Back before JK Rowling wrote a short 800 story for the Waterstones 'What's you story?' there was a challenge community for fanfic authors to write their own 'prequel' style fic.  The challenge was as follows: "use 800 words exactly, no more, no less, to tell us a bit about what happened in the years before Harry's birth. Plot, characters, and themes are up to you.£  The community is here.

And the reason I tell you this?  Because people are all so very busy with NaNoWriMo, NaNoBlogMo, fanfiction challenges and all sorts of busy-ness that maybe we don't have time to read much at the moment, but a love of reading is the reason why most of us write in the first place, so check out this masterlist of brilliant short stories.  They won't take up much of your time and hopefully the reminder of how fun reading is will encourage us to write more this weekend. :o)