AGE: Twenty Five
BIRTHDAY: 27 March
BLOOD STATUS: Pureblood
PREVIOUS SCHOOL: Hogwarts School, Gryffindor House
OCCUPATION: Assistant to the British & Irish Quidditch League
FACE CLAIM: Maxence Danet-Fauvel
POSITIVE TRAITS: Paternal, Endearing, Protective, Confident
NEGATIVE TRAITS: Fidgety, Narrow-Minded, Stubborn
I. CHILDHOOD AND HOGWARTS YEARS: Fleamont Potter had met Euphemia Munter only a few short months after his graduation from Hogwarts- on a trip to Norway with his father at some boring posh party with people he didn’t know, wanting to go home and spend his final summer with his friends before he had to settle down with a job and familial duties. He hadn’t known then just what he had gotten himself into, only that Effie’s wicked smile and that gleam in her eyes lured him in and before he knew what was happening, he was besotted. They were married by that summer’s end; their wedding guests left to marvel at the fact they pulled off such an elaborate party in that short amount of time. But they had both always been the type who seemed to always get what they wanted, and they wanted to be married as quickly as possible.
The Potters had, however, struggled for years in their attempt to have children of their own. They tried everything they could and it was when the couple had been close to leaving their fifties when they decided a child was just not going to happen for them. While disheartened, they eventually came to accept it, so the two saw it as some kind of miracle when a few years later the unexpected happened and they found out they were expecting a child. Fleamont was a highly successful cosmetic potioneer by that time, well known for his ‘Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion’ and made more than enough to support his small family off the earnings from his most famous potion alone. However he was nearing his mid sixties and retirement had been in the back of his mind already, so Fleamont had put the company’s management in the hands of his assistant of five years, a young muggleborn lad who had slowly begun to know the working side of things better than Monty himself.
James Fleamont Potter had been his parent’s entire world. In their eyes he was a gift and could do absolutely no wrong, but he had also grown up extremely sheltered and blinded from any of the harsh realities of life. Between being a product of helicopter parenting and having no family his own age, James’s only playmates as a child were his mother and father. From the moment they woke up until they tucked James into bed they followed him around, doing their best to keep him entertained and shielding him from all danger at the same time. But keeping up with a hyperactive toddler isn’t as easy in your sixties and it often left James stuck still for longer than he was able to handle. His energy just continued to build up and he had no outlet for it, and he soon started to look for ways to release all of his extra energy on his own. There had been a phase when James was around five where he would just run at top speed around his home, jumping down staircases, and climbing every surface until he fell asleep in whatever spot he had decided he was finally tired in. Eventually he realized how much of a thrill a bit of mischief could give him and instead of running in circles he went around looking for trouble to get into. Just enough for that bit of thrill but never enough to get him in real trouble. His mother had been a bigger fan of the tiring lecture and a good deed than punishments, and it had seemed to work in her favour most of the time.
Finally the day had arrived that James had been waiting for as long as he could remember and he was clambering onto the Hogwarts Express, eager to start his first year. There had been some initial debate on where to send him, Effie’s family had been attending Durmstrang since the school had been founded, the Munter name one of great importance in the history of the Institute. But ultimately Potters truly did belong at Hogwarts, and neither of his parents had ever learned just how to say no when James asked for anything. And he wanted to go to Hogwarts like his father; to do everything like Monty really, because at the end of the day James’s father was his hero and idol.
Once he had gotten there however, it had occurred to James that he had never had to make friends on his own before. He was used to being constantly entertained and it was equally exciting as it was terrifying to his eleven year old self. But his father had always told him being brave didn’t mean you were never scared, but was more about how you acted when faced with fears so he quickly put himself out there. He met the boy he would call his brother on that first train ride, setting up the basis of their friendship in a small compartment on the Hogwarts Express. And it still keeps James up random nights, wondering what could have come if he simply picked another compartment. If he let his nerves get the better of him and told Sirius Slytherin seemed like a fine house for the boy. Would the Marauders have ever been if he hadn’t for some reason felt comfortable being himself and the first two of them hadn’t bonded on that ride? Because his fear of rejection in the place he would call home for seven years was strong, so instead of being himself he quickly learned to put on a show when around his classmates. Most couldn’t tell James was insecure. With new glasses that felt far too big for his face and a scrawny frame, he felt like an outcast for the first time when he started his first year of school. Sure, his parents had introduced him to some of their friends’ children over the years, but at their age all of their school chums were empty nesters, or had kids coming out of Hogwarts when he was first headed in. He never had much experience with making friends and had overcompensated, mimicking behavior he had seen older students display and being a bit of a bully himself at times hoping it would keep himself on top.
The boasting that always got the perfect reaction out of his parents seemed to work well on most of his classmates as well, and his mischief and mayhem only got him more recognition across the student body and staff, giving James that validation he didn’t know how to cope without. He had been a bit of a prat, but behind the ‘too cool’ exterior he had a kind heart and loved with everything he had.
Only three boys in his year had managed to see through James’s charade. Partially through their own wit but mostly because he let them. James trusted them with every fibre of his being, wanted Sirius, Remus, and Peter to know him well enough he never had to put on a show around them. The Marauders are his family, sure they were a chosen family but sometimes that made it feel even more important. The four boys kept each other in check, not all in the same way, surely they didn’t all need reminding they were being assholes, or to get off their high horse or Evans will never give you the time of day. But Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs complemented each other in a way that just fit even if from the outside it would never make sense why they worked so well together. Plus they never completely shut James down, his childhood ego wouldn’t have let himself be friends with anyone that wasn’t there to build him up. But he needed that then. Now he just enjoys it.
