James Potter, the Marauders were quick to learn, never took 'no' for an answer. The first time they came to realise this was when Larry Gilroy refused to give up his bowl of treacle tart one morning during their first year; the yelling escalated into a scuffle, and it was Larry's incessant wailing ('He was taking my treacle tart, Professor!') that resulted in James Potter's first-ever detention, and also the start of his deviant career.
To the boys' amusement, Larry Gilroy was rushed off to the Hospital Wing that night after someone put itching powder into his soup.
The Marauders also learned that James was a stubborn git, someone who would ride a broom into the Whomping Willow to prove a point, never mind the consequences. (He had, in fact, done this before, if Filch's records—and the hospital wing's files—were anything to go by.) It never came as a surprise to any of them, then, that James was forever neck-deep in detention, just as it was unsurprising that the Hogwarts' Staff considered him too intelligent to expel.
It was also unsurprising that the Marauders took part in nearly every one of James' idiotic escapades, because that was what friends did, Sirius asserted. 'If we won't help you with all the whack things you come up with, who will?' Truth be told, they enjoyed getting into mischief as much as he did, though only Sirius would have admitted so. But just as he was loud, and messy, and sometimes a complete arse to have around, the Marauders learnt that James was loyal. Loyal to the bleeding core. There was a reason why he outstripped all the other Gryffindor boys in detention, and that was because James Potter took the blame for most of the pranks they pulled, refusing to let them get into as much trouble as him.
'You lot don't have to get detention for every single thing I put my mind to,' he had mumbled once, after another round of detention with Filch. His eyes had been strangely imploring, his face oddly serious. 'Remus's got his mum to look after, Sirius can't just get kicked out of school—his parents are bonkers, no offence, mate—and, er, well Pete's just Pete.' He ripped open another chocolate frog and wolfed it down, then shrugged. 'Besides, you wouldn't get into trouble if it wasn't for me.'
'We probably would,' Sirius said, laughing.
'Nah.' James flopped onto his four-poster. 'You wouldn't, you ninny. "Oh, let's not do anything to Smythe, Mum knows his parents and she'd bloody well murder me if she found out,"' he mimicked Sirius, scrunching his nose up in a pained expression. The gale of laughter that issued from him was quickly stifled with a pillow to the face; he tossed it back, hazel eyes swimming with mirth.
A full-blown pillow fight ensued, complete with levitating charms and reckless shouts of 'Incendio!' that nevertheless resulted in one of the curtains catching on fire. But when they fell asleep that night, their mattresses damp, the smell of smoke still tickling their nostrils, and feather-stuffing between their feet, they realised that their friendship ran deeper than any of them had ever thought before. It was a quiet kind of knowing, as solid as the feel of cold flagged stone against their feet every morning, as solid as James' obsession with treacle tart, as solid as sweaty palms and hands linking firmly together on nights when the world outside seemed so much darker than before.
Five years later, they were ready to die for another, should they have to. Or so they believed, and thought, and trusted in themselves that they would. For the Marauders, it started with James, and it ended with James, and it was James who tied them together. The troublemaker, when things got dull. The mediator, when Sirius and Remus had a shouting match over Remus' having lied about his lycanthropy. He was a tugboat on stormy seas, heading straight off the edge, running through life with a smile on his face and an arrogant toss of his head. He exhaled confidence. He incited confidence, pushing his friends into accomplishing what they feared they never could. Becoming Animagi. Joining the Order. Flying through the Great Hall on a Sunday and making it snow. He was reckless, but he was passionate. And everything was warmer, and everything was funnier, and the boys were braver when he was around.
To Hogwarts, he was exasperated cries of, 'Potter!', but to his friends, he remained—would always remain—'Prongs'.
By the time they entered their fifth year, meetings with McGonagall had become routine. They were, most of the time, accompanied with disapproving glances. 'You can accomplish so much more than these petty hijinks, Potter.' 'You have so much potential, Potter.' 'This is the last time I wish to see you in my office, Potter!' 'Seepage in the Slytherin Common Room? Detention, Potter.'
Disapproving glances and, usually, a biscuit. James always commented, smirking, that he actually looked forwards to the latter. The Ginger Newts were the best.
He always said 'Ginger Newts' loudly whenever they were in the vicinity of a certain Lily Evans. Evans, who ignored him when he asked her out. Evans, who tried not to laugh every time they hexed Filch's hand to his mop, but shook her head at them anyway. Evans, who became a constant in their lives so quickly that they really couldn't recall a time when James had not pined after Lily.
James Potter, the Marauders knew well by now, was dead persistent. He began to ask her out nearly every other week, and it soon became tradition for them to go out for a moonlit walk to Hogsmeade the nights she turned him down.
In March of their fifth year, James' parents died. Dragonpox, Dumbledore informed him. I'm so sorry, James.
Their wanders down to Hogsmeade became more frequent.
The Marauders learnt, within a month, how James Potter handled grief. He would go flying in a storm, perhaps trying to drown himself; other times, he would disappear, and they would gather round the Map to keep an eye on him, knowing full well that he wanted nothing but to be left alone. Then James Potter would throw himself into his work, complete all his essays, study for the OWLs. despite never having displayed the slightest interest in them before. He played pranks with a newfound passion, made people laugh, regained a quirkier, newer step in his gait—but only the Marauders saw through to him. They could see the hesitance in his smirk, the abrupt way his laughter would begin and end. He would trail off after beginning a sentence and sometimes there were tear-tracks on his face in the morning, but they would ignore it all.
