I Am Begging You to Try Harry Potter Fan Fiction

[00:00] life. The first one was having a baby girl. The second one was discovering Claude code. And the third one was getting absolutely obsessed with Harry the channel where we talk about productivity or like AI or like how to

[00:15] 9 years, sharing things that I find interesting, I'm going to talk to you about Harry Potter fanfiction because I have been literally evangelizing it to you're open to trying something new, then hopefully this video will give you

[00:31] some of my favorite Harry Potter fanfiction book recommendations. I'm going to explain what fanfiction actually is in case [music] you are like

[00:44] know, I'd heard of fanfiction as a concept. And I used to think that fanfiction was basically just, you know, some teenage girls who were like taking

[00:56] scenes from a book and like turning it into like, you know, spicy romantic sex scenes or some something like that. And from speaking to uh my wife who's that actually is broadly what the, you know, what the teenage girls were into.

[01:12] that would be like saying that like all books are basically just Fifty Shades of Fifty Shades of Gray. And I was a dumbass for characterizing fanfiction as

[01:26] that was my bad and totally my loss over the last like 20 years of not like until about the middle of 2025 when I stumbled across a thread on Reddit that

[01:42] "Huh, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality." This actually rings a bell. The reason it rang a bell is because over the last like five or so years, I've heard about three different friends independently recommend Harry

[01:57] friend Cliff Whitesman. He's been on my podcast a couple of times, featured on brother, I was hanging out with them one time and they were both gushing about

[02:09] was like, "Ah, come on." Like fanfiction, like why would I read Harry which was, you know, [music] to my discredit. And a couple of other people then I saw it on Reddit like last year, and I was like, "Okay, I think it's time

[02:25] sources for me to for me to give it a chance." And immediately I was hooked and I was just so totally like man words cannot describe just like how much this

[02:39] book just completely gripped me all the way through. So this is kind of this was sort of my gateway drug into the world of Harry Potter fanfiction. Harry Potter fanfiction which is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by

[02:53] Eleazar Yukowski. Interestingly, Elazu Yukowski is also like one of the OG AI safety researchers, and he's recently come up with a book called If We Build but it's kind of random that he wrote this Harry Potter fanfiction like many

[03:07] years ago. Anyway, so Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is 662,000 words. Now, the entirety of all seven books of Harry Potter are about 1.1 million words. It's split up into six books within that. So, each book is its

[03:20] own like anime arc kind of thing. [music] And the idea behind methods of rationality is that it follows Harry in an alternative universe where instead of Aunt Petunia marrying Uncle Vernon, she actually married a guy who's like a

[03:32] professor of chemistry at Oxford University. And so Harry grows up in this loving household where his parents are like total nerds, or at least his about the scientific method and how science works and how history works and

[03:46] how maths works. And so when he gets his letter at the age of 11 saying, "You've like, "Wait, what?" And he doesn't believe it. And then Professor McGonagal comes to his house and like has to convince him that like magic is legit.

[04:00] Harry, he's like Harry who's sort of this sort of autistic soant type character where he's like super super super sciency and clever and mathsy and like giving Hermione a run for her money, but also he's a bit like socially

[04:15] uh inept and you know a little bit obnoxious and struggles to make friends happen if Harry went to Hogwarts but actually was like testing the principles Harry Potter. So, for example, you know, wingardium leviosa, what the hell?

[04:33] does it even mean? Like, why is it that those specific words in Latin [music] would happen? Huh? Is there a limit to what kind of weight or mass you can lift Hermione because she's into this stuff as well. Obviously, she's a nerd. And

[04:49] premise. And the methods of rationality, 662,000 words, basically covers Harry's first year. So, the Philosopher Stone is a thing. It's still Harry Potter and the

[05:01] Philosopher Stone, but man, like it's just so sick. I don't want to give more super popular, um, the community around it, like people who have enjoyed reading

[05:13] this fanfiction actually have created their own like audiobook version of it. Rowling does not allow anyone to monetize it. So, you're not allowed to internet. It does not put any money into JK Rowling's pocket if that's something

[05:29] turned it into a whole audio book with like, you know, sound effects and like know, 200,000 words of it and then I listened to the next 462,000 words of

[05:44] description to how you can download this. It is slightly annoying the fanfiction.net and then AO3 and mostly they're available in EPUB format. And so

[05:57] what I do is I use my Kindle and I send the Epub to my Kindle and then I read it put a link in the video description to all of the relevant EPUB files so that phone or I'm sure you can find a way to read Epop files. There's no romance in

[06:14] R-rated stuff so you don't need to worry that this is any of these like you know books that we're going to talk about further down the line. But this is sort of the Hunger Games in it. It's got some elements of like ah man. I don't I don't

