Disclaimer; The universe and all characters are borrowed from J.K Rowling's Harry Potter series. The somewhat bizarre twists are all mine...

Up is Down

James Potter suffered the grave misfortune of being the first born heir to a great family in tumultuous times. This misfortune was something that he rarely dwelled upon, even as his family and tutors did their level best to instil a proper sense of the enormity of his duties upon him. It was not that the James was unaware of the burden's that would be placed upon his shoulders upon his graduation from Hogwarts. Rather he was fully aware of them from a very young age, and was thus all the more determined to devote his childhood to having as much fun as possible, to make up for what he was certain would be a very staid and dull adulthood. Going off to school, where Potters had been going to learn magic since Hogwarts conception, did not diminish James' natural liveliness, mischievousness or propensity to land head first into trouble.

Hogwarts did, however, broaden James' horizons beyond that of his parents. On his first day, in his first lesson, Professor Slughorn attempted to improve Gryffindor/ Slytherin house relations by randomly pairing the two houses together as potion partners. The dungeon went deathly quiet once the last names had been paired together. In a somewhat ironic twist that was noted by none in the classroom, Silius Yaxley and Sirius Black put aside their innumerable differences to lead the uproar that ensured. And through it all Narcissa Black and James Potter stared at each other across the room, neither blinking. The impasse broke with her slow, hesitant smile. At the age of eleven Cissa Black was still an impossibly tiny, cute blonde in pigtails who looked as though a stiff wind would knock her off her feet. James found her smile to be infectious and, discounting a lifetime of training and indoctrination that stated that all Slytherin's were irredeemably evil, unwillingly returned the smile. It was the start of a tentative partnership and, eventually, an enduring friendship. The uniqueness of the partnership could be illustrated by the fact that in a class of forty, there's was the only partnership that was not consistently at war with each other.

Sirius Black was easily James' best friend. They had met on the train, came up with a plan to prank an obnoxious slime ball who had been loudly commenting on how Hogwarts should not accept mudbloods, and sealed their friendship through covering said obnoxious twit with dungbombs. The boys in reality came from very similar backgrounds, but had parents who were worlds apart politically. The Blacks, like the Potter's, were a wealthy pureblood family that had two hereditary seats on the Wizengamot. However the similarities ended there. The Blacks were a family that were notorious for their study and use of the Dark Arts, whilst the Potter's were almost polar opposites abhorring all families who practiced the Dark Arts. The boys had been to many of the same parties and functions, but at all these parties the children were kept separate and apart along partisan grounds. Sirius became the first Black in four centuries to be sorted in any house but Slytherin or Ravenclaw, upon his being sorted into Gryffindor. The Great Hall was upon his sorting stunned into silence. The only sound was that of James Potter clapping. A great many Slytherin's responded by sending death glares in Sirius' direction. The Howler that Lady Black sent the next day to her heir should have made Hogwarts a History as one of the most vitriol letters ever to be sent to a first year student on their first day. James, knowing that his parent's would have reacted in a very similar manner if he had been sorted into Slytherin, did not offer commiseration like most of their fellow Gryffindor's. Instead he tried the "they'll get over it eventually, provided you act in a manner befitting your position" approach. His words managed to calm Sirius down enough, that three days later he sent a very civil letter to his parents emphasising his friendship with James and describing his first couple of days at Hogwarts. His parents responded with a letter that could only be described as lukewarm, and the relationship which had been strained till breaking point gradually begun to repair itself. The howler and the Slytherin's reaction to his sorting left its mark on Sirius. Sirius became openly disdainful and prejudicial of Slytherin House and its inhabitants. It was not until the third year that he would resume his former friendship with his cousin Cissa Black, which was brutally severed upon their respective sorting's, despite her efforts to the contrary. Many of the friendships that he had fostered prior to Hogwarts with Slytherin classmates would never recover.