The Marauders, James Potter learnt, were the damnedest best bunch of mates he could ever hope to find.
James Potter was a bully. He would grow frustrated some nights, dream of his parents, dream of his dead cousins—they died, he read in the Prophet, in a Death Eater raid. 'A bleeding Death Eater raid—they can effing stuff death down their stockings and no one would stop them, not one bloody person,' he would repeat, over and over again, running a hand through his hair. It became a nervous tick, growing more accentuated until it reached a point when he only did it to appear confident, reassured. He was the same James Potter, right? he would ask his friends. Nothing's wrong with me, right? And they would respond with a chorus of 'no', of course there was nothing wrong with him. He was their best friend.
The Marauders were the only people who saw him grow progressively worse.
Hexing random students in the corridors. Pranks on the Slytherins that grew more vindictive and less funny with every passing day. The fire that was James Potter wasn't a blazing arc any more—it was a hurricane, singeing everyone who got too close. Smoke billowed from the shutters he had dragged down over himself, and it wasn't until McGonagall took him aside and talked to him firmly and kindly, after he had cried in front of her—in front of her, a teacher—that he calmed down considerably.
Not a lot, but considerably.
But, the Marauders saw, he did not change overnight. Sirius was more than eager to help him rag Snape, because 'he's a special case, isn't he, mate?', and he hated him as much as they did him. Sirius Black and James Potter had never been good with drawing lines, or toeing them, and growing up was not on their agenda. Grief, frustration, arrogance and a sort of sadistic pleasure in obtaining some sort of revenge—it fuelled them. It gave them a high.
It was strange, then, that what broke through to him were angry words on a warm June morning. 'You're as bad as he is!' Later, he would recall greasy hair and soap suds, bright-green eyes and disappointment. He would recall surprise, a twinge in his heart, a sudden wave of calm and frustration that both tickled him and riled him up immensely.
For all intents and purposes, James Potter was not a bad person.
The Marauders saw how suddenly and slowly change could bloom. Something calmed the hurricane, turned it into the meagre flame on a guttering candle, a flame that turned into a wisp of warmth when he went home over the summer and saw his parents' graves for the first time. That year, Sirius moved in with him, in the large, empty house. A chill settled within him, within them, and it seemed like it rained a lot more often, and the clouds were greyer, and the crickets chirped in the night like a mournful medley trying to keep the boys company.
They saw, in sixth year, that fires could be calm: they could burn with as much vivacity as before, sparks leaping from the grate to burn at unsuspecting people's toes. But for the most part, they simply burned. Burned with sincerity and earnestness. Burned with passion and love. They burned, and they smiled, and they welcomed people in in a manner that was roguish without being forced, warm without being insincere. They burned so you couldn't see the coals, burned so brightly that they brought out the good and hid the bad.
James Potter, the Marauders learnt, loved Lily Evans. She was so alive—it was incredible how much she was like James, how different she was from James. Funny and kind, there was something undeniably warm about her, something that James had grown to admire, something that he wanted to possess, too. He would watch her when he didn't think they were looking, glance up from his Potions homework to smile at her, his eyes twinkling. Sirius would nudge Remus, and they would tease him mercilessly about it in the boys' dormitory, but for the first time, James did not go after Lily. The bridge between them was fragile, like glass, and James did not wish to touch it for fear that it would break and leave him with nothing. Nothing, like his parents, who would have wanted to go down fighting, he knew, but had been too old for that.
He did not wish for what he had with Evans to whittle down to nothing, so he looked her way, and he hoped, and his unsaid apology became a somewhat-coherent jumble of words one night when he entered the Common Room, dripping wet after a wild Quidditch practice. His apologies were dry humour and clever jokes, nights of comfortable silence and friendly conversation. Something bloomed, and the bridge became firmer, and the gulf between them narrowed to a patch of dry sand on the ground.
But James Potter was a leader. His forte was excitement. Nothing was quiet with him around; the fire splashed out of his cup like molten gold—it was infectious. The bond between the Marauders brimmed deeper that year, just as rifts grew between them, just as some people grew closer and some flitted further away.
That year, Snape found out about Remus' 'furry little problem'. And James saved his life when 'the idiot, the absolute idiot' followed Sirius' hints and entered the Shrieking Shack by way of the Willow, just as Remus transformed.
The Marauders learnt that James Potter was brave, that he was not afraid to do what was good, but that he was also reckless and unthinking of the consequences. He grew angry; he yelled at Snape; he yelled at Dumbledore; he yelled at Sirius. For the first time in his life, he was unaware of the real weight of what he had actually done, and what would have thrilled him a year ago now only managed to subdue him.
James Potter had a terrible temper, the Marauders learnt. But he was forgiving and trusting, and what should have divided him and Sirius only brought them closer. They learnt that people made mistakes. They learnt that growing up meant that there are certain people whom you can't really forgive, ever, and that hatred burns deeper than razor-sharp words that trim at your skin, peeling away layer by layer until there's nothing but raw flesh underneath. But they learnt that goodness flows deeper than hate, and it took time, but for all intents and purposes...
The Marauders were good people.
Or really, most of them were.
James, the Marauders learnt, was blind without his glasses; but his heart was blind, too. He trusted, and that trust was fatal.
If there was one mistake James Potter made, it was his heart seeing clearly for the first time after Lord Voldemort walked in through the door.
But he went out blazing, and that was that.