Spinning this off of the posts about what's good in fanon, from recent discussion in the Pet Peeves thread.

This isn't for what you liked about X in story Y by author Z - that would be a fanfic rec. This is about ideas that are recognizable over the HP genre, supplement or even contradict canon, that you still enjoy seeing in a story.

It does not require the concept itself to be done well often: MPAI, and therefore it can be taken as given that most ideas in fanon are horribly executed. Just that the idea itself is one you believe has merit.

1. For me, it's other magical schools in Britain, provided they are smaller, less prestigious, etc. (The story mentions them, it is not about them)

I like a large magical world, the sort that canon hints at when there are large congregations of wizards in Surrey despite no particular reason for them to be there, and multiple parties happening all over the country at Voldemort's downfall. Professional quidditch leagues, and economic specialization that allows for multiple joke shops and clothing stores and gossip magazines. That allows for a fully functioning government with specialized departments, and a large hospital. But if Hogwarts represents Britain's wizarding adolescence, even if you factor in 'small class size due to war', it's difficult to shoehorn this in...

Other schools, even as just a passing reference, is a good compromise for paving over the plothole cause by Rowling's inability to do math.

2. Pureblood Manors. Fred & George hint in Chamber of Secrets that House Elves live and work solely in old estates, manors, and castles. Therefore one can assume that there must be a number of these around. Furthermore, it has always made sense to me that the sheer utility of magic would lead to wealth generally being concentrated in the hands of families that have had magic the longest.

 

Runes - I like the idea that more permanent and powerful magic requires something physical to imbue it. The idea you can cast a spell at a building and give it powerful protections (or undoing i.e. Dumbledore breaking his own protections on Hogwarts on the fly at the end of HP6) feels lazy to me.

It probably links back to me not liking wands to be the end-all of magic.

 

I second Runes. It seems to be to be fairly useful in fanon, plus I would like to predict that the fanon explanation for how runes work is the closest thing to canon that the fans have come up with (there's always the chance that Rowling will get around to explaining them in Pottermore and prove me wrong, of course).

My favorite thing about fanon? That it's made the whole OC-in-a-name-character's-skin okay to utilize. True, some characters have accumulated their own universal fanon traits (Daphne the ice princess/queen, Susan Bones is well-endowed, etc) but when a story takes full advantage of having a blank canvas, it can benefit the fic as a whole. As fans, we will care more about an INO-character than a wholly original creation by virtue of having that name.

 

Unsurprisingly most of mine relate to magic:

- Any mention of needing to understand a spell to be able to cast it properly.

- Any explicit denial of exhaustible magic.

- Presentation of spells as related nodes in a theoretical structure rather than discrete and static objects.

- The presentation of magical theory as completely incompatible with the body of knowledge known as "science". E.g. a magical theory of matter which directly contradicts atomic theory.

- Complex magical theory which does not devolve into a science analogue e.g. that avoids the use of formulas that are reminiscent of the formulas of physics, only with magical units instead of physical ones. The best kind of magical theory is that which draws on philosophy, theology, alchemy, law, numerology, astrology, etc. Essentially a constructed narrative about some aspect of the world or human experience.

- Pluralistic magical theory. That is, there not being a single, comprehensive and unified theory of magic but rather a large number of competing magical philosophies, which have different merits and may be suited to different areas of magic. Further, it's not the case that a single unified theory is possible and it simply hasn't been arrived at yet, but rather that there is no single "magical truth". Instead, many different narratives can be told about magic, all of which have validity (though this does not exclude the possibility of a magical theory being completely wrong, it just means that there are more than one which are right).

- Single-word incantations.

- Complexity of magical theory being alluded to by reference and by illustrative examples but not explicitly detailed. The problem is that it is impossible for any author to come up with a convincing magical theory i.e. one that is suitably complex that it bears the appearance of a deep field of study which has been developed over thousands of years by countless different thinkers. Any author-described magical theory will feel far too simplistic. As such it's better to allude to there being this body of theory out there, and to illustrate it with small slices of bits of theories, but to never attempt to go into any comprehensive description of any given theory or magic generally.

