There are two big problems (at least for me) in writing Harry Potter fanfiction.
First, the fandom is so … enduring (which is a polite way of saying it’s massively popular and also fairly old) that pretty much every idea in it has been done at least before if not to death. I’ve gotten around that by crossing HP with other fandoms that aren’t as enduring (the notable exception, of course, being when I crossed it with the Marvel Cinematic Universe), but that’s clearly a workaround.
Second, because it’s so big and popular, it can be difficult to sort out canon from fanon – again, at least for me. Full disclosure: I rage-quit reading the series in the middle of Book 5 Order of the Phoenix when McGonagall effectively told Harry to suck up Umbridge’s torture because there was nothing she could do. Two words to that: bovine excrement.
Even if McGonagall were hamstrung by the Ministry into accepting Umbridge as a teacher, torturing children is against the law. (Torturing anyone, of course, but especially children.) And if the DMLE wasn’t going to help, then McGonagall had a duty to get Harry out of the school to someplace safe.
And that brings up the larger reason I quit reading the books: I get it, okay, that the books were originally written for children, and I give Ms. Rowling all kinds of credit for keeping the stories right on track with the age of the protagonists and the ages of her target audience. But still – would it be too much to ask for just one of the adults to actually act like an adult?
I’ll stop there before I go all Ranty McRanterson on the series. I enjoyed it through Book 4 Goblet of Fire, and my headcanon is that Harry managed to defeat/kill Voldemort in the graveyard. (At that time, remember, the word Horcrux had never been mentioned. We had seen a wraith form of Voldemort in Book 1 Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone, but we didn’t know what happened to Voldemort himself. As far as we knew (and I believe the film confirmed it), the wraith escaped.
The diary in Book 2 Chamber of Secrets could quite easily have been made by a young Tom Riddle while he was in school; it’s not too different from, say, the magical portraits we see, or the Marauders’ Map (which we didn’t learn about until Book 3 Prisoner of Azkaban). (This ties in to the single biggest plot hole in the series: How in the name of Magic did sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle know that baby Harry defeated his older self?
The answer I came up with is that the wraith in the diary is the same wraith that escaped at the end of Book 1. The wraith somehow found its way to the diary, which Lucius Malfoy had as a … well, keepsake is the only word I can think of. The wraith inhabited the diary and told Lucius to get it into Hogwarts for the express purpose of resurrecting Voldemort. Had the wraith succeeded in killing Ginny Weasley (or draining her magic, which isn’t exactly the same thing), it would have come back as the fully adult/mature Tom Riddle/Voldemort, who did know that baby Harry killed him.
That same wraith, then, inhabited whatever it was that Pettigrew brought to the graveyard and used to resurrect Voldemort fully. (I’ve seen this called a homunculus in fanfiction, but I didn’t find any reference to that term in the scene in Book 4.)
That’s my non-Horcrux explanation, and I’m sticking to it!
Sorry for the digression – now it’s back to the issues I have when writing HP fanfiction.
Both of those issues are, honestly good things overall. I’m very grateful for amazing fanfic writers! (If you’re looking for a few recommendations, CatsAreCool (aka TrekCat aka Rachel500), FurySerenity (aka Vance McGill), Keira Marcos, LeQuin, Methos2523, Old Crow, Potter8668, RobSt, Sinyk, and TomHRichardson have written some very good stories. All of them except Keira Marcos can be found on fanfiction.net, Archive of Our Own, or both. Keira Marcos has her own site, which can be found by entering her name in your favorite search engine. GRIN)
However, over the years, a lot of things that are actually fanon have become considered canon. (And for the record, the movies are just author-approved fanfic; where there’s conflict between the books and the movies, the books win.) So, every now and again, I get comments on “Man of Iron” that are ever-so-helpfully “correcting” me on some part of my story.
Right.
See, because I’m a bit of a canon devotee, every time I write a Harry Potter story, I go look things up in the applicable book(s). Sometimes, I even *gasp* use the exact words Ms. Rowling used! … And then I’m “corrected.”
Honestly, those comments mostly just amuse me, but they do make me think about canon and fanon, and sometimes I wonder why I go to so much trouble to get it right (as one example, the description of St. Mungo’s in Man of Iron. I looked up the description in Book 5 and used Ms. Rowling’s own words – only to be told I was wrong. *eyeroll*).
The only answer I have as to why I go to so much trouble is, “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
Despite legal controversies, fanfiction is a result of enthusiasm (positive or negative) about the original story. Staying as true to the source as I can is the clearest way I can convey my respect, as well as my enthusiasm, for the original.
So I spend far more time than is reasonable looking things up, and I get “corrected” anyway. I’m not saying I don’t make mistakes (yes, Sir Arthur C. Clarke was British, not American – I’m probably never living that one down – GRIN). I am saying I make every effort to get it right, and I really, really wish people who want to “correct” me would look it up first. It would save them from embarrassing themselves and save me the momentary irritation that slides into amusement.
