For as long as there was still a movie left to go, it felt like the Harry Potter adventure wasn’t quite over. Now with the premiere of the final movie, part 2 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, fans are left bereft. Still, while J.K Rowling might never write another Harry Potter book, her fans will write millions.
Such ‘fan fiction’ allows fans to linger in Harry’s world for just a bit longer... and to really claim it for their own. “Harry Potter is coming to an end. We at Figment have been sallow and shaky for days, just waiting for the inevitable. But then we thought, ‘No.’ No, it won’t end. We won’t allow it! We will take these characters and write new adventures. Different stories!” say the editors of www.harrypotterfanfiction.com. The site was founded in 2001 and claims to have over 65,000 stories in its archive and 30 million hits per month. But there are other even larger collections out there. FictionAlley.org hosts an estimated 80,000 stories and 20,000 works of fan art.
A loose categorisation of these stories divides them into those that are faithful to the canon and those that play out in AU or alternate universes. The former take for their context the world that Rowling has already created – for instance the premise that Harry is an orphaned teenage wizard who goes to Hogwarts. When it comes to AU fanfic all bets are off – in AU Harry Potter teams up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer or is also turned into Spiderman. Fans let their imaginations go where Rowling has never ventured – one website is devoted entirely to stories based on what would happen if Snape decided to mentor Harry, with some going so far as to imagine the Slytherin Professor adopting the son of his arch enemy.
Much Fan Fiction thrives in between the lines – the stories that Rowling did away with in a line, the sentence she chose not to elaborate on. At immeritus.org, they’re all obsessed with Sirius Black and there are reams of both prose and poetry about the character. You’ll find stories about ‘lying low at Lupin’s’ (a line taken from the book, where Dumbledore said Sirius was hiding with his old friend Remus Lupin) and detailed narrations of the exploits of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. Ginny Weasley too has her own site – stories pairing her with Potter are popular.
Fans have long been obsessed with the romantic choices of Rowling’s characters, and out of this have come some of the most unlikely pairings possible. (What would you think of Hermione in love with Draco?) Of course, there’s plenty of unsavoury, inappropriate stuff mixed in as well. For those who would navigate this universe with care, parental supervision is recommended. The websites themselves will help you identify adult content. At www.harrypotterfanfiction for instance, such stories are rated ‘mature.’ (Incidentally, another tag ‘Era’ will tell you if the story is set in ‘Hogwarts,’ the ‘next generation’ or ‘post Hogwarts’.) Though the vast majority of fans fiction authors toil away unappreciated, a few have gained fame or at least notoriety. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Less Wrong - up on the ‘granddaddy of fan-fiction sites’ www.fanfiction.net – is a good example. It opens with 3 people looking at a letter from Hogwarts, inviting Harry to join.
A few lines in, the plot deviates from the one we’re familiar with - the ‘eminent Professor Michael Verres-Evans, and his wife, Mrs. Petunia Evans-Verres, and their adopted son, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres.’ (Who would have ever thought we’d miss poor Vernon Dursley?) Other stories up on the same website imagine what would happen if Harry found Time Turner and went back to join the Marauders or retell Dumbledore’s death from Snape’s perspective. There’s even one story about an orphaned Hermione going to live with Luna Lovegood.
Perhaps the most famous, ‘James Potter and the Hall of Elders’ Crossing’, was written in 2007 by computer animator George Lippert (www.elderscrossing.com). A young James Potter is the protagonist of Elders’ Crossing and he is placed in interesting times – a group of students known as ‘the Progressive Element,’ are seeking to repeal the law of secrecy that separate the muggle and wizarding worlds. The book has become so popular it even has its own wiki.
Unlike George R.R Martin, Orson Scott Card and Anne Rice, Rowling has been very supportive of fan fiction and has been quoted as saying “I find it very flattering that people love the characters that much.” One thing is for sure, Potter now belongs as much to Rowling as to her legion of fans. |
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