what if you just swapped james and lily in the narrative?
like, it would still blow because all the characters who aren't dead would still be men – sirius, remus, peter – but even the simple change of putting a lady in a close friendship with three guys would be incredible
harry looks up to lily, lily led a group of her classmates to become animagi to support their werewolf friend, lily is hilarious and brilliant and popular and she and her rich family take sirius in when he's homeless and try to love him, lily is arrogant and an obnoxious troublemaker and inhumanly braggy about her quidditch skills. lily is the linchpin around whom PoA turns, harry's source of inspiration and connection to the past
james had a sister he didn't get along with and a childhood friend who lily and her gang bully at hogwarts, james got hit on by slughorn and was told plainly it was ~despite~ his blood status, james thwarts people's expectations and mouths off but so that there's plausible deniability and james talks to flitwick after class, one supposes
harry doesn't think about james as much.
