Tried to read
Harry Potter at Seventeen, but the author's attitude was too much for me to handle (in my experience, any fic that claims to be better than canon is one you should run, not walk, away from), though the recommendation of Thanfiction's stories is heartily supported -- for those of you who don't already know, Thanfiction is the author who wrote
Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness, which is
the fic about what was going on at Hogwarts while Harry was out on the Horcrux hunt. It's dark and often brutal and intense (and the sequels, taking place some years afterwards, are even darker), but
really well-written. Fans of Neville Longbottom are doubly urged to read these stories.
I had a collection of fic recommendations back at the House, and it's always a possibility that someone didn't catch them, so... reposting some of them here. All of them are genfics, largely because I prefer genfics to ship-fics, though some of them have romantic pairings (usually canon pairings).
Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past by S'Tarkan is one of those "Harry travels backwards in time to relive his Hogwarts years, only with knowledge of what's going to happen, so that this time around he'll do a better job" stories that have grown so popular in the later years. Most of these fics are pretty awful, turning Harry into a hugely annoying, self-righteous and hypocritical Stu, but some of them do a really good job of presenting the concept -- and
Nightmares of Futures Past is probably the best of them.
The story takes place in an AU where Harry doesn't manage to defeat Voldemort until the age of thirty, and by that time Hogwarts is in ruins and everyone is dead. Almost succumbing to depression, Harry finally hits upon a way to send his adult mind and memories back to the past, giving his eleven-year-old self all the knowledge of the years to come, so that he can change history and avoid the biggest disasters.
The rest of the fic sees Harry discovering that trying to change everything for the better isn't all that easy, and sometimes it seems like Fate insists on things happening the same way nio matter what he does while other times he changes too much and renders his foreknowledge useless because things go differently. Suffice to say, you can't have an eleven-year-old with the mind of a thirty-year-old running around knowing too much about everything and manipulating people and events without someone eventually getting suspicious... and it's amazing how certain people won't automatically take lip even from the Boy-Who-Lived.
It's not a perfect fic, and it hasn't updated for months now, but S'Tarkan hits more targets than he misses, and just about every single chapter has at least one completely awesome moment. It also features the best-written Horace Slughorn I've seen in any fanfic.
Hogwarts Houses Divided by Inverarity is probably the best "Teddy Lupin goes to Hogwarts" story I've read, largely because it's so much more than just "Hogwarts, the Next Generation." It has its own story to tell, its own secret plots and its own problems and dangers -- because the wizarding world's problems didn't all die with Voldemort.
It's Teddy Lupin's first year at Hogwarts, and inter-House relations are worse than ever before -- Slytherin in particular is more loathed than even in Harry's day, and the competition between Houses is one step short of open war. The Sorting Hat is sick of it, and after the year's Sorting gives the following ultimatum:
Either you people learn to get along, or I quit the entire Sorting business.The following story becomes a struggle for everyone involved, as teachers and students try to better House relations, and the inevitable backlash makes everything worse. Since Inverarity has wisely decided not to just stick to Teddy Lupin's POV, we get thorough descriptions of life in all four Houses -- Hufflepuff and Slytherin especially. All the students --apart from Teddy -- and a few of the teachers are OCs, of course, but most of them are pretty good characters in their own right (and all the major canon characters get at least an appearance; Neville and Slughorn are the most prominant, but Harry, Ron and Draco Malfoy turn out to play important roles towards the end).
Inverarity has also written the two Alexandra Quick stories -- Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle and its sequel, Alexandra Quick and the Lands Below -- which are
completely OC-dominated, given that they take place in the American wizarding world around the time of the epilogue of
Deathly Hallows. Canon events are only mentioned briefly (most importantly Voldemort and, surprisingly, SPEW), although it gets obvious that Voldemort's short reign in Britain has had definite influences on other countries as well, which has huge consequences for this story.
Alexandra Quick is an American eleven-year-old Muggleborn (or so she thinks) who gets accepted into Charmbridge Academy in order to learn magic -- and just like Harry before her discovers that there's more to her past than just being born a witch, and more to her future than just learning magic. What makes Alexandra different from all the Mary Sue OCs out there is that she quickly discovers that she can't do anything she wants and get away with it; her headstrong stubbornness lands her into trouble more often than not (even earning her the nickname "Troublesome") and she falls flat on her ass more than once for thinking she can handle things when she's actually completely outclassed. And it's all written with such wit and charm that both Alexandra and her friends come across as likeable in all their folly and bad decicions.
Thankfully, Inverarity doesn't try to turn Charmbridge into Hogwarts, and the American wizarding world has enough of its own unique quirks to make it plausible as a different country and culture, but enough familiar things to place it in the same world. If you don't mind OCs, you can't do much better than these stories.
Back in the "canon characters" type fanfics; one of the most intriguing -- and creepiest -- HP fanfics I've read is The Very Secret Diary by Arabella. The entire fic happens during
Chamber of Secrets and consists of Ginny's diary entries and Tom Riddle's answers. The fic is pretty old -- it was written even before
Order of the Phoenix came out -- and there are some very minor inconsistencies with canon as a result... but the only really notable thing is that Ginny's full name is given as "Virginia" instead of "Ginevra." If you can swallow that, the fic is really excellent reading material, though also extremely disturbing in how Voldemort manipulates and uses the poor girl, and how she gradually realizes what's happening but finds herself powerless to stop it -- even if she does put up a fight.
If you want a really
evil Voldemort, this is where to find him.
More lighthearted, but with the same narrative technique, is the
Hermione, Queen of Witches series by the same author, where the premise is that Hermione too has a diary that answers back when she writes in it -- but Hermione's diary (Guenivere, nicknamed "Gwen") is not evil and doesn't try to take her over. So we get the canon events from Hermione's point of view (and Gwen's often quite amusing commentary) through year one, two, three and four, with the beginning of year five written before the author seems to have vanished off the face of the Earth. It's pretty fun to see the canon story from a different point of view, espesially when year four also includes the companion piece Ron's Rants -- where Ron gets to tell his side of the story.
Arabella captures the voices of Ginny, Ron and Hermione perfectly, and you have no problem believing that yeah, this could very well be how things were even in canon.
Finally, for this round at least, there's the utterly hilarious Harmless and Easily Domesticated by Angie Astravic. Taking place in a slight AU that's formed by the author's own stories (though you don't need to read any of them for this fic to make sense), the story has the Ministry of Magic deciding that Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures class is too dangerous and forbidding him from teaching the kids about any creature that's classified higher than XX -- Harmless and easily domesticated.
Needless to say, things don't go completely smoothly, even if we do get to see a number of the various magical creatures that populate the HP world and the various problems you can have with them, even when they're not actively trying to kill you. Also includes a "You Might Be a Redneck Wizard If" test, and Snape's "substitution potion ingredients."
Home 
It is scarily well done and is worth the read. You should check it out! 
