I'm looking for fics that started all those popular cliches.
Where did Gringotts blood tests come from, Wizengamot Lords, magical cores, WBWL, soul bonds, Snape being Draco's godfather, Longbottoms being Harry's godparents etc. etc.

 

Unsung Hero was one of the earliest WBWL-fics, if not the first. The earliest magical nobility appearance I've come across was in A Lord and His Lady, which also split the Wizengamot into Tory and Whig parties, or something like that. The latter was taken off of FFN and revised, but was abandoned far earlier than the endpoint of its predecessor, so it's pretty much lost.

 

It might be important to specify whether you're looking for the Ur-Example, the Trope Maker, or the Trope Codifier (from TVTropes). Fanfiction has so many stories out there, and so many are derivative of each other, that it's difficult to determine where a particular cliche "began." I was not a fanfic reader when the above stories were published, so I cannot be sure, but I believe they would be the Codifiers - they are not necessarily the first fics of a given type, but they are the first fic that everybody remembers, because they set the standard for all fics that followed.

 

I think I may have been responsible for that trend of putting bullshit pseudo-clever quotes at the beginning of every chapter. My bad.

Hmm... earliest Harry and Draco become sort of friends/allies I can recall is probably Barb and her trilogy.

Lori, back in 2000, possibly had the first readable post-Hogwarts fanfic. It was Harry/Hermione, if I remember correctly. Here's a link: http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/lori/TPOU01.html

Wow, been about thirteen years since I read that one.

What else can I think of... Promises Unbroken by Robin4 - https://www.fanfiction.net/s/1248431/1/Promises-Unbroken

I remember being supremely envious of how good that story was at the time. May give it another read now, see how it holds up.

Agree with Ched that Power of Time was the fic that launched a thousand trunks.

 

Don't quote me on this but I think Summer of Change was the story that made Unspeakables the super spy/hitmen.

 

Though not the first HP Peggy Sue, by far the most influential was S'TarKan/Viridian's Nightmares of Futures Past. This story also popularized the magical core business. (Again, not a first, but he made it a fanon staple.)

Ruskbyte (Order of the Phoenix) for the first unabashedly over-the-top Super!Harry.

Full Pensieve's Harry Potter and the Year of Rebellion was coincident with Russ's Power of Time as among the first major "Indy!Harry" stories that set in motion many of the tropes.

I'm pretty sure jbern's Bungle in the Jungle started the whole spell-chaining thing that's been copied a gazillion times.

I'm also pretty sure Jeconais started the Harry/Daphne pairing with Perfect Situations. His This Means War was arguably the one that popularized the whole "Nobody told me it couldn't be done so I just broke the laws of magic" trope.

Possibly Joe6991 and Cygnus Crux for the sprawling, massive-world, existential-threat, multi-book epics.

 

Thanks for all fics.

Ah TVTropes... I learned so many things there, that I later needed to unlearn because they were false.

I think that both trope makers and trope codifiers are what I'm looking for. Trope maker is still revelant, because codifiers are usually based on them.

What tropes did that one start? James and Sirius being aurors or something that died out after later books came out?