The Most Popular of Them All:
a look at fanfiction’s favorite ships

BY SHIRLEY WU

There are many aspects to the Harry Potter franchise: books, movies, a new play, studio tours and theme parks. But when it comes to gauging fan reaction, there’s probably no better place than fanfiction; with ~760,000 stories on fanfiction.net, ~110,000 on Archive of Our Own, and ~80,000 on Harry Potter Fanfiction - that's a lot of reactions.

For this visualization, I looked into Harry Potter Fanfiction because of its more manageable numbers, meaningful metadata, and (I’ll be real) relatively family-friendly content. First interesting find: the number of stories peaked in 2007 at 12,613 stories, held steady at around 7,000 until 2011, and have been rapidly declining since. Second interesting (though not unexpected) find: at 52,908 stories, Romance is the most popular genre - almost twice as popular as the next biggest genre, Drama (29,429).

So of course, I was curious about all the ships: who does the fandom want to see with whom? The top two - Lily and James, and Ginny and Harry - are definitely canon, but the third - Hermione and Draco - is non-canon. (I have this theory that Dramione blew up after Hermione punched Draco in the third movie, but alas, the data is inconclusive.) The most popular leading lady is undoubtedly Hermione, with a whopping six suitors.



Explore Hermione’s stories, or select another character to see theirs:

canon non-canon

LilyJamesSiriusSnapeTonksChoDeanDracoFredOrGeorgeGinnyHarryHermioneKrumLavenderLunaPansyRemusRonRoseScorpius

Hermione
1 st film5 th book
200220032004200520062007200820092010201120122013201420152016123456781234567Total (0 stories)

A tribute

My family immigrated to America when I was 10 years old, and I spoke no English. I studied every day, motivated by the need to understand what was going on around me. My dictionary-reading paid off and half a year later, I was deemed "fluent enough". I was able to read most grade-school books by then, but the Harry Potter series eluded me; I had checked out Sorcerer’s Stone many times, but found it too difficult every time.

When Goblet of Fire came out that summer, my parents came back from Costco with the hardcover. Money was still tight in our household back then, and I had never owned such a beautiful book; I was touched and determined to get through the whole book. When I did, I was ecstatic. I binged the first three books, and was proud when I joined my first Harry Potter conversation.

I have only good memories associated with Harry Potter, from that first hardcover (my parents made it a tradition to buy me every hardcover since), to the 3am screenings with my college floormates, to the full-theatre standing ovation as the credits rolled on the final film. It’s given me a whole other world to daydream about, and a sense of belonging in this one.

This year is the 20th anniversary of Philosopher’s Stone.
With all my love, thank you JKR








many many thank you’s to Catherine Madden for
the beautiful illustrations of every character (and of me) 😍


made with 💖 for January: datasketch|es
a monthly collaboration between Nadieh Bremer and Shirley Wu