U. Iowa: Fanfiction writers in a world all their own.

(From University Wire)

Byline: Ali Gowan

Harry was sitting on the ground, propped up against a large fallen limb of the Whomping Willow. He was alive. He had defeated Voldemort. They'd all defeated Voldemort. Sirius was sitting with him -- neither was speaking, and neither looked truly happy.

No, this is not an excerpt from the latest work by J.K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince," to be released at midnight Friday. Any Harry Potter reader will know that the character Sirius died in the last installment. And with two books to go in what will be a seven-part series, Harry's mortal enemy, Voldemort, isn't ready to be defeated just yet.

Yet to many Potter fans, the break in sequence makes perfect sense. They know this is nothing penned by Rowling. Rather, this story, titled "Writing History," was created by Jennie Levine, who online goes by the name Zsenya. It can be found on her website, www.sugarquill.net, alongside the millions of other homemade tales of Harry that fill the Internet -- a genre known as fanfiction.

Exactly as they sound, fanfictions, often called "fics," are stories written by fans using the characters and plots from established stories. Anything can be the basis of a fanfiction -- Harry Potter fics are some of the most popular, but a visit to one of the largest online databases for the medium, www.fanfiction.net, brings up stories on everything from Blues Clues to X-Men to the works of Charles Dickens.

UI senior Melanie Simet has been reading fanfiction since her freshman year. An avid Harry Potter fan, the astronomy and physics major said she was exposed to the genre by friends from her floor in Stanley Residence Hall. At first, she wanted nothing to do with the idea, she said, thinking it better to stick to the originals. But then one day, a friend forcibly sat her down at a computer and told her to read. She got hooked.