to be: they trained to fight in the war whereas she trained to become a healer. And their ideology that being good means not killing their enemies, is something Hermoine can’t support which causes further fractures in their relationship. The leader of The Order then asks Hermoine to complete a secret mission: liaise with Draco Malfoy who has promised to change sides on the condition that Hermoine will be his during and after the war. Again we see Hermoine as Draco’s possession except this time it is of her choosing because she decides that she’ll do anything to win the war.
But Draco is not as he seems – he only asked for Hermoine as his ‘prize’ because that sort of behaviour would be expected from the likes of him. Instead, as Draco and Hermoine meet to share information, Draco takes it upon himself to teach Hermoine defensive fighting and how to shield her mind against those who could use her memories against her. Like any good enemy-lovers romance, their time together is filled with simmering tension and moments of hate that quickly turn into respect for one another and something more tender. By the end of her flashbacks, Hermoine remembers her love for Draco that led to her eventual capture during the war in a bid to save him from Voldemort learning of his subterfuge.
We flash forward again to the present once Hermoine remembers the end of the war. With the context of her previous love for Draco, she views her current situation differently, but Draco doesn’t. Draco hates himself for what he was forced to do to Hermoine, even if she no longer does. She excuses his rape away as rape for both of them, because he didn’t have a choice in it either – Voldemort would have tortured him if he disobeyed. And it’s this sort of acceptance of her trauma that makes the book sit uncomfortably – we want Draco and Hermoine to finally be free of Voldemort’s tyranny and be together, but we can’t erase all the mess, chaos, and trauma that precedes that happy ending. We also learn that Draco never thought it would get to the point where Hermoine could get pregnant because he was planning an escape for her, it was just took longer than he thought.
After cutting Draco’s arm off to get rid of his Dark Mark, Hermoine and Draco are able to escape and run away from the war. The backdrop to their twisted romance is that Voldemort is dying because all of his horcruxes have been destroyed – the last one having been destroyed by Draco in the first third of the book. Because of this, when Draco runs aways, the Death Eaters and Voldemort’s army start to crumble from the inside at the loss of such an integral player in the Dark Lord’s army. Voldemort is eventually killed by Ginny Weasley (who Draco saved years before) and we see the book end with Hermoine and Draco’s daughter going to Britain and working in Gringotts to re-establish her friendship with Ginny and Harry’s son who Draco also saved as a result of saving Ginny during the war.
There’s a lot I haven’t touched on and I’ve missed massive plot twists, context, and plot development but coming in at 1017 pages, it’s really hard for me to touch on even a fraction of what occurs without writing an extensive essay on the book!
Whilst some of the Harry Potter context was lost on me, as I’m not an avid HP fanatic, I thought the structure of the book (present to past to present) kept me on the edge of my seat and I spent many evenings reading late into the night in an effort to get to the end!