Headcanon: James' Parents (Part 1)
Charlus Potter, deceased, aged 77 (Richard Gere)
The Potter patriarch, before his death, was incredibly warm and loving despite everything that'd happened in his life. An only child, he was born in 1890 to one Matthew Potter and Harriet Flint. He had what could be described as only a typical pureblood upbringing during the time, especially for a pureblood family with incredible wealth such as the Potters. At age eleven, he entered Hogwarts and became a Gryffindor just as the many Potters before him, ultimately playing as a Chaser and a Beater on the House team and being part of two championship teams during his time there. Charlus excelled at Charms, Ancient Runes, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Alchemy, not having too much of a fondness for Transfiguration despite getting Es in the subject.
In his sixth year, he was engaged to a third year Ravenclaw, one Isabella Nott. The two were friendly with each other, Isabella being incredibly shy with her fiance while Charlus simply wanted not to hurt the much younger girl, but they grew more comfortable together as she aged. While waiting for Isabella to graduate from Hogwarts, Charlus worked as an Auror, not taking the job too seriously since he already had a fortune to his name. The two married in 1911 and she soon became pregnant with a girl.
Both Isabella and their unnamed daughter died during the birth.
No matter how Harriet and Matthew attempted to comfort their son, he was not hearing it. He'd grown fond of his wife, loved her despite not being in love with her, and seeing her youth waste away with their daughter's silence was enough to harden Charlus just that much. When the time came, he participated in World War I, part of the secret Wizard-Muggle unit put together by the Ministry and the MI6 to combat the central powers. He came out with little injury but a still broken heart, a traumatized psyche, and a love of staying at home for quiet nights. His mother, bless her, tried to help him by finding her twenty-eight year old son another wife.
There were talks with the Selwyn family, for Charlus to wed the freshly widowed Agatha Selwyn as her newly deceased husband has been in the same unit as Charlus, but there was too much there. Too much animosity combined with resentment, with too little attractive to even make it work in the hateful sense. A year of trying, and the two broke off the notion of engagement before their parents could say otherwise. By the year 1935, Charlus was suddenly offered up to the Black family as well, this time as the husband for a very young, soon-to-graduate Cedrella Black. To be forty-five with an eighteen year old wife was any man's dream but she reminded him too much of Isabella and it hurt more than helped heal.
It didn't help that she ran away with Septimus Weasley and was burned off the Black family tree because of it.
Or, well, it helped quite a bit because he truly was not interested in her. Instead, he'd caught the attention of one Dorea Black, Cedrella's cousin, three years younger. She was fifteen, pale, blonde, full of life like he couldn't remember appreciating. And she was so elegant, and forceful, everything a Black woman was supposed to be, but also intelligent, just as much ambitious as a Slytherin was supposed to be besides just aspiring to be rich. Dorea, his gift, quickly took his heart. And it took very little convincing of his old classmate Cygnus for him to have her hand in marriage when she was of age. At forty-five, Charlus was as respectable a wizard as any, with a fortune well-managed and steadily growing, and actually had genuine love for his daughter, something that the practical Cygnus wasn't all too worried for but did have his daughter incredibly happy and that was something he liked.
They married in 1940, but with a second World War looming over their heads there was little to be said for their so-called honeymoon years.
Continued in Dorea's Biography