This graph was meant to capture the number of fan fictions published on the site over time and to see how the spikes correspond to significant events in Harry Potter fandom history. This includes when each book was released, when each movie premiered, as well as small other tidbits- hover over the scars for information on these events.

Right away, you'll notice two large spikes. If you hover on the scars near those spikes, you'll see that they belong to the date the last book was released, as well as to the date the last movie was released. The other spikes typically correspond to other book/movie releases. But that's not always the case, and more than just fan fiction overall, I wanted to split this up by character to see when it was fans reacted to certain characters- when it was that they decided they cared for the characters so much that they would take their lives into their own hands.

The graph starts automatically filtered for Harry. In an ideal world, all of the characters would be in the drop down but it turned out the dataset was simply too large, causing lengthy load times, and so I chose certain characters I thought could be interesting. For instance, try going from Harry to Draco Malfoy. It's important to note that the Y-Axis scale changes automatically. You'll see that when moving to Malfoy, the spike near when Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was published goes up, indicating a surge of interest in Malfoy after the 6th book was published. Also interestingly, if you then shift to Neville, you'll see that fan fiction written about our favorite snake killer was sparse compared to that written about Harry, until the 7th book, but more so, the 7th movie. What happened there? I'll just leave this article here.

While most characters' spiked after the 7th book and movie, Sirius is a notable exception, spiking after book/movie five due to that thing that happens to him. One more interesting observation can be found when filtering for Snape. The spikes are all pretty expected except for the last one in January of 2016, long after the books and movies ended. It turns out this spike belongs to the day Alan Rickman, the actor behind Snape, passed away. We begin to see now a blurred line between fiction and reality- it is understandable that Sirius fan fiction spiked after Sirius the character died in the books, but for Snape fan fiction to rise after the real life actor passed away is something different. Perhaps it shows the power Alan Rickman's acting, to thoroughly blur the lines between himself and the character he played- or maybe it shows the potential healing behind fan fiction- the ability to turn to a fandom that is also grieving and turn that grief into art.