【Never Sleep Alone (1984)】

You may laugh at fan fiction,Never Sleep Alone (1984) but original written work has helped sustain voracious fan communities for decades. When Harry Potter fans had to wait years between novels, writing our theories into online content was a welcome form of catharsis.

I first logged on to fanfiction.net in 2004, fresh from the theatrical release of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkabanand still at least a year out from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Princein print form (for all we knew at the time, it would be longer). I was starved for new Potter content, and ff.net boasted over 150,000original Harry Potter stories by fans (and yup, dozens if not hundreds are still updated daily). At the time, J.K. Rowling was still pretty reclusive, and the books she had written for us formed the basic structures of a playground that extended as far as the imagination.

Years later, we've got more than enough fresh Potter content coming in, whether it's on the page, stage, or screen. Still, there are fanfic tropes and traditions that withstood the test of time, and today, on the 20th anniversary of the original publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, we salute them with a wink.

1. Wolfstar

Wolf = Remus Lupin, star = Sirius Black. Fans have been shipping SIrius/Remus since Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban-- and probably since before that subconsciously, because it is the lord's truth. Imagine the merry, mischief-making marauders at school together: Best friends Sirius and James Potter, their squad rounded out by intelligent golden boy Remus Lupin and I-guess-we-need-one-more Peter Pettigrew. Through illicit adventures and animal transformation, they form a lifelong bond, and Remus and Sirius fall deeply in love, knowing that it's probably forbidden but that society and their families have already ostracized them enough. Excuse me...I need to go read some fan fiction...

2. AU

This is broad, not Harry Potter-specific trend but a great one. In an alternate universe fic (AU), the rules and events of our own Harry Potter series don't apply. An AU can star Harry and Dudley as best friends fighting magical crime, a world in which Harry's family and guardians survive, or a universe where Voldemort went after Neville Longbottom and it was Harry's classmate who became the Chosen One. AUs are rarely executed well, but they let your imagination run blissfully free.

3. Draco/Hermione

Speaking of forbidden love, what could be more scandalous than pureblood-fanatic and Slytherin 4 lyf Draco Malfoy falling for a Muggle-born Gryffindor? There are a few offshoots of this ship, including Snape/Hermione (NO) and Draco/Harry (this was a no until I read Rainbow Rowell's Carry On...now, sure). Surely their love alone would stump everyone enough to stop the wizarding war and make Voldemort's head explode merely from contemplating it.

4. The Mary Sue

A Mary Sue is, by definition, an idealistic character -- and man do they come Before we knew who every Potter character would marry and have children with, we imagined new characters entering the story and sweeping our friends off their feet. The term started with Star Trekfan fiction, but in Harry Potterit manifested as a skilled young wizard, a manic pixie dream girl, or...

5. A foreign exchange student

For non-British fans with no evidence that the magical world extended beyond Bulgaria and France, our only way into Hogwarts was to write ourselves in. These often overlapped with the Mary Sues as love interests, a harmless form of wish fulfillment for readers who just want to date a Quidditch player now and then.

6. The first-person POV

One of my favorite fan fics for a while was Hermione, Queen of Witches, an entire retelling of the Harry Potter series through Hermione's diary entries. It was invigorating to view the events through someone's eyes besides Harry's; J.K. Rowling's books occasionally depart to the omniscient narrator, or the points of view of bystanders like Frank Bryce and the Muggle Prime Minister. For all we know, the whole wizarding world are keeping diaries that say what they really think of life at Hogwarts. Chances are we won't get those published or produced on stage soon, so let fan fiction guide the way.