[06:31] you start reading it and you're like holy freaking wo wo. I recommended it to a few friends, practically all of them who got through the first like five

[06:43] anime like you got to give it a little bit of time. Replied to me being like, "Holy moly, like I cannot believe how good this is." uh one of my friends Potter fan and was like, "Oh my god, this is incredible." So like it really

[06:58] Methods of Irrationality. Book number two is The Debt of Time by an author called Sha Lonnie. This is 727,000

[07:12] words. So again, the entire Harry Potter series is 1.1 million. This is 727,000 Like, I could not get enough of this book. So sick. This is also split up you read it on your Kindle and like loads of [ __ ] is going on and you're

[07:29] this?" And so then I started looking at word counts and I was like, "Yes, Time. So, this is a fanfiction based on Hermione's point of view. Everything

[07:42] happens the same up until the end of the Order of the Phoenix. So, you now have and then the Order of the Phoenix comes along and then the famous duel between Bellatrix and Sirius and then Sirius dies. Sorry if you haven't read it, but

[07:56] Sirius dies, goes through the veil and Harry's like, "Oh my gosh, Sirius is because we really like Sirius back. So, that happens at the end of the Order of spoiler, Dumbledore dies. You know, Snape does this thing where he vatavas

[08:12] Dumbledore. And so the death of time starts out at the end of the half blood their little camping adventure to find, you know, all the horcruxes and stuff. a way to bring back the dead because we got to save Dumbledore. Like we can't do

[08:27] the dead." And so Hermione obviously then goes to the restricted section of the library to try and figure out like, is there any kind of rituals or dark dead. She realizes that she can't really bring back Dumbledore because he was a

[08:42] little thing that's like there's this ritual, this blood magic ritual that minute, the veil. Sirius went through the veil. He didn't really get a he got

[08:56] in like chapter 1 of like fre 300 chapters. So, I'm not I'm not really manages to bring Sirius [music] Black back from the dead. You wouldn't think

[09:08] that this would be a premise worthy of 772,000 words, but it really is because Sirius's presence in the Deathly Hallows changes camping trip. It's Harry, Hermione, and Sirius because obviously he's helping

[09:25] so so so good. It's incredible. There is some romance and like a handful of R-rated scenes in this. They're not really central to the plot. So, if you

[09:38] if you're weird and you don't like R-rated scenes, you are welcome to like a few different threads of romance which I personally really like. It wasn't point is, you know, the story line is kind of secondary. The romance and and

[09:53] thread that goes through it. The R-rated scenes are like skippable if you don't incredible story. And I I literally cried when it ended. It was like the

[10:06] the end of the Death of Time. So that would be recommendation number two. depending on what you like. I [music] would recommend starting out with the

[10:18] an audio book uh kind of by default. You can turn all the rest of these into like obviously it's better when it's actually recorded as an audio book with of stuff which is what you get with the methods of rationality.

[10:36] So now we're going to come to book number three. Book number three is a series of four books that totals currently 1.4 million words. Again the than the entire Harry Potter series and it's you add in another Goblet of Fire

[10:54] and you get like the Riel Black Chronicles. These four books, the first author, her name is Murky Blue Matter, has started writing the fifth one, but you do is if you trust my recommendations on this, is [music] you

[11:11] it sort of rounds the series together very nicely. and I will let you know or you can keep an eye on the discord forum uh when book five becomes like is a you

[11:23] know becomes more active. So this is one where I was not expecting to enjoy it because the premise of the Riel Black Chronicles is that it's an alternative universe. Now in this alternative universe two things are crucially

[11:36] lord. He actually becomes a politician. The politician Lord Riddle and he's the head of like the pure blood supremacist kind of party. and he manages to pass through this legislation that makes Hogwarts only available for pureb blood

[11:50] blood. Obviously Dumbledore's trying to oppose this. And so Dumbledore is sort of like the opposition political faction to Lord Riddle and his uh so party is like people getting cruced and killed and stuff. Sort of is like in the

[12:05] in sort of cannon Voldemort's like evil reign. So it's quite like politically based if you're into that sort of thing. But the second crucial twist [music] in this alternative universe is that Harry Potter is in fact Harriet Potter. She's

[12:20] because she really wants to go to Hogwarts. The reason she really wants to in the world is Master Sea Snape, and he teaches at Hogwarts. And so, Harriet

[12:34] Potter, the daughter of Lilian James Potter, really, really, really wants to potions. She's like a potions savant, a pro potions prodigy. She's been reading like potioner weekly since she was like three. She's been experimental brewing