James made another friend, by the name of Peter Pettigrew. Peter Pettigrew, whilst a pureblood, came from a distinctly working class family. It was he who taught James the reality of money and gold. James had grown up in a world where money was there and everyone who he had ever been encouraged to associate with had plenty of it. Peter had grown up in a rough neighbourhood, with parents that had saved and scrimped every knut and sickle to send him to Hogwarts. Even then the only way he was able to afford to attend was with the help of a partial scholarship from a charitable trust. Peter's decades old books, frayed robes and second hand wand made it impossible for him to cover up his straightened circumstances and to his credit he did not even attempt to do so. But his very presence at Hogwarts made James uncomfortably aware of all the servants and shopkeepers children who he had dismissed and automatically assumed would not be going off to school with him. Having Peter as a friend made James question whether it was fair for one's birth to determine one's education and thus one's social status. And then finally there was the friend, which neither James nor his best friend Sirius, knew what to make of. Remus Lupin, to paraphrase a famous cliché, was a riddle rapped inside a mystery hidden inside an enigma. He disappeared at frequent intervals, appeared to be constantly sickly and had a dazzling array of chronically sick relatives. But when he was at school James was attracted to Remus' quiet intelligence and pushed Peter and Sirius to include them in their group.

James was further exposed to a world beyond the sheltered confines of his childhood by the eccentricities of Hogwarts staff. Albus Dumbledore, who Cissa wryly referred to as the self-proclaimed greatest wizard of the age, very publicly displayed his eccentric nature through his garish robes and habit of offering anybody who happened to be in his office sweets. James, admittedly with plenty of help from Cissa and Sirius, saw through Dumbledore's convenient mask to the master tactician that lay beneath after their second meeting. And there were many meetings. James and Sirius, after being dragged up to the headmaster's office for the third time in their first term for a relatively minor indiscretion were well aware that the headmaster was using the meeting's to get a read on their characters. Through casual inquires to upper year students James knew that the only time student's usually got called to the headmaster's office were for disciplinary actions sufficient to warrant suspension or expulsion. All other disciplinary matters were handled by staff members or the heads of houses. However both managed to display the right amount of naivety and rudimentary occlumency to avoid Dumbledore detecting that the boys knew why he called them into his office. James' interactions with Dumbledore were an excellent introduction to the world of politics as played out on the Wizengamot. The other teachers were no less fascinating. Hagrid, the groundskeeper, was to put it politely big-boned. Those who were less polite loudly speculated about the possibility of giant's blood being in his heritage. Hagrid's alcoholism and mad affinity for extremely dangerous creatures meant that James fell quite firmly into the latter camp, as indeed did the vast majority of student's. Filch the extraordinarily bitter caretaker, was in James' considered opinion; redundant because of the house-elves and a menace because of the constant muttering about whips and chains. The divination teacher, Sabrina Streep, was completely batty and could be commonly sighted wandering about the castle at night moaning about the gloomy signs. The ghostly Professor Bins did nobody any favours by 'teaching' his farcically boring classes in such a manner that made even the grisly subject of the goblin wars coma inducing. Professor Slughorn was a sycophant of the worst sort who was determined to like James, however little James might return the compliment. James in desperation brought fireworks into his potions lesson during the third week of his second term of his first year. The resulting explosion destroyed the potions lab, and turned the entire class a peculiar shade of puce for three days. Slughorn promptly gave James detention for "keeping fireworks in his pocket and accidently setting them off during class". As the detention turned out to be a meeting of the Slug Club and neither Cissa nor Sirius spoke to James for a full two weeks after the explosion, it was not an episode that was repeated. However the prize amongst Hogwarts staff for ineptitude was easily won by James' many and varied Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor's. Stammering and stuttering, having no practical knowledge of the subject and being over the age of three hundred appeared to be prerequisites for the position. As the leader of the Death Eaters, Voldermort, seemed to make it a personal mission to kill all that held the position none lasted longer than a year. It made filling the position at all a challenge, let alone finding a suitably qualified candidate. Then there was the quartet of sanity that managed for the most part to ensure the smooth running of the school. Minerva McGonagall, Filius Flitwick, Ponoma Sprout and Poppy Pomfrey ran their various departments with iron fists. Without them Hogwarts would cease to function. James watched and observed the astonishing array of characters that made up the staff at Hogwarts. As he did, his horizons ever so slowly started to widen...

In the summer between James Potter's third and fourth years at Hogwarts the world in which he lived in suddenly, and from his viewpoint, without warning was rocked to its very foundations. At the personal level James' parents went out to a dinner party. They never returned. Their deaths left James responsible for the transnational, multi-billion galleon hedge fund that was his inheritance, the five hereditary Potter votes on the Wizengamot and one hereditary vote on the International Confederation of Wizards, his two younger sisters and the twenty thousand wizarding souls who considered him to be their liege lord.

