Here is a search of FF.Net with the following criteria: (i) published before 16 July 2005, (ii) at least 60k words, (iii) complete, (iv) Character A: Harry Potter, (v) Character B: exclude slash and shitty ships, (vi) sorted by favourites.

In other words, it's a trip down memory lane to the days of fanfic before HBP was published.

So, dear friends, shall we engage in a bit of nostalgia together?

Some of my thoughts:

- Rorschach's Blot really was the GOAT of that era. He was still active in his CaerAzkaban group as of 2020 and posted something on FF.Net in 2021, but seems to have disappeared since.

- I'm actually surprised at how many of these I haven't read. Or at least have no recollection of reading.

- There was a reason Azkaban Harry was a DLP category. The list is full of them.

- Organized crime!Harry was inexplicably popular.

- The FFA authors are well-represented - they lost relevance later, but this would have been their peak.

- The Awakening Power by sib-ff. What an absolute all time classic.

- Even by travelling back in time 17 years, you still can't escape shitty edgelord Harry. But if you change the search to only return fics published before OotP, it seems you finally have gone back far enough to dodge the worst of it, entering the era of classic fanfiction.

 

Ah, yes, back when Blaise was a female.

On the first page, I've read all but one of those stories.

I'm glad Nonjon's nonsense is represented. Wonderful comedy even to today's standards.
It's funny how Cedric's death was used as a plot point so often before the fifth book came out, while canon was so indifferent to the matter.

I always trawl through people's favorite's list to get new stories, and running down this list is identical my memory of doing that in 2007.

 

But I see plenty of Ginny fics in there.

...What? I thought we were channeling the ghosts of the past.

 

I remember that period being heavy MWPP...

 

It was sort of heavy on a lot of things. IIRC this was around the peak volume era for HP fanfic (and really fanfic in general).

I mean, look at the anime section on ff.net and you'll see that the series that have the most stories written are to an overwhelming degree the ones that were popular during this time period and the few years preceding it.

 

I think this is mostly just because fanfic writers have (for the most part) moved onto other sites such as Wattpad, AO3 etc...

If you check the AO3 anime section for example, although Naruto and its ilk are still popular, you have heaps of stories for My Hero Academia (230k+ on AO3, ~25k on FFN), Demon Slayer etc...

But yeah ~2006 was really a different time I think, there were so many different HP fanfic sites out there.

 

Yeah, fair enough.