I’m a big sucker for Harry Potter Fanfiction; I love writing fanfics, but I also love reading them. The only problem is that, in order to find a breath-taking, nail-biting fanfic that makes you sit on the edge of your seat and makes you fall on your knees begging the author to write more; you first have to find your way through an enormous pile of crap. Yes, crap, because of all the stuff that gets posted under the “Recently Updated” section of harrypotterfanfiction.com; at least nine out of ten stories are crap.

They lack catching oneliners that draw you to reading the story, the banners they use suck (which makes the story at least ten times less appealing to me), the characters are getting old (please one more Hermione/Draco badly done and I’m going to puke) or they simply ignore any of the characteristics already mentioned in the original Rowling’s books. If you want to change Ron into a heroic warrior, you will have to pull a LOT of strings to make that one believable to me. You want to pair up Harry and Hermione? Turn the world upside down. Most authors don’t realise that what works in their fluffy little fantasy world, doesn’t work in real life. Readers aren’t interested in the offsprings of your sick mind, unless you manage to pull it off in a believable and interesting matter. But please keep away from sucky ideas such as: making Harry Potter a vampire, developing theories about a family connection between Harry and Voldemort and quit the magical “Sirius returns from Zombie world” madness.

Too often I browse through the recent list on harrypotterfanfiction.com and come across such idiocies. The problem with the entire browsing system there, is that although one can browse the story archive by a hell of a lot of preferences, ranging from era to pairing, there is no “best of” or “most reviewed”, etc. There is, on the Best of HPFF page, but the number is limited to ten. I don’t know about you, but I get through ten stories rather quickly. I would prefer a monthly “Best Of”, or even a weekly. It would sure give me a lot more reading options. Sure HPFF also features some Author and Story recommendations, but the last date from December 11th and the ones before that dated from July 2008…You can probably see where I’m coming from. They throw the good and bad stuff together and mix it in a blending pot. Eventually the ‘best’ stuff (most reviewed ever, most updated ever) comes out, but the ‘good’ stuff stays hidden. My mission is to find this good stuff and present it to you.

Now, before you start looking forward to my monthly (I think weekly would be too much hassle for me) recommendations of HP stories, keep a few things in mind: I hate fluff, I’m not fond of Harry/Hermione nor Hermione/Draco, if you bring up a title anywhere near ‘Harry Potter and the Attack of the Werewolves’ I might not even bother reading, if you make Draco soft and weak I will probably despise your story and I absolutely ABSOLUTELY will NOT read a novel length story in which the main character falls in love with an OC character anywhere in the first five chapters. On the other hand; if you serve me sexy bad guys, mixed with a delicious amount of wicked plans to control the universe, the necessary drama, blood and madness, I might adore you till the end of time. Well, now you guys know a few of my preferences, you will probably have a better clue of whether or not my story recommendations will be somewhat in line with the type of HP fanfics you prefer.

The way I think about it now, my recommended fanfics will be posted once a month in a seperate category which will (no kidding…) be called: “Recommended HP Fanfics”, with my short opinion and of course a link to the fanfic itself. Length of the fic will be mentioned, but to me it doesn’t really matter. I enjoy reading one-shots just as much as I enjoy reading novel-length pieces. And as a short message to HP fanfic authors, you may always comment here, leaving a link to your HP Fanfic so I can read it and possible even add it to my recommended list.

So, let me know what you guys think about this little idea of mine and I will get back to you asap with a list of my Recommended HP Fanfics for the month February :D