The wider world was undergoing a no less important transformation. On June 3rd, the Wizarding World lost a hero, when Albus Dumbledore was discovered slumped over his desk, dead. The history books were left to speculate, and quarrel, and argue some more over the cause of his death for the next millennia. Few believed the Ministry of Magic's official explanation that it was a consequence of Dumbledore's advanced age. Those who were aware of the carefully concocted plan, that involved imperioing Honeydukes owner and forcing him to poison Dumbledore's order of lemon drops, infinitely preferred the undignified explanation of old age and consequentially rarely spoke of the truth.

The coup d'état at the Ministry of Magic was swift, and for the most part largely silent. The Minister of Magic, Leo Bagshot, had met an untimely end on 26 June. The vote to replace him was due to take place on Wednesday 4th July, but given the turmoil caused by Dumbledore's death, was delayed till the Friday. Death Eater's had infiltrated every level of the ministry. The untimely deaths of the Potters with their tremendous influence over the Wizengamot, combined with the death of Dumbledore meant that the coalition that made up the light disintegrated. A brilliant young politician, marked by Lord Voldermort, by the name of Rodolphus Lestrange was voted by a clear margin of two-thirds of the available votes to be Bagshot's successor as the Minister of Magic. Emergency provisions, installed several Minister's of Magic ago, meant that the government controlled the content that the media was permitted to report. This had seemed less open to abuse given the fact that the Potter's owned the highly regarded broadsheet; the Daily Prophet. But the editor, faced with a dead owner on his hands and a world in turmoil, gave in to the ministries ceaseless commands and printed only 'approved' stories. Thus it was; the media became an apparatus of the State and the State became an apparatus to push Voldermort's agenda. The new ministry used its first month as a consolidation period. Given the huge influence that British Purebloods had on the International Confederation of Wizards and with their fellow European purebloods it was relatively easy to shut down all magical means of transportation out of the country. As Britain remained the centre of finance and the economic powerhouse of the Wizarding World very few countries agreed to accept British refugees. The only two countries to do so, Australia and Canada, had been founded by muggleborns fleeing persecution from Europe. Both countries wizarding economies neared collapse as a result of their brave decision, as Britain launched a total trade embargo and stated that it would not trade with any country that dared to trade with Australia or Canada. The heads of department's who were not loyal to Voldermort, with a few notable exceptions, were either strongly 'advised' to step aside or 'tragically' died accidental deaths. Many previously neutral senior bureaucrats recognised which way the wind was blowing and joined his forces. The only exceptions were the senior officials belonging to the House of Potter. They were for the large part left severely alone. Ministry workers who were not openly sympathetic or loyal to Voldermort's cause were marginalised and if they were sufficiently 'impure' or impudent enough were thrown into Azkaban.

And thus James was brutally initiated to the civil war raging around him. At the age of fourteen it felt as though the whole world had been dumped upon his none too sturdy shoulders. When the news of his parent's deaths reached the Potter Estate, located just outside Cardiff, the millennia old wards were automatically raised to full strength. In the following years James would look back on the first couple of days following his parent's deaths and only remember a foggy haze. He could remember the almost constant presence of his Security detail, their anxious faces and constant drawing of wands when a small noise happened to break the oppressive silence of the Manor. He could remember the weeping of the servants and the sombreness of the village of Wyndam located within the Manor's rather extensive grounds. He could remember his Aunt Katherine, his father's sister, sending her regrets from her Château in France saying that Britain in its current state was not safe for her to visit. He could remember his father's Chief solicitor and legal counsel giving him pages after pages of documents to sign dealing with the transference of property into his name. He could remember the constant flood of refugees flooding into Wyndam, desperately seeking shelter behind the Manor's infamous wards. He could remember thinking that his House was in turmoil. He could remember watching people who, at his directive, continued to show up to work move their families onto the estate. He could remember thinking that it seemed as though the House of Potter was preparing for a siege. But most of all he could remember how numb he felt. How the world felt as though it was being played on a tape cassette, constantly moving forward. How it felt like he was no longer on the tape cassette, and whilst the world around him kept spinning, he was left to stand alone and motionless. But most of all when James thought of those times what he inevitably remembered was the numb loneliness and isolation that he felt.

