dear god Albus Potter do you utterly haunt my thoughts
Just… Albus in the cursed child, for as mixed as people seem to be on it… Albus as the certified middle child who doesn’t have the cloak, doesn’t have the map, who doesn’t even have a family name?
Can you imagine little Al (not yet Albus because that’s a name he truly goes by once he has Scorpius) tucking himself into the cracks of the door as he hears his parents talking, hears his dad say it would have been better to know they were having two boys so they could have just called him Sirius
Al, getting teased by his invisible brother, yet seeing so distinctly that his father chose James over him for their family legacy
Al, who grew up on the filtered advice of a distant, out of reach mentor who he could never live up to. Not like James with his fun, his humor, or Lily with her love and her girlhood.
(Albus, who will hear Cedric called the spare and understand far too well what it’s like to be of secondary importance)
Al, who out of all his siblings looks the most like his father, a reflection to every family friend of what harry went through and an eternal reminder to himself and the world that he will always be his father’s legacy (he will look in the mirror for most of his adult life and see his father before he sees himself)
Al, age 11, seeking comfort on the train platform as everything changes around him and getting another lecture about bravery that he doesn’t feel he has
Al becoming Albus on that train, when the boy who would become the most important person in his life actually asks him, asks him what he wants to be called
Albus, under the sorting hat, struggling but thinking about who he wants to be outside of his family’s legacy and getting put in Slytherin for it
Albus, who grew up on war stories and hogwarts hyjinks staying up half his first night because he’s afraid of his peers, but doesn’t want them to know that because he so desperately and conflictingly wants to both fit in and stand out
Albus, who is bad at flying, humiliating himself in front of his peers, because he isn’t harry but isn’t Quidditch player Ginny either… Albus, who all the adults see as Harry’s extension; Albus, who struggles with charms like Lily never will, who can barely make his matchstick silver under the blue eyed portrait in the room, who struggles to parse through the moving and unequal words of wizarding textbooks, who attracts bullies like flies and doesn’t yet have his mother’s hexes to fight back
Albus, struggling to write that first letter home, to tell his parents and little sister that he’s different from them; Albus who doesn’t even get to tell them because James tells them first
Albus, who doesn’t get a green scarf and hat until after the first snow, unable to parse if it’s the color, the fact that he’s the second born, or maybe just that it’s him that made it come later than James’ had
Albus, who goes back home for Christmas and faces his father’s disapproval for befriending a Malfoy, his father’s distrust and attempts to assure his morality for befriending someone harry assumes cruel and antagonistic
Albus, having to hold awkward conversation with Rose and Ron and Hermione, because neither of the kids want their parents to know they’re not talking (they find out eventually, and though they’re nice about it, Albus knows they’ll always put Rose’s feelings first)
Albus, who is suddenly assumed more malicious and problem causing than he ever was before, who suddenly is seen as a prime person to scot the blame off to when things go wrong
Albus, who gets chosen after his sister (“just like her mother!”) during the family quidditch match; who gets meaningful looks from his Uncle Percy; whose Christmas sweaters are no longer red but never green; who suddenly cant seem to talk to his uncle ron anymore, someone who used to understand what it was like to be James’ brother
Albus potter who stradles the line of too Potter for Slytherin and too Slytherin for his family.
Albus Potter, who’s ambition has been squashed out by bullies and disregard and distrust, struggling to find his identity in a house and world that is still in the midst of undoing decades as an indoctrination machine…
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