Jamiespxtter - ¬ James.

Lily Potter

☆ + pepperoni pizza

"Are you talking about her birthday party, when we were nine?"

He says it with a wicked grin, beyond amused.

"Ask her about it. I dare you."

mxrlenemckn​:

It had been a long, sleepless night.  Sirius had been a welcome break from the heavy realizations the day had brought.  But once they parted ways and the tequila settled into a heavy ball in her stomach she could no longer ignore the truth she had been avoiding.  It was her fault.  Fully ignoring the fact that she was the only one of her family that was in the Order, the only one with a job that would have created any sort of target upon them, there had been a million opportunities to stop it.  She should have made sure the house was protected before they all gathered there, or demanded they wait to gather until they knew they could do so safely.  When she saw the shadow she should have thrown up a shield.  When Travers removed the immobilization spell she should have fought back.  There were a million things she could have done to save her family.  She had failed them once.  It wouldn’t happen again.

July 29, 1981.  She had two and a half years.  Thirty-two months to figure out how to save them.

The headache started setting in as the sun tipped above the horizon – the second night in a row she was up before the sunrise.  She sat on the window sill, watching the sun streak orange and pink across the street.  She sat, listening as the street became alive again.  Muggles stepping out on their way to work, cheerful and energized in that way you became after a short vacation, unaware that for some people everything had changed.

Eventually the hangover induced headache escalated to the point that she was motivated into moving.  Walking barefoot across the worn carpet, she made her way to the medicine cabinet, pulling out one of the hangover potions she kept for moments like these.

She had just unstoppered the vial when a quiet knock came from her front door.  She startled, the cool, glass bottle nearly sliding through her fingers.  Tipping the potion back, she swallowed it in a single gulp and already began to feel the comforting warmth working its way through her.  In another time she may have simply been confused by the door.  Literally no one she knew would be calling on her before noon.  But curiosity go the best of her and she stepped hesitantly forward, loosely holding her wand in her right hand.

But when she opened it and saw James she froze.  It had been a long time.  Maybe not in 1979 – but in 1981 it had been over six months.  And she understood.  She had understood the need for the hiding and for the secrecy without knowing the exact reasons for it.  If they thought it was necessary she supported them; truthfully, she couldn’t think of a circumstance when she wouldn’t have supported the pair of them.  She had always understood, but she missed him and Lily.  And here he was, at her front door as if nothing had changed.

But it had for him – she had seen the look on Lily’s face, heard the glass shatter as she dropped the mugs.  She had seen the way Sirius tensed when she approached him.  She had died, been murdered. They had accepted that and maybe even mourned her a bit – and she was back, some kind of fucking ghost.

With most people she wouldn’t have considered it, but with James it had always been different.  There was something different about someone who had seen you through nearly every stage of life, from an awkward child to an adult.. sort of.   She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace.  She stood there like that for a long moment before letting out a breathy laugh.  “You look like shit, mate,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.  What a fucked up twenty-four hours it had been.  “Come on, let me make some tea.”

--

It wasn’t real.

It wasn’t real, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real.

For how messed up the past day had been, how much information he and Lily had been forced to sit with and process, nothing had prepared him for this. Nothing could. Losing Marlene had taken an entire piece of his heart, ripped it right from his chest, and no force on Earth could have brought her back to him. He had tried to accept that, tried to live with it, had mourned every day since Moody had come to them to break the news, and James had to use every ounce of strength he had to keep Lily upright, to cling onto her like it was the only thing keeping him holding on, too. 

And now, she was here. Hugging him. Sane and sober enough to joke about how he looked.

The last time he’d seen her had been in a fucking grave.

She was everything like he remembered. Eighteen years old and bright eyed, even with the hangover that haunted her expression. Blonde hair in waves around her shoulders, wand in hand, still in the same clothes she wore the night before. Sirius had gone to see her, Lily had explained, and James had needed the few hours to reason with the fact that Marlene, his Marlene, had come back to them. As much as he’d wanted to run to her as soon as Lily had told him, James knew it was a reality he couldn’t face.

Hell, it was the exact same thing stopping him from running back to the estate, crying for his parents.

She was warm. Very much real, and very much alive. Her arms were tight around him, voice as choked up as he felt, and James stayed quiet as she suggested tea, the comment so bizarrely normal that some part of him refused to believe it was happening at all. Maybe he was still dead. Maybe this was some kind of purgatory, while Marlin or God or whoever was up there decided what to do with him, after he hadn’t done enough. Maybe this was hell, forcing him to relive the past two years of losing his friends, and his family, and fighting a losing war, and facing Voldemort again, and learning how to fucking handle everything he’d done wrong in this world.

Or. Maybe it wasn’t.

His hand lifted before he could stop it, catching Marlene’s cheek. 

They always could have been something.