This state of perpetual numbness was broken on the third day after the Potter's deaths. It was the day that Sirius and Cissa Black managed to talk the Head of Security, Dorcas Meadows, into allowing them to visit James on the condition that they submitted to a magical strip search, permitted the use of veritaserum to confirm their identities and surrendered all magical items for the duration of the visit. Their footsteps sounded unnaturally loud as they made their way through the eerily quiet and still Manor. When they were eventually brought to James, he was sitting in a bay window in the library, staring out the window. The footman cleared his throat impressively, causing James to start and turn around, and intoned "Lord Sirius Black and Miss Narcissa Black to see you milord". Then the three friends were left alone in the vast space to stare at each other in a grief-consumed awkward silence. After a minute or so of silence James managed to give a twisted version of a smile, which crumbled like a fault line. Sirius responded by sinking to the ground with a muffled sob, whilst Cissa crossed the room and pulled James into a tight hug. That hug smashed the walls that James had built around him in the preceding days and led to him howling in her embrace.

An hour later the three friends sat in a semi-circle, somewhat recollected, leaning against each other for support. The outpouring of grief had left them feeling cleansed but drained. James, for the first time in days, sat up and called for his personal house-elf Twiggy.

Twiggy, dressed like all the Potter house-elves in a tea-cosy of mourning black, arrived in milliseconds. "Master James called?" the familiarly squeaky voice of the elf queried.

James smiled a genuine smile at the elf. "I think some tea might be in order."

Cissa sat up, waved her wand and muttered grooming spells over all three of them. Their robes returned from their crumpled, ruffled state into immaculately ironed pieces of clothing. The tears on all three faces were automatically dried and their faces were washed.

Moments later Twiggy popped back into the library with a tray laden with teapots and tea, smoked salmon sandwiches and Honeydukes premium chocolate biscuits.

The tea made them all feel more human again. However the silence became more and more oppressive as all three friends waited for the others to initiate the conversation that they all dreaded. They all knew that they needed to discuss what was happening in the wider world, but none wanted to be the ones to raise the topic. Sirius and Cissa were exchanging significant nods and lifting their heads at each other, each indicating that they should initiate the conversation. James looked at the two of them with a wry sigh of amusement and dryly suggested "perhaps I should try and pre-empt what you're going to say..."

Two embarrassed cringes were thrown back at him. Sirius with his dark colouring got away with an embarrassed smile, but Cissa had the misfortune of being born a blonde and flushed a somewhat enchanting crimson.

James sighed "You've come to tell me what's been happening in the wider world whilst I've been...preoccupied with my own personal crisis. You're trying to formulate a way to let me know gently that You-Know-Who has won. That the British Wizarding World is in turmoil. That in the next couple of days I must make a choice. Do I retreat behind these wards of mine and declare Wales' independent from the rest of Britain? Do I declare war on behalf of my House on You-Know-Who and demand retribution for my parent's deaths? Or do I attempt to find some way to broker a deal with my parent's murderers... Not that they have the slightest interest in brokering a deal with me. They have this House on its knees and they know it. And if I was to take that option how many people do I knowingly condemn to death? How much blood would I have on my hands? There is no..."

He was interrupted mid-sentence by an imperious tap on the library window. James looked over and seeing a regal eagle owl went to relieve it of its message. The owl once the message was given inclined its head and flew right back out the window. James looked at the letter in confusion, wondering how it was able to bypass the mail wards set up. He looked at the envelope. The letter was addressed to Lord James Potter and stamped with the personal seal of the Minister of Magic. Knowing that the mail wards would filter out any mail containing harmful magical properties he slowly opened the letter.

Lord James Potter,

Attached you will find emancipation documents, already approved by a majority of the Wizengamot and myself. All that they require to become legally binding is your signature. I wish to extend my sincere regrets to you over the unfortunate deaths of your parents. Nevertheless sometimes phoenix's can rise out of ashes, as I hope the House of Potter will do. I look forward to working with you on the Wizengamot and International Confederacy of Wizards. Arrangements can be made so that you can run your business interests and attend sittings of the Wizengamot, whilst continuing to attend Hogwarts. Please respond with the signed documents attached. I also wish to arrange a time to meet with you, so that I might better get to know one of the biggest vote holders in the Wizengamot. Please reply with a convenient time and place.

Yours Sincerely,

Rodolphus Lestrange

Minister of Magic

The stunned silence that followed James' reading of the letter was broken by his dry comment "Well that settles it. The world's gone mad. It's been turned upside down. No actually it would be more apt to say Up is Down."



A/N I'm currently on the hunt for a Beta...any volunteers? In case you couldn't tell I have trouble with grammar (especially adding too many commas) and the use of tenses...so if that's your forte and you like where this story is going please contact me. Thanks for indulging me by reading down this far!