Harry Potter Fanfiction: Top Ten Websites for Reading and Writing Harry Potter Fanfiction

Harry Potter is a household name, and for good reason. JK Rowling's Harry Potter series is beloved by millions and has been turned into a cash making franchise for books, toys, and movies. It is little wonder that such a widely known book series is the inspiration for one of the largest categories of fanfiction on the web.

Fanfiction is a gateway into our favorite worlds. It's the gray zone, where a creator's fictional characters are borrowed by the fans and made to do their will. Fanfiction can be a fantastic escape from reality.

Here are ten Harry Potter fanfiction websites where novice readers and writers of fanfiction can find excellent story variety.

1.) www.fanfiction.net- While fanfiction.net has been criticized for its extremely large size and it's mixture of quality and very amateur writers, it is still the most comprehensive fanfiction site on the web. And its Harry Potter section is full of great finds. With forums for chat and role playing games, as well as its new, easier-to-use method for sorting crossover stories, fanfiction.net is a great stop for fanfiction readers. It is constantly expanding and updating in order to deliver an easy to navagite site for fans.

2.) http://www.fictionalley.org/- FictionAlley is a wonderful, visually beautiful site that caters specifically to all things Harry Potter. While it's not always the easiest site to navigate or post works on, it does have an excellent system for dividing stories by type. Also, FictionAlley links to ArtisticAlley where Harry Potter fans can post fan art.

3.) http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/- This is the oldest Harry Potter fanfiction site on the web and has a huge selection of stories to choose from. This is a must-stop for the serious Harry Potter fanfiction reader.

4.) http://www.sugarquill.net/- For those who love canon ships (relationships which actually take place in the books such as Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, and Weasley stories), Sugarquill has an excellent fanfiction archive. While it is somewhat hard to find stories by category, there are plenty of excellent stories available on this site.

5.) http://restrictedsection.org/-ADULTS ONLY. For those who enjoy hard R or Mature rated Harry Potter fanfiction stories, this site is a good alternative to the more regulated fanfiction sites. It originally began when fanfiction.net decided to band NC-17 stories from their archives. The Mature stories were moved to this, very separate site. This site is for adults only and requires age verification.

6.) http://www.ginnypotter.com/phpnuke/- Ginnypotter.com is, as one might expect, geared towards fans of Ginny/Harry stories, though other stories are also available.

7.) http://www.phoenixsong.net/- Phoenix Song is another site that's aimed to please fans of canon ships (aka Ron/Hermione, Harry/Ginny).

8.) http://www.dracoandginny.com/- Dracoandginny.com, The Fire and Ice Archive, is a wonderful archive page for stories containing the very noncanon Draco/Ginny relationship.

9.) http://www.sycophanthex.com/occlumency/index.php- Occlumency is a Severus Snape archive and is completely devoted to everyone's favorite Potion Master.

10.) http://fanfiction.mugglenet.com/- A large, quality Harry Potter fanfiction archive in the very popular Potter news site Mugglenet.com.
With huge variety and quality stories to be found, all of these websites can provide an excellent escape for readers of Harry Potter fanfiction. Whether you're a fan of unconventional relationships or relationships found in the books themselves, short stories or epic tales, dark genres or fluffy romance, there's something for everyone in the world of Harry Potter fanfiction.

Article originally posted at http://www.squidoo.com/harrypotterfanfiction. For more information on Harry Potter fanfiction, visit this lens.