“.. you’re really here?” he asked finally, still in the threshold of her home, afraid to take another step forward. James searched her eyes, looking for the truth in them, and felt tears in his own. “You’re -”

‘ hold up ‘

He lets out a strangled yelp as the collar of his shirt is roughly tugged from behind, and James tries not to trip over his own feet as he's pulled back into a doorway. He's already on high-alert, heart beating rapidly in his chest, pounding in his ears, and changing their hiding place had been a bad decision. His palms are sweaty, grip loose on his wand as his back is pressed against the cool stone of Hogwarts' ancient walls, and while part of him wants to keep pushing forward, to keep their heads low and their position a Godric-damned secret, it's becoming an increasingly difficult tactic to maintain. Sirius is nowhere to be found, after taking a wrong turn on the fourth floor, Remus and Peter having split off within moments of the team's arrival. James feels decidedly out of place, nose-to-nose with Marlene in the tiny doorway as rushed footsteps hurry by, not stopping to investigate their spot. It's the most intense game of muggle hide-and-seek he's ever played. Not that he's ever played it before. Marlene is staring him down, gaze pinned to his own, and James can't look away. It's years of friendship, over a decade of knowing each other, bottled up into one intense stare-down that he doesn't actually remember agreeing to take part in. There's a storm in her eyes, he notices, something that's always been brewing under the surface, - and not for the first time, James is wondering what's on her mind. She's his favorite type of mystery. She looks like she's about to say something when someone else runs by, again, footfall echoed in the halls around them, and James resists the urge to flinch when they come just a little too close to their hiding spot. "You owe me," she states finally, when the quiet that signals safety and a close call creeps up on them again, and James grins at her.

Send me a ! (　･_･)o/☆(ﾉﾟ⊿ﾟ)ﾉ for my muses reaction to your muse hitting them

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚ bo burnham: inside sentence meme

part 1/3

“Interesting, now leave me alone.”

“Sorry that I look like a mess”

“____’s been a little depressed.”

“I’m sorry I was gone.”

“Daddy made you your favorite, open wide.”

“It’s a beautiful day to stay inside!”

“The world is changing.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

“Should I leave you alone?”

“Should I be joking at a time like this?”

“I wanna help to leave this world better than I found it.”

“And the fear is not unfounded.”

“The world is so fucked up.”

“There’s only one thing I can do about it.”

“Making a literal difference metaphorically.”

“So maybe I should just shut the fuck up.”

“I don’t wanna do that.”

“There’s gotta be another way.”

“Lord help me channel sandra bullock in the blind side.”

“I said I’d never be back.”

“But now I’m back on my feet.”

“Pour me a drink and clear my schedule.”

“I’mma FaceTime with my mom tonight.”

“These forty minutes are essential.”

“How’d you guess?”

“And that’s the deepest talk we’ve ever had.”

“It must be complicated.”

“That’s how the world works.”

“It’s similar to a constant state of sleep paralysis.”

“Don’t you know the world is built with blood?”

“That’s pretty intense.”

“No shit.”

“What can I do to help?”

“This isn’t about you.”

“So either get with it or get out of the fucking way.”

“Watch your mouth, buddy.”

“Have you not been fucking listening?”

“I can’t go… I can’t go back.”

“Look at me.”

“Are you going to be on the right side of history?”

“Who are you?”

“Or you can roll up your sleeves and get to work.”

“Is this heaven?”

“Or is it just a white woman’s Instagram?”

“It’s been a decade since you’ve been gone.”

“ Is it necessary that every single person on this planet um, expresses every single opinion that they have on every single thing that occurs all at the same time?”

“Can any single person shut the fuck up about any single thing for an hour?”

“Is that… Is that necessary?”

“ Who needs a coffee? Cause I’m doing a run?”

“The coffee is free, just like me.”

“I’m an unpaid intern.”

“You just torrent a porn.”

“I’m being a little pretentious.”

“It’s a defense mechanism.”

“ I’m so worried that criticism will be levied against me that I levy it against myself before anyone else can.”

“Oh, if I’m self-aware about being a douchebag, it’ll somehow make me less of a douchebag.”

“Self-awareness does not absolve anybody of anything.”

“I want this to stop.”

‘Dear Mr. Potter, 

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July. 

Yours sincerely, 

Minerva McGonagall 

Deputy Headmistress’

Friend

HEADCANON:

So much of James' personality is based around his ability to have friendships. He considers himself practically everyone's friend, unless they've been a dick to him, or he's got good reason not to like them. For years growing up, he had always seen how his parents were treated, liked, how they had so many people they could rely on and turn to, people they trusted, people who could just pop by the estate and were greeted with a warm welcome. Acquaintances, they would call them, but James always knew better; they were friends, as simple as that.

Marlene had been his first real friend, aside from his parents, and she has a special place in his heart. But something had changed on that first train ride to Hogwarts; when he had met Remus, Peter, and Sirius. There was a shift in his very core understanding of friendship, in the way he saw how it worked. Friendship was so much more than just people you got along with and saw every now and again, especially when those friendships turned into a family.

Family are people you want to stick by. People you want to surround yourself with. They're the people you call home, when you have nowhere else to go, and no-one else you want to go to. People you trust, people you would do anything for, even without asking, no matter what.

James has plenty of friends.

Sirius is his family.

❝ What did you do? ❞

"Did I do something?" He sounds drunk when he says it, voice a little slurred and nasally as he tries to make sense of the situation. Marlene's here, which is always a nice thing, but so is Sirius, and Hooch, and they're all standing around him, looking down at him like he can't quite believe he's actually there. He is there. Isn't he? The sky above them is blue, and despite the lack of clouds, he can still see it swimming. There's a bludger to his left, pinned to the grass by a quidditch boot, and James tries to focus for a moment, brow furrowing, - but the action itself causes a sharp, aching pain to shoot right up his nose to the back of his brain, and it takes all he can not to hiss in agony, trying desperately to not do that again. It's a tough challenge, something for him to focus on while Hooch leans down to turn his head this way and that, poking at his chin to get him to turn his jaw to the side, and Poppy pops up beside her, looking remarkably unimpressed. "Third broken nose this month, Potter?" she asks, already shoving something minty and sharp right under his face, and James tries his best not to sneeze. "Think he's going for a new record," Marlene remarks, rolling her eyes. He lets out a laugh, and immediately regrets it, pain hitting his nose all over again.

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

— Emily Bronte