Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent

Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent #1

by B.L. Purdom

In Harry's fifth year he gets a snake with the Sight. Hermione's torn between Ron and Harry, who's torn between her and Ginny, who's torn between him and Draco Malfoy, who's torn between her and loyalty to his father. Plus: a Prophecy, Animagus training, a Dueling Club, Snape's Penseive, kilts, giants, house elf liberation and more!

Cover by Leela Starsky

Genres: Harry Potter, Fan Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction

1474 pages, ebook

First published July 15, 2001

About the author

Barb Purdom, best known as simply Barb, is a Harry Potter fan writer.

http://psychic-serpent.livejournal.com/
http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/b...
https://www.fanfiction.net/u/70312/Ba...

Reviews

[Lakshmi C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Need to know - This starts after Harry Potter's 4th year or the triwizard tournament.
The original book 5 is seriously depressing. Or maybe its because I was a young, emotional smuf when I read Order of phoenix.
Emo Smurf disappeared after reading the last chapter. He is still missing.

3 reasons for trying this :
This has some interesting reviews - a small but loyal fan following
The excerpts had me hooked, no turning back
I miss HP but cant digest whatever JKR is whipping up these days. None of it agrees with me.
Sigh.

Warning - Over 3,00,000 words

Harry wants muscles and he's ready to work for them.
Harry is not depressed.
Harry knows mythology. Obscure knowledge win.
Harry has a psychic serpent.
You saw the title. You knew it was coming.
I confess, Sandy is the best girl for Harry.
Harry screams 😂😂😂
Harry is sassy in this one. Not a tortured, depressed Chosen One.

I wish Original Hermoine and Original Viktor were together. They could be THE Power Couple of the Wizarding World. Her brains and his mad skills.

The hermoine in this book is a compulsive liar. I was hoping that she would die or disappear or go to Azkaban.
Cool magic. Guess whose the new Animagus in town?

The writer had taken the time and the words to dig deeper into the psyche of these characters. No one note characterization here.

Workover - fantastic reconstructed version of Snape and Malfoy. My favorites.

It is about more than the war of the wizarding world. Points for giving each character goals.
Cases where it worked - Percy, Ron

Alternate timeline of sorts

Father figures, friendship, monsters, looking beyond the surface, psychology, the heir, prophecy - the book has a lot going on.

What didn't work for me :

The romantic bits took up a lot of time and were like a soap opera. Unintentionally funny.
No memorable villains.

Moving on to the next one.

[Heather Serra]

After seeing all the good reviews I thought I would give this one a shot, but though it seemed to hold a lot of potential, the writing style was a bit wordy and then came a little tidbit that brought me to a screeching halt. In a letter to Harry from Hermione, she mentions going to see Victor Krum in Bulgaria, who had just gotten a job as reserve Seeker for the Chudley Cannons. WTF?! Why would a world-class quidditch star, one who carried his team to the finals of the world cup, take up a second string position on probably one of England's worst teams?! There is no possible conceivable reason he would totally screw over his entire career like that! And if the author made such an unbelievable choice, completely ungrounded in the very world he or she is playing in, how else might this author upset the very foundation of this world. (And no I'm not just speaking of Quidditch lol.) No matter the case, it has quite put me off wanting to read this story any further, so take that as you will.

[Markus Quast · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Fanfiction was the first one I've read five years ago and I can say that the trilogy to which "the psychic serpent" belongs, is the best of all FanFiction of HP I've read until now. The sequels "the time of good intention" and "the triangle prophecy" is even better! Thanks Barb!

[Joanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

GREAT HARRY POTTER FAN FICTION! It's the HP story told with different twists (starts after The Goblet of Fire). NOT for the under 17 group as the teens do what a lot of teens do and explore their sexuality. A few things were changed from the original and you may or may not pick them up (example: Ginny's given name is not "Virginia" as stated in this story). I enjoyed it a great deal and will be starting the next book by this fan today. :-D

[Lori Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the first HP fan fictions I ever read, and I thought it was clever, even if the serpent didn't have a lot to do with the story overall. The characters were well written, and it made me want to read the rest of the series.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda heavy with the teen drama. Everyone is crushing hard on everyone else, it's a hormone fest. I found it interesting enough to keep reading as I don't remember reading a fic with so many interrelationship issues, there was lots more of that than any typical fantasy genre book I've come across. More than any story I've ever read. Just, not really my kind of story.

