give her love » james potter

love, lina

James Potter isn't scared of anything.

He remembers falling as his first memory. Off of brooms and bikes and while running so fast you'd seem to get a whiplash of sorts. He'd grown up with bruises on long limbs and broken bones every few weeks, it never scared of him. It almost fueled some deep passion in him, to always seek adventure.

It made sense to ask the boy with a scowl filled with nervousness if he wanted to sit together on the train ride. It made sense that the sorting hat didn't hesitate to yell Gryffindor. It made sense to become best friends with Sirius, Remus, and Peter, then cause mayhem wherever they went. It made sense to pull all these ridiculous stunts to impress Lily Evans because love was always the greatest adventure in his opinion. It made sense to become a chaser in second year. It made sense to ask Sirius to come over for Christmas and Easter and summer and eventually to just stay forever.

Everyone likes to think James Potter is some spontaneous guy, but in reality, he only does what makes sense to him. Nobody every understands the logic though.

His parents are older. Having him fairly late in their lives and filled with streaks of grey and decade old jokes. But James has never minded because it's never been the age that defines a good parent, it's the character.

Euphemia is a loud woman. She yells when she loses at chess, screams at the sight of spiders, and always has a laugh so loud that it echoes for days in the large mansion. As loud as she is, she knows how to listen and that's how everybody remembers her. Though she passes on her volume to her son, she gives him her most memorable trait of being a good listener.

Fleamount has enough money to buy too many mansions and still be considered rich. But, instead he buys a single mansion that tiptoes on the line of being called a large house, and enjoys donating to charities, investing in small businesses, and teaching his son the simpler things in life. He likes to play chess and the piano and tries to play some quidditch though he has a bad knee.

James grows up privellaged but is grounded by his parent's normality. He's never had a hand me down or an old broom model, but he's also been taught that shiny and new has never equaled value. So when the time comes and he sees his team mates with older models, he almost doesn't even register it. It's not the broom that makes the player, it's the player that makes the broom, his dad always told him.

When he was younger and his father went to work, he'd sit in the kitchen with his mother and draw mountains with dragons all day. James wasn't a good artist, but he enjoyed art, and maybe that was enough.

"Wow," his mother says, as she puts down some fresh banana bread in front of him. "I have my very own Monet."

He shakes his head. "Don't you think I'm more of an Andy Warhol?"

Euphemia turns her head, looking at the picture from a different angle. "I see the Warhol," she agrees, but points at the mountains. "But Monet's art makes me happy and this makes me happy. So to me, you're a Monet."

James is eight. He doesn't comprehend fully what she's telling him at that moment, but he will in the future and it's one of those memories that sticks out to him from his childhood. The idea of perspective and the value we give everything.

Of course he knows Angelina Peirce.

He remembers that she was before him during sorting, the way she had long dark hair was pulled into this intricate braid, how he stared at it to calm his nerves. He remembers more than just the braid, he remembers how nervous she looked and they way their eyes met and he smiled in a hopefully reassuring away and he remembers the way her face fell as she became a Hufflepuff, but, then it was gone with a smile that he knew couldn't be real.