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When I finished reading the “Harry Potter” series by J.K. Rowling, I was still left with questions about the marauders: James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. These characters were mentioned a few times in the books as adults and as they related to the main series, but we aren’t told much about their years at Hogwarts. I wanted to know more.
The books ended, but my interest in them hadn’t. I could’ve waited for the author to tell me more about them or to release books focusing on the marauders, but I didn’t. There were fans already creating stories that were left untold.
That was how I was introduced to fanfiction.
When reading a novel or series, you may find yourself thinking about stories within that universe that haven’t yet been told. Our imagination begins to flow, taking those characters or moments from the original storyline and, somehow, creating something entirely new. The only difference is that this one is not created by the author; it’s created by the fans, for the fans.
I remember being invested in the marauders’ story, looking up fanarts on Pinterest of possible moments from their younger years at Hogwarts, before the “Harry Potter” timeline happened. I also read works of fanfiction related to the marauders on Tumblr, where fans shared small and imagined pieces of the lives of these characters. From their interactions with the students in Hogwarts, to magical fights we didn’t get to see in the books.
All those moments, details and conversations between characters were created by fans. So really, the only things I know about the marauders from the original series are their names and roles.
Star Wars is also a fandom that has inspired a lot of fanfiction. One of its most famous pieces is “The Love Hypothesis,” written by Ali Hazelwood. While this book is now part of its own universe, it started as fanfiction between the sequel triology’s characters Kylo Ren and Rey titled “Head Over Feet.”
How can someone create a whole story with so little information about those characters? Why do they even want to?
Having both read and written fanfiction myself, I think it exists because we want to make fictional universes our own.
A sense of ownership comes when we create fanfics. Not in a legal sense, but an emotional one. We take the fiction that someone else created and we interact with it in our own way. We imagine conversations that were never written, relationships that were never explored and moments that were never written by the original author. We take the pieces of what they gave us and build something new with them.
This is exactly what happened to me with the marauders.
The canon only gave me four names, a few pieces of their lives and some knowledge of who they were. It told me that they were inseparable friends, that they were all Gryffindors, that they created the Marauder’s Map and that they were involved during the First Wizarding War.
But for me, that was enough to ask more questions. What types of pranks did they pull during their school years? How did they manage the full moons while Remus was out of the castle as a werewolf? How was their relationship with Peter and why did he betray them? What happened during all those years that the canon skipped?
The books didn’t answer those questions. But fanfiction did.
Lynn Zubernis, a clinical psychologist who researches the psychology of fandom, describes fanfiction as a form of “imaginary play.” With fanfiction, fans bring their own thoughts and feelings into a story that already exists. This does not only give us another version of the fictional universe, but it also allows us to participate in it. And maybe that is one of the reasons why fanfiction has become such a staple of fandom culture.
We spend our time consuming stories through movies or books, and there are times when we want to know what happened after the end. In fanfiction, instead of only asking the author, we can ask ourselves.
It gives us permission to play with the universe.
We don’t have to wait for the author to release another book or for a studio to announce another movie. We just simply ask “What if?” and start writing. Questions are where creativity begins.
Astrid Alomia (she/her) is a sophomore studying journalism with a concentration in public relations and a minor in marketing.