II. DURING THE WIZARDING WAR: James’ father had put off selling Sleekeazy’s hair potions for years in hopes that James would change his mind and eventually decide to take over the company. The potion was the Potter’s name to fame, bringing his parents from a life of comfort to mass wealth, nearly quadrupling their assets from the first potion alone. It was Fleamont’s life’s work and as a child James had taken many trips only for them to turn into another pitch of hope he would finally take interest. The only issue with this dream was James hated potion making. It had been his least favourite class in school, as well as his lowest mark on his OWLs. Still, it wasn’t until he decided not to continue with potions for his NEWTs that his father finally sold the company not to the muggleborn wix who had been running it in James’ father’s place for almost twenty years, but to a pureblooded wizard who only offered fifty-thousand galleons more. This had left a bad taste from the huge half-blood and muggleborn population who supported the product for their muggle rights activism over the years.
The Potters were infamous for their position on muggle rights. A lot of older witches and wizards wondered if this stance was a plot to get James’s grandfather, Henry Potter, his seat on the Wizenmagot, while the majority queried on whether it was all a ploy to get more bottles of the potion sold. Profits plummeted for a year or so, but the Potters walked away with even more gold from the sale. James’s personal vault increased in size, and with a war brewing outside the protective enchantments of Hogwarts, the Potter name was trusted a little less.
This wealth had been passed down to James with his parents’ deaths and meant he never needed to work. He had enough money his grandchildren would never need to work and Dumbledore had him convinced that meant he had even more to prove. To his closest of friends James will admit he struggles to see the world outside of very black and white thinking. To him a negative trait makes you a bad person, and his loved ones can do no wrong. So after leaving school it wasn’t much of a question on where he should go from here. If he had not joined The Order, hadn’t decided to do everything he could to help, he was just as bad as the Death Eaters. He had spent years watching the people he cares about get slighted by society’s fixation on pure being better and it made things personal- became more than being about doing what was right, but a need to make this world a safer place for the people he loved to be a part of it. What James refuses to admit, even to himself, is that he has a bit of a saviour complex. In school he was the friend who seemingly had their life together. He reached out and did what he could to take care of his friends who were struggling because he had an easy life. He liked things that way. During the war he was struggling, everything seemed to be falling apart around him more everyday and fighting with The Order was one place he could continue to live on his high horse and hold onto that bit of superiority that defined his character as a teen. He only clung to that persona tighter the more it slipped away to keep his child safe.
James regressed to boyhood immaturity while the Potters were in hiding. He could cope with putting his life on the line, had learned to deal with the fact that his wife and friends were in danger simply for existing, and he was sure he could have accepted the fact that his toddler child was a target of this war if it wasn’t for the fact that there was nothing he could do about it. The safest thing for Harry was for their family to hide and as much as James knew it was selfish it was more difficult for him to stay out of the action while the people he loved were in danger than to just stay back and keep his and Lily’s baby out of harm’s way.
III. WHERE ARE THEY NOW: Everyone keeps telling James he’s nothing more than a naïve fool and an idiot. From the age of eleven one didn’t think of James Potter without imagining the Marauders stuck to his side and to James, to mistrust one’s friends was to mistrust yourself. But James can’t seem to shake the fact that there had to be some sort of greater reason behind Peter’s betrayal. Friends didn’t hurt friends; not the way Peter did, and the man who had been linked to James’s side since boyhood certainly would never willingly put Harry and Lily in danger. James couldn’t bring himself to believe there was no higher reason for Peter Pettigrew to betray the Potters. And if that made him an idiot so be it. They were going to find Peter someday, and after James hugged him until they were both crying, he would hand him over to the dementors himself for putting his family in danger.
.After years of living in a war torn society, returning to any sense of normalcy was a struggle for James. He didn’t understand how to stand down and accept the fact that the fight was over because it wasn’t. He saw just how much work still needed to be done in the way Remus struggled or the off hand comments about how his parents must have been at least a bit disappointed for the purity of the Potter line to have ended with him. Where James has always struggled was learning microaggressions weren’t solved with a wand, He wasn’t a student anymore who could get away with hexing someone he disagreed with and face nothing more than scrubbing cauldrons with Sirius a few nights a week. James has always been an act first, apologize later personality and while it left him to thrive in the Order where they were facing people who wanted to kill, it didn’t hold up in the day to day life of civil wizarding England.
It was why he turned down the offer the first time he interviewed to work for the British and Irish League. James told everyone it was because he was meant to be playing for Britain, not being the errand boy for a bunch of pompous quidditch players, but in reality taking that job felt a lot like giving up the fight. He had to accept that their world wasn’t perfect, but he couldn’t put his all into fighting injustice every moment of his life forever. He had a not so little baby at home who was growing far too fast for both his parents’ liking and a wife and friends and James would be damned if he let anyone else he loved slip through the cracks. They fought so hard and all the guilt and insecurity will be worth it to give Harry a fraction of the childhood he had.
𝙅𝘼𝙈𝙀𝙎 𝙄𝙎 𝘼 𝙈𝙀𝙈𝘽𝙀𝙍 𝙊𝙁 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙊𝙍𝘿𝙀𝙍 𝙊𝙁 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙋𝙃𝙊𝙀𝙉𝙄𝙓 𝘼𝙉𝘿 𝙄𝙎 𝘾𝙐𝙍𝙍𝙀𝙉𝙏𝙇𝙔 𝘾𝙇𝙊𝙎𝙀𝘿 𝙁𝙊𝙍 𝘼𝙋𝙋𝙇𝙄𝘾𝘼𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉𝙎 !
