Barry Trotter is a series of Harry Potter parodies written by Michael Gerber. The Harry Potter series are taken as a heavily censored version of the life of Barry Trotter. The story takes place long after the trio have "finished" their education at the Hogwash School of Wizardry and Witchcrap.
The first book in the series is Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody. It follows Barry Trotter, Lon Measly and Ermine Cringer as they do their best to stop the making of The Movie of the series of books about Barry's school life, written in-universe by J.G. Rollins.
The second book is Barry Trotter and the Unnecessary Sequel, in which Barry becomes headmister of Hogwash after the previous one died.
The third book is Barry Trotter and the Dead Horse, a Prequel within a Sequel, wherein Barry undergoes hypnotherapy to relive the memories of his time at Hogwash in order to find a cure for the arrested youthanasia curse he was afflicted with in the previous book.
Tropes found in this series:
- Afterlife Express: There's no trains in it but the afterlife hub in the third book looks like a train station.
- Alliteration & Adventurers: Nigel likes a Fantastic Fantasy Is Mundane tabletop game called Accountants & Attorneys.
- Art Imitates Art: Dali gives Barry a tiny statue of himself dressed as the Virgin Mary floating in a jar of his own urine. This seems to be a reference to Piss Christ
by Andres Serrano, a photograph of a crucifix floating in his urine. - Artistic License – Biology: Lon living with a hole in his head, clean through, and having part of a dogs brain implanted as substitute. But its a parody and... well...
- Bazaar of the Bizarre: A Diagon Alley parody in London called Catty Corner is mentioned.
- Bearded Baby: Bumblemore is said to have been born with his beard which is said to be a sign of a powerful wizard.
- Character Name and the Noun Phrase: Each book, following the pattern of the series being parodied.
- Color Me Black: Barry once called into a TV show presented by a white supremacist and cast a spell to turn him black.
- Death by Cameo: Peeves the poltergeist appears briefly in the second book before Barry banishes him to Hell. Notably, he's actually called Peeves rather than having a Parody Name.
- Deconstructive Parody: Quidit, for one.
- Ear Worm: A teenage Barry tortured his aunt and uncle by making them hear dogs barking to the tune of Jingle Bells constantly.
- Eat Dirt, Cheap: The Death-Eater equivalents, the Earth-Eaters get their name because they do this.
- Equivalent Exchange: The second book has Barry learn that every time a wizard summons something with magic is actually just teleported away from a muddled. This coincidentally results in someone whose cake always goes missing on Barry's birthday, and it's implied Barry conjures cars fairly often.
- Fantastic Fantasy Is Mundane: Nigel plays a tabletop game called Accountants & Attorneys.
- Footnote Fever: The books use footnotes to expand one-line jokes in the text into paragraph-long comedic monologues that would otherwise break the flow of the narrative.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: Valumart attends Barry's birthday party, and is generally friendly towards him and other main characters, having abandoned his quest to kill Barry in exchange for building a media empire.
- Golden Snitch: Parodied, as catching the sneetch in Quiddit gives that team a zillion points and wins them the game, rendering every other aspect of the game completely meaningless.
- Keeping the Handicap: Played for Laughs in Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody. The blacksmith Zed has, on several occasions, offered to make Barry a set of prosthetic zinc eyeballs to correct his vision problems. Barry always refuses on the grounds that Zed is crazy and it's a bloody stupid idea.
- Lovecraft Lite: The Luna Lovegood expy, Tuna Lovecraft has Cthulhu as a Familiar.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: With Barry turned back into a child, Ermine complains she gets strange looks off people when they're together in public.
- Muggles: Called Muddleds here.
- The Nudifier: One of the delinquent wizards in the class Ermine teaches, turns her top transparent with a spell.
- Parody: Of the Harry Potter franchise, naturally.
- Parody Name: The books contain such winners as "Muddle" for Muggle, "Philosopher's Scone" for Philosopher's Stone, "Hogwash" for Hogwarts, "Lord Valumart" for Lord Voldemort, "Earth Eaters" for Death Eaters and "Measlys" for Weasleys.
- Postmodernism: The first book. It's a parody which is actually a book about trying to stop a movie which turns out to be said movie which is actually revealed to be a parody of the movie written by the main character who has been watching a movie based loosely off his own life, which involved trying to stop the movie from being made. There's even a disclaimer at the back from the author, claiming that if anyone has worked out what's going on that they are to let him know at once.
- Predatory Business: As suggested by his name, much of Lord Valumart fits this trope by selling magical goods to the Muddle world.
- Self-Duplication: Barry and Lon do this to make enough duplicates of themselves to play a quiddit match.
- Significant Anagram: Barry takes "an embarrassingly long time" to figure out that his favourite musician, Art L. Valumord is Lord Valumart.
- Summon to Hand: The first time Barry uses the C'Mere spell, it summons an object across the room like the accio spell from Harry Potter but later uses just cause items to be teleported.
- Toilet Teleportation: This series' equivalent to the port key is a magic chamberpot called a portal potty.
- Travelling at the Speed of Plot: In the second book, evaporating to other continents takes several hours while in Dead Horse Barry can use it to appear in other countries instantly.
- A True Story in My Universe;
- Here a franchise parodying Harry Potter is based on a true story and lead to the existence of magic being exposed to the Muggle public.
- We meet Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who had a successful book and movie based on his adventure. Though the other characters and actors have different names.
- Unmasqued World: The Barry Trotter books being released has exposed the existence of magic to the muddle public.
- Vague Age: It's inconsistent whether the Neville expy, Syril Broadbottom attends Hogwash when Barry is an adult or was a student in his year. He either has a son named after himself or was held back multiple decades.
