Chap 1 - Who I Am
Coming from a pure blood families not always the best thing in the world. For the non-magical, pure blood is equivalent to the Muggle upper class. So many of you won't understand the expectations of a wealthy or a family that has been around for a very long time. Here they are: everyone expected you to dance well, be well muscled, extremely intelligent, athletic, and make sure you do not do anything stupid otherwise you will make the morning headlines in the Daily Prophet and you face your parents and they give you that same lecture that you are now ruining family name. My family made take dance lessons where I got kicked out for "accidentally" pulling my instructor's pants down in front of a audience of 200 during a recital. After that fiasco, my parents tried to get me to learn magic earlier than normal kids, that didn't work out so well seeing that a person can't start preforming magic until they are of the right
age, but of course my family blamed me. I never understood why, I was just a normal boy of 8, skinny with messy black hair that never seemed to listen to my mother's brutal attacks with brushes. I was a decent height, about 5' 1". But for some reason everyone in my family got me wrong. Well everyone but my grandfather. I loved my grandfather. He was the one person that kept me going. I remember when I was 7 years old and I was actually thinking about just ending the fight. He had been over that Christmas and he took one look at me. Next thing I know, he's taking me down to Diagon Alley to get some ice cream and he said "I'll be right back." He comes back with this beautiful brown Asio Clemator. He told me if I ever thought my thought again to shoot him a letter and he made it a point to tell me that he will burn the letters and their contents will die with him. After that, I named my new owl Cole, after my grandfather. So as you can see, it's not that I had done anything stupid or something, I'm 11 for Merlin's sake, it's just those stupid stereotypes that always pop up and they don't even make sense most of the time. Kids my age were just determined to think that I was just a brat who just expected everything to be handed to me on a silver platter.
Don't get me wrong. I get that I've never been deprived anything materially. Always had a roof over my head and food on my plate. I appreciate that more than I let on. But don't think for one minute that I don't know that my life is better than a lot of people in the world. Here's the thing that bugs me. Since I'm not as materialistic as all the other pure-bloods, I wish I had a better emotional connection with my family. An "I love you" more often than every two weeks would be a definite improvement. At least a "Good morning son" would be really nice. Simple things really but they mean the world to me.
On top of my family issues, I never really had a friend. I tried my hardest to prove to everyone I actually happened to be a good guy. I know I was the black sheep of the family right next to my grandfather. Is it really wrong to have my opinion on things? All the other pure blood kids were nutters, always talking about how all the Muggles have to be killed and how they had stole the secrets of magic from us wizards. Like really? Thats just about the stupidest thing I have ever heard. The half blood kids always talked about how the pure blood kids are wrong, but when I agree with them they just push me away. I don't get it. It's been 14 years and I still don't get it.
When I got my admission letter to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry I knew my life had changed. This letter meant my freedom. I still had a huge obstacle with my "pure-blood" status but it was helluva improvement. You may be wondering why don't I just tell people some bullshit well-concocted story. You see, the wizard population probably would have died out had the original wizards not married the non magical, Muggles, as we call them. These became the "half-bloods" or half magical blood. But not all the pure blood families agreed to spread, and so these few families became the pure-bloods which are so scarce at this point that they are ALL very well known. Good for the ones who want their affluence to be known. Bad for me.
It's been 14 years since I got that letter. I'm going into hiding with my wife and child, but I know it's futile. I'm about to die and I know it. I'm writing this so people will maybe just maybe stop judging others so quickly. I wanna leave this world knowing I made a difference. My name is James Potter. This is my story.