(Untitled)

[eldarwannabe]

I just went searching for my absolute favorite Harry Potter fic and found out that the site it was on is down, the Wayback Machine does not have it, and it has not been uploaded to AO3.

*breathes into a paper bag*

It was called Hermione, a History, it was by Nope, I can see it linked here on the Internet Archive

Comments

[anglophile09]

I had a similar problem with my favorite Harry Potter fic. The full fic had been on the author's own site, but that disappeared years ago. Most of the fic had been uploaded onto one of the old HP fic sites (Astronomy Tower, or something?) but there were a couple of shorter interlude chapters the author had written and these were not included. In my case after years of missing those chapters I actually did find on single screenshot from the wayback machine. I should check AO3, so I can leave some kind of feedback, but I'm guessing my favorite fic is from the same generation as yours, and those authors have taken their stuff down completely.

[eldarwannabe]

THIS IS THE PROBLEM OF THE INTERNET.

And digital media altogether. All these things are disappearing and we want to re-read them! AO3 is trying to fix it for future generations of readers and writers, but there is so much that pre-dates AO3 and frankly, let's see how long it lasts.

I've seriously got to start downloading things for myself. I'm almost afraid to go back to find other things because I know so much of it will be gone. :(

[anglophile09]

There was one Harry Potter fic author I really liked, but at some point (this was years and years ago, maybe 2008) she announced that she was publishing work in the so-called real world, so she was taking down her fics. For a short while she made them available in PDF form, which I got. It's THOUSANDS of pages.

It's a shame that the newer generation of readers has no access to the old stuff! My laptop has some very old bookmarks, especially for HP fanfic, but I wonder how much of it is still accessible. A lot of seems to be on "Fiction Alley" and I wonder if that's still around. I hope AO3 is able to stick around for a while. For the most part we'll just have to hope that authors continue to migrate their fic from place to place.