[12:49] go to Hogwarts because she's a half blood because James is pure blood. Pure blood of Potter family. But then Lily Evans was famously a mongleborn. And so Harriet Potter is a half-blood. The whole premise is that Harriet Potter is

[13:03] I'm not like giving that many details away. Now Sirius has a kid. That kid's name is Archie. And Archie is a pureb blood wizard who really does not want to go to Hogwarts cuz he really wants to be a healer. And the American Institute of

[13:16] Magic, which is the Hogwarts of America, is has a really good healer track. And you, you know, the American Institute of Magic accept half bloodoods cuz they're so. And so Archie and Harriet concoct this big plot where they're going to

[13:32] swap places with each other. So Archie is going to pretend to be Harry and go to the American Institute of Magic where he meets Hermione Granger, who's a, you know, muggleborn who also goes to AIM to try and become a healer. And Harriet

[13:44] Potter is going to polyjuice herself into becoming Archie Black, a dude, and she's going to go to Hogwarts to try and learn potions from Master Sea Snape. Now sharing a dorm room with like Draco Malfoy and like those people and so and

[14:00] becomes like Snape's protege, shall we say? And all of this [ __ ] happens in like chapter 3. And then you've got 1.4 million words of stuff that happens as a result of this like swapperoo. And the reason I was not expecting to enjoy this

[14:14] when I first like saw the plot summary cuz someone recommended it on Reddit, I was like, "Oh, come on. This is going to be one of these trashy crappy boy swaps going to be some it's a boy girl thing kind of nonsense." H But then, you know,

[14:30] should not judge a book by its premise. [laughter] Uh I should not judge Harry Potter fanfiction by its premise and I'm so glad I did. Again, I cried when this one uh when when this one was over. I regret how fast I read I read it because

[14:44] as long as I did. I would say this is actually of the five that I'm recommending probably my favorite one." And I'm so sad that like the author has Taiwan and had a baby and stuff. And the Discord group for this is still active.

[14:59] waiting desperately for Violet to like, you know, write her updates on the please, we need book five. We need it. We need it. We need it so badly. It's so incredible. Absolutely incredible. You will not regret reading the Riel Black

[15:17] Chronicles. All right, now we come to recommendation two years of your life are sorted by just like going with my Harry Potter like honestly, just like follow my recommendations in the in the right

[15:33] called Backwards with Purpose. How many words is this? This is a bit short. This is only 392,000 words. Um, which is about a third of the entire Harry Potter cannon because that's 1.1 million words. So, again, I was I was sad by how few

[15:47] It's split up into two books. For any of these things, I would say do don't look up any spoilers. Don't even look up the titles of the books cuz I'm going to be of book two because the title of book two somewhat gives some of the game away

[16:05] recommendations on this. I did not and I was so glad I didn't. Here's the the final battle of Hogwarts, the good guys win. Sure, Voldemort gets defeated,

[16:17] but Voldemort is a lot more vicious than he was in cannon. And he decides, screw unleash it through the entire school. And so the battle of Hogwarts ends with alive by fiend fire. And so the only survivors really that we care about is

[16:35] Harry, Ron, and Jinny. They are the three survivors of the Battle of He died in book six. McDonald's. Like everyone's dead except Harry, Ron, and Harry, Ron, and Jinny are freaking depressed. They're like on the verge of

[16:51] The wizarding world is a shell of its former self. All of our loved ones are dead. Like Herman's gone, everyone's gone. They asked the question, "What if we went back in time and we were able to save more people? We were still able to

[17:04] save more people in the final battle of Hogwarts?" They go to Dumbledore's spoilers. Uh, they go to Dumbledore's portrait at Hogwarts. And like, people from getting killed. And Dumbledore's portrait is really helpful.

[17:21] He's like, "Guys, there's this dodgy ritual called the Tears of Merlin that potion, but this potion can actually help you travel back in time. Time toners only go so far, but the tears of Merlin will take you back to 1991 or

[17:35] like, you know, Harry's first year, except you'll the three of you will go the first time around." And so all of this happens in like chapter 1. And so the next 333,000 words of this are what happens when Harry, Ron, and Jinny go

[17:50] back in time to year 1, i.e. the philosopher stone when they're like 11 and 10 with all of the knowledge, all of the powers, all of the skills that 10-year-old. And they're going to Hogwarts for the first time. And they

[18:04] are trying to change time in a way that doesn't like tiny wimy destroy the world, but in a way that like ensures their victory without like all these going back and already being freaking legendary witch like or you know

[18:18] freaking like insanely powerful like witches and wizards. Ron has scabbers. They're like holy [ __ ] [ __ ] scab that [ __ ] like but wait we can't let him