Some non-magic ones:

- Defunct titles. Far too many fics give Harry de jure legal authority in the form of titles and that is the end of it. There's no struggle for de facto power because magic itself enforces the authority of those titles. I much prefer it if the "magical aristocracy" is much like the muggle one: displaced by the "new men".

- Presentation of the wizarding world as changing over time. Far too many fanfics run the line of the wizarding world as stagnant or even in decline, with "ancient magic" being venerated as much more powerful than modern magic.

- Contrary to vlad, I much prefer a small wizarding population (e.g. under 15,000 in Britain). This is ultimately about a) maintaining the importance of individual powerful wizards like Dumbledore and Voldemort and b) avoiding large scale magical battles. I think it is hard to maintain the fact that individual wizards are capable of turning the tide in a war, and the subterfuge/guerrilla/small skirmish style of wizarding combat, in the face of a large population. I also prefer the idea that wizarding society is less state-focused than the Muggle world, with international borders and nation-state governments meaning less. I prefer to think of the dynamic of the wizarding world as like a global conspiracy, Illuminati style, in which all wizards are complicit. The "other" are the Muggles, not wizards of different nationalities.

- Accordingly I tend to think of Quidditch teams, for example, as far less commercial than Muggle professional sports teams. I picture many players having regular jobs in addition to being on Quidditch teams, and the general tone of the domestic Quidditch league as being similar to an amateur league in the Muggle world.

- Characterisations of the wizarding economy as much less sophisticated than the Muggle one. For example, no stock markets or developed financial services. Very little mass production, with most shops selling what Muggles would call "artisan" goods - each one slightly different, with one-of-a-kind items being commonplace.

 

For sake of comparison, if a "Taure" is ten-thousand british wizards, a "vlad" is 500k. Much larger, but still tiny on the Muggle scale. I like the idea of quidditch being more a semi-pro sort of thing at most, though I don't think I've ever seen it (and I'm certainly not going out of my way to read about quidditch.)

 

I would second a bigger wizarding population. It gives room to a more complex world where the difference between the conservative purebloods and non conservatives can exist. In a small population it is kind of impossible for wizards not be aware of the muggle world. The ignorance of a lot of Harry's school friends and ministry employees about the muggle world can only exist when the population is big enough for them not to interact with muggleborns and partly muggle raised half bloods.

Same goes for the big pure blood manors. Muggle aristocracy lost its power and wealth mostly due to increasing taxes on land and inheritance. This mostly due to democracy really taking off. Not seeing the wizarding world as a very democratic place I can imagine that the old estates keep on existing.

Taure's point on titles if good as well seeing that there is a lot of strife between the old pureblood families and the new families it seems rather strange for there to be inherent power in the wizarding world protected by magic. Why would the purebloods fear the up comming muggleborns if there power is protected anyway they just could rule them as a small elite.

For myself i enjoy mentions of other wizarding nations around the world with different cultures and ideas.

And the mention of wizarding history giving a basis for the different political movements in the wizarding world

 

I really like the fanon idea of Blaise Zabini (Zambini? haha) as a playboy. Plus, one story flipped the idea of Mrs. Zabini as a black widow on her head. The story put forth the idea that instead of her as a black widow, she was known to make old wizards who are about to die comfortable. Sorry for the Zabini focus, I'm sure there's other fanon ideas that I love but these were the first ones that came to mind.

 

The Endless7's fic allude or show a professional Quidditch league the like of which you described.

 

He actually has two fics focused on it, with one focused on league play and one focused on the World Cup.

BarneyXII wrote "A Game of Style and Brutality" which is also somewhat faithful to my imagination of professional Quidditch.

And of course, jbern's Number Games.

 

The problem with runes is that a lot of people treat it like programming. Thinking about all the things people can do with programming and then applying that to magic, that interpretation of runes is too setting-breaking to work. I like a mix of runes and wandwork. The wandwork is to setup the details of the spell and the runes are to lock them down and make them permanent. They have to be properly synchronized to work.