Oh, you're right about Ginny and Luna vs. Lily and Snape. S/L is presented as a friendship while Luna is presented as this girl who's picked on and that's how Ginny meets her. Snape might be funny-looking but nobody's picking on him when Lily meets him. With Snape I think it's more showing that Lily doesn't judge people on superficial things the way Draco or Pansy would. With Luna it's that Ginny is great because she doesn't join in picking on Luna and stands up to other people who do. Lily doesn't have to stick up for Snape until they meet MWPP.
We don't really get anything about whether James changed any more than Sirius did, I don't think, since we don't see him. I think what we're told is that they're both made Head Boy and Girl in 7th year (why on earth James would be made Head Boy is a mystery...) and there's a vague mention of James having deflated his head a bit. It's more like the way somebody might say, if somebody saw Harry raging around in OotP, "well, Ginny started going out with him the next year, after he'd calmed the fuck down a little." It's not that there was some big change in Harry, he's just not as intense in that way later.
In some ways Sirius changed a lot more than James, growing old in jail. He just didn't regret anything about Snape or anything that he and James had done together. Did James? I don't know, but not necessarily. James did, presumably, want her to date him. But I don't think he necessarily changed any more or less than Sirius, even if Lily gave him a reason to reign himself in a little that Sirius didn't have.
I guess I'm not sure I even see James and Lily as "supposed to be epic." I think it's supposed to be sad that they died and that they were happily married, but I don't see them as any more epic a pair than Harry and Ginny or Ron and Hermione. They were a bickering couple who really liked each other underneath--tragic that they died young, but not otherwise tragic. Even the whole idea that Lily "changed" James is getting a little out of proportion. We didn't learn James needed any changing until the fifth book where he comes off badly to Harry, and the response isn't any story of Lily changing him but his friends laughing about how James could be an idiot at that age.
The change idea was even further put down in DH when we find out the Prank came before SWM. That was the thing that had previously been connected to James' change, because that was the heroic thing he did. Only it turned out he did that before SWM--probably it was more that that got Lily's attention. It's just that this whole idea that James shaped up for Lily really isn't supported in canon. It's just a joke--James stopped hexing Snape where Lily could see him and she agreed to go out with him in 7th year since by then his head had deflated a bit. At least that's the way I'm remember it now.
It seems more like James was always the good guy and Snape was always fatally flawed, and while good!Lily was friends with little, more innocent Snape she grew up to love the good man James was always going to grow up to be. No more fundamentally changed from the kid on the train than anyone else (because nobody changes much in this universe; their choices just gradually show who they are).
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We don't really get anything about whether James changed any more than Sirius did, I don't think, since we don't see him. I think what we're told is that they're both made Head Boy and Girl in 7th year (why on earth James would be made Head Boy is a mystery...) and there's a vague mention of James having deflated his head a bit. It's more like the way somebody might say, if somebody saw Harry raging around in OotP, "well, Ginny started going out with him the next year, after he'd calmed the fuck down a little." It's not that there was some big change in Harry, he's just not as intense in that way later.
In some ways Sirius changed a lot more than James, growing old in jail. He just didn't regret anything about Snape or anything that he and James had done together. Did James? I don't know, but not necessarily. James did, presumably, want her to date him. But I don't think he necessarily changed any more or less than Sirius, even if Lily gave him a reason to reign himself in a little that Sirius didn't have.
I guess I'm not sure I even see James and Lily as "supposed to be epic." I think it's supposed to be sad that they died and that they were happily married, but I don't see them as any more epic a pair than Harry and Ginny or Ron and Hermione. They were a bickering couple who really liked each other underneath--tragic that they died young, but not otherwise tragic. Even the whole idea that Lily "changed" James is getting a little out of proportion. We didn't learn James needed any changing until the fifth book where he comes off badly to Harry, and the response isn't any story of Lily changing him but his friends laughing about how James could be an idiot at that age.
The change idea was even further put down in DH when we find out the Prank came before SWM. That was the thing that had previously been connected to James' change, because that was the heroic thing he did. Only it turned out he did that before SWM--probably it was more that that got Lily's attention. It's just that this whole idea that James shaped up for Lily really isn't supported in canon. It's just a joke--James stopped hexing Snape where Lily could see him and she agreed to go out with him in 7th year since by then his head had deflated a bit. At least that's the way I'm remember it now.
It seems more like James was always the good guy and Snape was always fatally flawed, and while good!Lily was friends with little, more innocent Snape she grew up to love the good man James was always going to grow up to be. No more fundamentally changed from the kid on the train than anyone else (because nobody changes much in this universe; their choices just gradually show who they are).