[18:30] and like you know stage the Askaban mass breakout that happened in book three because Scabers like we obviously know who Scabs is all this sort of stuff and you know, when Snape giving Harry grief in like the first potions class and

[18:47] through all of this [ __ ] and he knows that Snape's a good guy and he knows Imagine what would happen and how sick it would be if you could do that. That's

[18:59] the next 332,000 words. And it's got like some murder mystery elements. It's got like secret puppeteer puppet master whose identity is unknown kind of recommendations, it it would be very easy for someone to dismiss it to be

[19:14] know what they are and we know where they are." It's like, but no, it's not be like 5,000 words, not 332,000 words. It's a really, really good premise. It's

[19:26] fanfiction world and other fanfictions have the concept of time travel, but obviously time travel is hard to it's hard to get right. I think everyone kind you know you introduce the time toner in the prison of Aszkaban [music] and then

[19:42] prophecy or whatever in in the in the department of mysteries in like book ton of problems right but like from book four onwards is it's as if time toners

[19:55] department of mysteries in order of the phoenix and so JK Rowling didn't do time you have time time turner to stop Voldemort from like rising in book four the time travel premise really well. And one thing in in in books in like fiction

[20:12] called? It's a trope, the idiot hat, I think is what they what they call it, doing something that you're like, oh, it's so obviously a freaking stupid because they have to for the sake of the plot. There's maybe a couple couple of

[20:28] but but for the most part like the characters are intelligent. They take it. It's it's not as simple as oh why couldn't you just dot a dot because they

[20:41] they might have tried it and resulted in all sorts of catastrophes. So really really really good short series 332,000 words only uh backwards with purpose by

[20:53] dead woodpecker. And then finally, book number five I'm going to mention is called Manacold and it's by the author Sen Linu. And how long is this? This is 371,000 words. Again, canon is 1.1 million. So, it's

[21:06] Now, Manacold is interesting. It's actually been turned into a proper book. a few months ago, and sold like hundreds of thousands of copies in its first week. Manold is a Harry Potter fanfiction that's set in a

[21:21] post-apocalyptic Voldemort has won era. So Harry's dead, Ron's dead, everyone's dead because Voldemort won the final battle of Hogwarts. like we're supposed to be having lunch and my sticks getting cold. But

[21:34] know the Death Eaters and the Pure Blood families lost a lot of, you know, good guys and stuff during the war. [music] And so Voldemort institutes a breeding program. And what he does is that all of the women that we know and love from the

[21:48] girls from the Harry Potter series, they all get like press ganged into this forced breeding program where they have to basically become the concubines of these like pure blood heads of houses and stuff so that they can like

[22:02] that happens in like chapter 1. So that's sort of like the premise that we're going into this with. It's like super super dark. The interesting thing here is that Hermione ends up as Draco Malfoy's girl where he and all of the

[22:17] other like Slytherins, death eaters and stuff are basically forced by Voldemort sorts of trigger warnings as you can imagine with this sort of premise. It's really really really dark. You've got a lot of torture. You got a lot of like I

[22:31] mean other than the cruciatist curse, you don't really see like what could magic do if you were really intent on causing someone pain and harm. You don't about how, you know, the first wizarding world pre Voldemort being vanquished by

[22:45] you know, the order was was was first a thing. You hear about how it was like in the background. You don't really see it firsthand up close, but in Manicold,

[22:57] and the Death Eaters, but like a level of viciousness ramped up like 10x to what it is in cannon. and like the Order of the Phoenix also having to do like really dodgy things to like does the end justify the means? Like if they're

[23:12] people and we're like trying to not cause too much too much collateral of themes that are overlaid on this background of like this force breeding

[23:25] like Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger and like the whole backstory and all of disturbing in in in a lot of places but really really really good and really

[23:37] book that people seem to love. So these are my Harry Potter fanfiction I'd love to hear a comment down below if you like some of these. And I'm in the

[23:49] Alexandra Quick series. Um, which starts off a bit slow. That's 1.5 million slow, but like I'm starting to get into it now in like book two. And there's a

[24:03] not I'm not really mentioning them here. In particular, I really, you know, they're called crackfix in like the the terminology where it's sort of like you

[24:16] of like when Voldemort tried to kill Harry when Harry was a baby you know a horcrux but but actually Harry is is actually a dark lord because Voldemort

[24:28] evil dark lord character when he gets into Hogwarts but it's a bit [snorts] supposed to be funny and stuff but I much prefer it when the books are

[24:41] poking fun at a premise. So that's why I read a few of these poking fun ones and like super sincerely and they're really really good. So anyway, that's it for

[24:54] this video. Thanks for watching. See you next time. Bye.