ENTERTAINMENT QUIBBLER
Thereʼs something about the Wizarding World that captured the mind, hearts, and imaginations of people all over the world in a way that we donʼt see all too often. I am old enough to have been around when the fandom really began. Grown men and women reading the versions with the ʻgrown-upʼ covers on their morning commutes, kids dressing up in robes and drawing scars on their foreheads, people of all ages (me included) queueing up at Waterstones at midnight to get our hands on the last piece of the puzzle, The Deathly Hallows. I stayed up all night reading that book. I read it cover to cover in one sitting, and though the sun had long since risen and my eyes were aching I simply couldnʼt get enough. I gasped through ʻThe Seven Pottersʼ, I seethed through ʻThe Muggle-Born Registration Committeeʼ, I cried through ʻThe Forest, Againʼ, I exalted at ʻThe Flaw in the Planʼ, I frowned disapprovingly through ʻEpilogue: Nineteen Years Laterʼ, and then when I finally closed the book I was hit with a sense of grief. It was finished. There would be no new tales of triumph, no more night time wanderings through the hallowed halls of Hogwarts. I had read all there was to be read, and there would never be more. Over the years since I have read the series again more times than I can count, I even tried the play that shall not be named, but I could never recapture the true delight of escapism that I felt the first time. I know it too well. I know all the secret passages we were shown, all the spells Harry learned. All the shocks are no longer shocking, the surprises no longer surprising. So whatʼs a girl to do? I had never really considered fanfiction. I knew it existed, knew it was popular, but I never sought it out for myself until one day when I was feeling awful and went to instinctively retreat back to the comfort of The Philosopherʼs Stone. Something stopped me. I wanted the familiarity, but I also wanted to truly escape. I needed a new adventure. I needed fanfic. Now, call me naive, but I thought this would be simple. I thought I could just google ʻHarry Potter Fanfictionʼ and Iʼd be presented with a few stories to choose from. Google seemed rather keen that I try a website called ʻArchive of Our Ownʼ and so I headed there blindly to peruse their selection, expecting maybe a hundred or so options. How wrong I was. As of the date of writing, Archive of Our Own, or AO3 as I came to know it, has no less than three hundred and forty four thousand five hundred and forty fanfictions tagged as ʻHarry Potter - J.K. Rowlingʼ. THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY FOUR THOUSAND. The world of fanfic has pushed and prodded and stretched the boundaries and limits of the HP universe to lengths I would never have conceived possible. There are historical AU (alternate universe), Voldemort wins AU, fics set at Hogwarts, fics set at the Ministry, fics set during an extended wizarding war. There are muggle AU, marauders era stories… if you can think of it somebody has probably written it. These fics take what JK 31