I found it to be kind of a slog to get through. I mean it was 324,080 words and most of it seemed to boil down to everybody lusting after multiple folk and all the problems that stood in the way of em all just banging each other silly. I found myself not particularly caring about the relationships at all, too much waffling back and forth, this one or that one, and the emotions involved always seemed kinda shallow (lust more than love), I just stopped caring at all about halfway through. Hell, even after all 300k words, the foreshadowing was pretty blatant about the fact that nothing was really resolved at the end. Lol, I wouldn't be surprised if in the next book everyone is gonna switch partners like musical chairs to stir up the drama some. Reminds me of That 70's Show more than a little.

Holy cow, i just saw that the sequel has 410K words, I don't know if I'm gonna make it. The way the fic is so relationship dynamics heavy is kinda interesting, I'm curious how long it will go on hinging almost entirely on overlapping love triangles. I don't care who ends up with who, but I fear that I'm supposed to. Like I'm supposed to pick a ship and root for it like an NFL team? I pick out fanfics based partially on ships that I can tolerate, but i haven't read a story where the likelihood of ship reorganization is a thing in the story itself. Since, I seem to have been lost from the whole the ship side of things, I've been reading the story just to see how a story like this is supposed to work. What is pulling me through it, I reckon, is a curiosity about how a layered love triangle story like this is done, with characters that I'm already fond of as padding for a style of storytelling that doesn't typically interest me. Not sure that motivation can stand up to another 1100k+ words worth of sequels.

I don't think it's a bad fic or anything. I wouldn't even think I'm qualified to judge if it is or not. The writing itself didn't hamper my reading or anything and the borrowed characters didn't deviate so much from their canon norms that it broke the universe for me (I'm sure it's a far better story than anything I could have done). If you are into love triangles and general dramas, then I think you'll have a lot of fun with this fic.

[Alexander Draganov · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obnoxiously wordy and I couldn't finish it. It's not one star only because it is a fanfic and you can read it for free.

[Marija · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I was a bit sceptical towards HP fanfiction, I couldn't be more thrilled that I actually decided to give it a try!
I absolutely loved the book, the whole parallel universe of HP world, and although I have read HP series a couple of times (more than I can count), it wasn't so hard just to mentally delete all the books after the Goblet of Fire and enjoy this as a sequel.
Things I love about the book:
- Harry thorn between Hermione and Ginny (confused adolescent brain, in its natural form ;) )
- no restraints to show his physical relationships with girls (which is only natural in their age and which is missing from the original series)
- Harry and Draco friendship
- ABOVE ALL: the relationship between Harry and Snape - which is more than I have hoped for. I love them not fighting and Snape actually being friendly towards Harry!! My fav parts of the book actually :)

[Megan McEnteggart]

So as I sit here and type this review I still have tears running down my cheeks. Through all three books I have laughed, I have cried, I have sat in suspense, I have gasped and I have loved.

This 3 part trilogy is something that will really get you thinking, make you stop and will make you appreciate everything.

The ending is NOT what I expected and it made me quite emotional. I wont say anything due to spoilers but take it from me. You need to read this book, you need to read all of them. I have nothing else to say about it. There are many twists, turns and downright What the f**k moments all of which make this book one of the best I have ever read.

[mirabilos · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. I don’t, in contrast to many other reviewers, mind long stories (in fact, those in the upper half of a million words begin to be enticing to me), but I do mind too much teenage drama and can’t stand too much teenage romance while searching for the plot in the verbiage.

Archived original information: http://web.archive.org/web/2009082903... (though the author now considers the FFN version, i.e. this edition I’m reviewing, official)

Author (Barb LP) is the same as https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Psychic Serpent Tetralogy is one of the better sets of fanfiction available. Purdom was able nearly seamlessly introduce her own reality into the timeline of Potter series. To the casual reader with no previous information about the series (or movies), the mistake could be made in thinking that there is no deviation. With her fourth book, The Lost Generation, she was able to fill in plot holes created by Rowling that were never filled.

