Do you know what it is to be named after the dead?
It always surprised the Potter's and Weasley's how many children there were who hadn't grown up with war stories. Of gruesome recounts of acts of terror, of memories that brought tears to adults' eyes. There were many sheltered children and unaware parents and ashamed parents. But every child was told of the war once they came to Hogwarts, whether their parents liked it or not, and when those children came out they looked at their world with new eyes; they saw the irreparable cracks in the castle's walls, they saw scars on professor's skin, and they looked at the Potter's and Weasley's differently than before.
The children were always in the limelight. That was the curse of their name, being children of war heroes. They were regarded as spectacles, as anomalies, as legends and as myths. Their fame was inherited and that was not missed by the children. It did not go to their heads, and they did not want the fame. They wanted to be normal kids with normal names and they wanted to be looked at as kids with potential, not as kids who had large shoes to fill.
The Potter's had it worse than the Weasley's. The children were named for the dead; a living memorial for those who had sacrificed and lost. They were named so out of honour and regret and remembrance. They existed in the shadow of the Potter name, and then were overshadowed once more by the dead.
This never hit more true than when in History of Magic, and each of the Potter's loathed the class. If the fact that everybody knew their names wasn't agitating enough, it became tenfold once everybody knew why their names were important, and the stares would not stop.
Lily would sit up the back of the classroom and keep her head down, so students wouldn't turn around in their seats and stare. She took accurate notes on topics that interested her. Monday's were bad as a general rule, but the class made them much worse for her.
Albus sat up the front, his eyes straight ahead, ignoring the stares boring into the back of his head. He didn't take notes, but he wasn't disinterested, either. He daydreamed of next period, where he could get out into the greenhouses with Professor Longbottom, who was cool and understood the pressure Al was under to succeed.
James lounged around the window seat, staring out the glass and forgetting that he was supposed to be paying attention. What did he need a class for when he had first hand accounts at home? Why was he in this class when everybody knew the tales of his parents and it was a given that he knew them too?
Teddy sat in the middle, but no one really stared at him. His name was not famous like the Potter's or the Weasley's. He kept with the class throughout his schooling, but his peers started staring once he made the Daily Prophet with Victoire, and he wasn't envious of his almost-siblings.
When the children left the hot classroom and heavy tales, it was like a weight lifted off their shoulders, and they could continue living as normal. They didn't like biting back their tongues, which was eager to tell the professor the correct facts, facts that were uncensored and unbiased and dreadfully gruesome. They wished to explain how political shortfalls were key in the war, and Voldemort was not some all-powerful dictator who brainwashed everybody, but a leader with distinct ideas and ideologies, and he swooped in at opportune moments to gain followers. They wished to explain that not all of his followers believed the ideology he spread, but followed out of fear or obligation or misunderstanding. They wished to emphasise that there were evil Gryffindors and cruel Ravenclaws and scared Hufflepuffs and kind Slytherins, and they all played their part in the war. But this was all glossed over, and the Potter's shrugged it off, because it wasn't their fight.
Yes, the Potter's struggled. It was a heavy weight to carry, the shadows of the dead and of the living. It was enough to drive them to recklessness - and Lily would lean out of the castle windows as far as she could go, and James would go swimming in the Black Lake at night when it was cold and no one knew where he was, and Al would break mirrors with his wand and then repair them and wonder if it would actually cause him bad luck. But like every child, there came a stage when they wanted to know who they were, and they each snapped.
Lily snapped in a Potion's class on a Friday, when Slughorn was substituting for their young and vibrant professor who Lily was fairly sure was a werewolf. She'd disappeared for the term, and Lily hated Slughorn, hated the way he looked at her with hope, and then with disappointment, and did the same with her potions.
Slughorn chuckled sadly when he peered into her cauldron, once again obviously disappointed in her efforts. "I'm surprised you don't have a knack for Potions, m'dear," he said, evidently trying to be gentle. "Why, your father, and even your grandmother, were brilliant. Some of my best."
Lily pursed her lips and glared at the old man. "Yeah, well, I'm not them, am I?" she replied stiffly. The people surrounding Lily tittered, and she glared at them, too, gathering her stuff. "I'm my own bloody person, don't you get it?"
Slughorn realised his mistake when the door closed behind Lily, who had stormed out with no less than three upturned cauldrons in her wake, and nobody compared her to any relation again.
Albus snapped in detention after receiving a long-winded and well-practiced lecture on how his namesakes would never be caught dead in detention, and how he ought to be better than himself. Albus called it his 'predetermined reputation'. Professor's called it exceeding expectation. He hated both phrases and let everybody know.
"I'm not them!" Albus would shout at anybody who dared bring up his namesakes. "I'm a Potter, dammit, and you don't know what that means!"
For the first time, the professor overseeing detention agreed, apologised and let the subject drop, but when Albus stormed out at the end of his detention and dropped into his bed, he realised that he didn't really know what it meant, either.
James snapped in the corridor outside Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, where he had a run-in with Professor McGonagall, now aged and wrinkled and very grey. She caught him with his wand out, pointing it at seemingly nothing, and James was already furious about the small smile she had on her face.
"Living up to your namesakes, I see," she said with a gleam in her eye, a fondness that James saw constantly from her and loathed because it wasn't directed at him, not really.
"No, I'm not," he retorted, and stormed away from the wall where he had been practicing turning stone to wood with his knowledge from Ancient Runes, cursing how he was named after pranksters and not intelligent icons like Albus was.
Teddy never snapped. He knew what the kids were going through, of how much it hurt to realise that they were reminders of death, not of progress. He never snapped, but he reached the same realisation when he was fifteen and liked turquoise instead of bubblegum pink and liked pastry over chocolate. He understood how the others felt - overwhelmed with the idea of filling impossibly large shoes and agitated that they weren't even sure of who they were yet. Teddy knew why they were named for the dead, and whilst he was also embittered at the thought of it, he had long since come to terms with it, and understood its importance.
Popularity was a fickle thing. But each of the Potter children decided that if they were going to be famous, it was going to be for something of their liking.
James was unusually adept at Ancient Runes. He enjoyed the precision of the runes, and the concentration needed for translation. With these skills he could have easily enjoyed quidditch, but he stayed away from the sport, if only to spite those who wanted him in it.
Albus loved getting detention. Whilst Potter's of every generation were constants in detention over the years, Albus Dumbledore never received one, and Severus Snape had loved giving them out. Albus enjoyed the irony of the situation and whilst at times it felt like a waste of time, he preferred being in detention over being in the library, where Professor's could glance at him with odd looks in their eyes, making him think that he wasn't being looked at, but his name surely was.
Lily had almost no Potter genes in her at all and she didn't want them. Her skills were not on the quidditch pitch nor in the classroom. She preferred to spend her time in the kitchens with the house elves, who taught her how to cook throughout the school year. For Lily Luna didn't want to be kind and patient like her namesakes, she wanted to be friendly and loyal and generous and loving like her grandmother. Like her Weasley family.
The Potter's were famous by the time they left Hogwarts. But not in the way one might expect.