Porri Gutter and the Stone Philosopher

The book is a literary parody of the world-famous series of books about Harry Potter. Strictly speaking, only this book can be considered a parody of “Harry Potter” within the whole series, because only here is there a certain plot correspondence to the books being parodied.

The parody is built using the method of “reversing” the original plot: almost every thing described in the original is turned inside out. If Harry Potter was born a wizard and lives with his relatives who persecute him—non-wizard “Muggles”—then Porry Gatter is, by birth, a mudl (an analogue of Muggles), or, if we use the terminology of the world of Harry Potter, a squib: a child of wizards who, from birth, has no magical powers. He lives with loving parents and a sister, and his entire family is made up of hereditary wizards—rich and well-off. Porry’s father holds an important post and is considered one of the likely candidates for the office of Premier of magical Britain. If Hermione Granger is a quiet and clever girl, then Mergiona Pager is a notorious bully (and hereditary—her mother’s teachers still recall her with horror). If the groundskeeper Hagrid adores all monsters, then Harley, Professor of Local Zoology, is terrified—horrifyingly so—even of cats. Sen Aesley (an analogue of Ron Weasley, the son of a minor ministry official, a child from a poor, large wizard family) is the son of a wealthy high-ranking official; an erudite, a logician, an obvious candidate for the highest state positions. Krayko Malhoy, Græbb and Koyle (an analogue of the “anti-Potter” trio: Draco Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle) are fans of Porry Gatter, showing him literally religious reverence.

The idea of freeing house-elves through provoking the owner to throw a piece of clothing is pushed to absurdity: in Porry Gatter’s world, having taken this idea on board, house-elves freed themselves en masse and turned into a bunch of idle people who, in life, do nothing but steal and fight.

The authors also didn’t miss the chance to invent their own new spells—for example, the Chubabais spell disables electricity within a radius of several kilometers. Most spells are formed from Russian words or easily recognizable foreign words, to which pseudo-Latin endings are often attached: “aerobus-naduvatus” (the flight spell), “stoй-kto-idetус” (stopping and destroying any magical creature), “churiki-ya-v-domike” (a protective spell).