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Notes -
Ironically, I actually think the strength of Harry Potter as a series is, fundamentally, its worldbuilding. The actual story of Harry Potter is not particularly impressive - the relationships between the core cast are messy and unsatisfying, and Rowling mostly fails to tell a compelling seven book narrative. The first few books are pretty good, but those books are mostly mystery stories, presenting the reader with a series of clues buried in amid exposition and worldbuilding.
Harry Potter has very good worldbuilding, but it's not the kind of worldbuilding that, pardon my language, autistic nerds like. The magic system in the series clearly has no rules, for instance, and things that any RPG player would immediately notice as game-breaking, like the Time Turner, enter and exit the narrative without explanation.
What it does do, however, is brilliantly create a sense of place. The main character of the series is Hogwarts, and Hogwarts is a very evocative setting - the magical castle with its interior constantly shifting, the quirky and colourful professors, the four thematically-aligned houses, and so on. I think readers really engaged with and fell in love with the setting. That's why it provoked so much fan fiction - the setting is a great place to tell stories, and the main characters are thin and archetypal enough that they can easily be shuffled around that setting to tell whatever story you like. The events of the story can be changed, and even the genre can be changed (obviously there's a ton of romance fanfic), but the setting, the world, is what makes it feel like Harry Potter.
Compare also the vast popularity of prequel fanfic - James, Lily, the Marauders, young-Snape, and so on. You can remove the actual story of Harry Potter and swap out all the characters and it's still magic, and people still want to read about it and write about it. Look at relationship tags on AO3 and notice the popularity of Sirius/Lupin, James/Lily, Regulus/James, or even Marlene/Dorcas, the latter being two names casually mentioned as coming from Harry's parents' generation but otherwise never described. The setting is doing all the work.
Or consider Hogwarts Legacy - popular game, used Harry Potter really well, but set in the 19th century. Avalanche Software correctly realised that the important thing about Harry Potter is the school, not any particular students or any particular events in the story.
In this light, the defense I'd make of Malfoid would be - okay, obviously it's boys and young men indulging in a romantic fantasy. There's ultimately nothing wrong with that. The last I checked girls and young women thirsted for Malfoy for decades and no one batted an eyelid. Maybe Malfoid is an Edward Cullen figure, but that's okay. For that matter nerdy guys have been writing fanfic about attractive girls in Potter for just as long.
Anyway, once you accept that this is male romantasy, I think it makes good use of the IP. Hogwarts Castle is a romantic setting, and the premise here - everyman hero plus well-bred, snobby perfectionist - is a perfectly solid one for a romance. I think it works fine.
It doesn't 'fix' anything with Rowling's series, and I think that's a silly way to think about it, but who says it has to? It's just a story idea that some boys like. Good for them.
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