I didn't do much to this story, only a few minor word changes. This was my first Lily/James work, and oddly enough still one of my personal favorites as well as fans'. This is usually not the case with first writings which are normally banished to some dark dusty hole of shame ("oh my GOD, did I actually write that?!") in a few years as the writer matures.
I originally published this on August 11th, 2005, almost exactly two years ago. Intended only as the prologue for a larger Lily/James story, I added a few chapters to it but gradually lost interest. A couple months later I decided it was better on its own, and reclassified it as a oneshot.
The First Oneshot
FIRE TO MATCH MY OWN: PUBLISHED AUGUST 11TH, 2005
They say that a first impression is the most important. I once believed that the first impression was so important, it was the only impression. If I didn't like someone, I never would like them. If I liked someone, I wouldn't ever dislike them. End of story.
I'd never really thought that people could change. I mean, a person is a person, right? And they're going to be that person as long as they live, yeah? So it was crazy to think that I, James Potter prankster extraordinaire, could ever change my wayward ways.
If I had to name the worst first impression I had ever gotten, it would be one James Potter gave me. I hated him. And by Lily law, once I hated someone, I would always hate them. But I had forgotten one thing: I belonged to a world where people flew on broomsticks and changed into animals. And in this world, where the laws of physics were defied every secondt…Lily law didn't stand much of a chance, either.
What I didn't count on was actually changing myself. Me, James Potter. I was a ladies man, a trickster, and Quidditch star, among other things. I was going to stay youthful and careless forever, and that was that. It was James Potter code not to care, and not to change. But hell, in a world where things are changed with a wave of a wand, James Potter code didn't stand a fighting chance.
James Potter somehow managed to, after years of being the main target of my enmity and being an immature nuisance in general, take my heart and turn my life topsy-turvy and his impression along with it.
Lily Evans somehow, after years of rejecting my advances, managed to initiate a transformation that changed me from the ladies man, careless trickster, and insufferable prat (as she so eloquently put it) into someone else. Someone who was thoughtful and sensitive, and all other traits I had erstwhile found despicably soft. And as for being a ladies man, I became a lady's man. And that lady was Lily.
Yes, I fell in love with James Potter.
Yes, I fell in love with Lily Evans.
And you know what?
We still are in love.