[Fawwaz Vi britannia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Considering how long the read was, there was not much plot to speak of - it read more like a series of related vignettes than a complete narrative. Nevertheless, it was good to see the HP crew again (Draco in particular got an excellent rework), and the romantic shenanigans offered a much needed distraction from the story's lack of substance.

[SgoiltePrais · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nope!

Could have been good, I liked the premise and I don't mind when a fan fic diverges from canon. I do however mind when it's long-winded and badly written.

Sorry... really wanted to like it.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exellent fan fic really enjoyed the different take on the series.
There is a preqel The Lost Generation that sets everything in where it flows more smoothly.

[Sean Randall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read a lot of fanfiction over the years, but this is ... almost the one that started it all.

I encountered these in the Great Gap between books 4 and 5 and thought they were pretty amazing at the time. Looking back, the hormones, teen drama and divergence from almost everything else I've read are strong. But as a 15 year old who'd powered through the first set of books, they were manna because they opened the world up more widely. It was the second Fanfic I ever read, and the first that was a completed series.

I'd remembered little bits as I did this first reread in over 2 decades. One of the things that leapt out at me was the way in which my old screen reader used to present the standings at the dueling club. It wasn't in this one, of course, but I can still here "table with 3 columns and 9 rows" at the start of every list to this day. The numbers I don't remember, obviously.

as a story, it's weird to see so much different from the later books, but Order of the Phoenix hadn't even been published. The way the Order appears in this book actually made me cackle out loud, I hadn't remembered it at all.

I intend to follow on with the remainder of the trilogy, just for old time's sake. But after a year of plowing through a lot of fanfiction I haven't read and revisiting an old one or two, it was a bit of a hit to end the year on a high with something so old.

[Dejan Loncar · Rating 1 out of 5]

Right, so I will go and say I could not finish this book. It started off good, but I could not bring myself to finish it. Up until the third or so chapter the book was great, then someone stopped by and the book took a weird twist of semi-errotic fan fiction. I originally thought it was a one off and thought oh okay, what a unique twist to the book. I got up to the chapter with sandy divinitation. I stopped there, almost every chapter after that surprise visitor chapter has some stupid teen romance. Literally everyone. Not only that but certain characters who for 4 books you are supposed to "dislike" they do a 180 in personality. At the start, it was again interesting you figure oh what a unique twist. But when they start doing it to EVERYONE it's pretty annoying. The writing style is just so predictable at times. Especially when dialogue is exchanged there isn't any "mystery" so to speak. I think the biggest hurdle for myself when I was trying to read this was the romance. If it wasn't for that I could have looked passed the other stuff. But that just made it incredibly hard to read.

[Marthie Elice · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great fanfic. Not perfect, but far better than anything I've read before :)
There's not a lot of R rating material. I enjoyed it as an alternate universe story, with a lot of focus put on relationships between people. It was fun to see what the writer thought could be plot twists, that ofc we know now aren't how things played out in the original books. Nevertheless I read it all, almost got a bit addicted to it, I did manage to put it down when I had to (being an adult and all), but I often lost track of time while reading.
I would give it a 4,5

[Nic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really a fan fiction person, but this one came quite highly recommended. I'm in two minds about it. At times, it seems polished and interesting, but other times, it seems like it is pandering to superficial fandom things. Some characters also were not entirely consistent with their characterisation in earlier books, which was quite odd.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book for ages I've absolutely had to keep getting back to - to read 'just a little more, just a little more' until 2 in the morning and so on.
Got almost nothing done all day because I was hooked on the book. Apart from some minor niggles with inconsistencies and Krum joining an English team, loved it. Going searching for the next one right now.
:D

[Leo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is too long and the writing isn't as good as other fan fiction I've read. The plot is slow but at the same time makes you keep reading.

[Joshua (ithildins) · Rating 5 out of 5]

2020 - This series gets better with every re-read. I read it in 2017, but never got around to finishing the series again - so I just restarted.

[Shane Marcus]

Introduce to me as a scandalous "lemon" fan fiction, it was really anything but. While it did have mature themes and moments, I quite enjoyed this story and the characters as they developed.

[Smitha Joemon]

Good