Like many writers out there, I got my start in fanfiction. I began with a delightfully terrible Harry Potter fanfic called “The Heir of Gryffindor”, which involved Harry getting horribly abused by the Dursleys and then being rescued by Sirius Black, who for some reason owned a mansion in the English countryside and had a fondness for mint humbugs. Yeah …
Then I progressed to my first real novelling attempt–a massive, 241,317 word fic entitled “Harry Potter and the Dream Come True”. Basically, James Potter comes back to life, hilarity ensues, and Harry finds the family he’s always been dreaming of (hence the title). It started off sweet and heartfelt, but has now become rather bizarre. I also haven’t updated it in about three years–shame on me! I’m sure I’ll get back to it one day.
But my most successful fanfiction by far has been my latest, a Hunger Games fic called “Life Through Sea Green Eyes”. People love it, and a few fans have even started translating it into Chinese. Awesome, right?! There’s a link on my “Fanfiction” page (located on the sidebar) if you’re interested.
On to the main event!
I used to read a lot of HP fanfiction. In fact, I probably spent more time reading HP fanfics in high school than I did playing WoW in university. Anyway, here are three of my favourites, two of which I’ve actually had printed out on Lulu.com so I can have them on my bookshelf forever. If you’re a HP fan and you haven’t read these, I suggest you get cracking!
Semi Charmed Life
Within the Marauder band of Merry Men, Sirius is the dashing Will Scarlet. Seventh year, his goal is to help Robin woo Maid Lily, avoid sermons from Friar Moony, aid a rat in need, and win the love of a fair lady.
This is a funny, romantic Sirius/Rosmerta fic with a little Lily/James and some Lucius-induced drama thrown in on the side. I particularly enjoyed the depiction of Hogsmeade daily life, as well as gratuitous Sirius-on-motorbike-wearing-black-leather scenes. This is one of the fics that I printed out, because I’m just that awesome. Go here to read.
Learning to Breathe
Harry Potter is 16 years old. He already defeated Voldemort, with the help of his Godfather Sirius Black. Now he is in for the biggest challenge of his life: attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
This is an AU (alternate universe, for the uninitiated) fic about how things would have gone if Sirius had never gone to Azkaban, and had instead raised Harry as the ultimate warrior. The story actually starts after Harry defeats Voldemort, and revolves around him trying to fit in at Hogwarts when all he’s known is being a soldier. It’s Ginny/Harry, so she plays a big role in helping him acclimatize to civilian life. It gets a little weird at the end, but it’s a really great fic, and has lots of re-read value. Go here to read.
Draco Malfoy the Amazing Bouncing Rat
Draco Malfoy, magically transformed into an evil rat. Who is it who always seems to get the evil rats as pets, and what is poor, poor Draco’s new name? Eventually D/Hr, just now mainly D/coffee…
My favourite HP fanfic of all time. As the plot summary suggests, Draco is turned into a rat and ends up living with Harry and the gang in Gryffindor tower. It’s full of brilliant one-liners, and basically just gives me a warm, fuzzy, happy feeling when I read it. This is the other fic I had printed out.
One problem with this fic is that it has apparently vanished from the internet. Neither the fanfic.net link nor the fictionalley.org link works. However, I did find this horribly-formatted site that has the complete text: click here to read. Expand the first menu and read the chapters as you please. Again, the formatting is squished and weird, so if you are interested in reading this fic (which I highly recommend!), I suggest doing a Google search and seeing what else you can find. Or I guess you could also copy/paste the text into a Word doc and change the paragraph settings so that the line spacing is double, which would make the formatting much easier to read.
Google “Harry Potter Fanfiction”, and here’s what comes up:
Fanfiction ftw!
I’m mostly past my fanfic-reading stage, but reminiscing is fun! What were your favourite fanfics / did you ever read fanfiction? For that matter, did you ever write fanfiction? Was it terrible? Was it awesome? Tell me!
Image cred: http://uthinkido.com/what-people-think-i-do/gallery/animal/otter ; http://www.aki-hoshi.com/thebet/bet.htm
Michelle Proulx - Author 